It's the beginning of April - and still no Easter. How are you doing with your Lent challenges, I wonder, whether it's ideas from that little book given out at church on the first Sunday of Lent, or your own programme? Myself, I find that it takes determination to keep on after the first flush of enthusiasm wears off. Wouldn't life be so much easier,
I wonder to myself, if I gave up on my hope of changing things with the rueful words, ‘That's all very well in theory, but in the real world...'?

This year the first of March is Ash Wednesday - so there's no way I can get out of writing about Lent for this month's Messenger! But why should I want to get out of it, anyway? Maybe the whole idea has a tinge of gloom and doom - giving up something you like to strengthen your spiritual muscle or, more practically, in order to give the money you have saved to some good cause. It may be worthy, but it's not really something you look forward to doing, except for thinking longingly about when it's going to be over.

February's the shortest month. And from what I hear about the weather we may expect, we might well be thankful for its fewer days than the other months of the year. But time doesn't seem to work that way, does it? If we're enjoying ourselves, or if we've too much to do, it goes fast; but if we're not, it drags, whatever the weather.
Just after Christmas I spent a week with my parents. Towards the end my father said that he just didn't know where the time had gone. Time just raced by, with news to share, presents to exchange, enjoyment of one another's company. And once I'd got back from holiday to a desk piled high with work, it's carried on that way.
At the other extreme, you, like me, may have occasions in your life when the clock is on strike; when sorrow or pain or loneliness or boredom stretches you out unmercifully on time's rack. Somewhere round four o'clock in the morning can be the worst, when all our anxieties or our regrets queue up to torment us.

The presents have been unwrapped, the tree is starting to shed its needles, Christmas is over and the New Year is upon us. Are you looking forward to 2006 hopefully, I wonder, or is it more a question of keeping on keeping on?
Maybe pleasurable anticipation is easier for children and young people, who have so much less experience of life. Both their joys and their sorrows may be more deeply felt, because they have not yet learned how to expect less of life, and thus how to avoid disappointment. I still remember my deep chagrin at the age of nine or so on getting a Christmas present that wasn't quite what I'd wanted - and my parents' firm suggestion that I should feel grateful for getting it at all!

By the time you read this, the Christmas lights will already have been switched on for a week or more. Advertisements for Christmas catalogues and presents for all the family abound on television, and restaurants have been booking for Christmas meals since late September. And every year the countdown seems to start further back.

At this time of year, we may well agree with Thomas Hood's gloomy appraisal:
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds.
November!
It's easy to feel somewhat depressed at all this absence of sun and of life, with Christmas looming large in the shops yet still far off in practice. Whoever coined the acronym SAD - Seasonally Affective Disorder - for a syndrome affecting those who feel the lack of sunshine at this time of year wasn't too far off the mark. So what can we do to combat this seasonal malaise? I have three poetic suggestions for you.

I've just come back from a four-day conference to find a big pile of letters on my doormat. When I went up to my study, I found another pile of letters on my desk I'd been too busy to read before going. My heart sank at having to wade through all that mass of words - opening each letter, reading it, acting upon what I'd read, throwing away some, filing others...
And yet, when I got around to opening them, my letters weren't that bad. True, I had a big bill I'd expected for a while, and several letters of the sort I particularly resent, enticing me to spend money I haven't got to buy things I don't need. But someone had seen my name in the URC magazine, Reform, and had written to congratulate me on coming to St Andrew's. There was a church newsletter telling me some of the exciting things St Mark's congregation has planned for the autumn. And even the junk mail is rather fun to put through the shredder for recycling.

Summer's over, and a new year's beginning: not the calendar year, or the tax year, or even the Christian year, but the academic year. We all notice it in little ways - the school run traffic jams are back again! - but some of us have it in our bones. During one of the graduations from Sheffield University I attended last year, I worked out that, from kindergarten to college, I've spent nearly half my life in formal education. So for me September feels both exciting and nerve-racking: new chances to learn, but on the downside, new opportunities to put my foot in my mouth.

They say, ‘A change is as good as a rest' - but don't believe them! Change can be a wonderful thing, but I am in a position to assure you that it is not at all the same as rest. Still, having survived my first few weeks here, I'm starting to feel a little more settled in Sheffield now. I know my local bus route; my milk gets delivered to the door; I'm beginning to meet familiar faces on the bus and in the pews (my embarrassed apologies to those of you whose names still escape me) and my bookcases are constructed and filled, by topic and in alphabetical order. For true well-being, apparently, intergalactic hitchhikers need to know where their towel is. If I am to feel at home, I need to know where my books are. Yet I keep catching myself wanting to rearrange them in a more sensible order - and a different order each time. Maybe my unconscious is trying to tell me that too much order is as bad as too little.

I've been spending much of my time recently wondering how life in Sheffield will unfold, and sympathising with Jesus' disciples when he firmly told them not to worry about little things like where the next meal was coming from or, just now for me, where I'm going to find a permanent address. I don't know about you, but I don't always find it easy to leave the worries of tomorrow to sort themselves out, and focus on the realities of today. Sometimes it is much easier living in tomorrow or yesterday, which don't really exist, at the expense of today.