Looking back over the past month, it has been a busy and exciting time.

Wilma’s farewell was a joyful and moving occasion and we wish her well as she starts her new role as Team Vicar to the North Lambeth Team. By the time you read this letter, Wilma will have been licensed and immersed in her work with her three new congregations.

We celebrated and enjoyed the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, and within the parish the picnic in the glebe fields on Jubilee Monday was a well-attended and happy event.

We were also treated to “the New Elizabethan’s” by the Parish Players – a truly memorable event with dramatised parishioner’s recollections from the 1940s and 50s. The flower festival was also an occasion not to have missed with many imaginative and colourful contributions.

And the World Cup – at the time of writing England has qualified for the second round, with expectations of future victory. (Oh well, never mind John! - Ed.)

This leads me to my theme – one of expectation.

We live in a world where so much is in prospect – often there is hype, sometimes justified but frequently not, where expectations are not always realised and achievements fade into distant memory.

But there are some things for Christians that will not fade and these are the events in Palestine 2000 years ago – the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the coming of the Holy Spirit, his continuing presence, and the promise of salvation and eternal life. Those events and those promises put everything else into perspective. As we move forward in expectation of events that may be of immediate importance in our lives, let us hold onto the truth and the endurance of the Christian Gospel. The Gospel gives us the knowledge that if we put our trust in our Lord he has promised to be with us even to the end of the age; an expectation that can be realised and a promise that will not fade.