Parish magazine article May 2025
Dear friends
I seem to live in overlaps and borderlands. What do I mean? Well, our diocese is one that occupies space between Wales and England, criss-crossing the border. We exist in (largely) two counties – Shropshire and Herefordshire (not overlooking our parishes in Monmouthshire, Powys, Worcestershire, and Telford & Wrekin). I live and serve in Shropshire, a county that straddles two dioceses: Hereford in the south and Lichfield in the north.
The Ludlow Archdeaconry is in the overlap, the centre of the Venn diagram.
Then there’s my role as Archdeacon. My colleague, Archdeacon Derek, and I minister in the overlap. We represent parishes to those working in the Bishop’s Office and the Diocesan Office and vice versa. We provide a link between multiple overlapping groups and individuals.
As Christians we all live in the overlap. We are already saved by grace, we are being saved and sustained by grace, and one day we shall be fully saved by grace when Christ returns. God’s kingdom of justice and joy has already begun with Christ’s first coming, his death, resurrection, and ascension, and one day it will fully begin at his return. We are citizens of the nation in which we live, and we are citizens of heaven.
We live in the Now and the Not Yet, the time between.
This month marks 80 years since VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, when the evil of Nazism was defeated in Europe. My late mother would tell me stories of how she and her friends, children at the beginning of the war and teenagers at its end, celebrated with overwhelming relief. We remember with thankfulness the courage and sacrifice of all those who served at home and abroad to win the fight for freedom against Nazi tyranny.
But that wasn’t the end of the war. In Burma, Singapore, and other places, the war raged on as fiercely and cruelly as ever. VJ Day, in August 1945, finally brought hostilities to an end. The troops still fighting between May and August, and their families, often felt overlooked in the celebrations of VE Day. They were existing in the overlap.
This season of the Church’s year is the time in between. We are between Easter Day and Pentecost. We have celebrated the joy of the resurrection, and we await the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit in power to set the Church alight in love and witness.
I wonder how that idea of living in the overlap, grounded in the past and moving to the future, knowing that we and all our times are held in the hands of our unchanging and faithful God, could help us as we continue on our pilgrimage?
The Ven Dr Fiona Gibson
Archdeacon of Ludlow