Sharing some thoughts

Today we are used to reading verses from chapters through the Bible – but up until something like 1000 years ago people were used to reading Bibles without any chapter and verse numbers – it’s interesting that when people came to put the chapters into the Book of the Prophet Isaiah they split it into 66 chapters - the exact number of books there are in the whole Bible – they also split up the two parts of the Book of Isaiah into 39 chapters and 27 chapters – a lot of numbers to take in so far, but you may not be surprised to know that the Old Testament has 39 books and the New Testament 27 books… And Isaiah in the first 39 chapters summarizes the message of the Old Testament and in the next 27 chapters he summarizes exactly the message of the New Testament… The second part of Isaiah (chapter 40) begins with the words later used by John the Baptist, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’… It moves on to a servant anointed by the Holy Spirit, dying for the sins of his people, and being raised a...

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...

Today we celebrate the day when God breathed life into his people and his Church through the Holy Spirit and we’re invited to go back to those early days – days when the early followers must have wondered minute by minute what God had in store for them. These were the followers who had lived through the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension and now saw God’s power literally transforming their lives – on the day of Pentecost they were given the ability to speak and understand different languages, they were given the courage to go and speak about the incredible things that were happening to them, and they must have been transformed by the joy of knowing that, whilst Jesus had ascended into heaven, God was right there amongst them. And God was there with them in a way that demanded their attention and commitment – they had no structures to get in the way, they had no rules, not even ideas about how the Church would grow… And yet it was to be a Church that would grow and grow… An...

Mark Twain once wrote that ‘it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things : freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the prudence never to practice either of them !’ In the gospel of Luke (Ch.4 vs. 16-21) we are given the account of Jesus visiting the Synagogue in Nazareth and being handed some scripture and exercising freedom of speech and conscience, but not having the prudence not to practice them – he reads the passage from the prophet Isaiah which we heard this evening (Ch.61). It’s a wonderful passage talking about bringing good news to the oppressed, binding up the broken hearted, proclaiming liberty to captives and release to prisoners. It talks about the time of jubilee – proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour. The passage is a whole string of celebrations as the Lord triumphs and sin and misery and evil and death are conquered… It was no coincidence that as Jesus read the scripture in the Synagogue that day, it was this pa...

Elvis Presley died more than 30 years ago now and it seems that an increasingly popular hobby is Elvis impersonating ! I’m not sure of the truth of it, but one of the most startling facts that I have read recently suggests that if the rate of growth of Elvis impersonators continues at its current level, then by 2025, 1 in 4 of the worlds population will be an Elvis impersonator ! You can imagine there are huge opportunities for businesses to grow up making and selling huge sideburns and glittery white suits, and training companies practising the various qualities that Elvis is remembered for ! And impersonation acts are nothing new – many people have made a good living out of impersonating people. One who was not so successful at it was Charlie Chaplin who, when on holiday one year, entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition and only managed to finish 3rd ! But anyway to impersonate a person you begin to follow and copy their behaviour and mannerisms. For Christians the life of Je...