View from the Vicarage

Unexpected guests

Hospitality has taken a big hit during lockdown. We are all holding our breath hoping life might return to near normal after June 21st.

We are going to have to brush up on our social skills again, learn how to make conversation and remember to avoid religion, sex or politics around the dinner table.

Hospitality is such an important part of our community life and we have all desperately missed it. Planned hospitality is always energising and of course the unexpected guest is a challenge.

Jesus spoke about this scenario when he was teaching his disciples to pray.

A man had unexpected guests and he had nothing to feed them with. He knocks on his neighbour’s door at midnight and asks for bread to feed them. The neighbour doesn’t appreciate being woken and fears if the disturbance continues all the children will wake as well. The story ends well as Jesus relates that because of the ‘shameless audacity’ of the request, the neighbour will get up and give him as much bread as he needs.

A great learning moment that we should persist in prayer but also a lesson for us all when the unexpected guest knocks on our door.

The Upper Dever was formed in 2006 and from this summer it will be joined by an ‘unexpected guest’.

We have been asked to welcome South Wonston church as part of our group of churches. The details have not been decided yet but it will happen and South Wonston will become part of one benefice with the Upper Dever Churches.

Its an opportunity to welcome them and to draw on each others strengths and weaknesses. An opportunity to put ourselves out for them, the equivalent to that ‘midnight call for bread’ and to absorb them into the Dever community.

I’m not sure there will be any place for shameless audacity but it is a unique moment to not only welcome them but also to share with them all the advantages of living and worshipping in the Upper Dever valley.

This month we begin some delightful social events across the Dever valley. Having missed them last year I do hope you will take time to support them and to be generous.

We are all delighted to learn of the appointment of Tom Johnstone as the headteacher of the Micheldever school which is at the centre of our community.

Tom brings many leadership skills and his Christian faith to this new role and of course the appointment will be a key factor ensuring stability for the school in the years ahead.

John Rennie