Aghavea Parish Church

One thing  I ask from the  Lord ,  this only do I seek:  that I may dwell in the house of the  Lord   all the days of my life,  to gaze on the beauty of the  Lord  and to seek him in his temple.   Psalm 27:4 We are now entering what I refer to as the second stage of settling in at the rectory.  We've moved in, and put our furniture in roughly the rooms where we thought they'd fit and suit - and now that we've been here for almost ten weeks, we've started to realise that our initial thoughts might need to be revisited.  In particular, we soon discovered that our snakes and lizards needed to be brought back out so that we could see them better, so we have had to rearrange our furniture to bring them out into the open.  I assume that this isn't the only change we will make - who knows where half of our furniture will end up! We all do this with all aspects of our lives.  We start out with a routine that seems to work...

"Back to school" - the words children dread!  It means a return to early mornings, packed lunches, and playgrounds - and the inevitable routine of study and homework!  To the parents, it means a return to the school runs, more traffic, and cleaning and ironing clothes, trying to remember how to spell certain words (is it i before e, or e before i?), and tricky maths problems again. For some of our young people it means a new chapter - starting in a new school, college or university.  It may signal a long year facing exams next year, or for some of our younger kids, it may even mean Transfer tests in November.  Children seem to be under more and more pressure to perform each year, and feel that they must succeed at all costs - and we need to assure them that they should just t=do their best, and expect nothing more of them. Even in our Church life, "Back to school" signals the end of the summer period.  For our own parish in Aghavea, it signals the re-start o...