HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS!

I'm sure many of you have had the same experience that I did at some time in your lives – in my case it was at the age of eight. It was during the Second World War, when there wasn't a lot to look forward to, and the small excitements of life in the village, such as the annual visit of the funfair on the Common, or the church fête in the vicarage garden were big events to be anticipated with real excitement, saved up for and enjoyed to the full.

The event I'm thinking of, though, was of a different kind. It was at the beginning of May, and my mother and I had gone on one of our favourite walks into the nearby woods just outside Guildford. We loved the Chantry Woods, beautiful at any time of year, but this afternoon, after we had scrambled up the sandy bank that was our short cut, we saw a literally breathtaking sight – the bluebells had come out, it seemed overnight, and the whole wood floor was covered by a haze of blue, light and insubstantial in the distance, radiant blue and gloriously fragrant close to. I couldn't say a word (yes, even I was without words!) – it was an overwhelming experience. Ever since then bluebells have been a special flower to me.

Imagine my surprise when I went to a Quiet Day at Offa House this spring and heard Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward (former Bishop of Coventry) talking about a special memory of his own, from when he was twelve years old and had seen a bluebell wood just as I had done, and with the same impact. But he read something into it that I hadn't quite perceived at the time – the spiritual nature of the experience, when everything in you cries out to pay some sort of tribute to it, to paint it, write about it, turn it into music – to clasp it to you in some way, and you can't. He led me to think of other moments like this, moments of such beauty that they overwhelmed me: the first time I heard Kathleen Ferrier sing, for instance; my first visit to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to see Peggy Ashcroft in "As You Like It", the moment on a walking holiday when we stood on a peak in the Lake District and watched the mist clear and the tops of the nearby peaks rise like islands above the pink sunlit haze.

I'm sure that God, in His wonderful generosity, reaches out to us in moments like this, as if to show us, not only what is around us now, but what is in store for us. I think there is something of this in the last chapters of the Book of Revelation, when St John describes the wonders of the New Jerusalem. But Jesus was concerned, not only with the world to come, but with this incredibly beautiful earth, with the lilies of the field that are clothed more exquisitely than King Solomon in all his glory, and with the amazing growth of the tiny mustard seed into a large tree. If you can, find a copy of a poem by Evelyn Underhill called Immanence, which says this more eloquently than I can:

It begins, "I come in the little things, says the Lord" – if you can’t find it, ask me and I'll be pleased to let you have a copy. Meanwhile, treasure those moments when God has come to you in the beautiful moments.

Sara