As we step out of winter and into spring it never ceases to amaze me how the daffodils, crocuses and all the spring flowers suddenly come to life. They died off last year, remain dormant until this time of year comes round and then find the light of day again and give us such an array of colour after the long barren winter.
So it is with our lives in general. In the winter with the dark evenings we close our curtains and it’s still dark in the morning when we wake and have to get up for work. Then spring comes and we feel so much better when the evenings draw out and we go to work in the daylight, new life has emerged.
We as Christians thank God for the new life he gave us when we put our trust in Jesus.
In the Bible it says in John Chapter 10 verse 10 Jesus says that ‘I come that they might have life and have it to the full’. Everything we could possibly need is there for us in Christ Jesus.
He is the God of all comfort, in Matthew Chapter 5 verse 4 He says’ Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.’
Hebrews Chapter 13 verse 5 says ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’
Psalm 46 verse 1 says ‘God is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble’.
So new life and all these things are offered to us in Christ Jesus if we choose to put our trust in him.
Barbara Garry
King’s Lynn Christian Fellowship
Author: andymoyle
God Delusion
In his best-selling book, “The God Delusion,” (2006), Richard Dawkins sets out his reasons why belief in God is ridiculous and irrational. Whilst the book’s popularity evinces that many concur, for me and two billion others across the globe, the God of the Bible, who became man in the person of Jesus Christ, is still very much alive, real and at work for good in the lives of those who let Him in.
I admire those people who, instead of dismissing God outright, take time to explore and question for themselves – those who are unsure, yet open-minded enough to ask the questions, brave the outcome. Many agnostics have set out to disprove God (C.S. Lewis perhaps the most well-known) and found themselves, instead, enjoying a life-giving relationship with the very God they were convinced did not exist.
So what stops people, what makes them so sure it’s all a delusion? Suffering and evil? What if our very ability to recognise and categorise these ills point to a God-given intuition that things should be better (as there were once at Creation and will be again in heaven)? The inability to ‘prove’ God exists? Fair, but if we could weigh, measure, see, touch and categorise God, then we would be denied the joy of learning to grow our faith and trust in Him. Christians who give God a bad name? Guilty…we are not perfect and make mistakes, sometimes big ones, as we learn and change and grow.
We understand your doubts. We have them ourselves at times. But don’t let them stop you coming, don’t let them stop you asking. Visit some churches, do some internet searches, ‘grill’ a friendly Christian – but, whatever you do, if there is even the tiniest question in your mind that God might actually be real and want a relationship with you, don’t let the questions go unasked!
Georgina Tennant
King’s Lynn Christian Fellowship
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is the day the story comes full circle. It starts on Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, with Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem while the jubilant crowd waves palm branches to greet him. Our palm leaves are folded into crosses because a few days later Jesus was crucified. These palm crosses are kept through the year because they tell the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Now, when nearly a year has passed, last year’s palms are burnt to make the ash for Ash Wednesday when our foreheads are marked with the sign of the cross in ash, a sign that this is all about each individual person.
Whatever else we believe about Jesus, the fact of history is that he was crucified because he believed that being willing to die was necessary to show his love for all human beings. Whatever we think about it, that is what Jesus believed. His sacrifice may inspire faith, or indifference, but how we respond reveals much about us.
Many people through the centuries have been willing to give their lives for the good of other people and their sacrifice made life more tolerable for those who came after. Many more people have cared for nothing but themselves, and they have caused much suffering. For all of us, Ash Wednesday can be a reminder that selfishness is the way to misery, but much more, that the love that inspired Jesus is the way to joy.
Canon Christopher Ivory
Kings Lynn Minster
Thinking
“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” Albert Einstein.
Many people who have had therapy will recognise the general principle of CBT which says that our thoughts affect our mood which in turn affects our behaviour. In other words, the way we think will affect our behaviour and how we react to situations around us.
This is something Paul recognised in the Bible. He advised us to “take captive every thought” (2 Corinthians 10:15). Often we find ourselves in difficult situations, thinking ‘I can’t deal with this’ or ‘this problem is too big’, so we get ourselves in a defeated mood before we’ve even started.
As a Christian I’ve found the best way to take these thoughts captive and change how I think about a situation is to read what the Bible says about it. Verses such as “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”, help when I’m feeling weak and “give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you”, for when I’m feeling stressed. In this way I can focus on the good things I have in God and find strength and encouragement to carry on.
If you’re dealing with something at the moment that seems too much for you, try thinking about it differently. Have a look at what the Bible says about your situation, it might be what you need to help change your perspective of it.
Bryn Joslin – KLCF Youth Leader
Back on the treadmil
Standing outside a room until a manager was available to go through some paperwork, I leaned my back on the wall outside his office on this long impersonal corridor. In the badly sound-insulated environment I could hear a range of conversations happening in several rooms. I couldn’t make out any one conversation – just a soup of different noises.
My attention was drawn to the painting opposite me – a print of a watercolour of a vase of flowers. Studying this, the noises in my consciousness faded. I followed the brush strokes and wondered who had made them. The vase was a vivid blue – the flowers multi-coloured. Such beauty and a gradual warmth and detachment grew in me from what was going on around me.
There’s nothing wrong with activity, with our being busy. But it can mean we complain about the waste of time as we stand in the shop queue – or traffic jam. Perhaps it is a time to reflect. To rejoice in NOT being busy!
I reflected that life is, for many of us, full of noises – conversations, machines. Our daily activities of being busy and on the move. What a blessing this time was. Standing still. Nothing to do except listen and look. How calm I felt and I thanked God for this sliver of peace.
Anyway …“Hi John. Come in.”
And I was on the on the treadmill once again!
John Belfield, King’s Lynn Catholics
No caricatures please!
The Pope is obviously a person of deep humanity. We can admire his reaching out to others. He is, like many of us, concerned about the mockery and satirising of religious belief. He compared defending religion to punching someone who might have insulted his mother. There is such a thing as righteous anger. In the New Testament it says Jesus ‘found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple’. We don’t know what injuries Jesus inflicted with his whip of cords or how large this improvised whip was, but he did use force and used it effectively.
Jesus also said ‘Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea.’ A punch on the nose seems a very moderate statement compared to being drowned in the sea. What would any of us do if our mother, or our cherished beliefs were attacked? Pope Francis would certainly not condone killing anyone, but some influential people would like to imply that he would. There is a climate of belittling religions in the name of press freedom, but editorial selection of news is biased in many ways. Let us have the freedom to proclaim our religious beliefs without caricature.
John Cairns.
King’s Lynn Catholic Church
Marie Curie
Recent tragic events in Paris highlight the dangers of dysfunctional theological thinking. Jesus taught us to provide a service for others but he did not tell us exactly how to do this. We must therefore seek out examples of high quality services and learn from them. With this principle in mind I recently visited a Marie Curie Hospice in London.
Marie Curie has 85 years of experience in nursing palliative care patients. Their first hospital, which opened in 1930, treated women with cancer. That hospital was destroyed by bombing in 1944 but subsequently the Marie Curie Cancer Care has developed nursing services and hospices for terminally ill people and their families all over the UK. Marie Curie now provided care and support for more than 40,000 terminally ill people and their families each year and is one of the leading funders of research in this area.
The hospice which I visited is a modern four story building with 34 beds on two floors. Patients are admitted for four possible reasons; assessment, symptom control, respite or terminal care. There is one outreach clinic per week and 6 community teams who, with the general practitioners, care for people at home.
On the day of my visit the hospice was undergoing a three day internal quality inspection by 12 inspectors. Groups of inspectors tackled the five different Care Quality Commission (CQC) principles: Is the service safe, caring, effective, well led and patient centred?
We can provide high quality services by working together.
Peter Coates, Kings Lynn Roman Catholics
The myth of the undeserving poor
The most challenging book I read in the last year is also the title of this article. It’s a book written as a Christian response to poverty in Britain today.
The media rhetoric in austerity Britain has been to categorise the poor into deserving and undeserving, strivers and skivers, hard working and scrounging. Statistics are pumped out and marginal cases sensationalised to make it look like the benefit system is funding lavish lifestyles for many.
Poverty in the UK is complex and actually has four distinct elements – the obvious economic poverty; relational poverty where some lack a family or community support network to help; aspirational poverty where there is a lack of hope or capacity to extricate themselves from their current situation and then spiritual poverty – not knowing the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the glorious Father.
The Church has always been at the forefront of dealing with all those four types of poverty. Facing up to poverty individually and corporately is a complex business – it challenges our culture, lifestyles, busyness, assumptions and comfort zones. Some get angry and defensive, some give money and hope that is all that is required. Some are overcome with compassion and identification. Some get taken for a ride and some give until it hurts.
I do encourage you to buy and read “The myth of the undeserving poor” and think and pray how you individually and your Church community can help alleviate all poverty. It’s available online at The Myth of the Undeserving Poor – A Christian Response to Poverty in Britain Today
Andy Moyle, The Gateway Church
Hope For The New Year
HOPE FOR THE NEW YEAR
At the start of every new year we have new hopes, dreams, plans and ideas for the coming twelve months. What hopes do you have for the year ahead?
Most of us hope the new year will bring better things than we had last year, or the year before. Will the new year bring new friends, a better job, prosperity and more happiness? Or if we are realistic, the year will probably bring the same loneliness, struggles and even more hardship. If the past few years are a guide, the coming year probably won’t be any different. But things need not be like this!
A couple of weeks ago we were in the middle of our Christmas celebrations; a time when the birth of Jesus was remembered. This birth was not just any birth but a very special birth when God’s only Son was born among us and whose life began an amazing series of historical events that changed the world and is still impacting peoples lives today.
Can the events of the first Christmas affect your hopes for the coming year? – Yes. Because of Christmas we can celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and because of Jesus Christ we can have hope; because Jesus came to give hope to those without hope, to give comfort to those in despair and healing for the broken-hearted. Why not find out more about the hope that Jesus has for everyone, including you. You can do this by contacting a local christian church, where you will be given a
friendly welcome by those who have already found hope in Jesus that lasts year after
year.
Geoff Duncombe
The Gateway Church, King’s Lynn
Annie Lennox’s Birthday
I was listening to Bill Turnbull and Louise Minchin the other morning as they interviewed Annie Lennox, the singer. Apparently Annie’s birthday is on Christmas day and she was bemoaning the fact that she is “always eclipsed by Jesus Christ.” I thought to myself that if I had been there, I would have suggested that she is not the only one to be eclipsed by Jesus! In fact I would suggest that He eclipses every person who has ever lived! As we approach Christmas – again, if we can see beyond all the trappings and commercialism of the season, we will be celebrating the birth of a man whose effect on the world, not only during his lifetime but in the 2000 or so years since, has been little short of astonishing.
The words of those who met Him speak volumes; as he calms the storm on the Sea of Gallilee with a word, they exclaim, “What sort of man is this that even the wind and waves obey him?” As he taught the crowds they say, “No man ever spoke the way this man does!” The bible records “They were amazed at his teaching.” When a major earthquake hit Jerusalem as he was crucified, a hardened Roman centurion exclaimed, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”
But most exciting of all, having taken upon himself God’s judgement for our sin and in doing so, dying a horrific death, he proclaims after his resurrection “Because I live, you will live also!”- his promise to his followers of eternal life! This greatest man of all time, the Son of God, eclipses everyone!
Tim Porter
King’s Lynn Christian Fellowship