Articles - From the Vicar

Dear Friends,

The other day I was, rather unusually for me, weeding the lawn. I pulled up an oak sapling and found, to my amazement, what lay under the surface. The acorn had split in two and the root and shoot were sprouting from the top where the two halves joined. It reminded me of a pair of lungs or kidneys, like a whole living system and I began to feel slightly bad at having uprooted such an amazing thing.

"Great oaks from little acorns grow" is one of those sayings that applies to so much of life - not just the natural world. At St Edmund's at the moment it connects to our talents campaign where we hope that from small "seeds" of £10, much will grow to fund essential repair work on the church. The way this can work was brought home to me rather wonderfully recently when I went to Gledhow School. Before I did my assembly, six children came forward to make a presentation to me. One of them was Rachel Redhead who is one of our Brownies. She had taken ten pounds and got together with some of her friends to run a stall at school selling things they had made or things they didn't want. I was amazed and greatly encouraged when she then presented me with an envelope with £50 in it. (You can read Rachel's letter telling us what she did at the bottom of page 2.) What a tremendous example of acorns growing into oaks, one that I am sure many of us will be following.

However, the same principle can work in our own lives. We plant a small seed, we make a new beginning, we try a new thing, - sometimes it doesn't work, just as not every acorn makes it - but often something will take root and begin to grow - a new hobby or interest or involvement, a new friendship or group to belong to. Sometimes we can also be the agent of that change in another - and the seed that we plant can be equally small - a word of encouragement, a suggestion or an invitation. Think about the big and important things in your life and I would guess that they all began with something really small. There are so many of Jesus' parables that are about the beauty of small things and the wonder of how they grow. Perhaps it's not surprising that he so often used "small things growing" as a sign of God's Kingdom. So why not think about making some small new beginning in your life - step out in faith and see what grows from it.

With prayers and good wishes
David

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