Rev'd Karen - May 2022

Light Reflections... “Let your light shine...” (Matthew 5.16)

It was wonderful to celebrate my first Easter here as we journeyed together through Holy Week, taking time to reflect on Jesus’ last week before gathering at the foot of the cross on Good Friday to meditate on the cost. This culminated in the wonderful Dawn Service on Easter Sunday as we proclaimed that Christ is Risen and called out our Alleluia’s from the top of Mill Hill in Mellor.

We are now in Easter Season, a time of hope, of new life and renewal, a time where we rejoice in Jesus’ resurrection and bask in His glory and victory over sin and death as we await the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And this month we will be observing the Feast Day of Jesus’ Ascension, as He is taken up into heaven to take His place at the right hand of the Father. And it is these themes of new life, of hope and of renewal I want to focus on.

As we now step into the blossoming month of May, we see these themes of hope, new life and renewal echoed in God’s creation as it teems with life all around us. We do not need to go far or look to hard. You can hear it early in the morning when the first vestiges of light start to seep through, the blackbirds start to awake and sing their hymn of praise to the new day dawning. I hear the calls of the curlews and catch their flight paths over the fields around us. I watch with joy to see a great tit family taking up residence in the nest box and the woodpigeon and crows artfully building their homes from twigs and sticks.

Winter has long been forgotten, Spring has well and truly abundantly budded, and the promise of sultry summer is on the horizon. The flora and fauna are displaying their fecundity. Our broad bean plants are now well established; early potatoes are peeking through their troughs and peas, of both the eating and flora kind, are beginning to grow up their supports as onions are sending out their long shoots (well the ones that haven’t been plucked from their holes by the Woodpigeons). The gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes are unfurling their leaves and have been joined by the raspberry canes. A harvest of soft fruits later in the year beckons. It truly feels like a mini-Eden, an abundant blessing of God’s generosity and rich provision, a re-creation of His handiwork. It is new life from out of the tomb of the cold, dank earth as it springs a quickening that has been gestating in the Creator’s womb.

During this glorious month of May let us enjoy and delight in the new signs of life around us, not just in the nature we see but also in the creation of who we are as children of God. His love and delight for us has no boundaries, as Jesus called the disciples to follow Him, let us follow Him and place our feet in His footsteps. As He leads us in the dance of hope, new life, and renewal, may we take His hand and glorify in how He is building our faith, growing His church and what He is nurturing and tending in the garden of our lives as He builds His Kingdom on earth as He builds in heaven. Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Blessings, Rev’d Karen

Christ Centered...Kingdom Focused