Minister's Letter - January - February 2012

Dear friends,

Everyone enjoyed our Christmas celebrations at the Gardner! The Family service on Christmas Eve was overflowing with shepherds and angels, kings and camels and angels…… massed choirs of angels! And so was Messy Church with the young ones a few days after Christmas. I sense a real community spirit in our church. If you haven’t been recently, please do ask the new visiting teams about what’s going on at the Gardner those days. Better still, come along and see for yourself!
As I write this, we’re enjoying milder temperatures and bright sunshine. There’s talk of snowdrops and spring coming and preparing the earth. Is it too early to start turning the earth in the garden? It’s only the middle of January! Is it too soon to start dreaming of the growing season?

Spring to summer
Summer to harvest
Harvest to hibernation
We turn this earth.

Turn us, God
Turn us with the seasons
Turn us with the generations
Turn us with the earth.

Taken from Eggs and Ashes ed R Burgess and C Polhill (Wild Goose Publications)

The year has turned and the days are getting longer. There’s a sense of preparation and clearing the decks too, ready for whatever the next phase in our church life might bring. We’ve twice been visited by folk from the Church of Scotland offices in Edinburgh, looking at the inside of the church. Our application for some funding to find out how we could make our sanctuary space more welcoming for the community is progressing well. Lots of interest and good ideas from local folk (non church-goers as well as yourselves) came in answer to our survey asking what they’d like to see at the Gardner. The church isn’t there just for its members, of course, but for the whole parish.

Let’s be bold this year ahead, and claim God’s promises that He is with us always. Let’s rejoice, that today and tomorrow and all the years ahead are in God’s hands.

I hope 2012 is a happy and healthy year for you and yours.

 

Jane

Rev. Jane M. Blackley M.A., B.D.