beginnings - personal

I can remember the first competitive football matches I played in – they were a disaster! I played twice in the school football team. I was about 14 and missed an open goal having intercepted a back pass, rounded the goal keeper and then put it wide as panic gripped my heart. The phrase – he couldn’t hit a barn door from a yard – comes to mind! I never played for the school again. It was a tough lesson for a sensitive teenager. When I went to college at 18 I turned up for the trials for the college team with no hope in my heart, found myself in the first eleven and played consistently for three years winning promotion twice in the local league that we played in. It was a new start – a new beginning!

I was brought up in Pakefield and attended South Lowestoft Methodist church. I would often walk home along the sea front believing that there must be a God because of the creation around me (I love the sea) but it wasn’t until I was 22 that I discovered the God who loved me personally through Jesus Christ and again it was a new beginning in my life. I went through a period of searching, looking for an anchor and meaning to my life in what seemed to be a very transient world in London. I would travel from Wimbledon across to Dalston Junction near Hackney every day so that gave a lot of time for reflection!

Every time I sense that God might be speaking to me I find it isalways a time of fresh beginnings. One is humbled by the fact God should speak and I turn once again towards His light and starts out afresh, determined once again to follow more closely and to love him more dearly.

For Nehemiah, when he heard of the state of the walls of Jerusalem, it gave him a new direction, a new start to his life as he beseeched the king to send him back to his homeland to build again that which was broken down, so once again the name of the Lord might be known and honoured. On there completion there were the wonderful days of celebration as the returning exiles read the words of the scripture and committed to live their lives by them. They told stories of all God had done throughout their history and said ‘Yes’ to Him with their whole hearts. What a wonderful ‘new beginning’. May we too continually come to God and make confession to all He is and celebrate all that we are becoming to His praise and glory.

Geoff Lawton, 04/03/2009