Just Me

At the beautiful memorial service for a lady from our Church today we heard read once again that most familiar of Christian funeral passages, John 14.  Including the simple phrase said by Jesus to his disciples, "You believe in God; believe also in me."  It is so simple and yet so profound.  How easy it is to associate the Christian faith with a great deal of activity or an accumulation of knowledge or family connections or heritage or musical inclinations or local meetings in a community.

It is about Him.  It is about trusting Him.  It is as available on the deathbed as the Sunday School, in the workplace or the clinic on the aircraft in the pulpit.  

You can be a Christian if needs must without almost everything - just not without Him.  The disciples Passion Week mistake centred on the catastrophic decisions they made to dispense with Him.  Running away they chose safety instead, in Judas Iscariot's case money.  And when they got there - that is, away from Him - they found they had nothing really.

Trust in ME.

Too Late

London has many leftovers from World War II and only this year more than one unexploded bombs have been discovered in the course of building work.  

London is also full of mysteries and many books have been written about them.  These include tunnels nobody has ever used, an underground station that was built but never opened, a railway station only for funeral trains and so on.

Here's a picture of Putney Bridge Station.  Unremarkable one may think, as a southbound train heads off across the Thames.

But wait a minute.

Isn't that a bunker to defend the station?

This seems doomed to remain a permanent mystery.  A cursory glance at a London map will confirm that if the storm-troopers of the Third Reich had reached Putney Bridge there was not a lot of London left to defend (and certainly the District line might as well have been written off).

We live in a culture that has many defences like this.  We jealously protect little children having surrendered any serious attempt to similarly defend teenagers who are left to go in whatever direction things take them.  We protect those teenagers from the worst abuses only to leave them from the age of 18 to live life with every vice and no guidance at all.  We provide universal healthcare to bring us safely to old age whereupon we become unwanted, unloved and very expendable.

Most of all, we have human rights but no idea why it matters that we are human.

All in all, it is not only Putney Bridge Station that has inexplicably strong defences in the wrong place.

The Love that leaves

Today we celebrate the birthday of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, London's greatest ever Baptist preacher by a mile and then some.  

Though his great appeal was to the soul of the ordinary man as well as to the social needs of a great but exploitative city, he was not willing to watch some other clever or compromising Baptists demolish the basis of the faith that has served the Gospel so well.  

However in this key passage at the start of the divisive Downgrade Controversy he demonstrates the reluctant pain with which believers who believe the Bible part company from those who state they believe the Bible (or that they believe the Bible but it doesn't mean what it plainly says).

It now becomes a serious question how far those who abide by the faith once delivered to the saints should fraternise with those who have turned aside to another gospel. Christian love has its claims, and divisions are to be shunned as grievous evils; but how far are we justified in being in confederacy with those who are departing from the truth? It is a difficult question to answer so as to keep the balance of the duties. For the present it behoves believers to be cautious, lest they lend their support and countenance to the betrayers of the Lord. It is one thing to overleap all boundaries of denominational restriction for the truth's sake: this we hope all godly men will do more and more. It is quite another policy which would urge us to subordinate the maintenance of truth to denominational prosperity and unity. Numbers of easy-minded people wink at error so long as it is committed by a clever man and a good-natured brother, who has so many fine points about him. Let each believer judge for himself; but, for our part, we have put on a few fresh bolts to our door, and we have given orders to keep the chain up; for, under colour of begging the friendship of the servant, there are those about who aim at robbing the Master.