Looking ahead to new beginnings

There is something about September that feels like a new beginning - perhaps more so, for most of us, than January ever does. In our house, the school bags will come out, for many the routines will restart, and for all the nights begin to draw in just enough to remind us that the year is turning. Whether you have children heading back to school, or you're simply feeling that familiar shift in the air, September has a way of marking something. A new chapter. A fresh start.

This September we’ll have our own changes in The Offchurch Group. All our services are moving to a new time slot, and the first Sunday morning of each month will just be an Eden service. If you’ve never been - Eden is a place, designed to make space for everyone, young and old to worship together. We have songs old and new, some with actions,  a reflection to help focus our minds for the week ahead and prayers for each other and the world.

This is a change for us, and change - whatever it looks like - can be unsettling, of course. New Services, new teachers, new classes, new colleagues, new challenges. Not every new season feels welcome at first. Sometimes we'd rather hold onto the summer a little longer.

But there is something quietly hopeful about the rhythm of seasons - the reminder that life moves, that things change, and that change is not always loss. The natural world has always known this. The trees don't mourn the summer; they simply turn, and in turning, they become extraordinary.

There is a line in the Bible that has always struck me as one of the most honest and hopeful things ever written: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" We’ll be thinking about this in our first Eden service on the 6th September. It's from the book of Isaiah, and it was written to a people who were exhausted and uncertain about the future - people who perhaps felt a bit like we do sometimes, not quite sure what the next season holds.

The invitation is simply to pay attention. To notice what might be stirring. To be open to the possibility that something good is on its way.

Whatever September brings for you - new beginnings, new challenges, or simply the quiet comfort of familiar rhythms resuming - I hope you find something in it worth holding onto. And if you're looking for a community to journey through the new season with, we'd love to see you. Our doors are always open. Something new is springing up - come and be part of it.

Total Eclipse of the Heart...

This week, many of us caught a glimpse - or tried to - of the solar eclipse. For those of us who were around in 1999, it didn't quite have the same level of drama. On Wednesday, the partial eclipse was more subtle. A slight dimming. A sense that something was happening, even if you had to squint to notice it.

The obvious thing about an eclipse is that the sun doesn't go anywhere. It is still there, still burning, still doing everything it has always done - it's just that something has got in the way of our seeing it clearly. You may know the famous words "I believe in the sun, even when it's not shining." These profound words come from an anonymous poem scratched onto a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany, by a Jewish person hiding during World War II. They are a powerful testament of hope and endurance during the Holocaust.

The eclipse, and these words, are a stark reminder that the light hasn't failed. Our view of it has simply changed.

I think there are seasons of life that feel a bit like that. Seasons where God feels distant, or obscured, or simply hard to locate. Where the warmth we once felt seems to have dimmed without us quite knowing why. And in those moments, it can be tempting to conclude that the light has gone out altogether.

But the sun was there all along.

The Psalmist knew this feeling well. They wrote - "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" - and yet they kept singing anyway. Faith, perhaps, is less about always seeing clearly and more about trusting what you know to be true even when the view is obscured. Choosing to believe, on the grey days, that the light hasn't gone anywhere. The eclipse passes, as it always does.

Fasting

Over the past few weeks I've been reading about fasting. What first caught my attention wasn't actually the spiritual side of it, but the growing body of research into its health benefits. It struck me that something many people now see as a new discovery has, in fact, been part of the Christian life for thousands of years.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised fasting isn't the only example. Today we're encouraged to slow down, practise mindfulness, rest well, be generous, and spend time in community. Christians have been cultivating those same habits for centuries - not because they're fashionable, but because they help us make space for God and remember what really matters.

Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (John 10:10). The Christian life isn't simply about believing certain things; it's about learning a way of life that leads us more deeply into the life God created us for.

This Sunday we’ll be exploring fasting together - why Jesus assumed his followers would do it, what it teaches us, and why this ancient practice still has something to say to our busy modern lives. Whether you've fasted before or have never really thought about it, we'd love to welcome you.

Pilgrimage

This week I'm writing from New Wine - a large Christian festival in Somerset where thousands of people have travelled from across the country, and indeed from around the world, to worship together. There is something quite extraordinary about it. Strangers becoming friends over coffee, children running between tents, music spilling out across fields - all of it held together by the simple fact that we are all heading in the same direction.

It feels, in the best possible way, like a bit of a pilgrimage. This theme has been picked up in the all age worship, and Nick and Becky Drake, who write many of the songs we sing at Eden, have written a new song called The Pilgrim Way.

The idea of life as a pilgrimage is ancient. The Psalms of Ascent - Psalms 120 to 134 - were songs sung by Jewish pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the great festivals. They sang as they walked. They encouraged one another on the road. They arrived, not just as individuals, but as a people.

I think that's what the Christian life is meant to feel like. Not a solitary trudge, but a journey made together - with companions for the road, songs for the hard stretches, and a destination worth heading towards. We are, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

Wherever you are this week - whether you're at New Wine or another Christian Festival, on your summer holiday, or simply at home - you are part of the same great pilgrimage. We are all, together, on our way home. 

All Change

This week we had yet another new Prime Minister walk into number 10. Whatever your politics, there is something a little dizzying about the sheer number we seem to get through at the moment. Seven in a decade. Each comes with promises and hopes and then the inevitable disappointments. It feels a bit, at times, like a revolving door of people who were going to fix things.

I don't say that to be cynical - I genuinely pray that Andy Burnham and his team will do well, and I hope they do. But it does make you wonder how much we pin our hopes on earthly kingdoms and the people who lead them.

Tomorrow we'll be singing Ancient of Days, I’ve quoted this before, but it carries a line that feels particularly timely this week: "kingdoms rise and fall, there is still one king reigning over all."

If we are feeling a little weary by yet another change in power, this isn’t an excuse for disengagement - we should care deeply about how our country is led. We must pray, and remain hopeful - but this song reminds us that we have another, far more secure anchor. Governments come and go. Leaders rise and fall. And through all of it, there is one who does not change, does not resign, and does not let us down. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." That's an anchor worth holding onto.

Disappointment

Well what a difference a week makes. England are now out of the World Cup. Tonight, of course, we’ll face France for third place but this is very much a consolation prize. For a lot of the match it looked like it might go a different way, but our hopes were dashed again. So close. 

Whilst, as I’ve said - I’m not particularly a football fan, there is a special kind of English grief that seems to come for some with football. The nearly, the not-quite, the heartbreak snatched from the jaws of hope. If you're feeling it this weekend, you are, I’m sure, not alone.

But here's the thing about defeat - the Bible again is full of it. The disciples watched the one they thought would change everything die on a cross on a Friday afternoon. All that hope, extinguished. Peter wept. They hid. It was over. 

And then Sunday came.

The Christian story doesn't pretend that loss isn't real, or that it doesn't hurt. It sits with the Saturday - the day of grief and confusion and dashed hope. But it refuses to let that defeat be the final word. Paul writes in Romans that "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope"  and not a thin, fragile hope, but one that does not put us to shame.

England will play again. 

And whether or not they ever lift that trophy, we are held by the one who has already won the thing that matters most.

Underdogs

What a week to be English! Earlier this week we watched Arthur Fery beat the odds to reach the semi-finals at Wimbledon. Even though he was beaten yesterday, he played very well, and got so much further than anyone expected. A few days ago the England football team beat Mexico, and whilst I know next to nothing about football, the history of the stadium made this a remarkable achievement. Tonight we're all looking ahead to England's quarter-final match against Norway. I'm writing in hope, which feels like quite an appropriate posture for a vicar!

England against Mexico earlier this week felt like a bit of an underdog story - certainly Arthur Fery's early wins were. The underdog story is as old as the Bible itself. When God needed someone to take down a giant, he didn't reach for the obvious candidate. He chose David - the youngest, the smallest, the one left minding the sheep while his brothers got the glory. Gideon was hiding in a winepress when God called him to be a "mighty warrior." Mary was a nobody from nowhere when she was chosen to carry the Son of God. Again and again, the story goes the same way - the world looks in one direction, and God quietly gets to work in another.

Paul puts it plainly in 1 Corinthians 1, "God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Not because weakness is the point, but because it gets God's fingerprints on the outcome.

So whoever you're rooting for this weekend - on the grass at Wimbledon or the pitch this evening - spare a thought for the God who has always had a soft spot for the underdog. And if you're feeling a little overlooked yourself this week, a little out of your depth - you might just be exactly where God does his best work.