Living back in Lichfield for the first time since leaving for university some time in the last century is a slightly bizarre experience. I am currently living fifty yards down the road from where I went to primary school and cross paths, while cycling to work, with pupils on the way to my old secondary. Sometimes I feel tempted to put the old red crimplene blazer back on and follow them in through the gates…
Although we think of September as the time when we ‘go back’ to school or to work after the holidays, the reality of course is that we can never go back. Life only moves in one direction. Even if we find ourselves in a place which feels like somewhere we’ve been before, we have changed – we’ve grown older, hopefully wiser, hopefully not too much less able to engage physically with the challenges of living. The people around us are different, some new friends and family, some are missing. The web of love and relationship from within which we engage with the world is different. The world changes but sometimes it’s we who change more.
The same is also true with how we interact with our faith: how we read the Bible, how we engage with worship, how we pray, how we think about God. Many would say that becoming a parent, for example, changes their understanding of the Father’s love radically. Everything changes because we change. And that is nothing to be anxious about. God is always revealing new things to us about who he is and how much and in what ways he loves us.
‘The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’ These words in the book of Lamentations in the Bible encourage us to see God as a faithful and never-ending source of love and mercy but that love and that mercy is new every morning. Because we are new every morning: a new me – older, wiser, creakier – with a new opportunity today to see my life afresh, through God’s eyes. ‘New every morning is the love’ – why not go and look this hymn up on that new-fangled Google thing and be encouraged and uplifted by it? And then, what new road will you travel as you grow nearer to God today?
Sam Rushton returned to Lichfield in April (after spending most of her adult life in Bristol and York) to take up the role of Chief Executive, also known as Diocesan Secretary, for the Diocese of Lichfield, working closely with the bishops and archdeacons to provide all the practical support and training to parishes, schools and chaplaincies that the diocese can offer.