Advent Day 16 - Another road

I have been in Harpenden today, visiting my Mum who rang me this morning early feeling very poorly and very frightened. After a doctor's visit and some medication she was beginning to feel better when I left this evening. 

This is a picture of the street I grew up in. Our house is on the right hand side of this street, some way  up. It is now a very busy road but when it was built in the 1930's (see picture below) it was a country lane. My Mum and Dad bought their house in 1959 after marriage, and Mum has lived there ever since.

We still call going to the shops at the bottom of the road " going down the road" - and I have been "down the road" a lot today to get prescriptions and do shopping. I have walked down this road a lot in my life, to go to primary school round the corner, to catch a bus to secondary school, to go to church, to shop, to now get things for Mum. It is interesting to see how the road has changed in 48 years. It is much busier. The shops at the bottom have changed - no more sweet shop where we used to buy half pence chews. no more newsagent where we used to buy those football stickers you used to swap, no more Stuarts of Wheathampstead outfitters, even the church at Southdown is not as vibrant as it was. I remember very well their new church hall being opened above a new supermarket (Fine Fare!) in 1980. There are now three cafes within spitting distance of one another!

 I used to know this road well. I knew people on it. I used to stare out of my bedroom window at it. In 1977 I had a silver jubilee trumpet and blew it at it! It was all I knew. 

Then in 1994, I left it and discovered another road, and that was the road to Manchester and ministerial training which changed my life. It wasn't easy to leave, but I needed to, to enlarge my vision and my experience of life. It is easy to stick with the familiar and never take another road. But isn't that narrowing what life is about? I think about magi tonight who were called to travel another road. The road they thought would bring them life was actually not the road to take. 

I cherish my upbringing and this road, but while it is good to return, I am glad other roads opened up for me and I am glad in my life to be invited to travel down other roads to see what is down them>

Advent surely if it is about coming is an invitation to travel something new whilst cherishing what we have travelled in the past.