My journey began on the Dengie Peninsular formed by the River Crouch to the south and the River Blackwater to the north. I stayed on a farm not far from Bradwell-on-Sea and could get to the coast by walking a couple of miles through reclaimed marshland. The flat landscape, the big skies and the tranquillity reminded me of parts of Norfolk and it was easy to find peace away from the hustle and bustle of normal life. Within easy reach was The Church of St. Peter on-the-wall built by St. Cedd in 654 AD on the foundations of the Roman fort of Othona. Cedd had travelled by boat from Lindisfarne to spread the good news of Jesus to the East Saxons.
My journey took me to the Suffolk coast and then around the Norfolk coast from Great Yarmouth to Burnham Thorpe. My wife Linda joined me for the second half of my trip and we journeyed up north to Loch Lomond, the Kintyre Peninsular and the shores of Loch Linnhe near Fort William.
I spend the first three days of my sabbatical in silence. I find that “retreating” from normal life in that way is a very good way focus on prayer and my relationship with God. I think our busy, noise-filled lives mean that so often we are unaware of God’s presence and we so easily miss what he is trying to say to us. My first rule of prayer is to create space for God.
I found God in the silence certainly, but also in the beauty of creation. Whether watching the stormy skies over the Blackwater Estuary, the waves lapping onto the shores of Winterton beach, or being overwhelmed by the majesty of the mountains in the west of Scotland I feel inspired to wonder at God’s creative acts. How strange then to hear so many references to the thoughts of scientists like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking rubbishing the idea of God and dismissing people with faith as deluded. To these two gentlemen and others like them I want to say – stop trying to explain away God with science but open your eyes and see the work of the author of creation. Then stop and listen for the still small voice of God.
The Revd. James Nash Rector of the Church in the Woottons
Author: andymoyle
Jesus is the source of all good
The purpose of mankind is to manifest good in a myriad of ways and thereby to give glory to God. Because of the complexity of good an individual usually requires training, practice, repetition and the co-operation of others in order to manifest good.
If a person does wrong (sin) the co-operation of other people is lost so that it becomes difficult for that sinner to do good. But Jesus knows that sinners can still do good. The church therefore runs charities which co-operate with any person wishing to do good, whatever their past mistakes.
CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) is the international aid and development charity for the Catholic Church in the UK. CAFOD is 50 this year. By focusing work on the poor and the marginalised of the world, CAFOD provides not only development and emergency aid but CAFOD also campaigns, with other organisations, to change the root causes of poverty and injustice. In Lent 2012 UK Catholic parishioners donated over £8.7 million to CAFOD.
Campaigning works. Previously successful campaigns include; the Jubilee 2000 petition which achieved $110 billion of debt cancellation; the co-founding of Fairtrade in 1992; the signing by 144 countries of the Ottawa agreement which bans the manufacture, sale and use of land mines; the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign which increased aid to developing countries by $50 billion; the ‘Ethical Trading Initiative’ and the ‘Clean up your Computer’ campaign which improved the working conditions in developing countries; and the ‘Unearth Justice’ campaign when 7 major jewellers signed up to the Golden Rules, improving justice in mining. In 2010 CAFOD joined with other charities to urge the government to maintain spending on overseas development to reach the agreed 0.7% GNI by 2013. Last year UK aid treated 100,000 HIV sufferers, vaccinated 3 million children, built 12,000 classrooms and trained 100,000 teachers in developing countries.
In 2012 CAFOD ran a ‘Thirst for Change’ campaign to bring basic services of clean drinking water and sanitation to more people in developing countries. Over 60,000 people signed the petition. Currently 783 million people lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack access to safe sanitation. It is estimated that a child dies every 20 seconds because of preventable infections caused by poor quality water and sanitation.
Jesus continues to make good manifest because God is the source of all good.
Peter Coates.
Being Good isn’t good enough
Recently I saw a play called “Damned by Despair” – a new version by Frank McGuiness of a play written in about 1635. Paulo is a monk living in the desert being very holy. Enrico leads a city gang and is as bad as possible. Paulo is certain God will have to let him into heaven, but the devil, disguised as an angel, tells him to find Enrico because his fate will be the same as Enrico’s. “If Enrico goes to heaven, that’s where you’ll go, if Enrico goes to hell, you likewise.”
Paulo is sure Enrico must go to hell. Therefore, according to the angel, so will Paulo. So what’s the point of being good – he might as well enjoy himself being as bad as he can!
Enrico is condemned to death, but still believes in God. Persuaded by his father, he turns to God and repents. He’s hanged, and goes to heaven. Paulo is too proud to repent. If God is so unjust as not to let him into heaven when he was being good, he’s not going to ask forgiveness for being bad. Paulo is shot, and goes to hell.
What kind of sense does that make of Christianity?!
About the year 400 there was a very nice Scotsman call Pelagius. He went to Rome and became a popular Christian teacher. He taught people that following Jesus was about being good. There was also a man called Augustine. He’d been a bad lad in his youth and realised it wasn’t as simple as that. We are a mess of good and bad. Our motives are always mixed and we can’t make ourselves good – only God can do it. Christians argued about this for decades, but in the end, they decided Augustine was right.
It’s like at Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step has to be admitting we have a problem we can’t sort out on our own – we need help. Trying to do it on our own, doesn’t work.
Sin is not about morality, it’s about the fact that we are broken. Christianity is about realising that only God can mend us, and he does it in Jesus because he wants to, not because we deserve it.
Canon Chris Ivory
King’s Lynn Minster
What is truth?
For many people, “is it true?” isn’t the most urgent of questions they have about a religion. They are more concerned with image (what it looks like) or emotion (what it feels like) and often with its practical consequences, whether it does good in the world on balance, or the opposite. But surely for a religion the question of its truth or falsehood is a basic one to ask, even if the answers may be hard to know. Many of the claims made by religions are not amenable to scientific enquiry, but that perhaps only shows the limitations of scientific enquiry. Scientific evidence is not the only kind of evidence valid in this world.
I am a Christian because I believe Jesus Christ (not just in Jesus Christ) and because I believe the claims of Christianity to be true and sufficient for life here and in eternity. I do not belong to any other religion because I believe that some of their claims are false, or at least inadequate for living in the light of eternity. There are some attractive features of most other religions (as well as some ugly ones) but, unless the religion is true, I don’t want to follow it. The reasons that I believe Christianity to be true are mainly related to Jesus Himself: his words, his actions, his character, his Divine claims, above all his self-sacrificing love all have the “ring of truth” about them; so does the evidence for his resurrection.
Well, you say: You believe one thing and I another. Yes, and thank God that we are still free in this country to practise our faiths. No one should be forced either to accept or to deny any religion, either by the State or by zealots of another religion or by atheists. The State’s role with religion should not be to suppress it, but to make violence and unfair types of persuasion illegal, i.e. to be a kind of moderator, and also to use the goodwill of many religious people for the common good.
Jim Ryan
White Rabbits
Last week, while waiting for a meeting to start, a colleague said “there just aren’t enough hours in the day.” She was out of breath and clearly under stress. On the other hand, a previous boss of mine – many, many years ago, told me that if, at the end of a day, if you asked yourself “could I have done anything more, or better” and the answer was “no”, then why worry about what you DIDN’T do! It took me many years to really take that advice on board.
What I now realise is that the important “things” that I prioritise are people – hopefully my family first – but apologies when I get THAT wrong! Not that other tasks are not important – but many things can be left. I now find life gives me unexpected “windows” of time to do things I thought would take ages to achieve. I also enjoy having to wait (usually!). If unprepared I will sit/stand and think through things. I will think about the people who are either important to me or who may be needing me to do something. As a Christian I frequently use this time to pray – for the same people just mentioned. I am often asked to pray for someone or someone’s relations. Or if anticipating a wait – at an appointment, for example, I will take a book or my kindle and enjoy the chance to read in peace. People usually apologise for keeping me waiting, but I really don’t mind!
“Wasting time” is such a silly phrase. Are we so important that we think we are indispensable. Sometimes is just sitting around, or having a drink with a friend or friends, reading the newspaper or a book, pottering in the garden, writing a letter/email to friends not as important as other things that we HAVE to do – or think we have to do.
Yes we need to do certain things – but not at the expense of the people we love and others who really do need our time.
The dash
When my wife, Miriam, was asked to read a poem called The Dash at the funeral of a close friend, I learnt, that the dash referred to was the hyphen between the person’s year of birth and the year of death. The poem then asked how we spend our dash in living, loving and treating others with respect. This is more important than the mere accumulation of wealth and possessions.
In other words, it is not the years in our life that count, but the life in those years.
But another idea of “dash” came to me. At my school sports there was an 80 yards dash for mums and dads. It was a race for pride, but one full of laughter and amusement.
At the Olympic Games the dashes or races are more serious. Victory is achieved at the expense of long years of training and dedication. Speeches made by athletes after the events thanked their coaches for advice and motivation.
At the recent Olympic Games, Usain St.Leo Bolt was the master of the dash, the winner of the 100 and 200 metres sprints. Before each race he made the sign of the Cross, declaring his Christian belief. It is a belief he lives out in his life, giving back to the Jamaican people his surplus wealth to develop education and medical facilities. Through his Foundation he gives more money to charitable causes.
The passage from St Paul’s letters (1 Corinthians 9, 26-27), that links how we can live our dash, our life, and prepare for the dash, says
Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
Relentless
Our lives are relentless, it’s one thing after another, after another. The thing about life is, there’s no space to pause, there’s no room for a break, it’s not like we’re whirling around on a ride, and we manage to gasp out that we want to get off for a moment to catch our breath, and possibly be sick somewhere, life goes on, and it goes on relentlessly throwing things at us. Whether it be work, or our family life, or our school, or just the daily grind of getting up and facing each day.
Even when we take holidays it doesn’t stop, often the very act of going on holiday can be
incredibly stressful and difficulty, and merely adds to the relentless nature of life, rather than taking away from it.
Something being relentless means that it’s happening constantly, usually with negative, or how the dictionary puts it, oppressive overtones, and it’s pretty easy in our lives, in our world to focus on that negative aspect of the word. “My Boss never gives me a moments peace, she’s relentless.”, “This illness, just doesn’t give me a break, it’s relentless.” “I can’t seem to catch a break, life is just so relentless.”
The book of Lamentations in the Bible is a book of mourning, it’s a song of despair, and deals, at least in part, with the relentless nature of life. But in the midst of the book, in the midst of the suffering, homelessness, shame, defeat, and despair, there are these words from chapter 3 and verse 21 onwards: “Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the LORD never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.”
The faithful love of the Lord never ends, his mercies are new each morning. If we think our lives are relentless, if we think our problems, our sufferings, our despair is relentless, then I invite you to think on these words: The love of God is never-ending, his love, and his compassion for you, whether you know him or not, begins anew each and every morning. Each and every morning it’s just as passionate, just as heartfelt, and just as powerful to change your situation as it ever was, and ever will be…
…It’s relentless.
Kieran Woodward – Assistant Leader, King’s Lynn Baptist Church
A Tale of Two festivals
I took my young children for their first experience and they were literally gobsmacked as they saw the young man, who had been standing 50 feet from us in the nearby signing area, go on stage after prayer, pull out his hearing aids and have a conversation with the speaker without them! That 21year old had been profoundly deaf from birth – you could hear that from his speech. Medically verified healings from previous years are viewable here
What a difference between the two festivals! Jesus Christ changes lives. There were no deaths, suspicious or otherwise, or urine filled bottles thrown at mainstage and yet there were thousands of young people jumping up down to some very loud music, listening to pretty inspired teaching, responding in their hundreds to serve God and going out in the afternoons to clear gardens and paint fences in some of the deprived parts of Norwich. The local councillor and MP came on mainstage one evening to thank the young people for all they had done to make a difference. I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen at the V-festivals.
Christianity isn’t dull and boring and only for the older generation. It’s vibrant, exciting and awe inspiring. My nine year olds saw God at work in miraculous ways, healing people and changing destinies for the better. That’s not brainwashing or forcing it down their throats! They saw firsthand miracles and told me “That was awesome”. If you need healing, there are Christians at the Vancouver Centre bandstand every Tuesday morning 10-12noon happy to pray for you. And if you need life change, then why not check out one of the local churches this Sunday morning. www.churchestogetherkingslynn.com lists them all.
Slower, Lower, Weaker
The Olympic motto, ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’, is a pretty good one. Those simple three words conjure thoughts of sprinters shooting down the track with smoke coming off their running spikes, pole-vaulters twisting into the air as if gravity worked the other way, and weightlifters going red in the face as they lift the equal of seventy bags of shopping. Anyone who’s ever had a go at athletics will recognise that ‘faster, higher, stronger’ is the whole focus – pushing the human body to the apex of its performance, and then going beyond it.
Is this a good motto for life in general? Certainly there are many areas of our lives where pushing ourselves will reward us in the end. There are even times when people will grit their teeth spiritually, determined to summon a greater discipline or to reach out more keenly for God. Sometimes, though, I believe we have to pursue the opposite of the Olympic ideal.
For example, there are very few places in the Bible where anyone is urged to go faster for God. On the contrary, coming before him involves slowing down and putting our own capabilities in perspective. In Psalm 46 it is being still, not being fast, that is the way to know God. In the same way, the apostle Paul charges Christians to ‘be willing to associate with people of low position’, a challenge to anyone whose life is all about climbing ladders. Perhaps most surprising is the New Testament paradox that it is often when we are weak that we can do the most. The decisive event of the gospels is Jesus Christ at his weakest, held motionless by nails, exhausted from a Roman flogging, bleeding and asphyxiating on the cross. Bewilderingly, this is the most powerful moment of his ministry; this is where he does the most good for the world; this physical low point is a spiritual high point.
Perhaps (when the Olympics are over) we should try out ‘Slower, Lower, Weaker’ as a motto for a while. We might discover that slowing down for God’s sake, noticing the lowly in our communities, and trying to understand the power of weakness are things worth striving for.
Corin Child St John’s King’s Lynn
“Chillax” after the Grandchildren have been!
We have just enjoyed a visit from the grandchildren. We learnt a few new words that might appear one day in our dictionaries. Now we “chillax” after a busy day! If the grandchildren enjoyed the ride on the Wells and Walsingham light railway, then it was “wicked”, but we did pay for the tickets! Words can come to be used differently. We are reminded that language is a living phenomena, just as our words are. They convey our life style. Have you noticed the present way we describe what’s going on in our nation as our “culture”. Culture can be good and bad. But who is to make the value judgement?
Recently the chairman of the Bank of England used the word to describe some of the behaviour of one of the banks that cost it a hefty fine. He told us the culture of the banks had to change. I am sure the general consensus would support his judgement.
But over some other behaviour in our national life there might not be such quick consensus.
The trouble with calling for a change in behaviour by a change in culture is that it avoids the root problem. If the majority disapprove of the behaviour, then there will be some steps taken to regulate behaviour and make it harder to indulge greed and deception. But I doubt there will be much sense of shame about the reasons for the culture change. If we want a heart felt change in the nation, then we would be wiser to talk for a need to repent. Yes, I do know that word has gone out of coinage but we are the poorer for ditching it. To repent means to have a change of mind leading to a change of heart. It acknowledges the truth that some corporate behaviour is plain wrong, and rides rough shod over the Bible’s command to love our neighbour as ourselves. It takes ownership for my share in corporate guilt.
Repentance is calling time on corruption and turning around to head off in the right direction and ask for forgiveness. Some will find it hard to forgive those who have been found out and face public disgrace. But God is willing not only to forgive us but also to give us a change of heart that will keep us out of a culture that disregards the well being of others.
John Wallis, Gayton Parish