Rectory Ramblings…
“…they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees…”                                                        (Micah 4:3-4)
 
My very large Rectory garden in King’s Cliffe has a very small vegetable plot. I have always had one, well for the last 37 years at least. so now I have created one here. It is beginning to look as if it might produce something this year, although none of the beetroots and carrots I sowed earlier have germinated, and the leeks are not looking too bright either. In the rest of the garden some things are looking good, like the newly mown labyrinth in the back lawn, whilst others are not looking so good and are still waiting for attention. Meanwhile, on the other side of the mill stream, I still haven’t had time to sort out fencing for the Rectory field so that I can put sheep on it. At market this morning, two different people asked if I had brought my trailer this week, and when I would be buying. The answer to those questions was no, and I don’t know.
 
The reality is that sheep are just not a high priority right now, at least not compared with the demands of being a parish priest and a rural dean. But isn’t that a bit like life in general? Two steps forward, one step back, and always something else that needs dealing with first. Sometimes it can feel like we are always swimming against the tide, and just as we think we have everything under control the one piece that we hadn’t been watching falls apart. Like the path in my back garden labyrinth, it begins by heading straight towards the goal before turning away again, and much time is spent going round in circles without apparently making any real progress. Often it is only later, when we have time to stop and rest, that we look back and see just how far we have come and how much we have achieved. And only then can we see how much we have been blessed by God and how much we have to be grateful for.
In my other garden, in Middleton Cheney, I created a “Micah-Habbukuk” corner – a seating area between a vine a fig tree. I put them there to remind me that our times away from the busy-ness of day to day life should be times of rest and peace, but also to remind me to thank God for his rich blessing, at all times, whatever life is like.   
 
“Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food;
… yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:17-18)                                                                   Revd Eddie