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Dear Friends, Well we're at the tail end of summer now. The weeks seem to whirl round at such a rate. Wouldn't it be nice if we had buttons on our lives, like a tape deck. 'Pause' to enjoy the better bits longer, 'fast forward' when things are difficult, and 'rewind' when we wish to visit a past part. Perhaps God who can see the beginning and the end has such a facility; though that conjures up a somewhat bizarre picture. Our lives are often a continuous muddle of influences from the past, intimations of the future and the all important present. There are no simple cut-off points. So it is with the seasons, in our country anyway. They run into one another and can change day by day. Snow in June is not unknown. I would like a beautiful hot summer for 4 months, 3 months of a perfect, fruitful and colourful autumn, 3 months of spring and 2 months of real snowy winter. But instead we have to live with the muddle, tough always hoping for better things. Nothing is ever cut and dried it seems - the good exist side by side with the bad, in all parts of life. In Italy (sorry to hark on after only one visit but it makes a change from Sweden - my former talking point!), the amount of great art and architecture is mind blowing. Yet in amongst all these amazing riches, there are artifacts of all kinds, in the most appalling taste. The sublime and the kitsch seem to live alongside each other with no one seemingly troubled about it. So it is with us. We can be wonderful or hideous; bathed in glorious sunshine or grey and dreich. How can a perfect God tolerate us? I suppose he too lives with the muddle, hoping (in the theological sense of faith) for better things. We too must trust, in faith, that God through Christ, can take the dross and make us what he would have us be. One thing is certain; we're all too much of a mixture and a muddle for us to be able to do it for ourselves. Yours, Janice |