Good News for You Serenity – and a Hidden Connection

Any search for serenity should include Longford in northern Tasmania, where Georgian-era stately homes, parks, and few small businesses, are set against a relaxed rural backdrop. The town’s historic church tower completes the scene with a clock that King George IV presented to the church in October 1844.

During the 1950s and 1960s however, serenity frequently took a back seat when local roads became a motor racing circuit. Photos or footage of those races reveal how spectators were sheltered by lines of hay bales and wire fences. Such minimal protection contrasts so sharply with the mandatory high mesh fences, tyre-wall cushions, and concrete barriers that keep everyone safe today - especially with dirt-track speedway circuits, where I’ve enjoyed many years of chaplaincy.

Nowadays, disturbance only hits Longford if the annual Targa Tasmania rally includes it in their six-day, 2000-kilometre course.

While visiting Longford, we stepped into its serenity, but then we discovered that its historic church was concealing some surprising cutting-edge technology.

Years earlier, the tower’s stairway for access to maintain and adjust the clock had become unsafe. Repair quotes were threatening the church budget, But even though few people attended worship services, the church faced pressure from the community to maintain a clock that everyone felt they partly owned.

Enter lateral thinking…

Someone suggested fitting the clock with electronic sensors, to maintain its timing through signals from satellites – a suggestion that worked. So, without further risk to life and limb, and with no outward changes, this almost 180-year-old clock’s accuracy was guaranteed for many years ahead.

Longford’s clock solution illustrates how God helps us in our challenges. He could impose answers on a “take it or leave it!” basis; or offer them from a safe, stratospheric distance. But he prefers to work personally with us – the infinite into the intimate – developing our inner peace as we sense his timing, his grace, and his creativity.

Like the clock’s sensors, our connection to God may be hidden, without revealing any obvious changes at first. But as we stay tuned in to him, we find him building our confidence, our character, and our clarity. And all the while, he helps us to keep a leash on arrogance, so we may offer credible reassurance to anyone around us, that instead of being so far away, God is right there for them as well.

To spread his serenity - more easily and more openly.

Noel Mitaxa,