Dear Friends,

As I’m waiting to welcome our next guests, I reflect on their need for refreshment and wonder if I will be able to meet (or even exceed!) all their expectations whilst they are staying with us. Often I don’t know their back story, the reason why they have chosen to stay in a particular place or at a particular time, but I do know that the welcome they receive when they arrive at their destination will set the tone for the rest of their holiday.

Visitors often arrive exhausted and sometimes frustrated from a delayed journey, so a cream tea is often the best gift I can offer to satisfy the immediate need for a sugar boost!  However, the Oxford dictionary definition makes it clear that, apart from satisfying our physical needs of food and drink, refreshment is also a giving of fresh strength and energy. Other words associated with refreshment include restoration, rejuvenation and spiritual refreshment.  Tavistock and its surrounding villages offer all of us the opportunity for refreshment in its widest sense.  We are so fortunate to have been placed in this area to live and work. Sometimes it is through the eyes and revelations of visitors that we are reminded of God’s glory. Living as we do with the beauty and majesty of the landscape constantly around us, we can become complacent and forget momentarily how awesome it is to be part of West Devon and Dartmoor.

We all need to set aside time for refreshment even when we live here! I imagined that by the time I got to be of a certain age I would be fully in control of my time. I hoped to be able to manage it so that I would never feel exhausted, weary and left reeling round and round. Instead I often expect my body to work as it did when I was only 35! But isn’t it encouraging to know that even when we have nothing more to give to others physically and emotionally, God never tires of us, and He gives me the strength when I need that last push. I can turn to my Bible and find the following to lift my spirits:

Psalm 62:1: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.

Psalm 73:26:  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

Jeremiah 31:25: I will satisfy the weary and all who are faint I will replenish.

Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

As we encounter visitors this summer, we might do well to let something of their passion for our town and villages remind us of our love for where God has placed us to work in His Kingdom, and may we bring encouragement to all those seeking refreshment in this special place.

Love and Blessings,

Reader Sally

Nothing is ‘Ordinary’      

We are once again coming to the end of the Easter season in our Church calendar, and after celebrating the ‘birth of the Church’ at Pentecost, we enter that long Church season termed ‘Ordinary Time’. But nothing is ordinary in the dealings of God with humankind, or in the life of the Church, or in the lives of you or me as Christian believers.

The triumph of the resurrection on Easter Sunday was certainly no ‘ordinary’ event. The powers of darkness may well have thought they had the victory when our Lord Jesus, the incarnate God who had become man, was crucified and died on Calvary’s tree. But no, Jesus burst forth from the grave to give to you and me not just the hope of eternal life, but also the promise that we shall be changed and share in the everlasting joys of heaven.

And what did the bystanders at the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem in the year AD30 make of the diverse languages coming from the lips of the disciples after the descent of the Holy Spirit had come upon them? In Acts 2v4 we read “the crowd was bewildered, amazed and astonished as they heard all these Galileans speaking in their own native language”.  That was no ‘ordinary’ event either for the bystanders to hear, or for the disciples who suddenly found they had been given the ‘gift of tongues’.

And is it any different in this twenty first century for you or for me as Christians?  We have become followers and disciples of the one true and living God, Yahweh, who spoke and the universe came into being (Gen 1v3). Yet God is like a Father to us, for He loves us with a love that accepts each one of us just as we are, and that is no ‘ordinary’ relationship.

Joy and I have just returned from following ‘the way of Saint James’, the Camino, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Some of you may remember we looked at ‘The Way’, a DVD featuring Martin Sheen, for our Lent course some three years ago, and if you have not yet seen the DVD it is well worth viewing. I hasten to add that we did not walk the 790km in twelve days but took the SAGA coach!

The culmination was the pilgrims’ Mass in the Cathedral in Santiago with the swinging of the thurible, the metal censer for incense, and that was no ‘ordinary’ event either! It was as exciting as in the DVD!

So, I wonder, what is your perspective on God? Is He just ‘ordinary’ and so small in order to fit your imagination? Do you hold a distorted view of what true faith in God should be? I am sure we all hold some distortions that only eternity will finally dispel, for now we “see through a glass darkly” (1Cor13v12).

Saint John relates how Jesus tried to give us a picture of a God free from distortions, a God who imparts to us eternal life, not just a supplier of our material needs, for the life God intended for us all is much fuller than that. Do our prayers reflect such a distortion, becoming just a mere list of requests, or are they more profound and outward looking? Jesus said “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life”. The crowd around Jesus then asked a most pertinent and relevant question, a question we also should constantly ask ourselves: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (Jn6v27).

And the answer that Jesus gave is not an ‘ordinary’ expectation or experience for most people: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn6v29). That should be our prayer, both for ourselves and for all those whom we love and all whom we meet.

But, like the crowd around Jesus, people today demand a ‘sign’, “that we may see, and believe” (Jn6v30). But this is just another distortion. God is not in the business of supplying miracles on demand. We do know that as a God of grace and mercy He may well work miraculously in some situations, so let us not give up asking him for healings, and let us in expectation bring friends along to our monthly service for healing and wholeness. We may be surprised at what God can and will do.

Our faith as Christians is not merely a response to outward signs, even though these may be most significant at times, but it is a commitment and relationship to Jesus Christ, for Jesus is the gift of God to us that far outshines any material blessing we may desire or receive.

So as we move through the coming months of ‘Ordinary Time’ let us look forward in faith for the ‘extra ordinary’ to be seen from the God we serve, for we have the promise from Jesus that “he who comes to me I will not cast out” (Jn6v37). And Jesus does not end there but gives us that great hope and promise that “everyone who believes in the Son should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn6v40).

Now if that is not something ‘out of the ordinary’ I don’t know what is.

Every blessing to you all, Mike.

Dear Friends,

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?                                                         

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?                                                       

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble;                                        

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

I am writing this on Easter Monday, but I will never forget the Tavistock Passion Play on Good Friday. It was an enormous privilege to be involved with the production. I found the crucifixion extremely moving. It was wonderful to be able to sing along with the choir and reflect on the words of the old American Folk hymn: Were you there?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Yes, I was there in my imagination, the re-enactment was so powerful. The music and acting were great and the attention to detail paid off. It was so convincing – the crosses; the Roman soldiers; the costumes and the make-up, including the very realistic bruises on Jesus’s arms and leg, all enhanced the performance.

Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Was I the only one who looked up at the sky as the choir began to sing this verse, half expecting the Lord to make the scene even more dramatic? We had prayed that it would not rain and the Lord answered our prayers despite the forecast the day before for light rain for most of Friday morning. Delightfully it also remained fine for another smaller, but no less significant, Passion Play that took place on Good Friday afternoon – the Easter Ascent of Brentor to St Michael’s. It was a great start to the season of services at the top of Brentor.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? This was a powerful reminder that Jesus, the truly righteous man, really did suffer appallingly and died for our sins. As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:  But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (Chapter 5:8 NRSV)

But, of course that is not the end of the story.

Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?

Yes! Jesus is alive today!

We have now travelled through Lent and are celebrating the season of Easter with Ascension Day at the end of May. For many of us, particularly in Mary and Peter Tavy, our Lenten journey has been particularly poignant this year following the death of our beloved Rector, Rev. John Higman at Candlemas. It would have been even harder to bear without the knowledge that Jesus overcame death and is alive and reigns forever, promising the gift of eternal life to all who believe in him.

Here in Mary Tavy the swallows have arrived and there are bluebells everywhere. Spring is established and summer on its way. The words of the old hymn, by JMC Crum, focusing on life through death, sung to the Old French Melody, come to mind:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,                                                               

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;                                                               

Love lives again, that with the dead has been;                                                               

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

The beginning of the second verse makes it clear Love refers to our Lord Jesus Christ:

In the grave they laid him, Love whom men had slain

But it is the last verse that breaths life and hope into our situation and informs my prayer for the parishes of Mary Tavy and Peter Tavy:

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,                                                                     

Thy touch can call us back to life again,                                                                                 

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:                                                                        

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green. 

A prayer for guidance from St. Thomas Aquinas:

Guide my going in and going forward;

Lead home my going forth

You are true God and true man

And live for ever and ever.  Amen.

In the world we live in, justice and rights are expected to go hand in hand; through justice we seek what we believe to be ours. This can lead us into difficulty because many rights conflict with each other, such as the right to free speech, the right not to be harassed or offended.

The graciousness of God goes far beyond rights, and the justice of God pays well over the odds and is a work of ultimate love.

When God truly expressed his love clearly and completely, and declared his love for each one of us, it was in the giving of his Son (while we were still sinners Christ died for us – Romans 5: 7).  The cross of Jesus reveals his great love for us.  Jesus’s cross is the source of our eternal salvation.

Jesus’s passion brings each of us so many graces, blessings, justification and reconciliation, and we are adopted as sons and daughters of God and heirs of eternal life.

God signed a blank cheque on our behalf, wiping out our debt, our sins. The price paid for our salvation ~ in the death of Jesus on the cross ~ is priceless and lavish beyond measure, far beyond anything we could ever know or imagine.

Lord, you have put gladness in our hearts, you have satisfied our hunger with good things.  In giving all, you have not withheld from us your own dear son, your very self.  How can we withhold anything from you, our Lord and our God.

Renew us day by day with the gift of your Spirit that we may give ourselves completely to your service, and walk with joy in the footsteps of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The first day of March saw the beginning of the holy season of Lent. It is a season which can be described in a number of ways. It might be defined as a time of spiritual retreat, a journey of faith, a period of time reminding us of the forty days Jesus spent facing temptation in the desert. Whichever, Lent marks a period of penitence and reflection, filled with opportunities for receiving special grace and blessing. ‘Lent’ means ‘spring’—reminding us that, above all, it is a season of growth, preparing for the joy of Easter. How do we prepare for joy during Lent? In the sixth chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel Jesus himself offers us advice concerning the keeping of Lent, through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

As spring comes we can really get to grips with our gardens once again—tidying away the remnants of winter and making way for the new growth. Lent—the spiritual spring—is about getting to grips with the promise of Easter, and is a time when we need to put ourselves in order and cultivate the love of God within us. In Matthew 6 Christ himself advises us to clear the ground as we pray, fast and give alms.  He encourages us to tidy away all artifice and complexity, all vanity and show, and to pray in secret, so that we can be honest with ourselves and honest with God about our strengths and weaknesses.  Christ tells us that prayer is an intimate, loving conversation with God and that fasting is an inward and individual discipline, designed to make us stronger and able to do battle with the fears and doubts which tempt us.  The way in which he suggests we give alms reminds us that we are part of a human family—a human family that God himself is intricately connected with. We are called to live Lent in a way that both prompts us to look at ourselves, and out of ourselves, and to consider others.

Christ, who is perfect both in his divinity and humanity, teaches us how to prepare for the joy of heaven and that it is a process that begins on earth. Christ does not present us with abstract ideals or impossible tasks; rather he shows us both how to be human and how to attain the joy of heaven, because he himself was—to use George Herbert’s expression—‘heaven in ordinary’ and came amongst us, living a life of prayer and sacrifice.  The prospect of Easter ignites within us a desire to attain that perfect joy of heaven, where we, ordinary as we are, may become heavenly, as he is.

The cross of ash we receive on Ash Wednesday reminds us of the times when, through fear, for the sake of artifice, for the lack of faith, we may have buried that desire for the joy which the Easter event promises. We may have lost the discipline of being attentive to God, or being honest with ourselves; we may have not made an effort to see Christ in others, or have lacked the patience to present Christ to others. The ash makes a dirty, gritty mark on our foreheads, but we must remember that it is in the sign of the cross, which is a sign of triumph, of joy and hope; a sign of victory over sin and death. As the cross is placed on our foreheads, the words spoken are: ‘From dust you came and unto dust you shall return’. Those words remind us of our mortality, and that we will return to dust. And yet in that very dust there is the hope of joy.  It is in that return to dust that we will find new life, a life of joy because it is an eternal life which Christ has won for us through his victory over death on the cross. That victory can be ours too if we prepare for joy, because ‘Joy’, as Teilhard de Chardin once said, ‘… is the infallible sign of the presence of God’.

Christ tells us how to practise Lent and reach for joy: through Prayer which is a loving dialogue with God who knows the secrets of our hearts; through fasting, that we might cultivate a habit of discipline so that we may be better able to resist evil; and through giving, because we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves.

All this is about opening the door, allowing Jesus, the source of all joy, to serve us.  One of the main events of the Church’s year is Maundy Thursday, when we once again are called to contemplate the God who came to wash our feet and feed us. As the Apostles show us, allowing Christ to serve us requires effort, honesty, patience and practice. Looking at Lent as a time of preparation for joy is not a soft option, and yet, in each one of us, there is a deep desire to grow in love, goodness, patience, honesty and kindness.  And God is longing to fulfil our desire to be fit vessels for his joy, because he, the source of goodness and joy, has placed that desire within us.

May these first weeks of March be the start of a holy and grace-filled Lent for each one of us.  As the new shoots emerge and grow this spring, so too may our desire to claim that joy which is ours, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Saviour and our Friend.