September at the beginning of the Academic Year is a time for new starts. And I’m thinking of 2 ‘PA’s. The first is our new Rector’s PA and Benefices Administrator Mrs Alison Belding who started with us at the beginning of the Summer. Many of you will have received her weekly e mails and other information. Good communication and organisation is vital in our busy group of 5 Parishes and Alison is already building on the great work that Kim Reeve started as our last Rector’s PA and Benefices Administrator. But the other PA is another change. Its ‘Post Anthony’. Rev Anthony Davis moved to continue his curacy at St Paul’s Bedford in August and we are already missing him as he brought so much to our Parishes in the 13 months he was with us. But new starts also remind us of endings. Many children and young people are beginning a new school, college course or university this Autumn, and they have all left something else in order to do this. Our schools often sing ‘One more step along the world I go… ever old and ever new, keep me travelling along with You’. This gives us hope, in that whenever someone moves on there is an opportunity for someone else to join, step up, or change roles. This is the way God has created His world – things come, and go, to grow and wither, to be born and to die. King Solomon writes of this in the book of Ecclesiastes ‘there is a time for everything; a time to plant, …to scatter, …for war, …for peace etc’. Nothing stands still. Its been noted that God created His world as a garden, and it ends at the end of time as a Heavenly City, the new Jerusalem. So there’s a challenge for each one of us. God creates us as helpless babies, but matures us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually for all that we face in this life to prepare us for the life beyond. God calls and sends and brings people to serve Him and others. What has God been doing in your life to prepare you for your next step as we seek to serve Him? Is there some opportunity ahead with someone else moving on where you could blossom and flourish in a new way? Christian ministry I have found is a particular situation where people come and go as has Alison, and Anthony. We may be very small scattered rural communities, but God is always on the move with some plan that we are yet to see and discern. Let’s keep being watchful hopeful people and ready to be part of the change and new opportunities that God has for us, as well as each one of us as individuals.
Timothy Wilson
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