Dear friends,

Our garden was looking quite pretty before we went off for our three week annual holiday.  When we came back, however, it looked as if we hadn't ever touched it!  Weeds were several feet high; the flower beds had disappeared beneath a mountain of undesired greenery; and a rather evil-looking bramble (I'm sure with a grin on its face!) was inching its way purposefully across the lawn.  But what amazed me most was a small delicate flower growing in the middle of the concrete. 

I looked at the tiny, vulnerable flower and looked at the hard, unforgiving concrete and wondered at how it had ever managed to make its way through the stones and earth and mortar to arrive at the light.  But it had and there it was.

No doubt many of you could cite similar experiences; snowdrops growing through tarmac in Spring for example.  It actually gives us an excellent picture of Christian living which I should like to encourage you all to take on board.

Christians or not, we shall all meet in life with many difficulties, problems, things that get in the way, people that rub us up the wrong way, irritating things, nasty things, things that cause us to get our hackles up.  It's all very well Jesus saying "love your enemies," we might all agree with that, but what happens when you actually get one!

As Christians, even as human beings, we can take our example from the delicate, tiny flower.  When it met resistance, when it came across apparently insurmountable opposition, it didn't try to have it out 'head to head' but it gently bent and changed direction, so that it would not be deflected from its aim of growing towards the light.

It seems to me that the picture of the world we see today in the news, with so much oppression, enmity, war, terrorism, misery, is a picture of delicate flowers going head to head with obstacles and getting nowhere.  How much better the world would be, if instead of meeting hostility with hostility we made it our main concern to grow towards the light, gently turning away from the opposition and taking a new path ever upwards.

To quote the chorus of a popular hymn, "The Spirit lives to set us free; walk, walk in the light."

Best wishes to you all,