Look back over the brief history of Common Ground, and you’ll find certain recurrent themes: the life of the Church in and for the world, the lives of women and men leading in all kinds of fields, the gospel entailing a whole-of-life calling, to name just a few. One theme has been there right from our first edition in March 2020: life in time. This is unsurprising. Engage with any of Venn’s lead programmes and you’ll be invited to reckon with the doctrine of creation, and with the limits and possibilities, glory and folly of our created human life. And fundamental to creation is time; indeed, although we deny or suppress it at our peril (and we regularly do), we are human creatures in time.
To say as much is to risk boredom: Time is—yawn—just one of those things. But in this Winter season why not scratch a little deeper? Take a moment to consider your present, perhaps fretful or frantic life: what might it look like to “do time” more faithfully, more hopefully? What’s the meaning of time in light of Jesus? What is time for Christians—for the world? Our reliable guide to such matters is Venn’s newest teacher, Rev. Sonya Lewthwaite. Displaying her skill and patience as a theologian, Sonya explores how “time is a gift for knowing and enjoying God”, and how this gift calls forth and shapes the Church’s life in time: the seasons and feasts and fasts and celebrations of the Christian year. There’s been a new hunger to observe such Christ-centred time, but recovery of these practices has not always been accompanied by understanding. Here, Sonya opens up the meaning of the Christian year—what it means to keep sacred time.
Exploring creation’s contours has long been a concern of Andrew Shamy’s, as his substack posts attest. So: if time were a landscape, how might we best get about? What is the timescape for Christians, and what might this mean for how we live and move in time? After some hiatus, it’s a delight to once again feature Andrew’s inimitable style. We’re equally delighted to feature new, beautiful—and beautifully honest—writing by Cassandra Allpress and Chelsea Ramohitaj. Both explore daily life with God in Scripture: Chelsea’s insights into her experience of learning to pray the Psalms are disarming and compelling; Cassandra draws us into a week in Scripture in this post-Pentecost season of Ordinary Time. Finally, the edition is made complete with Bethany Britten and Na’amah Cheiban’s musical response working with Central Vineyard’s Sunday liturgy of confession—this is seriously, delightfully playful worship. Enjoy!
Finally, here at Venn we want to wish you and your whānau a restful and glad Matariki: may God, who is faithful and loving to all his creation, continue to shepherd and lead us at this turning of the year.
Ngā mihi nui,
