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Good morning. This bank holiday weekend sees the return of a battle for supremacy in my garden.  It’s not a big garden but I do have a couple of fair size trees, one of which is a real star with two tone golden leaves.  Neighbours and passers-by admire it and I am very fond of it myself.  But its beauty comes at a cost.

Its colours are the result of some clever grafting onto an original stock that had plain dark green foliage.  And, deep down the tree really wants to have plain dark green foliage again.  And so I will spend the summer watching out for dark green leaves and climbing the tree to remove them.  If I didn’t it would lose its lovely colours in a very short time.  I certainly think the results more than justify the effort.

It strikes me that there are very few things in our lives that don’t need a bit of maintenance. 

At a very practical level – if we don’t get our cars regularly serviced we can expect things to go wrong.  More personally, relationships in particular need to be constantly nurtured.  But many of us also have to battle with behaviours and attitudes – maybe old bad habits - that we want to leave behind but could slip back into if we didn’t work at keeping them in check.  And for many of us that can be a real struggle.

In my experience as a Christian the life of faith can be a struggle too.  It should change us but that change isn’t automatic or easy and we need to be constantly on the watch for and deal with signs that we are slipping back to old ways.  Being a new creation is one thing – using that opportunity well is quite another.

Lord God, we thank you for the potential You have put within each one of us.  Keep us alert for any sign that we are getting distracted from the task of becoming who You made us to be.  Amen