THIS week I’ve been privileged to spend just over twenty four hours away from the office.

I was over the border in Yorkshire, at Parcevall Hall Retreat House in Wharfedale (a few miles on from Bolton Abbey).

If you are in the area it’s worth searching out - the lovely gardens are open to the public.

And beyond the grounds lies the more rugged beauty of the hills. It’s a place I love returning to and which always does me good!

Life for most of us is busy and demanding – whether at home or at work – and sometimes full of anxiety.

It can be so helpful to find time, every so often, to step off the treadmill and to slow down.

Being outdoors, somewhere beautiful, can help us do that. It doesn’t need to mean going far.

It can be a walk around the park, around a reservoir, or in the grounds of somewhere like Whalley Abbey, our diocesan retreat house here in East Lancashire.

Spending time in the outdoors is good for our physical and our mental health. And it can be good for our spiritual health too.

It can help us to remember that we are part of something so much bigger, a world full of life, life that does not depend on us, but on God.

Jesus once offered his own ‘Saturday Sermon’ as he invited those who gathered around him to observe the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and so to trust in God rather than to worry and fret.

Of course, even the birds have to find their food and build their nests, and we have plenty of things for which we are responsible.

But trusting God for the big picture will help us find a calmness in which we can then cope with the responsibilities that God has entrusted to us.

So this weekend, why not find a bit of time to get out into the fresh air, to be still, and to sense God’s peace?

Toby Webber - Chaplain to the Bishop of Blackburn