Minister's Letter March 2024
Revd John Henry
Tickhill Methodist Church
March Winds
During my travels over the years, I have often noticed the great British preoccupation with the weather…
Whenever you are in a new place, perhaps meeting new people for the first time an excellent conversation starter is the weather. It has happened a few times in Tickhill!
Perhaps it is people that we know well, people with whom we are very familiar; and again, the talk and the discussion moves around to the climate as we now are experiencing it.
No doubt we shall soon be thinking of and probably we will soon be talking about April Showers; and I wonder what sort of a summer we can look forward to or not as the case may be!
If I could put my order in, it would be for nice weather but not too hot!
Well, here we are in March… someone reminded me only the other day that there is that wonderful saying that ‘she’ comes in like a lion (or should that be lioness) and goes out like a lamb – or is it the other way around! I’m not sure!
But then one thing I am convinced of is that this month is prone to the wind!
We will soon start hanging out the washing again, after a time of putting it in the dryer over the winter period.
From our kitchen window we will be able to glimpse the washing line where shirts toss their arms in a wild fandango as the March wind blows through them.
Sheets will spin over and over the line and towels blow like flags in the breeze.
They tug and pull at the line — pleading with the pegs to release them — straining to be free to fly over the rooftops into the great sky beyond — and suppose sometimes I long to fly with them!
We all find ourselves pegged down at some time in our lives. It can seem that we are tethered and anchored by life.
The March wind blows and we long to be free; to travel, to explore, to follow the pursuits of our hearts and to escape from the routines of life, but we are fixed down in many ways. Sometimes it is by lack of resources or opportunities; sometimes for some by responsibilities to families or their many tasks.
Certainly, in this economic crisis there will be a number of people who find that their opportunities become severely limited – holidays and leisure might have to be put on hold and other things might have to wait!
The strange thing is that often, when we do at last achieve our ‘freedom’, we don’t know what to do with it! I am told that some ‘retired’ people confess that they look back longingly to the days when they were tied to routine and the needs of others.
Pull out the pegs, and those shirts which danced so lightly in the wind will quite likely fall in the mud.
Perhaps the truth is that the only real freedom we can know is the freedom to rise above the restrictions and inhibitions of our daily lives and see the whole of life as a great adventure. Let the winds of the Spirit blow into our souls, refreshing and uplifting us but keeping us pegged securely to the lifeline of love that as a Christian minister I find in God.
I am certain that over the years some people have wrestled with God’s commandments and perhaps have seen them as a set of rules that greatly inhibit life; but I would suggest to you that a much better way of seeing them, is to see them as protective, as being like those pegs on the washing line defending the washing from a journey into the mud and the dirt.
God is no kill joy – he asks of us to go His way because He knows that is what is good for us.
March winds a symbol to contemplate.
Revd John Henry
Bless you all dear friends
Minister of Tickhill Methodist Church
- Tickhill Methodist Church
- Northgate
- Tickhill
- South Yorkshire
- DN11 9HY