Tower and Town, March 2016 (view the full edition)Clergy Letter: Life In All Its FullnessIt's a very wonderful thing that each and every year we are fortunate enough to be alive as the natural world as we see it in our fields, gardens and parks renews itself. The (not so cold this year) winter months begin slowly and surely to pass away and with the coming of Spring there is an extraordinary amount of new and diverse life and living to be seen all around us. Fundamentally I know of course that the reasons for this are primarily horticultural and agricultural, but for me there is still something nonetheless remarkably miraculous about the whole business. We ourselves may do little or nothing to assist and yet the earth through the miracle of life enters into a new phase almost unnoticed at times. The end of March sees the annual Christian Festival of Easter. It is the pre-eminent time in the year when Christians will meet together in order to celebrate the generosity of the God of life in whose munificence they believe they live, move and have their being. The kind of life that the God of the Christians inspires Christian people to live is one of a great and surpassing abundance. It is one in which they are encouraged to drink so fully from the oases of joy and gladness that other people round about them cannot but help notice them do so and in turn be inspired to find that life in all its fullness for themselves. This kind of life is the very opposite from that mean, exclusive, destructive kind of life and living which at any moment threatens to take a hold of people and destroy them and others. It is the very opposite of destructive negativity because it seeks all, it embraces all, it welcomes all and it knows that in God's reality and in God's time all shall win and all shall have prizes. David Campbell |