Author: andymoyle

Having time to spare, (well, I am retired!), I was scrolling through YouTtube when a lovely piece about soaring condors in the Andes came on, accompanied by a Simon and Garfunkel track. I was struck by the phrase, “I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail”.
It took be back many years to a time when I was teaching RE. There had been a class discussion of bullying looking at both the bully and the victim. I had put up several ‘thoughts’ on the display board which included one – ‘Sometimes you’re the pigeon and sometimes you’re the statue’. A school inspector (loud boos), not asking about the context of this, criticised me for its inappropriateness. Had he but asked I could have explained how it related to our topic.
As a teacher (and parent) the cry of ‘it isn’t fair’ is often the usual response to some perceived injustice being done to the poor little dear. In the political arena it can be our response to ‘them’ doing things to ‘us’.
Government and councils can seem remote, uncaring and unresponsive. Price rises and the increasing cost of living weigh down on those with limited incomes. Things we want are out of reach but we see others with wealth buying whatever they like. Is that fair?
How we respond to the ‘pigeon’ does not mean we have to feel like the ‘statue’.
Where there is injustice and genuine unfairness then, yes, we do need to challenge it. Even so, the individual, somehow, has to deal with these situations. Feeling you are the victim is not healthy. It can lead to depression or anger. Anger that can be vented on totally innocent folk – either those we meet or those out there who we don’t like, for whatever reason.
We may not be as wealthy, good-looking, healthy or intelligent as others. So what?
Looking at what we do have is a good starting point for feeling at peace with the world. Where it is possible, we can make changes, if we want to, at a pace we control. Where it is not possible, then shrug your shoulders and move on. Who knows, someone else may be looking at you with envy because their situation is even worse than yours. Perhaps supporting others in need may be one way to appreciate what you do have!
Whatever your situation, this is the time of year to be a bit more generous with your time and goodwill. It is a universal opportunity to be grateful for the gifts we receive and to consider sharing something we have with those even more unfortunate than us!
Christmas Season Blessings to all.

John Belfield

The Power of Words

Words are powerful. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, recently. Let me explain.

Firstly, my beloved 81-year-old Nan had a stroke last month, suddenly changing everything for her. She’s not a white-haired, diminishing-old-lady kind of Nan either – she is 5ft 10, plays golf twice a week, makes incredible jam, flies around Tesco like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep and can talk the hind legs off fields of donkeys. Could. Because that has been one of the most heart-breaking effects of the stroke – her words are all gone. Almost entirely. She can communicate a little, but without a wealth of words, she is horribly frustrated and reduced. She can’t keep the nurses on the stroke ward listening for hours, regaling proud tales of her grandchildren and great grandchildren. She can’t explain to them the pain of the loss of my Granddad, so recently, and the lifetime of love they had. Even those of us who know her best can only partly guess from charades and a few stray syllables, some of the myriad things she is trying to communicate to us, each day. We pray for words to return.

The other thing that got me thinking about words was a phrase I heard at the annual Christian camp, One Event, which our church attends every year. It is always a full and exhausting weekend, with so many meetings and talks, that taking it all in is impossible. But one of the phrases that stuck with me, was “I see in you…” The speaker was promoting the importance of these four small words, encouraging us to imagine the things we might unlock in others, the paths on which we might set them, by naming the potential we see in them. Don’t we all long for that – someone to notice our gifting, encourage us in it, champion us, believe in us? While we wait for it to happen to us, let’s get on with sowing that which we long for ourselves, into the lives of others. Four small words. Enough to make a difference.

Finally, the Bible describes Jesus as ‘the Word of God’ – spoken from heaven to earth, to bring life and hope to any who would hear him. Let’s use our words well today, in all their stuttering incompleteness, to bring life, hope and peace to those we meet. In doing so, we echo, in small quiet ways, the gentle voice of the only Word fully capable of speaking life and hope, with no stuttering or incompleteness at all.

Georgie Tennant
Kings Lynn Christian Fellowship

What’s your memory like? Apparently, the storage capacity of the human brain is virtually limitless. I guess that means I don’t have an excuse for forgetting what I came upstairs for, or forgetting to take my lunch to work the other day, or worse still – forgetting my wedding anniversary! Incidentally, you might be relieved to know that there is a scientific explanation for forgetting what we went into a room for. Apparently, going through doorways may act as a trigger for the brain to store memories away so that we then can’t remember once we get to the next room.
My mum tells the story of when my sister (her first child) was born and she went to a shop. As was common in those days, she left the pram outside and went in to do her shopping. She finished the shopping, left the shop and started to walk home, completely forgetting to take my sister with her! She didn’t get too far before realising! I am so glad that God promises never to forget me. There is a verse in the Bible that compares God to a mother and says, “how can a mother forget her baby? And yet even if she does, I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15) God can’t forget us because we are his precious children and he is our perfect parent.
But what is equally amazing is what he chooses to forget. The Bible tells us that when we ask God to forgive us, he doesn’t just forgive, he forgets, (Isaiah 43:25). When we forgive people, we don’t automatically forget what they have done – we can’t erase the memory just by choosing to do so, although the memory can become less painful. It is very easy to bring those things back up again in our relationships, even when we think we have forgiven someone. But God CHOOSES to forget. He decides not to remember the mistakes we have made. That means that we can be absolutely sure that he will never hold it against us. When God says he forgives, he means it because he wipes it from his own memory. So, if I try and ask for forgiveness for the same mistake again, he says, “What mistake?” Jesus came not just to forgive us, but to wipe the slate clean so we can start again with him.

Wendy Hill

“Truth isn’t truth!” is the most ridiculous statement President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudi Gulliani has said so far in a news interview. It is like saying one is not equal to one. What he was trying to say was that Trump’s truth was different from Cohen’s truth, but even that sounds ridiculous!

For decades, many have argued for relativism – the idea that there is no absolute truth in the areas of belief and morality. Trump’s legal team are trying to leverage moral relativism into matters of law. Specifically over whether hush payments to a porno actress during the presidential campaign are legal or not.

The idea that there can be no absolute truth is self defeating. To say there are no absolutes is itself an absolute. It is trying to bring preferences into matters of right and wrong or whether any idea is true or not. What is considered right and wrong in society changes as culture changes. That though is inherently selfish – if there is no such thing as right and wrong, then stealing is right, until someone steals from me, when it becomes wrong again. What you end up with is a mess!

Some of my friends have said of my Christian faith that if it is true for you then good for you, but it is not true for me. C.S. Lewis argued “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. “

The claim of the Christian faith is that Jesus Christ died on our behalf for our wrongdoing. On the third day he rose again thereby defeating the power of sin and death. If Jesus is still dead, the Apostle Paul wrote, we are to be pitied more than all men – we are wasting our lives on a delusion.

So the issue of whether Christianity is true or not comes down to whether he really died and if he rose again. The spear in his side effusing blood and water we now know is fluid from the pleural cavity followed by blood from the heart, proving death.

The body was never produced by the Romans or Jewish authorities to disprove the troublesome new faith. Grave robbers would have stolen the spices and grave-clothes rather than the body. The disciples who had fled in fear then lived in boldness and never wavering to produce the body when they were persecuted. He was seen by 550 people for a period of 40 days and then no more. Of course there are far more detailed arguments that can be made than in those few words. It adds up to the resurrection being the only credible explanation for Jesus no longer in the tomb.

If the resurrection is objectively true and many lawyers who have investigated for themselves have come to that conclusion then Christianity is true. Truth is truth! Why not investigate and decide for yourself?

Andy Moyle, The Gateway Church

How to relieve suffering.

I wonder how many of you recall Roy Scheider, who played Brodie in the film Jaws, the big summer hit film of 1975. He said, when he saw the size of the man-eating shark of the film’s title, ‘you’re gonna need a bigger boat’. It occurs to me that a similar expression might help us when confronted with the size and endurance of human suffering. ‘You’re gonna need a bigger brain’.
There are said to be about 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) in the human brain and each makes about 7000 chemically mediated connections (synapses) with other neurones so that the number of synapses in a human brain is estimated to be a staggering one quadrillion (1015). Our Christian culture is also centred on making good connections, but between people, not neurones. This suggests to me that, if every human acted as a mobile neurone and made functional connections, mankind could come together to produce a form of higher order brain.
An early example of this can be found at http://www.parkinsonnet.info/. Through this network people with an interest in Parkinson’s disease can interact, learn and share research, knowledge and hope.
In his book ‘Fractal Brain Theory’ Wai H. Tsang, who studied Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College, London, finds that there is a hierarchy of nerve connections in the human brain with emotions at the top, powerfully driving us to satisfy our needs. The power of emotions can feel as though it grabs our sense of life or death. Could we form a higher order brain governed by creative and life giving motivation? For me that means the dominion of Jesus Christ.
Carl Jung (1875-1961), who was a practising psychiatrist and a polymath, wrote extensively on psychology. Jung thought that humans need to develop through life to reach their full potential, otherwise mental illness occurs. Could a higher order brain allow the whole of mankind to reach their full potential and consign mental illness to history?
Individually we are not fully conscious. In her book ‘Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction’ Susan Blackmore, who is a visiting psychology professor at Plymouth University, concludes that: ‘Consciousness, then, is a grand delusion.’
In conclusion, could mankind develop into a higher order brain which, beyond meritocracy, gives its members equality through full consciousness? Would sin then be impossible and could you say to anyone; ‘you exist, therefore I love you’, and mean it?

Peter Coates,
Kings Lynn Catholics

REMEMBERING NOAH
It is easy for us to ignore history, yet if we cannot learn from the past, we are likely to repeat the mistakes made by our forebears, leaving us unprepared for what is to come. We all know the story of Noah, his ark and the animals, but the real significance of this account is rarely mentioned in books that are mainly written for children’s entertainment.

The account of Noah in the Bible tells us much about the character and actions of God and how He governs the world with love, mercy and justice, When Noah received the command from God to start building the ark, he was told that God would destroy the whole population of people who had turned away from God. Noah was told ‘what’ was coming but he was not told ‘when’ it would come.
For over 100 years Noah faithfully believed everything that God had told him and when the deluge came, those who remained outside of the ark were all destroyed. This account was not just an isolated incident in history, but was a foreshadowing of an event yet to come.

In Noah’s generation, the ark was the only place of safety that God had provided for Noah and his family. The ark had a doorway and a threshold that Noah, his family and the animals had to pass through before they were safe. God has also provided a place of safety for us living today, Instead of a wooden ark, Jesus is building his kingdom with people from every nation, tribe and culture, The
kingdom that Jesus is building also has a doorway and a threshold. The doorway can be entered by those who believe in Jesus and who identify themselves with his death on the cross and his resurrection to new life. On our part, the threshold must be crossed before we can enter into God’s kingdom and be saved. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus also forewarned us that the world will see another earth-shaking event that will come suddenly. Jesus said “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in
the days of the Son of Man (the return of Jesus Christ)” (Luke 17: 26-27). I have chosen to follow Jesus as my saviour and I am safely inside His kingdomwhatever happens. How about you; are you safely inside or currently outside? Its your
choice.

Geoff Duncombe
The Gateway Church
Kings Lynn

The Enemy Is Our Superiority

Thank you for your love which contributes towards the functioning of society. Your love contributes towards our realisation of the wholeness of everything and everyone (God the Father), the wholesomeness of everything and everyone (God the Son) and the harmony of everything and everyone (God the Holy Spirit). But we frequently get things wrong.
Because God is so high above us, the first step to love is to acknowledge our faults and change. Jesus started his ministry by calling for repentance because our love starts with being wrong.
One of the greatest wrongs down through history has been a conscious or subconscious desire for superiority. Examples of manmade disasters caused by the desire for superiority include the First World War, the holocaust and extremism. In true Christianity we give away to God our desire for superiority. Because I believe in the mercy of God I am pleased to tell you that I made an inadvertent error in my last ‘Thought for the Week’ in December. When writing about the book ‘The Meaning of Blue’ by Luke Bell OSB I wrote that blue is the colour you get when you look towards the light. In fact the book says: ‘Blue is dark seen from light. It is therefore the colour of the light-filled, the spiritually realised’.
The Infinite Joy of Repentance.
What value my dreams?
In a history of dreams;
In a history of conflict,
That symptom of failed repentance,
In an ocean of dreams.

If I could dream God’s dream
I would dream of repentance.
Of sin rejected;
Of naked humility;
Of Christ crucified;
Of your good dreams fulfilled
In forgiveness and prayer.

Then my dreams are our dreams;
A shared consciousness;
An ocean of dream;
An ocean of repentance.

Then Lord we invite you into our lives,
Where gently, repeatedly, you wash in;
As waves wash the seashore;
As truth repeatedly corrects;
Washing the spirit
In waves of repentance.

An ocean of repentance
Becomes an ocean of faith.
An ocean of faith
Becomes the kingdom of God,
Just as Jesus said it would.

What value my story now?
Since we bought your eternity
With our repentance
And we paid with the life of Christ.

Your love became our life;
My story became our story;
My isolation became our joy;
My ignorance became our knowledge;
My grief became our creativity,
In the infinite joy of repentance.

Peter Coates,
Secretary CTKL

Britain is the 3rd loneliest country in Europe according to the Office for National Statistics. Some five million people have no close friends. Loneliness has long been recognised and worked on for older people, but recent research is showing an epidemic of friendlessness among younger people. You’d think with Facebook “friends” that people would have lots of friends, but the reverse seems to be true.

God is the model for relationship and He created us for relationship.

It is not good for the man to be alone. Gen 2:18

We were created to be social beings, not islands. We were made with a need for friends and the desire to enjoy warm, healthy and lasting friendships with others. The fundamental issue that hinders friendships is of course the sin that separates from God and from each other. The Gospel wonderfully reconciles us to God and one another. We have seen how Jesus beautifully models friendship. He is a friend of sinners, continually eating with tax collectors and sinners. He is the one who says of His disciples,

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called your friends… John 15:15

Friendship thus became a glorious hallmark of the early church, who were devoted to fellowship. Jesus promise’ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35) was so thoroughly obvious to the Jewish historian Josephus, that he wrote “See how these Christians love one another.”

There are levels of friendship. Jesus was friendly to the crowd, knew the 72 better, had 12 close followers, 3 inner circle and John his closest friend. At the bottom of the scale of friendships is “no friends at all” –Jesus experienced that when he was rejected in the lead up to the cross. Jesus promises to be a friend like no other, God promises to never leave you or forsake you. Then there are acquaintances – Liam at the garage, Simon in the coffee shop – people I say hello to regularly! Good friends are the ones you know their birthday (correction my wife does!) Jesus picked the twelve “he desired” (Mark3:13) to be good friends. Really good friends are like Peter, James and John, for Jesus, that He took with him to the mount of transfiguration. These are the friends you look forward to spending an evening with and would drop everything to help solve a middle of the night crisis. Finally there are intimate friends – John describes himself as the disciple that Jesus loved.

How are your friendships doing? God is interested in you and that area of your life and would love to help you if it is a struggle. Ask Him and pop into a local Church this Sunday if you don’t normally.

Andy Moyle

The Gateway Church
Excerpted from “Friends, Food and the Gospel”