TEAM RECTOR’S LETTER MARCH 2021
One of the delights of St James Church, North Cray is its lovely setting in a dip leading down to the Footscray Meadows. The church and churchyard are beautiful in every season of the year, but particularly well-beloved in the spring, with the trees in blossom and the bank of primroses in flower, a carpet of the palest yellow seeming to glow amongst the gravestones. To me it is always a sign of new life, this juxtaposition of fresh spring flowers and the gravestones which remind us of our own mortality.
Contained within those pale flowers is the abiding Easter message of Christ’s victory over death, despair and hatred. This year particularly, where we have lived for twelve months with the limitations and losses of the pandemic, these signs of spring seem the more welcome and the more poignant.
The Government have recently announced the so-called ‘road-map’ towards some kind of return to normality. Let us hope and pray that this is effective. But while we look with hope to the future, we cannot just wipe this last year from our memories. For many of us there will be a remembering with sadness, the loss of a loved one, the sense of grief at enforced separations in those times when we need human contact the most, the loss of job or health or livelihood.
There is a remembering with thankfulness too, those who have supported us, and the many acts of kindness shown, the word of encouragement, the shared concern for the well-being of others. I believe that all of us in different ways will now need a time of recovery and healing. So may I encourage you to notice afresh the God-given beauty of the natural world and allow its beauty, and the love of its Creator minister to your wounded soul.
Reverend Ren Harding (Team Rector)
contact me at Joydens Wood Vicarage, 6 Tile Kiln Lane, Joydens Wood, Bexley, DA5 2BB 01322-528923