Para-translation

The Paralympics are a great tribute to Great Britain which seems so much more able to celebrate diversity and integrate disability than many other cultures.  I suspect this has much more to do with its Christian Heritage than the Big Bang that the opening ceremony lauded but, hey.

Samuel Sherechewsky was also suffered from becoming largely paralysed.  He was in the process of  translating the Bible into Wenli Chinese so paralysis was apparently terminal to that task.  Yet he had a typewriter made to construct the characters necessary and with his one useful finger continued the task.

He sat for twenty years.  Of course this is not what was to be expected of the Bishop of Shanghai.  His life that had carried him to China from Lithuania via the United States had certainly not been sedentary before. "It seemed very hard at first", he reflected, "but God knew best.  He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted."

Losing when winning

Home from holiday!

Among many visits we visited a house that had a plate in the bedroom just like the one below.  It had been owned by a successful businessman who had lost his faith (having previously intended to be a priest) - he then lost his house to the National Trust but that was a smaller loss according to the plate. 

It reminded me of the British Olympic Gold Medalist Triple Jumper Jonathan Edwards who I had just seen talking on television about his own loss of faith.  He found virtue in the thought that his faith had really helped him to win the Gold Medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - "It was where I was at the time - it's not where I am now" - 'it does seem incredibly improbable there is a God'.

Ah well - better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Or maybe not.

We shouldn’t need to keep talking about why we ought to turn from deeds that bring death and why we ought to have faith in God. And we shouldn’t need to keep teaching about baptisms or about the laying on of hands or about people being raised from death and the future judgment. Let’s grow up, if God is willing.  But what about people who turn away after they have already seen the light and have received the gift from heaven and have shared in the Holy Spirit? What about those who turn away after they have received the good message of God and the powers of the future world? There is no way to bring them back. What they are doing is the same as nailing the Son of God to a cross and insulting him in public! [Hebrews 6, CEV]

Just a Second

These two scenes from yesterday have something in common.  Two women crying almost uncontrollably.  Ah, well. Such is life.

But no.  They have something else in common.  They have just both won silver medals.  Gemma in Judo, Victoria in Gymnastics.  You can see how upset they are to have not won gold.

But no again.  Gemma Gibbons (top) is crying with joy.  Victoria Komova is crying with dismay.

Same Olympics, same medal, same intensity of emotion, opposites.

Cometh the day when we all see humanity's Messiah.  His the Golden Glory, ours the silver lining as the consequence of being human but second best dawns on every other one of us.  For all humanity tears.

Tears of joy or the opposite.