The Law of the Lord

Tags

Liturgical Seasons, Psalms

During Lent I have been preaching a series of sermons on the Psalms and then we have been having a discussion on a Wednesday evening about issues raised in the sermon.  Last Sunday it was Psalm 19:

¹ The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
² Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
³ There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
⁴ yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
⁵ which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
and like a strong man runs its course with joy.
⁶ Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them;
and nothing is hidden from its heat.
⁷ The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure,
making wise the simple;
⁸ the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear,
enlightening the eyes;
⁹ the fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring for ever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
¹⁰ More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey,
and drippings of the honeycomb.
¹¹ Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
¹² But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
¹³ Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.
¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,  O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Last night we had a great discussion about those laws which were around in the time of this psalm first being sung but we totally ignore and don’t even think about – such as the wearing of mixed fabrics – also why there are other laws of that time which still challenge the church so.

Rivers in the Sand

Tags

Isaiah, Liturgical Seasons, Photography

 

Trickles of water carving pathways through the sand proof that there is water, working its way around small pebbles journeying onward, ever onward.

Draw near to me, hear this!
From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,
from the time it came to be I have been there.
And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.
Thus says the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
I am the Lord your God,
who teaches you for your own good,
who leads you in the way you should go.
O that you had paid attention to my commandments!
Then your prosperity would have been like a river,
and your success like the waves of the sea;
your offspring would have been like the sand,
and your descendants like its grains;
their name would never be cut off
or destroyed from before me.

Isaiah 48:16-19

The Jonah Complex

Tags

Jonah, Liturgical Seasons, Religious Thoughts

This morning the reading from Jonah at Mass got me to thinking about what I am going to call the Jonah Complex.  The reading itself didn’t actually cover the complex but reminded me of the story in its entirety and the more I thought the more I got drawn into pondering on the complex.

You know the story, God asks Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell them to change their ways or God will destroy the city, Jonah first of all decides to flee and ends up in a large fish, finally he goes and does as God has asked and all the people great and small repent.  These two elements of the story are often majored on, but it was the is the final part of the tale, the Jonah Complex that has been travelling with me all day.  The notion that when God turns bad into good, when God’s promises come true, we fall out with God.  In Johan’s case it is how dare God not destroy Nineveh, the fourth and final chapter of the book.

Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God, “God! I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness!  God said, “What do you have to be angry about?”  But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city.  God arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up.  But then God sent a worm. By dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away. The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: “I’m better off dead!”  Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”  Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!” God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?”

translation – The Message

I have seen such reactions in churches towards individuals, towards vestries, towards clerics and towards whole congregations.  The astonishing thing is that these reactions often come about after prayer has been answered in a positive way.  People want help with something, so they pray to God, one presumes that such prayer is done in faith and with some kind of hope that God will respond.  However, when God then has the audacity to hear and respond to their prayers and make things better the complex kicks in.  People get all indignant about the fact they no longer have that particular thing to grumble about.  They grumble even more about it than they ever did while it was still around.  They grumble about the fact something has ‘changed’ even if it is a change for the better.  They grumble about the fact the old problem isn’t there any more.  They grumble about all the ways in the past they had tried to solve the problem and failed.  They grumble to God and to each other.  Sometimes they, like Jonah, even grumble about the fact that because the problem is no  longer there they look foolish in some bizarre way.  They sulk as Jonah sulked and they grumble about the conditions that they sulk in.  Such displays aren’t restricted to God’s people, oh no, it is almost as if it is part of the human condition.  To grumble when things are bad and grumble some more when they are put right.

For people of faith it could be said it is back to that old adage

‘Be careful what you pray for, because you might just get it.’

In this season of Lent we are often inclined to associate ourselves with the people of Nineveh, our need to repnet, but we shouldn’t forget Jonah, not just his running from God, but also his complex.  For when Lent ends; I know it isn’t long started but that is all for the good as it gives us time to work on this; for when Lent ends we need to be fully prepared to live in the light of the risen Son and not be tempted back into Lenten woes.  Ready to rejoice for ourselves and for others.  Ready to put the past behind us and leave it there.  Ready to celebrate all the good things God has done, all of them.

A Lenten Thought

Tags

Liturgical Seasons, Quotes

What good would it do if truth stood before us, cold and naked, not caring whether we recognised her or not, and producing in us a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion?

The Journals Of Kierkegaard translated by Alexander Dru

Clearing Out The Gutters For Lent

Tags

4 Maccabees, Liturgical Seasons, Photography, Religion

It is recommended, especially if you live near trees, that you should clean out your gutters after the leaves have fallen so that they don’t block your gutters and cause water ingress into your home.  Well in this country it is recommended, but in Norway the story is somewhat different.

This house is part of the Romsdal Folk Museum in Romsdal, Norway.  The Norwegians were onto the whole idea of covering your roof with grass instead of tiles long before it became the thing of the eco-set, this home missed one of the vital necessities for a grass roof, that is the need to occasionally put a sheep or goat up on it for never mind leaves in the gutters, you don’t want a tree growing out of your roof for pretty soon the roots will work their way into your home and your home will be no more.

Just as pleasure and pain are two plants growing from the body and the soul, so there are many offshoots of these plants, each of which the master cultivator, reason, weeds and prunes and ties up and waters and thoroughly irrigates, and so tames the jungle of habits and emotions.

4 Maccabees 1:28-29

Taming the jungle of our habits and emotions that sounds very Lenten indeed doesn’t it – maybe it is time to check the roof.

The 40 Acorn Challenge – Ideas

Tags

Liturgical Seasons

Have you picked up the challenge?

I am not going to post on here each day what I have decided to do every day for the challenge, as I think that slightly spoils the point of it, it shouldn’t be about saying look what I’ve done but about doing something because it should be done and for no personal gain.  However I was asked for some ideas to help you on your way so here goes.

• If you click here you will be taken to Christian Aid’s site were one of your options could be to purchase 20 fruit trees  – Fruit trees could provide healthy, nutritious fruit for struggling families in and around Jinotega, one of the poorest areas of Nicaragua.  They also allow farmers to diversify their income, so that they are not dependent on growing just coffee.  This ensures they have a more secure livelihood.
• It doesn’t need to have anything to do with trees at all though, you could search out a local project to clean up a river which has been used as a dumping ground or become overgrown.   Rivercare might be your starting point click here.
• Do a similar thing off your own bat.  Take a bin bag a pair of thick gloves and go and pick up some litter, be careful what you pick up and where you pick it up remember safety first even when litter picking.
• Back to planting, anyone who arranges flowers in churches will know the constant quest for greenery, yet many churches don’t have the right kind of greenery in their gardens if indeed they have any at all.  Why not plant a holly tree or an evergreen shrub in your church – ask permission first don’t want you digging up the graveyard!
• This might seem ridiculously simple but if you aren’t already doing so, recycle!  Not just the paper and glass but everything you can.
• Or recycle one step further, lots of charities can use items which tend to be thrown away why not become a collector of stamps in your work place The Brittle Bone Society is just one of them, they take not only stamps but postcards and coins too.
• Volunteer for a local community project, there are loads of them about with lots of different jobs that need doing there will certainly be something that you have the skills to help with.
• And if you are feeling adventurous how about this a sky dive for the Stroke Association.  There are of course other charities who raise money through events like this so if jumping out of a plane isn’t your thing then why not find out just what your favourite charity has planned and considered doing that.

The aim isn’t to do something different every day, or even necessarily something new to you every day, and as I hope these examples also show it doesn’t need to cost you anything in monetary terms every day, it is simply to plant an acorn every day to do something that benefits someone else every day during Lent.

The 40 Acorn Challenge

Tags

Books, Jean Giono, Liturgical Seasons

I fell in love with the book ‘The Man Who Planted Trees‘ when I read it for the first time several years ago, and ever since then I have tried and failed to get a copy of the DVD of the animation of it that can be played in this country.  At least being able to watch it on You Tube in two parts is better than not seeing it at all, although the sound is a bit iffy at times and the cutting of the two parts not brilliant, but as I said better than nothing.

So if you want to do yourself a favour make yourself a tea or coffee, or pour yourself a glass of wine if you are reading this in the evening then sit down for 30 minutes and enjoy the wonderful animation and the yet more wonderful story by Jean Giono read by Christopher Plummer.  (2 separate parts hence two links)

To return to the title of this post, you’ve got a week to get your 40 metaphorical acorns ready and think about where you are going to plant them before the 40 days of Lent and your challenge begins.  It is simple, you don’t need to plant acorns, although you might choose to, you don’t even need to plant a tree, although again you might choose to, the challenge is to do something each day that will benefit others today or in the generations to come.

The Nail by Stephen Cottrell

Tags

Books, Religion, Stephen Cottrell

Following on from yesterday afternoon’s post I want to share with you another birthday present which gets top marks, Bishop Stephen Cottrell’s new book, The Nail.  With Lent fast approaching this would make a good book to use as personal study during Lent and I am sure that there are clergy out there who will be also using it as at least the basis for Holy Week.

The book comes in three parts and there are suggestions for how to use it for a Lent course.  The first part (this is the part suggested for a Lent study Group) looks at six of the characters who are part of the Passion story – namely Peter, the centurion, Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas and Mary Magdalene) and how they played a role in hammering in the nails.  The second part is looks at the events from Pilate’s wife dream and fears of further dreaming.  While the final chapter and part asks the question – Will you let Jesus forgive you?  A question which is well worth contemplating even if you don’t read the book, but my recommendation is that you read the book.

Beauty from the Very Beginning to the Very End

Tags

graves disease, Liturgical Seasons, Psalms

After yesterday’s post I thought I should follow my own advice and remember the beauty that surrounds and is within me.

I am starting Lent this year unwell, which is highly unusually for me as my virtually non-existent doctors notes testify.  A collection of niggly things that have been around for a while all decided to appear at once which, along with some nagging, meant that the one trip to the doctor to shut people up has now become a twice weekly trip as medication stabilises and more tests are done.

You may be wondering where the beauty is in a sick body, well despite how old and decrepid this body of mine might get, it is still part of the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.  As one of my favorite psalms, 139, says:

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb.   I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!  Body and soul, I am marvelously made!   I worship in adoration—what a creation!   You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.  Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.

verses 13-16 – The Message

So today I am remembering the beauty of how wonderfully I am made – even when everything isn’t working quite as it should.

The Beauty of Lent

Tags

Liturgical Seasons

It may be a bit late this year, but Lent is now finally upon us, those forty days when we are often urged to look beneath our surfaces and find the horrors that are lurking there so we can chase them out and be miraculously more ready for Easter, than if we had left them buried and forgotten.

Now I am not saying that there isn’t a place for confession and noting those things which we haven’t got quite right and addressing them because I firmly believe that there is.  The old saying ‘confession is good for the soul’ is loaded with truth for when we confess our souls are lightened from bearing the burden of remorse, or revenge or bitterness, that we all too easily carry around.  While God rejoices in the good confession does for us, we are sadly mistaken if we think that confessing means God loves us more.  If it did, it would also mean that God’s love is conditional and shows partiality, which it doesn’t.  God loves us not despite our failings but regardless of them, God loves the beauty and promise that is within us.

Amidst all the harrowing pictures to come out of New Zealand after their devastating earthquake came this one:

The quake was such that some icebergs toppled over in the Tasman Lake.  Instead of the dirty side of the iceberg which we often see we see the beauty which is usually beneath the water.

Inside each of us, maybe deep inside but there nevertheless, is beauty and this Lent I would urge you to instead of seeking out your failings (which you are probably all too aware of and should be dealing with each and every day of the year) to search for your beauty, your gifts and blessings which often go by unnoticed and unacknowledged.  So that we can rejoice on Easter Day not because we miserable sinners that have somehow still been saved, but because we have searched and seen the beauty within us that God sees and wants to save for eternity.

Snowing Again

We knew it was coming, we hoped that they, the weather men that is, had got it wrong and it wouldn’t arrive again, just as it didn’t last week when they said it would, but it is here.  As I watched the delicate white flakes swirll around as they made the way to the already white ground I was struck at how unwelcome that white ground is to us this Lenten time, we look and grumble enough of the snow, it reminded me of this account in the Bible.

The LORD said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.’ “  That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.  When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.  When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.   Moses said to them, “It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat.”

Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away.

~Exodus 16:11-15, 21~

Giving Up The Right Things

When one of the children suggested that maybe he could give up school for Lent on Sunday, I did wonder about giving up Vestry meetings however last nights Vestry meeting was a good one and made me glad that I hadn’t suggested such a thing.  No, for those of you who are wondering, it wasn’t under the hour, but last night that didn’t matter.

It is far easier to give up the things that we would rather not be doing than the things that we are doing but maybe shouldn’t be.