North Wiltshire Methodist Circuit

We are a discipleship movement shaped for mission

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North Wiltshire Methodist Circuit

PRIVACY NOTICE

In our churches we are now in the season of Lent.  It begins and ends with food – pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, using up some of the foods which were traditionally given up during Lent, and chocolate eggs, bunnies, and anything else you fancy at Easter.  In between those two is Lent, the period when as Christians we remember the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil, in preparation for embarking on his public ministry.  The wilderness is a desolate place, there is little food and water, it’s a place of hardship and misery. 

When I watch and read the news these days, it seems to me that the world is going through a wilderness time, and I know many people who avoid the news altogether as it just makes them despair.  The war in Ukraine is now past its second anniversary, and shows little sign of coming to an end any time soon.  As Russia begins to make small gains, Vladimir Putin appears to grow in confidence, and threatens the use of nuclear weapons if things don’t go his way.  Would you be surprised if he carried out that threat, or if after Ukraine he sent his army into other countries which were formerly part of the Soviet empire, threatening and possibly causing a wider conflict with NATO? – I once felt that was unthinkable, but no longer.  The awful suffering in Gaza goes on and on, and whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, it is ordinary people, especially women and children, who suffer most.  And if this particular conflict comes to an end, it seems almost inevitable that a similar one will erupt in the West Bank, or Lebanon, or Syria.  For the ninth month in a row, February was the warmest month on record across the world for the time of year, with the average temperature 1.77 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, when we have been told that the ‘tipping point’ for irreversible damage to the climate, and the target agreed at various international meetings to try and contain global warming is 1.5 degrees.  Politics in the USA seems to be more bitterly divided than ever, and the forthcoming General Election in Britain threatens to be one of the most acrimonious ever known.  Many people are still living in relative poverty due to the cost of living crisis.  I could go on, and there may well be situations among your own family and friends which leave you feeling that you are in your own personal wilderness at the moment.

God’s people have often found themselves in the wilderness.  Perhaps the best-known example is the Hebrews escaping from slavery in Egypt, and spending forty years wandering in the wilderness before they crossed the River Jordan and entered the land which they believed God had promised to Abraham, one of their ancestors, hundreds of years before.  They frequently felt that God had abandoned them in the wilderness and complained to their leader, Moses, some of them wishing to go back to Egypt.  But they discovered time after time that God was still faithful and provided them with what they needed.  As well as at the start of his public life, Jesus was also in a wilderness at the end of it.  On Good Friday we remember the crucifixion, and some of the words which Jesus is recorded as saying while hanging on the cross are ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’  Following his death, those who had followed Jesus and out their hopes in him were also in a wilderness of despair, wondering if all they had given up, if all they had believed in, had been in vain, and some of them trudged despondently back to their old lives as fishermen.  But the experience of the Hebrews escaping from Egypt, of Jesus on the cross, of his followers in their boats, and of Christians ever since, is that God has not forgotten us.  However vast and impenetrable our wilderness seems, whether in the world or in our own lives, our Christian hope and conviction is that God will remain faithful and will lead us through, and will bring us from the despair of the cross and death on Good Friday to the joy of the resurrection and the celebration of new life on Easter Day.

Deacon Stephen Roe