Writing Sensitively About Current Affairs, by Georgie Tennant

Every few months, our church is asked to provide a block of four “Thoughts for the Week,” that are printed in our local paper, the Lynn News. It is widely read within our town, so it is a pleasure and a privilege to be one of the four people each time, to provide a “thought."

It’s always surprising to me how many people notice them: I was once on playground duty at school and the Headteacher approached and told me he had enjoyed my writing. One of my department once cut one of them out of the newspaper and pinned it to our staff noticeboard.

Writing a “Thought for the Week,” always feels like a joy and a responsibility. It is so important to get the tone right – reflective and thoughtful but not preachy. Enabling the reader to reflect on faith where they are at, without pushing my version of it down their throats. This was never more so than this week. I was already lined up to write a “thought,” but had declared myself to be “Thought Number 4,” as Number 1 was due immediately. Being September, and a teacher, workload was already high and time short.

Of course, though, the shock announcement on Thursday evening jump-started my writerly brain. Inspired by this photo put on Facebook by our own Rosemary Johnson, I promoted myself to “Thought-Number-One-Provider,” and began writing immediately. More than ever, the tone had to be right: thoughtful, reflective, respectful, sensitive. I think I got it right – I’ll let you be the judge!

Well Done Good and Faithful Servant by Georgie Tennant

Waking up this morning, it is a new era. The death of Queen Elizabeth II was announced last night. The second Elizabethan era has drawn to a close. As a nation, whatever our thoughts on the Royal Family, we come together in the “denial,” stage of grief. We blink, shake our heads and wonder if yesterday’s announcement of the death of our beloved monarch, who seemed as if she would go on forever (though logic told us she couldn’t), was really true.

News channels are broadcasting memories of her unique and exceptional reign. Newspapers across the world have adorned their front pages with beautiful photographs to celebrate and commemorate her. Children and adults alike are talking about their stories and memories of her seventy-year reign. Artists are painting pictures movingly depicting “Lillibet,” being reunited with her Prince.

By the time this “Thought,” reaches the newspaper, plans will have been made for all the pomp and circumstance of a funeral befitting the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, and our initial shock and grief will have settled. Perhaps some of us have found ourselves more moved than we imagined we would be, the loss of the Queen tapping into and reigniting old griefs of our own.

On her twenty first birthday, knowing she would one day take the throne, the Queen vowed to serve wholeheartedly, her whole life through, praying to the God she had a personal faith in, to help her to “make good [her] vow.” With a reign spanning seventy years and fifteen Prime Ministers, she took her vow very seriously.

She embodied a steadfast, unswerving faith and a quiet determination to live it out, in family and public life. One artist has painted a picture of her, boarding the newly opened Elizabeth line, alone, the front of the train heading into the light. It is an intensely moving portrait of the end of a life well-lived. She served her people so well, with such a profound sense of where her calling came from. She trusted, deeply, that this life was not the end, this hope strengthening her through so many trials, most recently the death of her husband, Prince Philip.

I like to imagine, at the end of the line, the Queen of England being welcomed by the King of Kings, with the words he spoke in a parable: “Well done good and faithful servant…come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25v21).

Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive. She is married, with two sons, aged 14 and 11 who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW ‘Christian Writer’ magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published ‘New Life: Reflections for Lent,’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone.' More recently, she has written 8 books in a phonics series, published by BookLife. She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk