23rd January 2019

I love to rest beneath it – that magnificent Jacaranda that sits in its gilt-edged pot in the Queensland Art Gallery. I’ve always loved it, and was recently able to see it again in all its lavender glory. Little did I know that the tree in the frame pictures a tree that actually existed – the physical tree blew over during a cyclone in 1979; and that it was the first Jacaranda in Australia and likely that most of the fair Jacarandas that grow across the city of Brisbane were seeded by this one.

What a lovely legacy! Not just a picture that brings delight to all who see it, but physical descendants that make their presence felt every Spring. What a parable too. Not all churches (in name and address) survive for a century, but they all give their seeds and cuttings that take root in other times and places. Our own congregation, begun in 1894, began its time under the sun as a cutting from another church.

This year our church celebrates its 125^th year as a congregation. My prayer is that it may continue to bloom, and not come to grief through theological error nor lose its sap by drawing from secular wells. But should it fall to some providential Act of God, it has already given many cuttings which have become trees across the city. Yet may it continue to flower and grant its shade to many old saints and many new seekers.

DM 23^rd January 2019