Dear Friends

It is a joy to write to you with our new postcard for the year and the outline of events that we plan to hold.  My hope is that it may sit in some prominent place and prompt your prayers and interest!

This time last year our postcard went out with locations booked for each of our events. As the year progressed we learnt that some of the locations booked were cancelled and we were left trying to find alternatives at very short notice.  In the general run of things this might be frustrating and a little wearying (and there is that side to things).  However as I look back on last year, some of my highlights and encouragements in the faith have come through God’s intervention, His provision and His introductions to those ministering angels who have been a joy to meet.  It’s not been as we planned but it has surely been God showing off beyond our wildest expectations.

Dear Friends

As I write this introduction to our newsletter we find ourselves carrying something of that paradox evident throughout Scripture where men and women were called out to walk by faith and not by sight. We have known something of this journey over many years, yet once again find ourselves being challenged to walk this way with God more deeply and more widely.

Many of you know that for over six years we have waited on God and followed His lead in regard to the property of West Watch, believing that somehow He had drawn us there as a context for ministry. As often as we have surrendered and given it back to Him, God has continued to hold us there with vision for this place, set aside by Doris Skinner for the very purpose of all that we are about.

Val writes: 

But those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”  Isaiah 40:31

I have loved this verse since my teen-age years.  In this image of the eagle something is stirred in my imagination, there is a freedom, a rising and a soaring with the current. It reminds me of the scene in Chariots of Fire when Eric Liddell could express to his sister (who was concerned that he might lose his focus for the mission field by running for the Olympics) that ‘ God has made me fast and when I run I sense God’s pleasure.’

For years I have sought ‘to run, to walk and not faint’ and yet as I reflect I think this was something I tried to achieve through my effort. I did not realize that God had another way, captured here in this verse.

Dear Friends

As we enter into another year, I wonder how you are feeling?  I think it is a time that can fill us with many different thoughts and emotions.  There can be a sense of hope and anticipation, a desire for change and new opportunities, but there can also be a sense of fear, regret, disappointment, disillusionment and grief; or perhaps simply a sense of everything carrying on regardless.   It seems to me that we experience many if not all of these conflicting emotions at different times and it can be hard to know how to carry them within us.  The greeting of a ‘Happy New Year’ we know will not change our reality and happiness may not be our primary emotion at this time.  Yet my prayer is that through this year in the very midst of all that you experience, you will know in increasing measure something of this mystery of Christ in us the Hope of Glory - He who has become to us our wisdom and sanctification.