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Each month Rev Philippa Donald or a member of our Joint Council writes a letter to the Benefice – here is September’s letter ….
Dear friends in Seven Towers,
As you read this, it will be the beginning of the new academic year, with all that means for children and young people, teachers and all those involved in education. In our family, the eldest granddaughter is going into Year 6 – already! – so lots of thinking about next year including the move to secondary school, the middle granddaughter is going into Year 4 and the youngest has another year in Nursery before starting school. Various places on the journey through education; you may have family doing the same journey.
Each Autumn in the school year is a fresh start, isn’t it? I used to love buying new stationery and pens, paper, erasers, crayons and all that – I was less keen on buying new school uniform, and especially new school shoes, as my feet were so tiny, only a size 13 when I went up to secondary school – the embarrassment! (they are a 3 and a half / 4 now, if you’re interested, but my mum had feet which were a 2 and a half!)
But I liked the idea of a new start. Lots of things will have gone well the year before and sometimes I was sad to leave my teacher, if I’d had a particularly happy year. But also there will inevitably have been things that didn’t go so well, or circumstances that happened to make that year an unhappy one, or perhaps there were things I had said and done that I was happy to leave behind.
Thankfully we don’t have to wait a whole school year to make a fresh start in the Christian faith. Each day can be a fresh start, as we seek to follow the teachings of Jesus and live the life God calls us to live. In the book of Lamentations, in the Old Testament, we read these words:
“The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.”
The word ‘mercies’ means that whatever has happened the day before has been forgotten about by God by the next morning, and every day is a fresh start. His faithful love and forgiveness for us never ends or runs out and is not conditional on us being ‘good’ or even ‘doing good’ – though it is a good thing to help others in whatever way we can. God forgives us again and again – and again – and…., you get the idea.
The challenging thing about God being so forgiving of us, is that he calls us to be the same. It’s as if he is saying ‘I always forgive you, so if you say you’re following me, and my teachings (as Christians do) you need to do the same.’ Not easy, especially when we feel we’ve been wronged or misrepresented or misunderstood, which can happen a lot in our messy world today.
As we begin this new academic year together, let’s remember that every day can be a fresh start if we put our trust in God and ask him to help us to be the best we can be each day.
With love and prayers from Rev Philippa 😊 x