The Venta Group of Churches

And finally from me…

The months since the end of January, when I was appointed to a new post, have gone so quickly that I can hardly believe I am writing to you for the last time. In fact, if you don’t get round to reading your magazine by 5^th July, I will have finished already. So many of you around the community have been part of our lives for so long that it is hard to know what to say except an enormous thank you for all the ways that you have been a blessing to me and Cathryn and our children and the churches over the last 14 years.

Apart from thank you and goodbye, it is hard to know exactly what to write this month, or at least hard to know what one thing to write. But something did occur to me as I started the process of tidying through our house and came across the removal van you can see in place of my picture at the top here. I bought it to use at one of the first services when we arrived, and then it got tucked away in a drawer, ready to be found at exactly the right moment.

That day fourteen years ago, Cathryn and I, and the two children we had at that point, arrived with everything we owned packed into one of those trucks. In the years that have followed, two children have become three, and grown, and I suspect the van that comes in July will be fuller than the one that arrived in 2012. But the question I asked that day is still a good one for me, and a good one for you. Is our life the contents of a removals van? Is it the contents of our diary? Our bank account? You get the picture.

My life is none of those things. Of course I have stuff, and a diary, and a bank account, but none of those defines me anymore than you might say it defines you. You might express it differently, and lots of you in conversations we’ve had over the years, but my life is defined entirely by Jesus Christ. Cathryn and I are starting new jobs; two of our children are going to new schools; one is heading off on a gap year; but amidst all that change, each of us is confident that Jesus is taking us to the place where he wants us to go, and he will be with us where we go.

The amazing thing about Jesus is that he can go with us, as well as stay here with all of you, and continue to prompt you with that question about what your life consists of. There are so many people in the churches here who would love to continue to talk about the life which Jesus offers, which is so much more than possessions or money or the things we have to do, and which in the end is the only thing that is forever.

Maybe we’ll bump into each other around Norfolk sometime soon. Maybe, following Jesus together, we’ll bump into each other again in eternity. But until then, again, thank you, and goodbye.

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