Early on in the days of lock-down in 2020, some colleagues remarked that I had adapted easily to working from home. My answer, consistently, will have been that I have been home based since 2006 when my office in Framlingham was closed, I moved home and went largely paperless. In the latter point I was ahead of my time, more by luck than by good design.
Looking at my desk the other day I reflected on the rich mixture of my life and gave thanks again for being so fortunate. The electronic age has brought about a transformation but there is still a time and place for the fountain pen. Research is largely digitally orientated but all my thoughts and sermons start in ink before being finalised on the keyboard.
At the back of my desk, a small bust of Socrates stands beside a large lump of Cumbrian granite that forms the base for a table lamp now with an LED bulb. A bottle of ink beside a computer screen. The diverse background works for me and is a reminder of the breadth of the panorama of life. The page of my day book has jottings for a Thought for the Day and a list of internet domain renewals muddled up together. Variety is the spice of life; it is energising.
Over the last three weeks it has felt as if the world has come to London. Interest drawn by a human being who was interested, breadth valued by a nation that has grown increasingly broad minded, pageantry and ancient ways of doing things beside modern media and a cosmopolitan outlook. We are blessed to have all that going on to energise us and, in time, a Coronation to look forward to.
This Saturday sees the Celebration Service for the Golden Jubilee of the union of churches that has become the United Reformed Church. We celebrate in Westminster Central Hall, that great mansion of the Methodist Church to recall the vision the led to the birth of the URC, to reflect on our diversity and the sheer breadth encompassed within one of the smaller denominations. There will be great thanksgiving and celebration.
URC Members, as other Christians, are all part of the Universal Church, all individuals but energised by diversity. Not all URC people do things the same way but we share the vision of continual adaptation to a broad panorama over which towers a common God, the focal point that draws together people of faith universally.
The Statement of Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church concludes with words I have come to value. I leave them with you as…
A Prayer
We affirm our intention to go on praying and working, with all our fellow Christians, for the visible unity of the Church in the way Christ chooses, so that people and nations may be led to love and serve God and praise him more and more for ever.
Source, Guide, and Goal of all that is: to God be eternal glory. Amen.