My dear Friends and Parishioners,

Dear Friends and Parishioners,
I have recently been re-reading some of the books of Elizabeth Goudge, first published in the nineteen-forties; and in one of them, 'The Herb of Grace' (the name of an ancient inn where the several members of a family find peace), there's this description of the grandmother's bedroom at her own neighbouring and very old house:

"There was deep peace in it - she did not quite know why, unless it was that for so many years it was here that she had prayed most deeply and most often; so often that now when she opened her bedroom door prayer brimmed up in her automatically as it did when she crossed the threshold of Hilary's church at Big Village."

Two activities are at the heart of the Christian life: prayer and worship. Churches of course are built for them, but you can pray and worship anywhere. The grandmother in the book found that her bedroom had become her special place. In her quiet way she was one of those people for whom converse with God had become the pivot of their lives; and so she joined the stream of those who are makers under God of salvation history. The Lord is the One who saves his people and judges his enemies but in that process his means is people rather than programmes.

The great sin of totalitarian regimes is to put programmes before people. Even in our own more or less democratic country aspects of dictatorship are always there. Think of the agonising worry engendered in schools going through an OFSTED inspection, or of the company run by a greedy board of directors, or of the family dominated by one domineering and poisoned person. Contempt, not care for the other, is the characteristic of this sort of 'programme'. And the only cure is to discover the open secrets of worship and prayer. Christians make brilliant business-people, lawyers, diplomats, cleaners, artists, teachers, advertising executives, and so on... men and women who acknowledge their need of God, the fact that they don't know best, and their willingness to grow. Such people are lovely to know, and it is open to us all to become such people.

It's a little late for Christmas carols, but this is one which looks forward not just to Spring but to that ultimate Summer to be enjoyed by those who have learned to worship and pray to the Lord once born at Bethlehem:

My master hath a garden, full-filled with divers flowers,

Where thou may'st gather posies gay, all times and hours,

Here nought is heard but paradise-bird, harp, dulcimer, and lute,

With cymbal and timbrel and the gentle sounding flute.

Oh! Jesus, Lord, my heal and weal, my bliss complete,

Make thou my heart thy garden-plot, true, fair, and neat,

That I may hear this music clear, harp, dulcimer, and lute,

With cymbal and timbrel and the gentle sounding flute.

Yours very truly,
Ian Whittle
The Rectory, Langham 01328 830246