This is a group of us from Hodge Hill Church walking the Paschal Candle to the church having lit it round a fire as the sun rose on Easter day.
Again, a metaphor I love. I am so grateful to those who have walked the light for me. Tonight we are staying with someone who did it for Paul many years ago. One of those people that made such a big difference in his life as a young person.
I wonder who we might be walking the light for at the moment? I wonder who is walking the light for us?
You can’t see where the path goes, the lights follow the bend. Some of you may have walked this path yourselves, it leads to Cotehele Mill.
As I look at this picture it makes me think of all the people who have lit the path for me over my spiritual journey. I trust that there will be others I cannot yet see, just like the lights further down the path.
Sometimes it is a phrase or action that is light, other times it feels like someone has picked up one of those lights and is walking alongside me with it.
Who or what is lighting your path? Are you lighting a path for someone else?
Shafts of light are a helpful metaphor for me at the moment. It has been a challenging year for us and some we are close to healthwise particularly.
However, when I reflect there are always shafts of light in a difficult day, but sometimes I need to put more effort into noticing them.
On the sea, the reflection of light is distorted by the movement of the water and this looks like a choppy path. But it is a path and I am grateful for those who illuminate a way for me by their actions, writing, example or encouragement and support.
I love seeing a path of light across the sea. Even more special when it.is moonlight but struggle to capture that on a phone and in the summer to be still up when the moon rises!
I have been seeing quite a few posts about paths recently and appreciating the way people are using it both literally and metaphorically.
What I realised commenting on one such post was that my path has remained quite similar in very many ways but the scenery has changed. Given a choice I would always walk by the sea but most of the time that is not possible and I have learnt to appreciate much more other landscapes too.
I have also been reminded of the Gate of the Year poem in recent days and appreciate Minnie Louise Haskins words about stepping out holding the hand of God. There are times when we see no light, they are the most challenging.
I get most days around 6 as I did yesterday. I opened the window where we were staying to see dawn emerging.
I love it when the first light is natural, as I write this before 7, it is in a room bathed with natural light, no artificial light is needed here. As the days get shorter I am missing that early natural light for my quiet time alone each morning. Autumn is gathering pace.
Light is used as a metaphor for so many things, one is knowledge. One of the early Bible verses I learnt off by heart was Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path.
A first light for me can be when I feel God is saying something to me and I need to see how it evolves, perhaps how it grows brighter or even how I grow into it.
Are you glimpsing a first light at the moment?
On our walk on Monday we kept waiting for the sun to break through to match the promised weather forecast! When it did it was beautiful! The picture doesn’t do justice to the beauty in real life.
There is a lot of writing and research on the benefits of gratitude. Looking for shafts of light is one way to frame this for me. In the past two years or so there have been plenty of times of darkness and listening to the news at the moment I am struggling to see the shafts of light although my mind keeps drifting back to Saturday’s football result which was a shafts of light for Spurs supporters after two poor games.
So where are the shafts of light for you at the moment? Beautiful early spring bulbs flowering are one if mine. Space to rest, read and walk this week is another. I need to be purposeful in looking for shafts of light, being grateful and experiencing joy even on those days when the search is particularly difficult.
This is a wild honeysuckle growing in a wood or forest we can’t find a name for near the chicks in the chapel’s new home. This type of honeysuckle grows towards the light which, in an overgrown forest, is upward. I was fascinated by this picture of a dead silver birch scaffolding fragrant, delicate honeysuckle which eventually may have red berries, poisonous to me but not to the birds. It is amazing what I can learn from Gardener’s World!
I am reading a few things at the moment, largely on social media, about what may die and what may live or grow or blossom as we emerge from lockdown. I am still dismayed to who is dying and the systemic issues that have caused this and find the rhetoric of we are doing well so hard to listen to. And despite many prayers over so long I still find it hard to hope that our self centredness and lack of regard for others and for an understanding of global citizenship, equity, dignity and respect. A more just and fair world is something I long for while admitting that I don’t always make the choices that contribute towards this. I interviewed a potential student yesterday and one of the questions we ask is what do you think should be too of the government’s agenda, she quickly replied, equality.
This year more than most I long to see the light of Christ manifest in our world. It has been a hard year in many ways but today I am remembering the vulnerability of God who chose to become human, being born as a baby, a risky endeavour. In the remembering there is hope and an awareness that God has been Emmanuel to me this year, I cannot imagine what it would have been like if that were not so. Christmas blessings to all
This was a thought around the fruit of the Spirit that I found while preparing for our Pentecost Sunday service today.(9 of us shared on one fruit each, very inspiring). I thought it really caught the essence of the fruit of the Spirit as we think about being filled and refilled with the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.
By our fruits we will be known. Actions? Naturally. Words, yes as well. When speaking out against injustice, owning up and taking responsibility for past mistakes, sins, oppression. This is the potential for the quality of the light that can shine from us reflecting our God and Kingdom in whose image we are made, Jesus as the Light of the World and the Kingdom of Heaven here now on Earth.
If we want to know what we should be doing and being, let’s try being loving, kind, gentle, good, the list goes on, so can our light.
Trevose lighthouse, on the edge of the north Cornish coast. I am drawn to lighthouses, there is one on my ordination stole as the metaphor is significant to me. It is only when it is dark that they act as a guiding light, but even then it is a flashing light, darkness, light, darkness, light… That might be because the light sweeps round 360 degrees although we only see it from one perspective. That helps me to realise that sometimes I need more than just my view – I can’t see everything from where I look for guiding lights to help me navigate the path.
Marker Posts and Shelters 