Dear Friends and Neighbours,

I recently read a story about some Missionaries in Africa who hired some local villagers as porters to carry some supplies. The porters were much slower than the Missionaries, so the Missionaries had to keep pushing the pace to get the porters to travel quicker. They kept increasing the pace and by the third day they had travelled twice as fast as they had done on the first day. However, on the fourth day when the Missionaries tried to rouse the porters for the day’s journey they would not move. When asked why they were refusing to move the porters replied that they had been journeying too quickly and they need time for their souls to catchup.

I don’t know about you, but that really resonates with me. Before the Pandemic most of us were working and living lives that were so much faster than we could really cope with. The pressures and demands of balancing work and home life, and the continued time pressure of availability to everyone 24/7 that the world of the internet brings to us… Not to mention the materialistic pressure we all feel to have more and more. And although, the Pandemic slowed down our physical way of living, as we’ve not been able to go out and socialise and many have worked from home and coping with home schooling too… the emotional speed at which we’ve travelled seems to have taken its toll… and perhaps we need to take some time to reflect … to, if you like, ‘let our souls catchup’.

March sees us as a church in the middle of the Christian season of Lent. A bit like Advent helps us to prepare for Christmas, Lent helps us to prepare for Easter. It’s traditionally a time set aside to enable us to reflect on our lives… to reflect on Jesus and His life, to think about Jesus dying on the Cross …as the Bible tells us, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life”. Lent is a time for us to reflect on God’s love for us … and who we are in response to that love. It’s a time for us to reimagine what our lives might be like with His love in our lives… and a time to asking Him to forgive us and refresh us and to journey through life with us.

So why not take some time out this Lent to let your soul catchup? …to perhaps take time to allow Jesus to fresh you. I’ll leave you with these wonderful words from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah;

God Bless

Rev Cathy x