How do you fancy celebrating National Quince Day or doing some Mangold Hurling, or, my personal favourite, entering the Golden Spurtle Porridge Making Championships? All October events and all, I think, a big improvement on some of the things people choose to celebrate this month!!
October is known the world over as the month of transition and celebration. In the Northern Hemisphere transition from summer through autumn to winter and in the Southern Hemisphere from winter through spring to summer. And celebration of gathering in the harvest, gathering round the fire (or other heat source!), or celebrating the longer days and better weather – depending which Hemisphere you live in.
Our lives are made up of transitions and celebrations – from child to adult, from work to retirement, from living in one place to moving to another, from one scene to another in our favourite movie or play, from one key to another in our favourite music, from ignorance to understanding. Of course, many of us find change difficult – if it isn’t broken why fix it?, we’ve always done it like this, I’ve found the way that works for me, who’s to say that will work any better? And yet we DO change day by day, week by week, year by year. I am living proof of that. I can’t move as easily as I used to, I know more about Baseball now than I used to thanks to my Son-in-law, I’m learning Tai Chi moves, my hair colour is now called ash blonde (not grey!).
We have a God of transitions and celebrations. A God who gently leads us from darkness to light, from ignorance to faith. A God who gives us all the resources we need to not only transition ourselves from Church attendees to people of faith, but also to invite encourage and support others as they come to know Him and love Him as we do. A God who sometimes shakes us up and urges us along different paths which we don’t expect and which feel uncomfortable and exciting in equal measure.
A God who wants us to celebrate the ‘joy in heaven of one sinner who repents’, ‘the stone that the builders rejected (which) has become the cornerstone … and it is amazing in our eyes’, ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should …have eternal life’.
So I pray that as a family in God’s Church we will transition into God’s latest plan for us with joy and celebrate together the wonder of this season.
Rev. Preb. Marilyn Peters – Lichfield Diocese - PTO