Ah Spring!  It seems like it’s been the longest winter ever.  Never-ending grey skies are finally making way for more blue and there is more light to encourage us in the mornings.  Signs of life are all around us.  The tulips I planted months ago are finally emerging from the earth.  After a long sleep, nature seems to be bursting into activity once again. 

In our churches we are currently looking at what it means to be fully alive, and fully human.  Using our new material that Revd Magdalen has written, “And Now For The Rest”, we are taking time to think about our own patterns of work, rest and play.  In a world which is increasingly active, this is not an easy task.  But the aim is not to make us feel guilty, but to help be honest about our own busyness, and notice where God might be speaking to us.

God famously made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  We now recognise that this is a symbolic, rather than literal account of creation.  However, principles of rest are deeply Christian, and something which we want to draw on in these difficult and unstable times.  Rest allows us to detach ourselves from what we merely do to who we are.  We discover that beyond our activity, we are deeply loved.  

May you find encouragement to be fully alive this Spring.

With warm best wishes

Revd Angela Hannafin, Vicar of Moseley Parish (St Mary’s and St Anne’s churches)