Sharing some thoughts

There’s a story about an angel appearing at a faculty meeting in a University one day. The angel said to the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behaviour, the Lord would reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Without hesitating, the dean selected infinite wisdom. "Done!" said the angel, and disappeared in a cloud of smoke and a bolt of lightning. Now, all heads turned towards the dean, who sat surrounded by a faint halo of light. After a while, one of his colleagues whispered, "Say something." The dean looked at them and said, "Wisdom tells me I should have taken the money."  Wisdom today is often seen as far less important than being outwardly successful and enjoying the trappings of that success in the form of wealth or popularity. For centuries people have sought to find answers to all of life’s complex problems, people have sought answers to the meaning of life, and many have sought to understand ...

There’s a story about a Sunday school teacher who was asking his class questions one day. He began, ‘If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the poor, would that get me into heaven ?’’No !’ the children all answered. ‘If I cleaned the Church every day, mowed the grass, and kept everything really clean and tidy, would that get me into heaven ?’ Again the answer came back, ‘No !’ ‘Well then, if I was kind to all people and animals, and if I gave sweets to children, and chocolates and flowers to my wife, would that get me into heaven ?’ Once again the same answer came back, ‘No !’ ‘Well’, continued the teacher, ‘then how can I get into heaven ?’  A 5 year old boy shouted out, ‘You’ve got to be dead !’ People often talk about the wisdom of children and sometimes as Jesus told us, we have to be more like little children as we try and make sense of the world. Today's gospel reading (Matt 13:24-30,36-43) points us towards thoughts of heaven...

from Helen Our gospel reading today (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23) had in it the story of the sower and his seed. It is such a well known parable. In the parable we hear of the sower who was not very precise in the way that he sowed the seed. If you think about it, one of the things that we can pick up from the parable is that not everyone is good at sowing seed. On the basis of trying to open a new box of rice krispies without them going everywhere I know that I would have been pretty bad at sowing seed.  Of course this wasn’t the main point of the parable. The main point was what happened next to the seed. We heard that the seed that fell on the path got eaten up by birds, the seed that fell on rocky soil did not have enough depth to grow, the seed that fell on thorns got choked and then the seed that fell on the good soil grew.  The parable was explaining how we can grow in our faith, how we can be good disciples. To be a disciple is to follow, to learn from our leader. ...