Sharing some thoughts

Life is full of choices, we choose where we want to go, when we want to go, what we would like to eat, when we would like to eat - Choices are all around. British prime minister Herbert Asquith once spent a weekend at the estate of the Rothschild family. One day, as Asquith was being waited on at teatime by the butler, the following conversation ensued: "Tea, coffee, or a peach from off the wall, sir?" "Tea, please," answered Asquith. "China, India, or Ceylon, sir?" asked the butler. "China, please." "Lemon, milk, or cream, sir?" "Milk, please," replied Asquith. "Jersey, Hereford, or Shorthorn, sir?" asked the butler. There are times when choices can just go too far – how often have you walked into a shop and seen too many things that you would like to buy or how often have you sat in a restaurant looking at a menu packed with things you want to eat ! In our readings today we have heard about choices, and not just ab...

One of the problems that each of us are faced with on a daily basis is recognising people who are good and who are bad, and the large majority who are not all good but certainly not all bad ! But we are challenged to live as people who recognise the good in others – we are to be people who are able to see people who are, in spite of their faults and failings, originally created in the image of God himself. Many of you will know the words of Mother Teresa. She was asked how she could tend the sickest and poorest people in the slums of Calcutta. Mother Teresa said that as she looked at each person for whom she was caring she tried to imagine that she was tending the Lord Jesus’ wounded body – His nail-scarred hands, feet, and side. And so it was that in each act of caring, she was welcoming Jesus, treating that person as if they were the Lord himself ! That sort of compassion and care is rare and yet it is one to which we are all called to aspire. And so we are called to look out for sai...

Trinity Sunday is a day often made up of a great deal of confusion – the Trinity is never the easiest doctrine to try and explain to people – there can be lots of complicated explanations and many people will try and use symbols as an explanation – it reminds me a little bit of a football match played one night. As the teams were playing the lights went out, and they called on an electrician to sort out the problem – he tried hard but failed, and then another man came forward who said that he knew what to do. Somehow he managed to communicate to some of the crowd to wave an arm in the air – still nothing happened, so he got some more people to do the same and this time asked them all to wave both arms in the air – as they did this the lights suddenly came back on proving the old Chinese proverb that ‘many hands make lights work’ ! Anyway that’s quite irrelevant for this morning, and you may very well wonder what I’m talking about, but that sense of confusion and mystery is particularly...