winter OF CONTENT

I LOVE gardening! Whenever I can get a day to myself  I love to spend it in my garden, weeding, pruning and generally enjoying the birds and critters who inhabit the garden. Being winter, I have recently set about pruning my roses, quite a job because I have 21 of them.

Over the last couple of years I have been unable to give them a really good prune due to illness and other commitments  but this year I was able to set aside a couple of days to get them done.

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I noticed that as I was pruning my roses, some of my favourites had the sharpest and the most thorns on them and getting them cut right back entailed a lot of scratches and cuts even though I had protective gloves on. BUt the pain of pruning them was offset by the anticipation of just how beautiful they will be this year after a radical prune and feed.

There is a life lesson in there for us! Our lives are a continuing journey of seasons, some are bright and full of joy, a spring full of beauty and delight, others are chilly and bleak, a winter full of challenges and sometimes heartache as it feels as if we are being pruned mercilessly.

But through the winters of our lives, if we stay close to God and sink our roots into the warm soil that is his word, then we too can grow strong for we have hope that spring is coming again when we too can again blossom and shine, just like my roses will.
St Pauls said;

Since then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future."

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—but we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles. Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us. Already we have some experience of the love of God flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.

So let us rejoice in all the seasons of our lives, knowing that God walks them with us, and sometimes carries us through them, producing strength of Character and spirit so we can shine in the world.

The Lord be with you.

With Blessings
Rev Jenny