Don’t worry

“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” are the last words of Colonel John Sedgewick during the US Civil War. Memorable, but stupid! I love looking up famous last words, and was delighted today by Alexei Navalny’s last words in his autobiography.

Navalny was a Russian opposition politician, poisoned with the infamous Novichok. He was treated in Germany, but returned to Russia where he was imprisoned. Three years later he died in suspicious circumstances (like many of Putin’s enemies). Navalny’s last words, at the end of his book, Patriot, are a passage on how not to worry. He knew that he would likely be killed and wrote about the pointlessness of worrying about it. They are a masterclass in how the Christian faith can be the antidote to worry.

He wrote that faith makes life simpler, then asked, “But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself. My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.”

That’s a phenomenally helpful set of last words. First, he asks if his readers have put their trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to know God personally. That’s the foundation. If the reader has, there is nothing left to worry about. Eternity is secure. 

I had a season of great worry twenty years ago and a friend asked me at the time “Will you still be worrying about this in 500 years?… No, then why are you worrying about it now?” That is incredibly freeing. There is literally no point worrying about what might happen. 

Navalny used the words of Christ – don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom once said that “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” Leave worrying about tomorrow for tomorrow. And to help us today, the Apostle Peter exhorts us to “Cast all our anxieties on Him, for he cares for us.”

Our days are better spent as Navalny encouraged seeking the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and not worrying about the rest!

Andy Moyle

The Gateway Church

QEH Sacred Space

I have a very privileged job, not only do I accompany people from all sorts of walks of life on their journeys through the health system, but I also get to do so alongside many people from different cultures, countries and faith perspectives. In 2024 the Sacred Space inside the QEH has hosted displays and heard people talk passionately about some of the major religious celebrations and festivals from around the world as well as major occasions in this country.  Holi, Hannukah, Easter, D-Day Commemoration, Remembrance, Christmas, Eid, Onam and Diwali to name but a few.  Within the hospital, at the last count, there were over 130 different nationalities represented amongst the workplace.  The hospital is probably one of the most diverse places to work in the town.  Sometimes the festivals were celebrated with dancing and music and food and sometimes with displays.  Sometimes a solemn service has told a story and sometimes the hubble and bubble of lots of people having conversations have told their own story. 

And for me this is one of the most beautiful things about my job, I get to learn about different people and what makes them tick and I also get to learn about my own faith as well.  I am a Christian, a follower and disciple of Jesus and when he was alive, Jesus was visited by people giving his family gifts, who were not from his own country and who followed stars.  The magi or wise men.  When he was teaching, he healed the servant of a man whose government was oppressing his own. The story of the healing of the Centurion’s servant.  In one of the longest episodes in Jesus’ life he gave teaching to a woman who came from a country that worshipped God in a different way and who came from the country that bordered his.  The story of the Samaritan woman.  And when he died, his cross was carried by a man from Eastern Libya.  Simon of Cyrene.  The list could go on and even more fundamentally than that, Jesus was a Jewish man, born in Israel and he definitely was not British, unlike myself. 

But even if all of that were not true, its still an honour to find out about other people and listen to their stories.  For what I find is that by listening to others tell their stories, you then have the permission to tell your own story.  And by doing that, having that conversation, you probably learn more about yourself and what makes you tick.          

Rev Lee Gilbert, Head of Spiritual care for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kings Lynn 

Light

Light

How we long for light at this time of year.  Each day it slips away far too early, well before we have dealt with all our daytime tasks.  To comfort ourselves we fill our seasonal festivities with lights.

In John’s gospel we hear of the light that enlightens every human coming into the world.  We are all enlightened. How do we experience this?

One of the inspirational early Quakers, George Fox, wrote:  “Now this is the light which you are lighted withal, which shows you when you do wrong … and you know with that when you have wronged anyone, and broken promise, and told a thing that is not so, there is something riseth within you that is a witness against you, and that is the light… If you love this light it will teach you”

Modern believers know that we have a conscience but we associate it with guilt, not seeing it as something to be celebrated.  It’s more of a dirty secret than something that illuminates our lives. 

If we explore the experience of being guided by this inner teacher we can begin to notice what gets in the way of the exposing light that brings things into the open that we might prefer not to see.  It is our fear, our sense of inadequacy, our shame or burden of guilt that cast the shadows.  And also all the many distractions we can find to turn our attention other ways.

This isn’t our own private problem – each and every one of us has the capacity to see clearly. 

In the 17th century there was a Quaker called George Watson living in Upwell who, as a young man, took the King’s shilling and went off to fight in the Low Countries.  Then after a season of fighting and a winter season in camp, he came to realise that he could not, when the time came, take up arms again.  That could not be what God wished him to do, he could see that very clearly.  He defied orders and thought he would be shot, but instead he was left to make his way home through enemy territory as best he could.

One Sunday many years later, having rejoined his Quaker meeting, he listened to some inspirational preaching and once again felt a clear nudge to act.  He made a written confession to his meeting and his testimony is kept in the Norfolk Record Office.  But the burden he was carrying was not that he had been a soldier and, very probably, broken the commandment not to kill.  What he confessed to was that he had received a powerful and irresistible push from God to change what he was doing and he had not shared that experience with others

George Watson came to understand that the point is to support each other in sustaining a practice of letting light into our lives.  It’s not about being “good” (and being ashamed if we are not).  If we are to retain trust in the moments when we allow light to shine upon our inner lives, we do have to remember that everyone carries that amazing inner light and we can relate to each other in ways that reduce the shadows.

Lucy Faulkner-Gawlinski

King’s Lynn Quakers

How can I help you today?

‘How can I help you today?’ asked the pleasant-sounding young man on the helpline. Could it really be that I had got straight through to speak to somebody personally and not have to to wade through pre-recorded messages, pressing of buttons or be subjected to half an hour of muzak while I waited to be put through.  However when he repeated ‘How can I help you today?’ in exactly the same manner, I realised that this was not a real human being, but artificial intelligence. And if I did not respond in an expected way, I would not receive the assistance I required. 

The request ‘I want to speak to human being’  was not understood by the bot. So I though the best approach was to shut up.  Once I did get through to a real person, and expressed my relief after this brush with AI, I was told that I had just met ‘Danny’, the name given to the bot. As I get older, my ability to deal with the modern world seems to diminish. Whether it’s an incorrect item in the bagging area at the self-service checkout or difficulty downloading an app to pay for a parking ticket, it seems you have to conform to the system or you will suffer. 

Life rarely conforms to a system. Life-circumstances are different for each of us; life is often complicated. That’s all part of being human. Only a human being with empathy can begin to understand what life is like for another person, and the problems they have to face. A bot cannot understand or express emotions; a bot cannot comprehend how difficult life can sometimes be; a bot does not care how you feel. 

In the Christmas season, Christians celebrate the coming to this world of God’s son Jesus Christ. We celebrate the incarnation, that the Word of God became flesh and bone and became one of us.  The Christ-child reduces the distance between us and God to an intimate degree. He knows what it is like to be human with all its joy and pain. And so, when we pray to him, we pray to someone who is completely interested in everything we have to say to him. He is here with us, through the Holy Spirit, all the time. We might ask ourselves if he is really there, but he is, he never goes away. Just as he is always there for us, and cares about us, so we must be there for each other, supporting each other. As our modern world becomes more dehumanised, this becomes all the more important.  

Fr Adrian Ling

Rector of South and West Lynn

When do you put up your Christmas tree?

When do you put up your Christmas tree? It’s that time of year…a time of tinsel and fairy lights, the season of streets crowded with shoppers, the smell of cinnamon and the sound of jingle bells…

For Christians it can be of a balance – in the shops we have been looking forward to Christmas since the beginning of October! And yet we are to patiently wait during the time of Advent – a time of watching, waiting. A time which is quite literally a pregnant pause

looking forward to Christmas, when we celebrate God being with us

The birth of Jesus – with all the great Christmas carols that speak of glad tidings and the birth of a new era when we can all rejoice and share the good news

It’s also that time of year when we don’t look too far, when we don’t lift our eyes too high when we are scurrying about (why does it always feel like it’s all at the last minute?!) lest we lay eyes on someone who is not

Who does not fit with all the tinsel, lights and shiny plastic snow scenes. Someone who isn’t jolly, who maybe looks a little lost, for whom this season is not a time to rejoice but rather to retreat…

We don’t really want to see those who will spoil our mood.

And yet, the marginalized, the lost, the widow, the orphan… the littlest and the least are the very people Jesus came to walk amongst. And so we should be alongside.

Everyone needs a stable influence

Revd Kyla Sørensen

Tell everyone about Jesus

There are many opinions about God and questions that could be asked but in our secular society, talking about God has become a taboo subject that restricts meaningful conversations or discussions.

Jesus told his disciples to go and talk about everything that he had taught them, so that the message of Jesus would eventually reach every part of the world and to every generation. This commission that Jesus gave to his disciples is just as important today, in our broken and hurting world.

As a Christian I love to share my faith with others; so what or who is my motivation to share the gospel of Jesus? It is none other than the living Jesus.

There are two principal gifts that God has given to the world that I treasure more than anything.

The first gift was when God gave his precious Son to us as a living sacrifice, instead of us having to kill goats and lambs to find favour with God. The second principal gift was on the day of Pentecost when God sent his Spirit to dwell in the lives of every follower of Jesus.

To me, and to most other Christians, the Holy Spirit, is the very presence of God, dwelling in our lives and who brings inner peace, joy and comfort, in complete contrast to the anxiety, fear and turmoil, that our broken world offers us.

There are a couple of Bible verses that are worth pondering. Verses such as these gives me, and other Christians, real reassurance and hope in what God has promised.

“And you, (believers in Jesus) were also accepted and included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him (Jesus) with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until all those who are God’s possession are redeemed – to the praise of his glory”: (Ephesians 1:13-14).

Based on these verses, here is my tick list:

Am I accepted unconditionally by God without fear of any judgement? Yes – tick.

Am I marked and sealed with the Holy Spirit as belonging to Jesus? Yes – tick.

Is the Holy Spirit God’s deposit or down-payment to me, that guarantees that I will have a glorious inheritance to come? 100% Yes – tick.

Who would turn down these amazing promises from God.

Geoff Duncombe the Gateway Church King’s Lynn

Hope

Thought for the week – by Gerald Hall

At the time of writing there is little good news. There is conflict in Gaza. Iran is threatening Israel. Russia continues to occupy parts of Ukraine and Ukraine is now advancing into Russia. At home riots have raged in many of our cities. People say we should learn from history but the present troubles at home and across the world suggest little has been learnt. Where then can we find hope?

In the Bible Psalm 46 gives hope and I recommend we read it.

Psalm 46

“1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam     and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. 10 He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’

 11 The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught his disciples to begin “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

With these model words of prayer Jesus is telling us that in God’s kingdom in heaven things are a very lot better than they are here on our planet earth.  The Christian hope is eternal life in the joy and bliss of the heaven to come.

So while there may be little good news at present both at home and abroad we should still strive, seek and pray that we may yet see God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.

How to be happy

Nick    If you ask parents what they want for their children it’s not often riches or good jobs, it’s that they want them to be happy.

Sue      Happiness is not that easy to define. Often those who are rich and famous are desperately lonely, and have depression or take drugs to combat it.

N         What makes you happy?

S          Seeing friends, looking at  trees and flowers.  I love looking at our big skies. You?

N         I like taking long walks, spending time with nature – and sometimes talking to God.

S          I’ve been reading Bill Bailey’s  ‘ Remarkable guide to happiness’ and he includes things like being in a caring community – also group singing!

N         So that’s why it’s often said that people live longer if they go to church – all that singing of familiar hymns turns out to be good for us!

S          Well yes but the same could be said of going to a football match.  Two places associated with mass singing is football and church!  I know you read the Bible – does it have anything to say about happiness?

N         Yes a bit.  But it says more about joy.  In the ESV (English Standard Version of the Bible) ‘joy’, ‘ joyful’, and ‘rejoice’ appear 430 times but  ‘happy’ and ‘happiness’ appear 10 times.

S          Is there any difference between happiness and joy?

N         Yes.  Often happiness is based on external situations and it’s transitory.  Joy comes from deep within, ad it’s like a fountain gushing out water that can’t be stopped.

S          How can I find joy?

N         Real joy can be found when you decide to have a personal relationship with Jesus,  and allow him, by the Holy Spirit, to be involved in your life.  Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit ( Galatians 5 :22) and it grows in you as you accept that you have messed up ( the Bible calls this sin) and realise that Jesus died in order to give you a new start.

S          Does that mean I’ll have an easy life and feel happy all the time?

N         No.  Nobody has an easy life on earth.  There’s always plenty to disturb us.  But the joy that Jesus gives goes deep inside to give us a quiet peace even in the middle of our troubles.

Entertaining angels

Just to introduce myself, my name is Lee Gilbert and I am one of the Chaplains at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn and as part of the Chaplaincy role, I get to meet all sorts of different people at all different stages in life.  My main role is to listen to patients.  Hospitals can be scary places and despite having lots of people around you, sometimes lonely places.  Having a friendly face to talk to can be useful for patients and as far as the hospital is concerned, studies have shown that caring for the spiritual aspect of patients, as well as the physical and mental, means that patients tend to get better quicker.  Always useful from a hospital managers point of view. 

But from a Chaplains point of view, I get to meet and learn from many different people.  Most of whom would only probably set foot in a church if there was a very specific reason (i.e. the classic reasons of hatch, match and dispatch!!).  And yet, all those different people, young, old, rich, poor and any other category that you care to mention continually astound me.  They astound me with their resilience, with their fortitude, even with just the different pass times and hobbies that people get up to, with the different jobs and roles in society that people have.  And the one thing that I am constantly reminded about is that all of them have been created by God and all of them have been made in ‘God’s image’.    

There is a verse in the New Testament book of Hebrews that says ‘Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it’. Which for me is the equivalent of that old phrase ‘Do not judge a book by its cover’ and the reason why I am saying that is that often the people who probably astound me the most are those from shall we say an older generation, who have had the most vivid and life affirming lives.  At times, I have to remind myself that this person in a hospital gown (not the most flattering of items, I think we will agree) has had a life, has often a full life and often has much to share.  And so by listening to these people who are strangers, at least initially, perhaps I am showing hospitality to angels without even knowing about it.  I leave you to decide as to whether you are an angel or are entertaining one.         

Christian support for Donald Trump, puzzling?

As I look at the presidential election in America, I get very puzzled, especially with the support for the former president Donald Trump – especially with the support given by Christians.

Donald has openly admitted that he doesn’t need to be forgiven, clearly he doesn’t see himself as flawed  – as certain Christians, like myself do. In his speeches he often makes fun and ridicules his opponents – which other politicians do , but I am feel uneasy about his behaviour.

Why do Christians vote for him? Well he has given them what they wanted, Roe vs Wade re abortion rights, has been overturned. Some religious leaders maintain that you vote for the party in keeping with your beliefs, and here the Republicans score.

Other Christians say that God has raised up unbeliever to do his will, and quote King Cyrus of Ezra 1 – who freed the Jewish captives in Babylonia and allowed them to return to their home land. So people reasoned that God has raised up Trump to do God’s will.

I just have this unease about Trump, I naively expect anyone professing some kind of faith – well you’d expect  a character changed by an encounter with the almighty.

However the relationship which Trump has with Christians is transactional, you give him your vote, he brings in legislation which you wanted.

We all witnessed the horrific scenes with the attempted assassination of Trump, and he has publicly stated that he wouldn’t be with us except for the grace of God. How do you interprete such an event? Was God saving Trump for better things, was God giving Trump another chance? Would there be a change in Trump, only time will tell. But initial signs are not encouraging – certainly if you see how he speaks about his Democratic opponents in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump apparently has around him spiritual advisers, and I’d love to hear what they say to him.

Some of us can remember Watergate and what happened to President Richard Nixon. Nixon had religious advisers, one was John Huffman an evangelical pastor. When questioned as to what advice he had given Nixon in his troubles, Hoffman said “I told Nixon the truth, that he had to be honest with people. I told him the truth because I loved the man”.

But the viewing of Trump  as solving all the problems in American – is like they view him as  messianic figure. Make America Great Again, really means things have changed – that I want things how they were in the past.

It is interesting that Jesus says that his kingdom is not of this world. We are told to pray for those in authority that we might live peaceful lives.

I believe that christians should be salt and light in society, for the betterment of their fellow man. However, I believe that society can only change if the person is changed, what scripture calls the new birth. Anyone who has an encounter with God, must change – or else what does that encounter mean?

Simply put, you don’t trust fallible man, even presidents – but you trust in  God whose business is changing people.

Ken Hubbard