I thought I knew the Yorkshire Dales pretty well before we moved here. I’d had several walking holidays in the Dales, I’d been up most of the highest peaks, I’d been to most of the famous beauty spots. During the months leading up to our move here I spent a lot of time looking at my old guide books and maps of the Dales, looking forward to driving up to Horton-in-Ribbledale, or Hawes, or Keld, to revisit all the walks I had been on before. I thought I could picture what it would be like living here.

But when we actually moved here it was quite different from what I had expected. Having your home in a particular place is a totally different experience from being on holiday there. Since we have been here I have travelled around the Dales much less than I thought I would - I haven’t even made it up to Swaledale in six years! On the other hand I did not appreciate just how beautiful this part of Wharfedale was. I never tire of the views of Beamsley Beacon and Addingham Moorside; the views change daily, or even hourly, with the colours of the seasons, and the fluctuating weather, and the ever-changing patterns of light. As a tourist you visit a place and think you have seen it. But that is nothing like opening the curtains and seeing it every morning. When you live there you know that each day it reveals a little more of its secrets to you. I envy those who have lived here all their life. I remember talking to a farmer who had lived all his life on the Moorside and he reckoned he could tell which field he was in, anywhere on the Moorside, simply from the smell. The longer you live there the deeper your sense of belonging becomes and the more the place becomes part of you.

I don’t think you can truly love a place until it has become a part of you like that, until you have put your roots down there. You may fall in love with a person the first time you meet them, but you do not truly love them until you have got to know them. So it is with places. The longer I live here, the more I grow to love this place.

And so it is with God, too.

It is possible to know God as I thought I knew the Dales before I moved here. We may have heard of him by repute, we may have read something about him in books, we may have preconceived ideas about him, we may even have had occasional glimpses of God at particular moments in our life. All this may lead us to think we know God.

But just as a tourist can never really know the Dales, so no one can ever really come to know God from a distance. To know God is to make your home in him - to live in God so that you are aware of his presence with you when you wake each day. To know God is to pray to him and to know he is with you in all your changing moods – in joy, in thanksgiving, in sadness, in anxiety, in times of loneliness, in times of guilt and regret… And when you make your home in God like this you discover that each day he reveals a little more of himself to you in some secret way. The longer you live in him the deeper your sense of belonging becomes and the more he becomes part of you.

That’s what it means to love God. We cannot truly know God until we have consciously chosen to make our home in him (John 15.4-10), and then - as we live and move and have our being in him (Acts 17.28), as we are rooted and grounded in love (Ephesians 3.17) – so we grow in love for him.

There is a room for each of us in God’s house (John 14.2-3). No one can make the decision to live there for us – that is down to each one of us. If you feel like a visitor who wants to know more – if you feel a desire to know God personally – if you long to belong to God so that he becomes a part of you – if you feel you want to grow in love for God (and though we live in God for a lifetime there is always room to grow deeper in love for him) then as you come forward to the communion rail to receive communion let us pray – today - that for the rest of our lives he may evermore dwell in us and we in him. Amen.

A.R.T.