Dear Friends

I'm just back from a litter pick – 'Macclesfield's Spring Clean' organised by the Borough Council. We were cleaning up the Middlewood Way and Bollin Valley pathways. The volume and diversity of rubbish was well beyond my imagining. In 1 and half hours I filled 2 bin bags, pulled out part of a car exhaust and a computer's monitor stand, others collected a similar volume along with numerous Tesco trolleys etc.

There were almost eighty of us out there gathering up the rubbish and the pile of black bags back at the start point was staggering. As I had a slow walk back with another full bag I was struck by the significant number of small pieces of rubbish that had been over looked, at least once by the collectors. We live in a world that has lots of rubbish and we have grown accustomed to rubbish being apart of our lives and our world - so much so that even when we seek to get rid of it we 'don't see it'. The same can easily be true of ourselves and the sin (an old fashioned and now unpopular word for rubbish) we have in our lives. Even when we try and get rid of the rubbish in our lives, we can still over look and 'not see' stuff that that we need to get rid of as we have grown so used to it being there.

It is my hope that through the time of lent and the Easter celebrations we can examine the life of Jesus and take a look at our own life. In noticing the differences, I pray that we all may then take the opportunity to have our own spring clean and get rid of all that rubbish that litters and spoils our life.

Yours in Christ's service

Stephen