VICAR
Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, by the time you read this, it will be June the fourteenth. The year is well into its stride, and the countryside knows it. The roses are in their first full flush, heavy and sweet, spilling over garden walls and along cottage porches. The meadows that were cut early for hay are showing a fresh green fuzz of regrowth, and the later fields stand thick with grasses nodding in the warm breeze. The cuckoo has fallen silent at last—he never stays past his month—but the swifts still scream their joy across the evening sky. It is a day of abundance, of fullness, of the year at its generous peak.
I have been thinking about the particular gift of this moment. Not yet the heat of high summer, nor the first hints of autumn’s turning, but the brief, blessed interval when everything is simply here. The hedgerows are white with elderflower. The wheat is greening towards gold. The young rooks are testing their wings from the top of the elm. There is no urgency yet, no harvest to rush, no frost to fear. Just the quiet, steady business of growing, of ripening, of being exactly where the season intends.
The countryside asks nothing of us at this time of year but to notice. To walk the lanes slowly. To lean on a gate and watch the light shift across a field. To pick a handful of elderflowers for cordial and leave the rest for the bees. It is a Sunday for stillness, for gratitude, for the simple prayer that rises from a heart at peace.
So today, a short prayer for this June morning, and for all who find themselves blessed enough to be standing still within it.
Dear Lord,
We thank You for this June day, the fourteenth of the month, when the world is so full of life that it seems to hum. Thank You for the warmth that rises from the earth, for the white petals of the oxeye daisies nodding in the lane, for the scent of mown grass and honeysuckle and warm soil after a brief shower.
We thank You for the swifts, Lord. Those screaming black arrows that have flown from Africa to be with us again. They ask nothing of us but open sky and a place to nest beneath the eaves. Let them remind us that we are not the centre of everything—that the world turns for creatures with wings as well as for creatures with worries.
We thank You for the crops in the fields. For the barley turning from green to gold, for the potatoes flowering white and purple, for the beans climbing their canes with determination. Bless the farmers who planted them, who watched the sky for rain, who trusted in Your providence through a wet spring and a late frost. Let the harvest be good, Lord. They have earned it.
We thank You for the quiet corners of this Sunday. For the garden bench in the shade of the apple tree. For the glass of something cold and the book that has waited six months to be read. For the permission to do nothing at all, and to call it holy. Teach us that rest is not wasted time. Teach us that the Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath.
We thank You for the evening, when the light grows long and golden, and the garden settles into its twilight hush. For the first bat flickering across the dusk. For the last blackbird singing from the tallest branch. For the stars that appear, one by one, reminding us that this small island is held in something much larger than itself.
And finally, Lord, we thank You for the simple grace of being here, on this day, in this place. Whatever the week ahead may bring—troubles or blessings, work or worry—let us carry this June Sunday with us like a stone worn smooth in the pocket. A small, warm reminder that all is not chaos. That some things grow as they should. That You are good, and the earth is full of Your goodness.
Amen.
God Bless You All.