5 May 2021 – Carol Tubbs, United Reformed Church, Petersfield

A Time for Everything

I don’t know about you, but I have felt that Spring has been more important than ever this year. I have loved listening to and watching the birds, ever increasing in volume and song and recently beginning to collect material for nests. We are lucky enough to have a variety of birds visiting our garden – free food whenever they want! I love watching as each flower has emerged – be it snowdrops early on, daffodils in their variety of bright yellows, the shrubs which seem to wait and then burst into bloom and now we have beautiful blossom on our small fruit trees.

As I said, this year more than ever we all seem to have been waiting for signs of hope in the strange lives we have had to lead over the winter months. Winter seemed very long and, like those bulbs underground, we were hidden away from each other. We know it was essential, just as it is essential for the flowers to bloom in their own time, but now things do seem more hopeful. In the Bible it says “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven”* and further in that passage “a time to mourn and a time to dance”.

For some of you there will have been much mourning during the long winter months and beyond, but I pray that the time to dance will come again for you. Again, in the same passage “A time to embrace and a time to refrain”. Well, we certainly have had to “refrain” for many months and maybe the hope that Spring has brought will see the time for us to “embrace” before too long. God bless us all and, in particular, you who are reading this.

*Ecclesiastes 3