Dear Friends

When thinking of the month of May a tune comes to mind from the film Camelot (by Lerner & Loewe): "It's May it's May, the lusty month of May", meaning vigorous and robust, as in the burgeoning forth of spring. Another line of the song is, "That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray".

This musical is based on Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur, which in turn inspired T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and the popular musical. King Arthur and Queen Guenevere are the king and queen in this land and of course Camelot is a mythical castle and court where, "The crown has made it clear the climate must be perfect all the year". That's because, "A law was made a distant moon ago here July and August cannot be too hot. And there's a legal limit to the snow here", never mind that "the rain may never fall till after sundown" and "by 8, the morning fog must disappear".

No need of weather forecasts there then. A complete fantasy. A different world order.

We do have a once and future king who was the first to make it clear and decided the rules for the weather by setting the seasons and the natural world to work together. He set down Day and Night, now we have daylight and night light too. Our bodies find it difficult to adjust to living at night but do so because we have artificial light. And should we go blissfully astray, once we acknowledge this, he will gladly welcome us back into the fold.

As with many relationships, Arthur cannot understand Guenevere and becomes frustrated, but he is told by a wise old man that the best and only way to understand her is to love her and love her even more. This is what our God does with us; he never stops loving us when we test him or lose trust in him.

When his crucified body took our wrong doings, and our disasters were nailed under his outstretched hands, he opened up for us a brave new world. It will not always be springtime, and the snow will take no heed of timetables and rules, but the light will always be there even shining in the darkness.