Latest Thought for the Week

The past year has seen a change of pace for me and I’ve spent some time wondering what my purpose is. I know that I’m not alone in having existential angst around ‘retirement’ age.

We live in a world of war, displacement, and fear. And we each carry our own hidden wounds and fears, which prevent us from letting go and reaching out, in recognition, forgiveness and love.

One of my earliest memories of church was going with my mother to hear the Passion Gospel read on Palm Sunday. I loved that the people got to deliver some lines, though it still rankles with me that only the priest ever got to play Jesus.

Make the most of Lent, and the opportunity to lament. God is ready and waiting to respond.

Mothering Sunday is worse than Valentines Day. The shops are full of folded pieces of card wrapped in plastic, covered in language that people are meant to be and feel.

Looking through the poetry of the priest George Herbert is time well-spent. I was encouraged to revisit his work after we remembered him in Morning Prayer on the 27th of February, marking his death in 1633.

In ‘Abiding’, Ben Quash uses the example of Damiel leaving the certainty and the knowledge of eternity to live in the flux and flow of life, in order to explore the Biblical sense that ‘to abide we must journey; to have truth and life (to have true life) we must be always underway.’

Lent; Tempt; Disciple; Discipline; Congregational giving; Generosity.

In a curious coincidence Ash Wednesday this year coincides with Valentines Day. The message is clear enough. You might want to give something up but on no account should you give up love.