FROM THE METHODIST MINISTER

Dear Friends,

Autumn seems to be the time when fullest expression is given to the confusion wrought by commercialism and every year it seems to increase.

Before some of those taking a late holiday have returned home and certainly before we who follow the Church seasons have celebrated the time of harvest, there is the faint sound of Christmas carols and the vague blurr of Christmas decorations and cards. About the same time we are reminded that our children will be looking forward to November 5th and at the risk of your fireworks getting damp, you are advised to purchase them in September. Now this week I see advertisements for next spring fashions. In the last week of the year and the first of next we can be sure the magazines, weeklies and daily papers will be full of suggestions about holidays in those elusive countries where the sun always, but always, shines!

In other words if you don't keep a close check on your calendar you would never know what season it was.

We have a lot to learn yet from the ways of the Almighty Who runs His seasons without fuss or prior notice, without confusing us or bringing us to nervous exhaustion. The cost of our highly advanced civilisation seems sometimes more than we can manage to pay.

Perhaps after all God's laws are more firmly rooted in common-sense than the plans of men. It was not man but God Who said:

"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease".

DONALD WHITE

ROUND THE SOCIETIES

Mothers' Union

The season has begun with a real tonic - our annual Diocesan gathering on 12th October, this year in Croydon. It was well worth the long coach journey, not least because it took place in the magnificently-equipped Municipal Hall. Mrs. Olive Parker spoke on Prayer in a way I have seldom heard bettered and after lunch a broadly-based panel (doctor, headmaster, housewife, child psychiatrist) answered questions on family life. .... (cont)