[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 31/July/2022]
Our daughter, together with her husband, has just been to Cornwall to visit her best friend from primary school days. We had a message to say that they were going to visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which we loved when we went there several years ago. The gardens flourished over a hundred years ago, but when all the gardeners went off to fight in the First World War they never came back.
Over the following decades the gardens were neglected, became overgrown, greenhouses and walls collapsed and the gardens were finally lost. By chance in the 1990’s, Tim Smit found the wilderness it had become and with others has restored it to its original beautiful place of trees, flowers and wildlife.
We especially remember a more recent and impressive sculpture of the Mud Maid, lying asleep on the ground in the woodland, with green moss for skin covering her body and Montbretia as a mop of wild hair. The story goes that, “Once the Mud Maid danced through the gardens and played in the lake. Sometimes she teased the gardener. Then one day, he marched away and did not come back. Flowers withered. Weeds grew. The Mud Maid was too sad to dance and play. ” She was filled with years of despair, but that all changed when she found the gardens restored. “All a-new!” she exclaimed and danced for joy.
During the past couple of years I must admit I have sometimes felt despair when I see parts of our world gradually turning into a wilderness in our ecology, and the lives of many people being affected in ways that they’ve never experienced before. Each day new problems seem to arise. For some the cost of living crisis must seem insurmountable.
It takes me back to my childhood when there were no supermarkets, food was scarce and rationed. My parents only heated one room with an open coal fire, and there was ice on the inside of my bedroom window. Yet even at a young age I found that I could trust in God who gave me everything I needed, right up to the present day. Whenever I worried I turned to Him and told Him of my trust for the future.
In recent years the word “hope” has crept into my thinking. I saw a Christian definition of hope as “certainty in the present and firm expectation for the future”. As He promises in Jeremiah 29:11,
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Therefore, “Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.” (Psalm 31:24)
Let’s especially look for the day with trust and hope for the time when Jesus returns, and we shall be able to say, “All a-new!”. Then every one of us will be able to dance for joy.
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Contributed by Michael Goble; © the Author
