Goodbye Summer!

Well, as I write this Blog the sun is shining; perhaps far more than it did in August!  Yet, there is no doubt we are once again on the cusp of the seasons changing.

Now the Autumn Equinox of Wednesday is behind us we begin that inevitable march to the year’s end.

It's significant that in church services and private prayer we often mark these ‘on the cusp’ moments.  In the Monastic offices of the day, Lauds is said as the dawn breaks and Vespers is prayed at dusk.  And this weekend at AFC we hold our Harvest Festival which, to me at least, is an annual marker that summer is over and the autumn beginning.

As I ponder all this it strikes me that in observing these ‘transitional’ moments we are re-affirming our faith in the God who has walked with us in the past and promises to take us in coming days.  Life has a momentum which is unstoppable, and our moments are usually anything but truly ‘settled’.  In a way, as we emerge from the Pandemic, gradually and cautiously, we are once again in another ‘on the cusp’ phase. 

The hymn we often sing at New Year has a refrain that seems equally appropriate as the seasons change: So, it’s from the old we travel to the new, keep me travelling along with you…