Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
"There is no time
Like spring
When life's alive
In everything."
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)
One of the joys of moving to a new party of England is to discover the particular joys that Mother Nature has in store for us in a new area. In this part of the country it is Snowdrops, and I love them. Snowdrops herald the first hint of Spring, and they are a sign of hope; hope of better things to come in these dark, damp and cold days. As Thomas Hornblower Gill puts it in his lovely poem:-
"The glory of the spring how sweet!
The newborn life how glad!
What joy the happy earth to greet,
In new, bright raiment clad!
Divine Redeemer, thee I bless;
I greet thy going forth;
I love thee in the loveliness
Of thy renewed earth."
We all need signs of hope - hope of better days to come - especially in times of anxiety, sadness, illness and depression. As John Greenleaf Whittier puts it:
"Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all his works
Has left his hope with all!"
Several years ago a teacher assigned to visit children in a large city hospital received a routine call requesting that she visit a particular child. She took the boy's name and room number and was told by the teacher on the other end of the line, "We're studying nouns and adverbs in his class now. I'd be grateful if you could help him with his homework so he doesn't fall behind the others."
It wasn't until the visiting teacher got outside the boy's room that she realized it was located in the hospital's burns unit. No one had prepared her to find a young boy horribly burned and in great pain. She felt that she couldn't just turn and walk out, so she awkwardly stammered, "I'm the hospital teacher, and your teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs."
The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked her, "What did you do to that boy?" Before she could finish a profusion of apologies, the nurse interrupted her: "You don't understand. We've been very worried about him, but ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He's fighting back, responding to treatment. It's as though he's decided to live."
The boy later explained that he had completely given up hope until he saw that teacher. It all changed when he came to a simple realization. With joyful tears he expressed it this way: "They wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?"
We all need hope in our lives, and God understands that. He is always ready to send signs of hope when we need them to give us the strength and the will to carry on. May God bless you with hope when you need it - hope of better times to come.
May God bless you all,