Dear friends

I have just passed my 6 year anniversary of being the Vicar here at St Martin's, and my goodness what change we have seen in this time! Not only has the world changed significantly with a global pandemic right in the middle of it, so we have seen changes in the people that have been part of our community here. We have seen vocations grow, to licensed lay ministry and ordained ministry, and we have been blessed with curates, and of course we are coming towards the end of Laura's time with us as we get ready to say goodbye to her and Jack on Sunday 24th June.

We have also seen gifts grow within the congregation - so many of you continue to offer such wonderful ministries amongst us: words of encouragement, words of welcome, enabling our young people to grow, offering hospitality, ensuring everything is in order for our worship, enabling our building and grounds to be such beautiful places, holding us in our singing, our learning, our praying ... and I know that God is continuing to stir you, by his Spirit.

We recognise those things, I think, that have an outward value, where we can see what we or others are "doing" as part of the response to God's love. And this is a wonderful thing.I wonder how often we value the stillness and pause?

I'm writing this message early this week, as by the time it is in your email in box I will have been on retreat for a few days. In the 6 wonderful years of being with you, this is the first time I will have been on a retreat for more than 24 hours, and I know I need the stillness, the rest, the opportunity to listen to God, and to pray.

Our readings this week reflect that it is in the "being" that God's word is known. Abraham experiences stillness after rushing around to feed the three visitors, where we read he then "waits" while they eat. In the pause, he hears the promise of a child which is laughable to him and Sarah his wife, who had wanted for children for many long years. Our Gospel passage will tell the story of Mary and Martha, the balance of being and doing that perhaps we know well. We look forward to Frank breaking open these passages when he preaches on Sunday.

I am looking forward to waiting on the Lord as I retreat, and I pray that for each of us we might find the rhythm of being and doing, that we might value the ministry of stillness as well as activity, recognising that it is often in the being that God's word is known.I also pray that in the space between me writing these words, and them arriving in your inbox on Friday, nothing extraordinary happens that might have required something more significant to be written here!! We trust in God's provision if that is the case.Thank you all for 6 wonderful years so far, and I look forward to all that is to come. I continue to pray for you sisters and brothers, as I hope you pray for me.

God blessBecky