The ministers from the East Anglia Methodist District are invited to attend a retreat each year and we have been spending a couple of days at the wonderful Sizewell Hall on the Suffolk coast.
We were introduced to the concept of visio divina which is a process of contemplative prayer, the leader of the retreat invited us to find a place, inside or out and to sit in silence and think of a colour. I confess, I am not good at things like this and hadn’t a clue what colour to bring to mind, I was sitting looking out to sea, so blue seemed like an obvious choice. The idea was that we used our smart phone to take a picture which we would talk about in the next session.
I spotted this stone pillar at the foot of the first flight of stone stairs down towards the beach. It occurred to me that one day, I am guessing that around a hundred years ago a stone mason would have lovingly crafted matching pillars and I can imagine that when completed, they would have stood back and been proud of their handiwork and the staircase would have looked perfect.
A century on, the stone pillar is showing the ravages of time, I guess that over the years it will have been battered by the storms of life, it might also have fallen foul of human hands and today it doesn’t look as good as maybe it once did.
It occurred to me that as ministers we needed this retreat as an opportunity to stop, and take stock. There were some of us arrived at Sizewell Hall feeling a bit like this stone pillar, battered by the storms of life and at times damaged by other people, we were tired, worn and in need of refreshment.
In all sorts of walks of life, we resemble the stone pillar and don’t look or feel as once we did. The point is, that the stone pillar still does the job it was always intended to do. According to St Matthew, Jesus said “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28) we all need a bit of rest and restoration from time to time