Rector’s Blog – Day 91

Dear Friends

2 Corinthians 5:  17 – 20

Be careful what you throw away.  There’s two types of people in the world:   those that hoard because “one day it might be useful”;  and those that throw away, because ” there’s no point hanging onto stuff that you’ll never need again.  Take it to a charity shop and help someone else.”  I am in the former category, as anyone who has been in my study can testify.  I find it to be a truism that anything I reluctantly part with is immediately the exact thing I need for the All Age service next Sunday.

You may remember three months ago in the dim distant days of April or so, when we stayed home, and didn’t drive our cars.  We only went to the shops when we needed and shopped for our neighbours instead.  Back in those days there was a lot of talk about not wanting to go back to how things were.  We didn’t much like the grind of commuting to work, we preferred the smell of the fresh spring flowers.  We didn’t miss the vapour trails but loved the clear silent skies.  We were proud that pollution levels were plummeting and we didn’t want them to rise again.  We liked not rushing, savouring the seasons and baking our own cakes (when we could find flour).  Life was going to be different from now on.

We were going to be a new creation, not held captive to the old pressures of life which once you stepped outside them seemed so unnecessary and destructive.

Did you make any decisions about how you wanted to live?  What you were, or were not going to do?  Did you make some guiding principles for life?  What were they?  Say them out loud!  Now!

Have you stuck to them?  Or are they like a breath from a bygone age, forgotten about.  An unrealistic utopian dream.  ‘everything old has passed away’.  Which of the alternatives makes you a better ambassador for Christ?  How you live now?  Or how you hoped you’d live now?  (Assuming you are not in the incredibly fortunate position of those two options being the same!)  And is there anything you can do about it?  [If you had made decisions about new priorities,and have managed to stick to them.  I’d love to hear about it, and how you achieved it.]

A prayer (the Collect for Easter Day)

Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.  Amen.

And a final sonnet by Malcolm Guite – St John the Baptist:  2 Baptism
It’s from Sounding the Seasons.  Seventy sonnets for the Church’s Year

Love’s hidden thread has drawn us to the font,
A wide womb floating on the breath of God,
Feathered with seraph wings, lit with the swift
Lightening of praise, with thunder over-spread,
And under-girded with an unheard song,
Calling through water, fire, darkness, pain,
Calling us to the life for which we long,
Yearning to bring us to our birth again.
Again the breath of God is on the waters
In whose reflecting face our candles shine,
Again he draws from death the sons and daughters
For whom he bid the elements combine.
As living stones around a font today,
Rejoice with those who roll the stone away.

If you would like to join us for Evening Prayer today (Wednesday) it is at 5.00pm