Be thou my vision.

But their eyes were kept from recognising him. Luke 24:16
Walking is always something I have loved doing when ever possible Early morning walks or early evening all bring revelation, recognition, awareness and pleasure  and yesterday while out I paused under an oak tree to look at the fungi growing in the grass. At first glance I thought mushrooms then a closer look revealed they were toadstools. These are 'fake' mushrooms, I thought, and some people don't recognise that which can often lead to death. For many around Jerusalem the rumor of the resurrection of Jesus must have seemed like 'fake' news. Its a scam some would say, should we believe it or not, but the true believers, though stunned and shocked came to see the reality as flashbacks from their journey with Jesus and his parting words suddenly started to make sense.
 Jesus resurrection is no 'fake' news, its no scam. Fake news and scams  rip us off, there is no good ending in them. Reality, the reality of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ is real news, good news and its what will bring us home.

Fake or real?

simple yet profound

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder. (TIS 155)
Sometimes something simple yet profound will remain with us always.I found a note scribbled on a piece of paper in a second hand book I picked up in a book shop and it simply said:'God is everywhere and he is with you now.' On another occasion I found a note on my desk in the chapel of the nursing home where I was chaplain and it came from a lady whose husband was dying, it said: 'Rev'd Anne, can you smell God? I came in here today and the chapel was filled with a wonderful perfume yet there were no flowers.' And every time I open my prayer book I see a picture scribbled on a small piece of green paper and the words Michelle aged 7. This was passed to me during a church service  by a very shy child sitting in front of me and it felt like I had been given a treasure, so special that 26 years later it still holds a place in my prayer book. Mary Oliver wrote: Every day I'm still looking for God and I'm still finding him everywhere - in the dust, in the flower beds - and I want to add in the unexpected note in a tattered second hand book, and in the chapel and a child's picture.
May the Lord of Peace himself give you peace at all times, in all ways.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

simple yet profound

Dance, dance wherever you may be.

For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28
Something, anything in life that comes out of the ordinary can throw us off course. What was, is no longer. What  can be or will be  now holds a question mark. But, today, now, this new day is life, this  is how it is, however it is shaped. Stillness and quiet say to us: Look and see. Touch and feel. Bend and smell.   Awareness and appreciation come in stillness and quiet and suddenly we start to see things we have just walked by before. Yesterday I didn't just notice that the autumn leaves were on the  ground but I stood still, under the tree and watched them fall, floating gently, quietly, softly, dancing in the breeze all over and all around me and I suddenly had an impulse to giggle because I thought I heard that coming in the joy of the ride of the leaves from the tree to the ground. Lost in the moment we shared the joy together. Would I have noticed or enjoyed that a few months ago when life was busy and at a hair raising pace? Maybe, maybe not.
May the Lord of Peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Don't blink and you actually 'see' the leaf!

What do you bring home?

How lonely  sits the city that once was full of people. Lamentations 1:1
For this season in time we are experiencing empty and lonely cities, towns, villages and homes but how are we coping with that? Daily life is very different but so many doors can open  for us. Doors of peace and stillness as we slow down from a 'running pace of life' to reflection and awareness. At the close of my day I like to go for a  long walk and find something to bring home. It may be a tiny colourful bird feather that I will place in a grandchild's journal and share with him or her its incredible creation and creator and yesterday I had so much joy from a beautiful coloured flower growing like a bramble beneath a very old eucalyptus tree.As I approached it I could see its petal skirts were red, white and  yellow on stems of bright red with deep green leaves and its perfume filled my space like incense. I picked some of it, all the while telling God how much joy it had brought into my day and taking it home put it in a vase as a bright symbol of a memory filed with perfume in this troubled world.
May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

So much joy

Easter Day

The Lord is risen indeed. Luke 24:34
A simply lovely Easter gift arrived at my door for Easter Sunday from my family. It gave me great joy and was an expression of what Easter is about for everyone. Made of butter biscuits was the symbol of the cross with the words iced onto it 'He is Risen.', a colourful iced flower and a yellow iced chicken. There was so much joy and celebration in the gift of a families love that I left it untouched on the table before I cold bring myself to demolish it all with a cup of tea and then it was gone!  The gift that Christ gave to us through his death  is not just the gift of his life and death on the cross but all that gift offers us of love, of devotion,of strength, of courage, of perseverance and of eternal life.
The greatest. The most wonderful. The most enduring. The most lasting gift of love is found in the gift of Jesus.
May the Lord of Peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Its not the gift but whats in it

Holy Week

Beauty from brokenness, hope for despair. Lord in the suffering this is our prayer.  (TIS 690)
I held the rough, dirty, round bulb  in my hand before I sank it into the garden and I marveled at its potential. Who would think that in that mass there would be something special, something of delight and beauty yet if you were to slice it open it would reveal nothing but  a cluster of fiber. Marveling at it in my hand I spoke to it asking: 'How is it that something so rough and plain can turn into something so beautiful and perfumed, a glorious flower. How does that happen?' Then I realised my questioning is not to the bulb but to God. In our rapidly changing world in this time we can look and question many things, for example how can the blackened charred and burnt trees ever hold their beauty again yet there are so many signs of new growth with the eucalyptus leaves showing their beauty in the red and green new fresh tips merging up the trunks. Life  comes from death. Resurrections occur and beauty rises.
May the Lord of Peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.
Anne, servant of the Lord

A mystery with an Easter insight.

Do not forget who you are.

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Isaiah 43:1
All across the world anxiety and fear has come into peoples lives. It has crushed the every day life, and  'normal' and peace hang like a thin thread for millions, its fragile and often out of reach. I read a lovely story recently it said this about a tradition among the Native American Communities: The infant is named at birth in traditional community and is passed around 200 arms, one to another, with each person whispering the child's name so that he or she will not forget who they are. Regardless of the dangers that life presents to us, one thing we must always hold onto is the Love of God for us. He wants us to remember we are his, he has called us by name.
May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways.
Anne, servant of the Lord.

Peace, God's peace