As I sit down to write, the windows and the back door are open. The birds are singing. Living in something of a hollow surrounded by very large, mature trees can be a little dark in the winter – but when spring arrives and then turns to summer it becomes a real blessing: cool and shaded and alive with the chirping of the birds.
Just for a moment I am transported out of myself to a place of delight where there is nothing but birdsong and branches sighing in the breeze.
Then the spell is broken. One of those sinister heavy bombers we’ve heard airborne so often over the last few months drowns out the birds with its drone. Then the songs of Saturday morning in a village arrive – a lawn mower, a circular saw making firewood for the far-off winter, a dog barking. But still through it all the blackbirds are trilling and within a few minutes the peace returns again.
For the second year in a row, farmers and gardeners are dealing with the effects of a very dry April, for despite an intermittently showery May, the ground is now very dry. Without rain, nothing can grow. If there was continual sunshine every day, then we would soon end up living in a desert.
Pure gold is too soft to be practical for making jewellery – gold that is durable enough to be wearable has been alloyed with other metals to toughened up.
The same paradox is true of our lives. We long for unbroken comfort, but a life of it would leave us as parched as the fields without rain. Few of us would be the people we are if we hadn’t gone through times that toughened us up. There is an increasing tendency to see trauma only as damage that renders us permanently weaker. But while I wouldn’t have chosen some of my struggles in life, and wouldn’t wish them on anyone else, they have made me the person I am. Like many of you, I suspect, it took me decades to learn to value the person I am – but I do.
Of course, in this job you see more than your fair share of suffering, and some people have a much harder time of it than most of us. Why this is so is something I find myself having sharp words with God about.
Yet, at the same time, people who suffer a lot are rarely bitter – in fact they often seem to be better than most of us at taking their joys where they find them. Bitterness instead seems to come from a frustrated sense of entitlement. I worry that our culture is becoming a decadent one – encouraging us to complain about our problems, instead of overcoming them and ultimately transcending them. It is when we use our struggles to become strong enough to improve our own lives that we are best placed to help those who truly need it.
The Rev’d Gerry Lynch
Rector
Recent Sermons
- How often do you see an ugly person on a TV show? Much of what we’re sold about what we’re supposed to be is a lie, aimed to make us feel inadequate. But God sees us as good enough already. Read here.
- At this toxic time, will you pray that God will raise up prophets among us – men and women with lips made clean – who will call this people of unclean lips to follow their Lord and Saviour? Read more.
- What does the fact that it’s hard to find an open pub in a small German town at 9 o’clock on a Wednesday evening have to do with the Holy Trinity? Read more.
- We sometimes forget that things do often get better, in dramatic ways that nobody predicted, often when things seem to be at their darkest. Read more.