A greenhouse is hardly the sort of picture you’d think topical for November, but we’ve been amazed at how many people have been noticing its progress – you wouldn’t think we live down a dead end road with nobody passing! Now you can see it is ready! Woo woo! From ordering it took three months to arrive, and then with one thing and another it’s taken me three months to put it together. But I have put it together and in time before the deadline of winter frosts and so on!

Having your life together before the final deadline is important and of course this month is a poignant time for remembering that. We have All Saints and All Souls, Remembrance, and then will finish the month with Advent Sunday, the feast day we mark/celebrate an event we don’t yet know the date of. Some people like the joke about old people reading the bible a lot – ‘swotting for their finals’. Of course, it’s not knowing the bible that is the main thing, or even the date, but knowing and walking with God, though I recommend reading the bible as well, especially the gospels.

Before the Queen’s funeral I gave all the school children in our church schools a candle, explaining that sometimes people light a candle for someone as a kind of prayer in itself. When you don’t know what to say but know you want to speak or simply be with God, sometimes it can help to light a candle – a way of saying, ‘I don’t know quite what to say to you God, but I’m thankful for life and want your peace at this moment’. As the flame flickers silently in that still space, it can be easier to receive the peace from God that he wants to give, and with that, to gain the resolve to get up and live as you knew you wanted to. May the peace of God be with you, and as the autumn chill turns winterish, may the warmth of God fill your heart with the good news of his love.