| Mar 2008 | They Met at Calvary |
| Apr 2008 | Keeping the Easter Rumour Alive |
| May 2008 | The Way to Pentecost |
| Jun 2008 | Where our Unity lies |
| Jul 2008 | The Californian Redwood |
| Sep 2008 | "Dwight L. Moody, 1837-99" |
| Oct 2008 | Nine Marks of a Good Church |
| Nov 2008 | Mammon |
| Dec 2008 | Advent and the Evangelists |
| Mar 2009 | A Pattern for Lent |
| Apr 2009 | We have seen His Glory |
| May 2009 | Witnesses To The Resurrection |
| Jun 2009 | The Holy Trinity |
When I last visited the New Forest and stood at the foot of several Californian Redwoods I was utterly amazed at their dimensions. These giants of the forest are the largest and tallest living creatures on our planet. At a hundred years they are still babies. At five hundred years they are only adolescents. They begin to mature at a thousand years.
The ‘General Sherman’ Redwood is over thirty-five feet in diameter, and still fourteen feet in diameter a hundred and eighty feet above the ground. It is three thousand years old. All great Redwood trees grow from seeds so tiny that six thousand of them weigh but one ounce! Great majestic trees develop from these tiny embryos.
How amazing that the entire ‘programme’ for the growth of that giant Redwood is contained in an infinitely small seed. All that is required is the earth beneath, the rain to fall and the light and warmth of the sun to shine above. We need no reminder that this is how Jesus pictures the kingdom of God. From the tiny mustard seed trees grow so large that the birds may nest in their branches.
When a child or an adult receives the light and warmth
of God’s grace in the waters of baptism and is planted
in the life of the church then we see the kingdom begin
to grow in that life. And from tiny beginnings in first
one life, and then another the kingdom developments. As
Wesley wrote, More and more it spreads and grows,
Ever mighty to prevail. Sin’s stronghold it now o’erpowers.
Shakes the trembling gates of hell!
Norman Wallwork
Copyright ©:2009 Wotton United Church Wotton-under-Edge Gloucestershire