The months of September and October seem full of beginnings and endings – new schools/universities, new jobs and the end of summer, packing away the shorts and getting out the winter woollies. In these months, the church has traditionally celebrated harvest, the collecting in of the grain and the fruits to keep us going through the winter months. Nowadays the festival does not feature so prominently as we are not as dependent on a good local harvest as our forebears were; the supermarkets seem to be able to
supply our every need all the year round.
But it set me to thinking that life is all about beginnings and endings. No sooner do we finish something than we start something else, hopefully better, but not always so. Youngsters grow out of School; teenagers long to get into work; those in work look forward to retirement! We are in danger of wishing
our life away! I think maybe that we need to be content with where we are and what we have, and make the best of it that we can.
I am reminded of Jesus’s words to the crowd in the Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 6 v 28-29) – Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.
John Sweeting