I have been watching birds around our home lately and am really amazed at the freedom they have just to spread their wings and take off. Well, it's my 65th birthday today, and at the age when most people are winding down and retiring I just feel I have been given a new lease of life! Certainly, following the massive surgery of last June I have a real sense of being spared - there was a risk of death in the operation - and spared for a reason. So I'm going to say this day is my retyrement day - new tyres on an old vehicle ready for the start of a new journey.

Thank you so much all of you who have sent me good wishes and cards etc. In Diane's card to me she wrote this Bible passage: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise".

So like the free bird pictured above, and despite the immense weakness I feel in my body after the op, I am stretching my wings today to catch the breath of God's Spirit, and prepare for the new things he alone can give us. How about you?