Autumn days

Reader's Letter, November 1999

Lawrie Crawforth I sit writing at the end of another glorious, sunny Autumn day. The evening sun was slanted a few hours ago onto the leaves of a tree in our garden, a tree bathed in colour so that it seemed to have an inner glow of its own. A bit over the top, perhaps? Nevertheless, it really is a lovely sight.

Autumn has always been a favourite time of the year for me. Keats was so right when he wrote "season of mists, and mellow fruitfulness". It is a time that reminds me of blackberries (which I still gather) and conkers (my grandson has been my excuse for these in recent years!), and of course, apples. There are some hanging tantalisingly over the wall, ready for picking now…

It’s also a time when the year changes very clearly - the skies become greyer, it is colder, the early frosts appear. There is a feeling of things coming to an end.

From little acorns…

Yesterday our grandson Peter came to visit, and during the afternoon he and I worked together for a while in he garden. Nothing strenuous of course, just gathering up the fallen leaves from beneath an oak tree. Peter swept up the brown and golden piles, and we talked whilst I gathered them up. He suddenly bent down and picked up an acorn, and our talk turned then to what that small acorn might have grown to become.

And later on that incident turned my own thoughts to God’s work in our world, all around us. As the evenings draw in now, as we begin to look towards the end of the year, we are reminded of our changing world - but also of its unending variety. God’s world, our world, does change - but there are always new beginnings for us, the work of God’s Creation never stops. One phase of life dies away, but it leads on to another. That small acorn was a signal of the new growth that is there all the time.

In all of our lives there are times of rest, when perhaps we lie dormant for a while, but these lead on to new things for us. Here at St Peter’s we are going through such a time as we follow the process of seeking our new Rector. Not that we’re really dormant or that nothing is actually happening, of course! This is a time for us all to be patient - but it’s a time for us to seek out God’s tasks for each one of us. As His world moves on, we cannot just stand still. He wants us to go along with him.

Lawrie Crawforth

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