Preparation

The season starts here.

This is the week when the players return for preseason training, something that largely determines where they get to in the football season to come.

It is 30 plus degrees today.  It is a long way from a winter's night in Hartlepool.

There is grass, but goalposts and lines will be replaced with cones and slalom posts.

No crowd roars, cheers or jeers.  Maybe an odd(!) chaplain stands and watches sympathetically (not empathetically).

In itself it is pointless.  Grass, running, a field, sweat.  It is all about the prize of victories (and bonuses) in the autumn, winter and spring.

The work of God's people on earth is not the end but a means to an end.  Making disciples really means calling people to pre-season training!

Paul wrote: I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.  Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last for ever.  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.

Duke

Congratulations to the Duke of Edinburgh who was 90 yesterday.  Is he really 90?  I fear he looks no older than me . . .

He tried to sound 90 in his interview,

"I reckon I've done my bit so I want to enjoy myself a bit now, with less responsibility, less frantic rushing about, less preparation, less trying to think of something to say," he said. "On top of that, your memory's going - I can't remember names and things."

In the light of which it is somewhat strange that his wife bestowed upon him a new name/title to remember - that of Lord High Admiral, a title that was hers until yesterday. 

Isn't that marriage?  You get to your 90th birthday and for a present the wife decides you should be doing one of her chores to help her out . . .

Time

The British (though strangely no individual Briton I have met) are quite keen on ancient peculiarities.  We had a dose of them at the Royal Wedding recently when the Archbishop, dressed in finery that threatened to outshine the bride but bespeaking some other century, led the couple in thees and thous, past a betwixt and a wedlock and generally reminded us of the glories, if such they be, of ancient Church of England liturgy. 

You can get an ancient peculiarity daily in Oxford Cathedral (which, were I an Anglican, would be my diocesan mother church).  For Oxford cathedral keeps Oxford time, not Greenwich Mean Time or British Summer Time like the rest of the nation.  So the 11:00am service starts at 11:00am Oxford time, which was five minutes later than London.  So, unless you've adjusted your watch, it will be 11:05 to you.

It's all a bit of odd fun, isn't it?

Mmm.  Yet in the field of human life there are few things more important than than marriage, the public commitment of a man and a woman to stay together faithfully until parted by death.  If there is something more important it might be a service of worship at which humans gather to address, and be addressed by, their God and Saviour.  So why, I wonder, are these things the ones that are anachronistic?  Why make these the museum pieces?

Although, of all the things that happen in Oxford, only the worship of almighty God is stuck in this time warp the real peculiarity is this - that worship of almighty God is the only thing happening in Oxford that will also happen in a New Order of things when time itself is history . . .

Buttons

That morning Hudson Taylor had donned his customary frock-coat, as befitted a Victorian English gentleman, and started another day of brave, even reckless, Christian ministry. Here he was in the depths of China, a place forbidden to foreigners, far beyond the reach of consular support. Yet as he preached in town after town along the inland waterways he found that his foreignness guaranteed him an audience. And that, after all, is what every preaching missionary needs.

Irritatingly his foreignness seemed to be more alluring than the message itself. And on this, as it was to be, historic day pairs of eyes were transfixed upon him. Before the question, the wonderfully polite man had explained that they understood the usefulness of the strange things (buttons) on the front of his jacket. They were there to go through the holes and somehow hold the clothing together in the cold wind. But, the foreign teacher was asked, "What can be the meaning of those buttons in the middle of the honourable back?"

A lesser missionary might have laughed off the question about his decorative buttons. Hudson Taylor was not such a man. The question haunted him as he made his way to the next location. He resolved to dispense with the niceties of western regalia and adopt clothing, and habits, that were the best suited for his purpose of pointing the people of inland China to Jesus.

What a different place the world would be if Christians and their Church had more frequently dispensed with ornamental buttons!