May day celebrations reinforce how Jesus’s goodness and mercy have followed me...

YOU’LL forgive me, I trust, for projecting forward to the coming month when on May 9 it will firstly be Ascension Day and, secondly, Ukrainian friends and family will be marking Victory Day in Europe in 1945.

Thirdly, I’ll be celebrating my next “significant” birthday too.

Ascension Day is one of those Cinderella events even in the Church. It sits in-between the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Day and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which is “kick off time” for the Church as we know it.

It is always 40 days after Easter on the grounds that, Biblically speaking, Jesus appeared alive to His disciples for the next 40 days.

That inevitably makes it 10 days prior to Pentecost too; always the same year on year and usually marked early in the morning as it will be again this year in Argents Mead.

In a sense, it’s the turning of a page from one chapter to another, one age to another. In the best sense it’s the coronation of the King; it’s the moment when Jesus resumes His place on the throne at the right hand of God the Father and sits down triumphantly having overcome sin and death and the worst aspects of hell both here and hereafter.

So how does that impact upon the other events for me and for us of that day?

Well, birthday-wise it tells me that through all the changing scenes of life, all the twists and turns of my years, Jesus has had His eye on me, His hand upon me.

I have not been exempted from the pains and issues of living into one’s seventies. No one is. But thus far His goodness and His mercy have followed me and seen me through.

He is my King and I am grateful to have lived life this long within His care. And on the same day as I celebrate my birthday one of my closest (much younger) Ukrainian friends celebrates his birthday too.

He remembers during Soviet days the displays of military might that went with all the other annual nationalistic events. And I am mindful that as we recognise the sovereignty of Jesus on this day, so also, we acknowledge that the world is embroiled in all the personal to international expressions of our fallen humanity as TV, radio, internet and papers confirm. Given the heinous nature of the war inflicted upon Ukraine for instance it is astonishing that the matter should be reduced to second place at best in our headlines, reporting giving way to something regarded as “even worse”.

But Jesus is Lord and He will always eventually have His way in our lives and in our world. And it’s in this hope that we stand; to this hope that we are called. Christianity is not about turning up at this or that, about doing stuff, or self-approving. It’s about relationships as the years accumulate; about standing firm in Him as the world around you collapses and rebels; about knowing the King, and knowing that He sits enthroned in triumph, hugely and intimately involved in our everyday living at one and the same time. Celebrate the days and look to Him in faith.

It’s about relationships as the years accumulate; about standing firm in Him as the world around you collapses and rebels Rev Clarke, left