Dear Friends,

We come, this week, to the end of the church year. It is a good time for each of us to look back over the last year - deep in lockdown at this time, the quiet Christmas, our gradual return to church worship from Easter onwards, each church and each one of us finding our own journey through the challenges of a world where vaccines give hope, but our care for one another is still essential, the emergence of issues in our personal lives and our lives together that the lockdown paused or made worse or highlighted, the joys of re-uniting with loved ones, the sorrows borne with others or shouldered alone - the life giving, the draining, the fruitful and the challenging.

Where have you felt God close to you this year: really remember those times, and what that felt like: give thanks for those times Where did it feel you were distanced from God: hold the feeling of those times out to God for God's healing and reconciliation. The new Christian year begins a time when nature encourages us to turn inward: shorter colder days may send us indoors, and offer us some preparation time. In the pattern of the Christian year Advent is a time of quiet preparation, we begin with preparation, not a rush into action.

As you have looked back over the last year, what might you want to let go of, to free you in life and faith in the coming year? What might you want to draw into your life to help you deepen in faith and love? Now is a time just to notice these things, to ask for the grace to let go, and the grace to take up whatever moves you closer to God in the coming year.

God bless

Samantha