Pastoral Letter October 2019
Hello All,
I wonder if, like me, you experience a little melancholy when the nights draw in, and when you have to start putting the central heating on in the mornings and evenings to take the chill off!! However, this time of year is stunning, and Keats summed it up beautifully when he wrote of “Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Autumn is here, and with it all the beauty and colours imaginable, and also dew on the car windscreens in the morning, and the biggest spiders you’ve ever seen coming indoors now to keep warm!! We have already had some of our Harvest Festivals in our benefice of Churches, and we have some yet to come. Food and donations have been generously given to help others in need, so I thank you all for your generosity and kindness.
Jesus was very concerned with teaching us about helping people in distress or need. His parable about the Good Samaritan came in response to a question from someone wanting to define who their neighbour was. In the case of the parable, a man took pity on someone from a vastly different background to himself, who had been beaten up and left for dead. And he took care of him, even at his own expense. That man in the parable had a good, kind heart, and he was moved with compassion to do something for a stranger in distress. (Luke 10: 25-37)
I have discovered time and time again how people are basically good and kind, and very willing to offer help if needed. But the sad thing is, that in our society we have almost become brainwashed to believe that people are not good or kind, and cannot be trusted. Our news reports and the media print and publish information that is worrying and even frightening much of the time; it is not their fault, they feel they have a duty to give us this information, but it seems that all we ever get to hear about is scams, fraud, theft and dishonesty. So we become suspicious of strangers, and negative and fearful in our thinking. This is sad and unfair, because the majority of people are basically good, kind and helpful. Even recently, my husband and my son were both saying how they had each been on the receiving end of an “act of kindness” by strangers, and they have been upbeat because of it.
*A minister friend of mine once commented in a sermon that ‘life is like looking in a mirror; If you walk up to it and smile then life smiles back to you’, and it’s true. Let’s not be afraid to be the good, kind & openhearted people we are. Let’s keep sowing goodness and kindness into our homes and communities, and this will reflect back to us a harvest of joy and friendship which will warm our hearts, and enrich our lives all year round.
God bless you, with love Sue Cooper. (Revd)
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