Unless one happens to be inhabiting the innermost regions of the Amazon Jungle it is highly unlikely that The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee has passed you by! Naturally in Tottington, our celebrations are later than those undertaken by the rest of the nation, but mark and celebrate it we will do.
I am immensely grateful for those who have undertaken the responsibility to organise, promote and support our celebrations liturgically, musically, socially and in particular making sure that our youngest boys and girls have a memory truly historic proportions that they will carry all of their lives. I like to think that we here at St Anne’s have a characteristic way of marking such occasions in the nation’s calendar!
The words for the prayer for June, as they are set for Petertide, are particularly apposite when we consider Her Majesty’s life and especially in respect of the Christian Faith that she has professed throughout her life. She has, if I might say so, taken particular inspiration and example from Christians such as St Peter and St Paul (but others too) and has led her people from the front, in firmly founded devotion and duty undergirded by prayerfulness and hope. But of course, unless you have been living in the depths of Amazonia for the last seventy years, we all know this to be true.
The service to be held on the 12th of June at 10.30 am an opportunity to thank God for The Queen’s long reign in both word and hymnody – we can have a right good sing! It is a time to be happy and to be proud of this remarkable godly woman whom God has blessed us with over so many years. Our Queen upon whom God she has placed all her hope in good times, and not so good time, and who remains, come what may and as we move into the future a perennial touchstone of what Christian duty and service is really all about.
The Vicar