Exe Valley Mission Community

News:

A Christian Comment - of sorts!

Oh dear! I've done something that I haven’t done before - as far as I know. I have missed a deadline. Not for this magazine, I hasten to add, (oh no! we are far too on top of things, here in the Exe Valley!) but for another publication I occasionally get asked to write for. And I completely forgot about it. I just didn't see it in my diary! In fact, I am not even sure that I put it there, in the first place. I didn’t even so much have a twinge of alarm as the deadline date came and went.

And then, of course I realised!

I sulked round the supermarket and bought a copy of the newspaper I was supposed to have contributed to. I half expected to see a snide, barbed headline wagging its finger at me on the front page. But there was nothing.

I went through the remaining pages, wondering if there would be a half page spread of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING or absolutely nothing and 'THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN A CHRISTIAN COMMENT IN THIS SPACE IF ONLY THE RECTOR OF THE EXE VALLEY HAD PULLED HER FINGER OUT...'

But there was nothing! No space. No blank columns. No white paper. No gaps. No comments. Nothing!

I flicked through the pages. It all looked pretty much the same. And then I noticed something! My space had been filled!

Outrageously, my space had been filled! The place where I was supposed to have waxed lyrical, pointing the population towards spiritual truth and enlightenment, towards a God who loves and them and cares for them and Jesus his son who died for them, that space had been filled by something else! Things like supermarkets, recipes, and cars, allowing extra space for yet more letters from people who comment on something every single week, people who presumably have the common sense to put the publication deadline date in their diary! And what was worse, I realised that, unless you were absolutely desperate to read a Christian Comment, you would never have known that it was missing!

And of course, that’s exactly what happens, isn't it? So many of us intend to make a bit of space for God in our lives, but stuff happens and the space that we have tried to carve out gets filled with things. Necessary things. Things that take time. Things that fill every available bit of space, so that there are no gaps left to think, pray, worship and wonder. Well, hopefully with summer approaching, there will be the opportunity to find the gaps and make time for all sorts of lovely things, but especially, importantly some space for God.

May the Son shine on us all!

Steph

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