Life Is Short

Our life span is so short. As the scripture says, we spring up like the grass in the morning, and by nightfall we have withered and died. Yet, as our lives proceed, individual hours, days, weeks and years can seem interminable because we can see in them no clear direction, no great purpose or grand conclusion. What a contradiction, life too short and too long at the same time!

That is the great anomaly, the great contradiction, whose answer and resolution we are about to celebrate in the feast of Christmas. Jesus broke into this world of ours and shared our humanity, with no special privileges. In the fullest sense, He became one of us. In doing so, He gave us hope by showing us the way out of the trap that seemed inescapable.

Jesus confirmed beyond all shadow of a doubt that we are loved and cherished by the good Father who made us, that our life here has real purpose, and that we have a destiny that is grand beyond all imagining.

As we begin the celebration of a new year, we have a great and wonderful hope to share with all of God's people, a hope given to us by our dear brother Jesus. Let us not fail to share it!

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Anglican Prayers

Preparing For Christmas

It's a reality that so many people spend a majority of their time preparing for Christmas by trying to find the right presents. Searching, buying, hiding, wrapping, are the main activities in the build-up to Christmas Day, and something that closely resembles panic sets in when, as seems to happen even with the best laid plans, these tasks are all squeezed into the few days before, or even into Christmas Eve. I too share some guilt in this. My first inclination would be to blame my heavy calendar. However, the truth is I'm hopelessly disorganised when it comes to trying to decide what I want to give to whom.

It seems important to give the right gift, and yet as the wonderfully acerbic poet John Betjeman memorably puts it in his famous poem 'Christmas,' we often end up giving or getting 'bath salts and inexpensive scent and hideous tie so kindly meant.'

Betjeman isn't meaning to dismiss these humble gifts, however. His point is that the inadequacy of the things we give at Christmas does not matter, because no gift could possibly compare with 'this most tremendous tale of all,' the gift of love eternal in a recognizably vulnerable human form.

And yet, it still seems true that we all want our gifts to be valued and remembered. Though Betjeman is right to think that no gift of ours stands in comparison with God's gift, the desire that our gifts have meaning behind them has a good theological basis as well. Giving is a way of putting ones self aside and making others matter. I choose the gift and pay for it, but what I choose and how much I pay is decided by your wants and needs. The right gift will always reveal our knowledge of the person who receives it.

And so it is with the Incarnation itself. It is a great mystery how the divine could become human, but however we understand it, it is essential to see that at its heart is God's setting aside His divine nature in order to enter fully into the humanity of His creatures.

Pain

To feel that we have been let down by our family or close friends is a very bitter experience. The hurt and the anger can be so strong that we are left scarred and broken. Of course we can be the guilty party and cause great pain when we let other people down.

When Jesus chose the twelve disciples to be His close companions, during the three years of His public ministry, who would have thought that in His hour of need one turned out to be a traitor, one denied that he ever knew Him and the others deserted Him and ran away. In Pilate’s judgement hall He stood isolated and alone and when they led Him away to crucify Him He was left to carry His cross with not a single companion in sight

It’s easy to understand something of what Jesus was going through. Betrayal, denial and desertion are bitter experiences and can often leave a permanent imprint on our hearts and minds. The cross was like a shadow across Jesus' life from the very beginning and grew darker and more threatening as time passed.

No wonder Jesus said, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' (Matthew 16:24)

Freedom For All ! ...almost

For most of us this is the start of another routine week; we know what we will be doing in the next few days. But there is one group of people who haven't the foggiest idea what will happen tomorrow. Some of them don't know where they are or what they have done or when they might be free. They are the men detained without trial in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, under anti-terrorist measures. Some, it is alleged, are being flown around the world from one torture centre to another.

Now by the law of averages at least some of them must be innocent - the victims of faulty intelligence, malicious informers or mistaken identity. They exist in a limbo at the mercy of the fearsome power of the State.

This text isn't shared today as a result of trans-European liberalism, but because I feel there is a Christian principle at stake. It is a clash between two ideas of justice neatly summed up by one of the speakers in the recent debate on the terrorism legislation. It's the difference between what he called collective and personal freedom; the rights of the many as against the one. Collective freedom, he argued, means that one inevitable consequence of trying to protect the whole of society may be that, regrettably, a few are unjustly denied their personal freedom.

That may be a prudent policy, but Jesus turned such conventional values on their head. He emphasised the welfare of the one against the many - the lost sheep in peril, the single sparrow falling to the ground, the anonymous prisoner. Even Jesus' own family thought he was crazy for insisting that the first should be last and the last first; that you save your life by losing it, that it's better to die than to kill, that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

Of course, there is no reason why the authorities should take any notice of the teachings of Jesus; they are hopelessly idealistic, except that the values and traditions of the very society we seek to protect have been decisively shaped by His impact upon it, so He's entitled to a hearing. Do the measures, which are proposed for our safety, make it less likely that an innocent citizen might suffer or will they create more victims of injustice?

And the clincher, which is hard to evade, is this: Jesus said that what we do to the prisoner we do to Him.

For the Christian, there's no way round that one.

Moldova Prisons

Exploited Children

Prison Ministry

Anger Moldova Prisons Lonliness Anglicans

A Blogging We Will Go

Had it not been for the miracles of modern technology, and most certainly God’s divine intervention, none of us in this group would have likely found one another. What a truly inspirational testimony this is as to how God’s touch leads us, even through technology.

For people to have found this site, you may have participated in a new trend called ‘surfing.’ And apparently the text I write is now called a ‘blog.’ But as a middle-aged adult, my natural instinct, up to just a few years ago, would have been to turn towards the written word, in the form of a reference book, rather than using a computer.

The comforting thing about a book is that before it comes into being it goes through a process of revision, assessment, and validation, which generally means that by the time it is published it has almost a seal of understood authority. However, with computer generated material there is no such process; anyone can produce professional looking material in his or her own home. Yet I have found myself, almost frighteningly, allowing myself to accept the premise that if I read it on the internet, it must be accurate. And when I ask my children to find information, they immediately rely upon the internet, rather than using the written word in our library.

This raises important issues for us. As religious people we may maintain that appearance is comparatively unimportant, it is substance that matters. The problem is that nowadays a professional looking document or Web page carries a kind of spurious authority, which demands from us constant caution to establish its relative value.

Creator God, you call us to rejoice in the discovery of new knowledge and to be fearless in the pursuit of truth and understanding wherever we may find it. May we not be distracted by outwards forms and ever watchful for the pitfalls which can befall the unwary. Amen

The Pride of Belfast

This weekend people in Northern Ireland, as well as throughout the world, said farewell to George Best, one of soccer's most beloved players. In many ways, his funeral was just as it would be for a member of the Royal Family. At 11AM, the city of Belfast came to a standstill in his honour, whilst many thousands of people lined the route of his funeral cortege. He was indeed a great sportsman.

Best gave the people of Belfast hope. In the midst of the darkness of their political struggles, people still found a common denominator when it came to 'their lad.' He gave them a sense of pride.

But George was no different than the rest of us in many ways. He was weak, just as we are. He had his own human frailties, just as the rest of us share. He had his own complexities that caused him to want to run away from himself. And sadly, he turned to alcohol as his escape.

He was a shy man and the idea of facing his celebrity status added weight to his already complex life.

But whatever man the public saw, he still possessed a depth and compassion for others, especially children. He contributed in so many ways to help others in need. Perhaps some of this was motivated by his recognition of his own weaknesses. And it was this compassion that has touched many of us so deeply.

All of us want to celebrate the feel-good experience of others. That's one of the reasons we're drawn to celebrities. We long to identify with their greatness.

Perhaps the weakness that Mr Best so openly showed to the world needs to be acknowledged by us as well. For just as it is when we see greatness in others and aspire to those heights, perhaps in seeing their lows we can aspire to rise above our own weaknesses.