Viewpoint from Rev Mandy Bishop 07/10/2016

Dove rightRev Mandy Bishop
Rector, Flegg Group, Ormesby

also published in the Great Yarmouth Mercury

 

October: the autumn years of our own lives

 
My childhood autumns in rural Hampshire hold precious memories for me—the unpacking of thick jumpers rom the box beneath the beds, hot milky cocoa, harvest moons, log fires in sitting room and in our bedrooms, and the pantry being stocked up for winter with apples and swedes put into hay boxes
 
The autumn years of our lives can be a strange mixture of Nostalgia, and perhaps I am just entering mine. As I mature with age I discern that the journey of life is a joyful mixture of blessings, and potential

Life in its mature years will often yield the harvest of seeds we’ve sown in younger years, and perhaps prepare for colder days to come in the winter years of our lives
 
dove leftWhen life’s autumn arrives, we can look back and better understand the way God guided us along the way, the experiences we encountered were all part of our formation; but in Autumn we still have plenty of work to do—the best and fullest. It’s a good transition time
 
“Autumn” occurs only once in the Bible. In Jude 1:12, where false teachers are compared to “autumn trees without fruit,” implying that autumn should be a fruitful season, the most abundant of the year.
 
Enjoy your autumn season
 
If you are young enjoy the beauty of the radiant colours and the abundance of fruit and vegetables that are harvested
 
If you are more mature, in the autumn years of your life, be joyful and count your blessings that you are now encountering your own personal, colourful, radiance and you are free to yield the harvest of your sewn seeds from earlier years
 
I pray you all enjoy this season
God bless you