The Reverend Liz Jump, Rector, The Wroxham Benefice,
The Vicarage, 11, Church Road, Wroxham, Norfolk NR12 8SH. Tel. 01603 784150
By the time you read this I shall have had a week off work. Not particularly noteworthy - I’m going nowhere special, and shall probably just potter around at home. But it’s a rare event, my actually taking time off, and I find myself wondering why this is.
In part, it’s because I love my job and enjoy being busy.
In part it’s because there is always something to do, and I never want to leave that one last thing undone.
But, if I’m honest, in part it’s because stopping means stepping out of the familiar pattern of busyness, and having to think of what else to do!
We all find the familiar comfortable. Patterns of living, the shape of our days, the things we do because we’ve always done them - they fit us like a cosy old jumper, and we settle into them easily. But sometimes it is good to step outside the familiar. To have to look at things in a new way. To challenge ourselves to move away from the things we always do, or the way we’ve always done them, and gain a new perspective on life.
The Bible is full of stories of people who had to move away from the comfortably familiar, and many of them weren’t happy to do it. Moses had no end of reasons why he couldn’t lead his people out of Egypt, and the people in their turn were all for going back to the familiar when times got hard - even though the familiar was slavery. Sometimes even a familiar bad place is less scary than facing the unknown. But God promises us that wherever we walk, he walks with us, and we are never alone. Through the prophet Isaiah, he tells us ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you walk through the waters you shall not be
overwhelmed....because you are precious in my eyes....and I love you.’
I’m fairly sure a week off doesn’t count as ‘walking through the waters’ but I am sure that through all of my life, busy or resting, God is with me; and that he walks with us all through the familiar, the challenging, the safe and the terrifying, and that we are never, never alone because we are precious in his eyes. And he loves us.
Love and prayers Liz
Inputs by 15th Please 5
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