I gleefully reached two separate milestones at the end of 2022. First, I accomplished 50 ‘park runs’ which entitles me to a swanky red T-shirt telling the world that I have in fact accomplished 50 park runs.
The other milestone was that the Christmass of 2022 was my fourth with you in this parish.
It all seems to have gone so very quickly. A lot of the time nothing much seems to have been happening but then everything has been happening.
Many of these park runs and Christmases were not much different than the last one. My times at Park run have actually got slower if the truth be told. It all just seems to be a matter of showing up, giving it your best shot, getting on with it and staying the course.
The same with Christmass. It’s a biggish sort of run with 5 parish centres to cover and a goodly number of kilometres to drive.
Is this what faithfulness is really all about? Faithfulness is not often glamorous, shiny and sexy. Faithfulness is about making the conscious and deliberate effort to show up; especially when you don’t want to and the church is cold and it's raining all over the park run track.
Or in the case of the faithful dear old couple who consistently choose to sit down together at night even though they have had a gigantic fight throughout the day. The couple who choose to say ‘I am sorry’ and maybe even smooch and make up.
It’s about choosing to ‘be in the community’ even when that community irks us, irritates us, disappoints us and gives us the screaming willies.
So here’s to the Parkruns and the Christmas that have flickered by and been… and here’s to the ones that are still to come.