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Open Door Magazine
The Open Door
magazine is produced bi-monthly by our church and
delivered to over 500 houses in the parish and beyond.
It includes articles (some of which are submitted by
members of the congregation), information regarding
weddings, baptisms and funerals, poetry, jokes and
adverts.
For further
information regarding placing adverts in the magazine,
please contact, preferably by email, the
Parish Administrator.
The following
is the vicar’s article from the latest issue,
August/September 2010:-
The Vicar
writes
'I’m writing this
article whilst watching a cricket match in what might be
considered a typical local village cricket setting. The
ground is surrounded by fields; some with crops growing
in them, another has four horses grazing in it, and
there is a smallholding close by, and it has a real
sense of peace and tranquillity. Countless people will
have witnessed similar scenes for hundreds of years
since the middle of the eighteenth century when cricket
began to be played competitively in many towns and
villages.
However, when you
look more closely at the surroundings, you see things
that would not have been present even a hundred years
ago; nets for the players to practice in, covers to
protect the batting strip, sight screens, a car park
full of cars. Then, from more recent times, there are
telephone posts, electricity pylons, a mobile phone mast
and even a wind turbine. All of which in the past would
have had their share of objections when they were first
planned to be put in place – they would have been seen
as a blot on the landscape that would spoil our
beautiful English countryside. Yet very quickly they
have become an accepted part of everyday life, in fact
without them our lives would become more difficult.
No-one particularly wants a mobile phone mast in their
neighbourhood and I guess that not many people would
want to give up their mobile phone, but at this point in
time we can’t have one without the other.
All of these
things that were once considered to be a nuisance have
now become an absolute necessity to maintain our quality
of life.
We live in a
world that changes so quickly that it can be difficult
to keep pace with the changes. Whilst it can sometimes
even be traumatic to embrace change at times, change is
essential for our world to improve and advance. But
change comes at a cost in many different ways, financial
or emotional to name just two.
God calls us all to change; He calls us to turn from the
temptations of our society – the ones that quickly
become accepted as being the norm in the way that
telephone posts, electricity pylons and wind turbines
were once considered a blot on the landscape they are
now accepted as being normal. God calls us to change and
to follow the way of Christ. But He recognises that it
is costly to follow Jesus.
In
Luke 9:57 it tells of a man who said to Jesus, “I will
follow you wherever you go”. Jesus accepts his offer to
be a disciple but also points out that he must put to
one side all earthly attractions and distractions and
give himself totally to Jesus. Whilst it may seem
unreasonable to give up all of the things that might be
deemed to be extravagances, the message that Jesus gave
the man in the reading and likewise us, is that he
expects changes to be made in our lives and that we
should strive to be more Christ like.'
Dave
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