Postlebury News February 2023

POSTLEBURY NEWSLETTER
February 2023
From the Rectory:
January and February can be dreary months. Unless you are lucky and can get
away to warmer climes, the lack of sunlight, (and Vitamin D) can really get you
down. By now, New Year’s resolutions have probably been broken, and we are
dissatisfied by our meagre efforts to lose weight and resist the January sales. The
sniffles and coughs we have managed to keep at bay during the festivities have
finally overwhelmed us and we are forced to retreat to bed, or the sofa and
daytime T.V.
But provided one is not too seriously stricken, one of the few good things about
succumbing to illness, (and in my case, a bout of COVID) , is the enforced bedrest
and the opportunity to catch up on a bit of reading and personal admin. Thinking
about this newsletter, whilst looking up the Gospel on the Sunday when the
Church was celebrating the Baptism of Christ, (and others were kindly taking the
services at Stoke and Witham Friary), I came across a reading that I realised tells
us as much about John the Baptist, as it says about Jesus. John the Baptist only
ever spoke and pointed the way, and yet Jesus said of him ‘Among those born of
women there is no greater’ (Luke 7:28). His calling was simply to be a voice, ‘a
witness to the light’ as St. John’s Gospel tells us; important, but only as a
signpost.
Commenting on the passage, the blind Scottish preacher, George Matheson, (who
wrote the hymn ‘O love that will not let me go’), tells his congregation-
‘Be willing to be a voice that is heard and not seen, or a mirror whose glass the
eye cannot see because it is reflecting the glory of the Son…
Do the most every-day and insignificant tasks, knowing that God can see. If you
live with difficult people, win them over through love. If you have made a great
mistake in your life, do not allow it to cloud the rest of your life, but by locking it
secretly in your heart, make it yield strength and character.
We are doing more good than we know. The things we do today – sowing the
seeds, or sharing the simple truths of Christ- people may some day refer to as the
first things that prompted them to think of Him.’
Powerful stuff, from a man who went blind at the age of twenty, (and whose
fiancée left him because of it.)
As we enter the season of Lent which begins with Ash Wednesday on the 22
nd
February, perhaps we can use the time to rethink our priorities for the coming
year, mindful of the seeds we might sow.
With every blessing,
Fr. Anthony