Signs of New Life

One of the lovely things about this time of year is the signs of new life.

Yesterday, I cut the grass for the first time in the new season and, while it took a while as I was too late getting to it, there is that lovely smell of freshly mown grass. The church recently had its first cut and you can see the daffodils and spring flowers peeking above the surface.

I put in some new herbs and potatoes in a few pots to see how they might go as a follow on from my first venture into growing some things last year. We have friends who are sheep farmers, and the lambing season is well underway as they get up at all hours of the day and night to deliver these new arrivals in the lambing shed.

As we see the day time extending, and this will increase as the clocks go forward next week, there are also signs of new life in God’s church.

It’s encouraging when we welcome new people who come to worship with us on a Sunday. It’s a real blessing to see our young people meeting together in the coffee bar on two Sundays a month and exploring questions of faith together with their leaders.

I get great encouragement from the regular updates we receive from our mission partners, Andrew and Joanne Quill, who are working in community health empowerment in the Diocese of Ibba in South Sudan. They are training trainers to go out into the community to work in areas like the healing of trauma after civil war. They are encouraging and empowering people to become self sufficient through drought resistant crops; they are training clergy and seeing people find new confidence and faith.

I’ve heard a few podcasts recently from Iran, where the church is one of the fastest growing in the world. The ‘Jesus Speaks Farsi’ podcast is full of encouraging and moving testimonies from people who have, not only found faith for themselves, but are sharing it with those around them, and finding great openness and powerful responses.

More locally, it has been powerful to hear the church planters from around the Diocese coming to share on Thursday evenings during Lent about the work they are doing in varied settings to try to reach out with the gift of faith and make possible new church connections. If you have missed them, you can find them on the St. Finnian’s YouTube channel or the website.

We want to be a church that sees new life, and we look forward next week to delivering some invitations to our Good Friday family show called,  ‘The Chair, the Table and the Cross.’ We want to offer that hope that so many are searching for and which can be found in Jesus. Maybe you could be the vital link that enables someone to hear it or find it for the first time.

There’s another good opportunity to offer the healing that Jesus brings through a service of Wholeness and Healing on Sunday morning at 11 am. So many of us long to know healing, either in our own lives or in the lives of people we care about, and we have the opportunity to very simply lift up these situations in prayer to God.

Look forward to speaking again soon.

Much love to everyone,

Jono.

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