The Renewal of All Things

Photo Caption: Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Flower Still Life, 1614

As I write, the King’s Road is bursting into all manner of flower displays to mark Chelsea in Bloom. Alongside my first visit to the Flower Show this week, it’s an almost overwhelming sensory experience – and that’s coming from someone who survived three flower festivals at Chichester Cathedral. The importance of flowers in human life, however, is significant: studies show how their scent can reduce stress and anxiety; their colours can stimulate human creativity; and that being around flowers can even lead to lower systolic blood pressure (although that hasn’t been my experience of walking down the King’s Road this week…).

Little wonder then that flowers have long resonated in Hebrew and Christian tradition. Think of Jesus pointing to the lilies of the field to teach about God’s provision, urging us not to worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6.28-30). Or in the Old Testament where God’s faithfulness is compared to the almond blossom (the almond tree being one of the first to blossom) (Numbers 17.8); or in Isaiah where the hope of the nation’s restoration is compared to the blossoming of flowers and the crocus in particular (Isaiah 35.1).

In both art, scripture and poetry, however, flowers are most often cited in reference to life’s flourishing and decay – from seed, to bloom, to withering – and the transience of all things. When we can become so wrapped up in the moment, in a particular argument or anxiety about something that needs to be achieved or completed in any given week, nature has a way of reminding us, in the words of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, that there is always ‘a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot’ (Eccl. 3.1).

That’s perhaps no less valuable an insight to institutions as much to individuals in terms of life cycle. Not to compare Fr Brian to a withering rose (!), but I think we can all feel that entering into a vacancy, particularly after such a long and fruitful ministry, brings its own concern for our future and what we might hope for. What is particularly striking about Brian’s ministry, however, has been his capacity in enabling others to live out their life in Christ with confidence. As such, the flower-bed remains, looking healthy, with a wide array of people who bring their gifts and time with great beauty to the parish’s life year after year; we are not short of colour or variety in the show-garden that is St Luke’s and Christ Church, certainly.

More than this, the testimony of Scripture is of course that ‘as the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of the Lord endures forever’ (Isaiah 40.8). Our confidence lies in the eternal, and that we have been born anew, ‘into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade’ (1 Peter 1.4). Thus we have no need to worry but must, as in all periods of change and flux, keep stirring up the gift of God in each other, encouraging each other, giving thanks for each other, and praying for each other – trusting always in God’s provision and timing.

Fr Daniel