Robin and I recently had a holiday in California and one of the highlights for us ageing hippies was hugging the giant Sequoia trees.It was extraordinary to be touching a living organism that had been alive for over 1800 years. A similar feeling to kissing a 150 year old giant tortoise I met last year! You may have guessed that biology was a part of my heritage!
This last year I have had the immense honour of having a beautiful American, Allison Wyatt from Redding CA, doing life alongside me. Introducing her to our amazing British culture has been an important part of our year. Recently we visited Chatsworth House in the Peak District where yet again I found the need to hug trees!
We journeyed on to Yorkshire where I was able to share with her my personal heritage. We visited Scarborough, where I was born and bred, and the small Methodist Chapel in a local village where, aged 12, I gave my life to Jesus. We prayed round the Methodist Central Hall where my father had been saved and received his call to preach under the eye of Methodist preachers Sangster and Newman. There we discovered that the lady who is now seeking to bring life again into that place was someone I had led into life in the Spirit when we were 17 whilst working together in a Methodist hotel!
Allison and I prayed in another church where I was raised and spoke with my old youth leader who shared movingly of his hunger for life to come once again into those dry and ageing churches. There we were given an old Order of Service from 1955 with my father's name as the preacher; his sermon title was The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. I felt as if that fellowship was spanning the decades.
Over these past months Colin has been sharing with us The Big Story that we are part of. God's story. Looking back at my roots reminded me that I have a spiritual inheritance through my parents, their faith and the Methodist movement that brought salvation, revival and community transformation to our nation. I now have my part to play as the Pioneer group of churches, of which River is a hub, is forging connections with the Methodist church to help resource and revitalise that call to impact the nation once again.
Looking at a cross section of one of those fallen giant trees I saw the rings, showing year by year the history of that tree, the growth, the droughts, the fires and yet life continuing for generations. Looking at our own lives we can see the years of growth and years of hardships but through it all we see the amazing faithfulness of The Ancient of Days whose wisdom will never fail and whose plans to restore this world continue. Surely we have an amazing inheritance and a wonderful legacy to hand on!
An old hymn writer, Joseph Hart, wrote in 1759:
"THIS, this is the God we adore,
Our faithful, unchangeable Friend;
Whose love is as great as his power,
And neither knows measure nor end.
'Tis Jesus, the First and the Last,
Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home;
We'll praise him for all that is past,
And trust him for all that's to come.
