There is so much on social media and in the news at the moment that worries, depletes and fills with despair. Of course there are good things too, but you have to consciously look for blessing at the moment.
Yet we live in a world alive with miracles. A world which is always there but from which we have sometimes been too distracted to notice. Remember the more you love God, the more you love all God has created, including human beings. So this front cover is an encouragement to consciously look for all the things for which we are grateful.
I saw a mother with her two children on the train out of Euston. She told them to put away their mobiles and look out of the window or they would miss leaving the city of London behind. ‘It’s your chance to see the edges of the city and the beginning of the country. Look now or you will miss it’. I look out of my window and see a father walking along the road with his daughter in a beautiful purple coat. She must be about six years old. Her father notices her shoe lace is undone and kneels down to tie if for her. I have bought my first bunch of daffodils. This Sunday is Candlemas, when we remember Simeon in the Temple who saw salvation with his own eyes. I wonder if today, and everyday, you too will see salvation. Perhaps Christ present in something as ordinary as looking out of the window, doing up a shoe lace or seeing the first bulbs breaking through the winter soil. Just in the act of looking for Christ’s presence in the world we bring salvation a little closer. Alfred Lord Tennyson expressed this hope in this way:
Ring in the valiant and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Revd Richard Carter
