The term begins

The most exciting time of my school year was the moment when I was given my new exercise books. Do you recall that feeling? They were all clean, fresh and just waiting to be written in!
Each one was handled with a sense of excitement and promise. As I - neatly - wrote my name and the subject on the cover, I would make silent promises to keep this book neater than the last and only get the best possible marks in it!
In some ways, coming to a new church and taking up the pastorate creates a similar feeling. It is all new and fresh. It is also challenging.
What, we wonder, will be written on those new blank pages? What has the Lord got in store for us as his people in this place?
Psalm 139:16 says: ‘All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.' Although we may feel that we are starting with a blank page, God has already ordained - set aside - his plan for us. He has brought us this far and is now preparing us for the next stage of that plan and our part in it. It is our challenge to discern that plan and to be obedient in our following of it.
In the months and years ahead, I look forward to us discovering and enjoying together that plan and purpose that God has ordained for us, as individuals and as a church family, as we listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit through our worship, our work and through our times of fun with one another.
Perhaps we can adopt this prayer for the month - adapted from Charles Kingsley: ‘Stir us up to offer you, O Lord, our bodies, our souls, our spirits, in all we love and all we learn, in all we plan and all we do, to offer our labours, our pleasures, our sorrows to you; to work through them for your kingdom, to live as those who are not their own, but bought with your blood, fed with your body; yours from the moment of our birth, tours now and ever. Amen.

Your new and fresh minister,

 Graham Clarke.