Bunched

A disconcerting life-fact is the way that the truth of our thoughts comes out a little more when we are wound-up than when we are calm.  My mother has always sounded more Welsh (occasionally repairing into Welsh words even) when she is more worked up.

Yesterday, in the frenetic atmosphere of Prime Ministers Questions (an atmosphere that he himself has encouraged however) Mr Cameron splurged out his collective noun for migrants trying to reach Britain from their staging post in the Calais area.  A bunch of migrants, he called them.

It was part of an insult thrown at Jeremy Corbyn who is unlikely to be much affected by any more insults.  However, plenty of hearers concluded that it was more of an insult to the people wanting to migrate.  There was added poignancy on Holocaust Memorial Day as no other day of the year more accurately reflects the dehumanising of groups of people than that day.  In Jerusalem great care is taken to record as best as is possible the names of everyone who was killed in the Holocaust precisely because in their death they were simply a bunch of Jews.  Here is the Hall of Names:

I am struck by the story told by the Lord Jesus.  (He, remember, was a Nazarene [i.e. one of the bunch from grotty Nazareth] - oh, and God manifest in the flesh).  There were, his story goes, a bunch of sheep.  Strangely the shepherd - the god-figure - leaves that bunch and goes across hill and valley to find one lost sheep.

So it wasn't the outsider that was God's bunch but those in the fold.  Kind of like Ali (who has a degree in Economics and a masters in Business and who owned a chain of supermarkets in Syria) who is on Calais waiting to join a bunch of Britons, David.

Building

The old riddle goes:  why is it called a building when it has been built?  It's a difficult one to answer but London contains some clues.

On any map of Britain there is an enormous, usually grey, blob toward the bottom right with LONDON written over it.  A glance at the map legend will confirm that the grey represents  'Built Up Area'.  Living and working here it is quickly apparent that this is not strictly true.  It is in fact a Building Area.

Take our Church premises for example.  Behind it is a building site of some proportions, the property next door to the left as you look at it has been rebuilt on the inside this past year, round the corner to the right there is large building works on both sides of the road, and looking across London from that same hilltop position you can see as many cranes as high rise buildings.

None of this begins to compete with Central London and Crossrail with vast chunks of prime junctions and thoroughfares turned into building sites.

It is the curse of every vibrant city that it is a building rather than a built site.  Perhaps the word was coined in some such city.

It was pre-thought in the Scriptures however about something even more exciting:

The Lord Jesus is the living stone. The people of the world decided that they did not want this stone. But he is the one God chose as one of great value. So come to him.  You also are like living stones, and God is using you to build a spiritual house. 

I Peter 2:4,5