From Beaulieu Abbey Church, I can see the Beaulieu River.

It is one of those views which, however familiar, never seems quite the same twice. The light changes, the tide turns, boats come and go, and the banks are continually being revealed and concealed.

Perhaps that is why I have been thinking about water so much lately. Water lies at the heart of our faith. Water of baptism. Water of new life. Water of blessing, forgiveness, and hope.

Over the past two years, our riverbanks have become places of worship as well as places of work and play. We have gathered here for services, including our increasingly popular Easter sunrise service. There is something deeply moving about standing beside the river as the first light comes up on Easter morning and proclaiming the resurrection. Water, light and new life seem to belong together.

Every Sunday, our parish worship begins at 8am at Buckler’s Hard. As I say a quiet opening prayer, I look out at the river. Whatever the weather, it is a reminder that while we pause, the river continues. It has its own rhythm, its own time. Always present. In ebb or flow.

And perhaps that is something we need to recover in our own lives: the wisdom of not expecting everything to remain still.

As Chaplain of the Beaulieu River Sailing Club, one of the great joys of this summer has been watching our young sailors during Juniors Week. Their delight is infectious — the excitement of getting out on the water, learning to read the wind and tide, gaining confidence and discovering the sheer joy of river life. Watching them reminds me that loving a place is one of the ways we learn to care for it. I hope they will carry their love of this river with them for many years to come.

Another highlight this summer has been our Sea Sunday service at Beaulieu Marina, when I was delighted to welcome Port Chaplain Kate Powell, Lead Chaplain to the Mission to Seafarers. It was a wonderful opportunity to remember that this apparently small and sheltered river is connected to a much larger world. Behind every journey by sea are people — families, seafarers, fishermen, sailors and all those whose livelihoods depend upon the water. The river leads us outwards and connects us with the whole world.

The Christian story, too, is full of water. Creation begins with the waters. The Israelites cross the Red Sea. Naaman is healed in the Jordan. Jesus is baptised in its waters, calls fishermen from its shores and stills a storm. In Revelation, the final vision is of the river of the water of life.

Water is never merely water in Scripture. It can mean danger and deliverance, death and life, ending and beginning. That feels particularly true of a tidal river.

John Betjeman understood this. In Youth and Age on Beaulieu River, he begins with the beauty of morning:

“Early sun on Beaulieu water

Lights the undersides of oaks.”

But his poem becomes a meditation on the passing of time. The tide turns. The shining water gives way to mud. What was visible disappears; what was hidden is revealed.

There is something rather profound in that.

We tend to think of change as something that happens to us — something we resist, or something we endure. Yet the river suggests another way of seeing it. Its ebb and flow is not a problem to be solved. It is simply the nature of the river.

Perhaps the same might be true of us.

There are seasons when life feels full, and seasons when it feels strangely empty. There are people and things we have to let go of. There are times when the way ahead is clear, and others when we have to wait. The temptation is always to cling to what we know. But the river keeps moving.

The Cistercian monks who founded Beaulieu Abbey understood something of this too. Their lives were ordered by prayer, work and the seasons, within a landscape shaped by water. They knew that we are not masters of creation but participants within it.

Perhaps that is what I find most moving about the Beaulieu River. It does not offer us certainty. It offers us perspective.

It reminds us that we are part of something older and bigger than ourselves; that life has tides as well as seasons; that an ebb is not necessarily an ending; and that sometimes we have to allow the water to recede before we can see what has been hidden beneath it.

So when I stand beside the river, whether at Easter sunrise, at the beginning of our Sunday worship, watching our young sailors set out, or praying for those who make their living on the sea, I find myself asking the same question:

What might God be asking us to let go of, and where might the next tide be taking us?

Perhaps the water has been quietly asking that question all along.

Amen