Spring... newness, life, colour, hope, growth... but oh so vulnerable! Ever seen a new-born lamb, struggle to stay upright, a seedling crushed underfoot, a smashed egg the victim of a scavenger, a young bird fallen from the nest, a bud blackened by a late frost? Yes, all too often! Newness and vulnerability seem to go hand in hand. I know what we are doing here in Telford feels so fragile, sometimes it scares me... we've committed al least 7 years to this, and so many things could crush and kill it before it even really gets going! And it could be my doing! I guess any one of the men or women part of that first "Christian" community could have felt the same way... hiding away in fear, worried that they had committed themselves to something which defied logic, which made no sense... how could a bunch of misfits and vagabonds make any impact on a world dominated by Religious and Civil powers... if the story of the passion bears even a passing resemblance of what happened that season in Jerusalem, they had witnessed first hand the tenacity and influence of the Religious leaders and the brutality and domination of the Civil authority... the Priests and the Romans... That's what makes their story so amazing... and gives me hope! We know that newness; the newness of spring, the newness of the "early church", the newness of our community is inherently vulnerable... small, irrational, delicate, insecure, alive with risk, hardly able to stand on it's own two feet! But after the ascension the 120 disciples gathered in the room where they had been gathering and...
They agreed they were in this for good, completely together in prayer, the women included. [Acts 1v14]Without spring there would be no summer... so we have no other choice but to embrace the vulnerability as a sign of the promise of what lies ahead! What a future! What a RIDE! So excuse us if from time to time we stuff it up or get a bit squashed, we are but seedlings!
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