13 September

Dear friends,

The Rambling Rose

When Hilary and I moved to our retirement cottage on the shores of Belfast Lough, we had a lot of work to do arranging the house in the way we wanted it.

We concentrated on the cottage and ignored the garden. Previous owners had been keen on the garden but, since they left, it had become overgrown. In 2021 we hired workmen to tame the wilderness and make us a flowerbed. With shrewd imagination they created this space around a rambling rose bush which had collapsed and which they fixed by ropes into an upright position against the garage wall. Because the whole garden was a wilderness, we had never noticed the rambling rose before. 

That June it produced a mass of blossoms, white with just a hint of pink. It towered above the incomplete flower bed like a blessing. Our neighbours all commented on how lovely it was. Of course it had been there all along but had never been noticed. All that beauty had been hiding in plain sight! What a lesson for us Christians, who may be tempted to take Christ, faith and church for granted. A treasure of great beauty has been bequeathed to us. We should rejoice in our great riches.

Denis Campbell