REV DR MARK
REID was appointed as Pastor of Maidstone Road Baptist
Church in 2007.
Mark was previously Minister of Swaffham Baptist
Church in Norfolk after training at Spurgeon's College and Woodberry Down
Baptist Church in London. Prior to entering full-time ministry, Mark
was a teacher for 14 years.
Mark hails originally from Wales and has a wife,
Rhiannon and two children, Michael and Bethan as well as a crazy dog
called Judy.
Prepare for Service
This year it seems as though we hardly got over Christmas and New Year than Easter was upon us. Easter is a time when we celebrate the new life in Christ as we remember again Jesus’ death and resurrection, but as I look out of my window as I write this, I see snow falling! The Manse garden looks sad, with just a few daffodils sticking out amongst the grass and bushes that have been blown all over the place.
Sometimes our hearts reflect the seasons don’t they? We might know it’s spring and should be enjoying the new life in Christ, but we so often feel our shortcomings, rather like our Easter chill in the weather.
If that’s the case, then let me share you a little story called the Prepare for Service, written over a hundred years ago by an anonymous Victorian who obviously loved gardening.
There was a brier growing in a ditch and there came a gardener along with his spade. As he dug around it and lifted it out, the brier said to itself, "What is he doing that for? Does he not know that I am only an old worthless brier?"
But the gardener took it into the garden and planted it amid his flowers while the brier said, "What a mistake he has made! Planing an old brier like myself among such rose trees as these!"
But the gardener came once more; and with his keen-edged knife, made a slit in the brier, and 'budded' it with a rose, and by and by, when the summer came, lovely roses were blooming on that old brier.
Then the gardener said, "Your beauty is not due to that which came out of you, but to that which came out of you, that which I put into you. Just so God can cause the most glorious roses even to grow out of such poor dried sticks as we all are.
