Normally, parking a car next to a wall should not be risky once the parking manoeuvre itself is complete. That was not the case recently in Framlingham when part of the churchyard wall collapsed of its own accord and damaged a parked vehicle. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
Walking past the scene a few days later I noticed that there were no obvious signs of foundations to the wall and, more significantly I expect, there was a mass of roots of plants and trees of all shapes and sizes, exposed by the collapse. This living, growing vegetation had been pressing up against the structure. My amateur and fleeting look told me that despite being a solid wall that had stood for many years, gradually the pressure of the encroaching roots was too much for it and, without foundations or buttresses, it fell over.
Whether my assessment of the incident is right or not is not the point. The point is that I was made to think again about foundations. The Church of England happens recently to have been in the news due to reports of numeric decline. At other times the same reports have been made of other denominations. Whatever your Church, you cannot but have noticed the trend.
This is not the place, and I have not the knowledge to analyse the reasons for the apparent decline in the effectiveness of the Church in drawing in new and younger worshippers. In this, as in so many matters, it behoves us to do what we can do and be the best we can be.
This is Advent again. The season of preparation for the coming of Christ as God Incarnate at Christmas. Soon we will hear grumbles about the commercialising of Christmas and inappropriate priorities. Far be it from me to warn against ‘Scrooge-like’ behaviour; instead, my suggestion is to not worry at all about how people do and do not keep Christmas and instead, make a good job of revisiting our own foundations as week by week, the messages of the four Sundays of Advent unfold.
Is my own response sufficiently well founded on the life changing promises of the prophets? Are my head, heart and soul accepting the enormity of the response of the timeless, global Church to an act of love by God that defies all attempts at measurement? This comes down to priorities; am I absolutely committed to the great gift of God, which is new life in Christ, or am I overwhelmed by a perception of how it is all going? If the latter is my worry, I am about as likely to stand up the future than the churchyard wall.
A Prayer
Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, help me to understand your love in Jesus Christ and continually to strengthen faith’s foundations by mining deeply the messages and promises of your word to us in Scripture and to live in trust with your Word, who is Jesus Christ and his Spirit, alive and active now as always. Amen.