Thought for the Week

Revd Pat Reid, Associate Minister, All Saints Church, Ilkley

WATCHING from the train window as I travelled to London the other week, I observed the fields and small villages where, from my distance, there appeared to be no activity - everywhere seemingly at rest. Yet within the scene, many miracles were taking place. Millions of seeds in the ground preparing for dormancy over winter, before responding to the seasons and bursting into life next Spring; trees about to shed their leaves but they would produce new growth next year, and year on year. In the villages, babies would be being born, couples would be falling in love, children would be growing and learning. Yes, there would be sadnesses also – people dying, relationships in difficulties, people succumbing to addiction – but remarkable things would be happening.

In September birds set off to migrate. Swallows swoop and swerve, drawn to settle on roof tops and telegraph wires before a moment of silence, and then rising in unison they set off for the warmer climes of Cape Town. The homing instincts of swallows and migratory birds take them to their exact destination, and miraculously bring them back again to the same place the following year.

In our troubled world, we hear daily of, great hardship and horror, of earthquake and hurricane damage, terrorist atrocities and threats of nuclear war. It is hard to understand, and those of us who pray for the world, find words hard to find. The writer of the Psalms, aware of threats and wickedness around, wrote, “My heart is in anguish within me, Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. Oh that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.”

We haven’t got a miraculous internal radar, allowing us to escape to a winter resort, but we have something within us, wanting to know love and peace and security. Jesus offers this. We cannot avoid the ills that beset us, but Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”. We can know peace with God within the storm of life, and we can be encouraged by the miracles in God’s kingdom.