Mary Slessor

Today is the anniversary of the death of Mary Slessor in 1915.  Brought up in a poor family that had been impoverished by death and her father's resultant drinking, Mary was a child worker in a Dundee jute mill.  

Her only escape was her weekly Sunday and church.  Unlike the escapes that 21st century life offers, this one inspired her to look to do great things for God.  In time, armed with the toughness bred by her story, she was an unlikely lone female arriving in West Africa at a mission station as a nurse.  The rest, as they say, is history. 

In her home city of Aberdeen, in Dundee, on Scottish bank notes, but especially in Nigeria (as now is) Mary Slessor is recognised as the means of a revolution in the dignity of women and children - and the means of thousands of lives being protected.  Her fiery, Christ-inspired anger at the killing of mothers of the stillborn, of twins, of the mothers of twins, transformed a society.

Her appointment as the first female British magistrate in any territory advanced the value and dignity of women the world over.  

And, as we almost tire of pointing out, this was and is best achieved, by grasping - as Mary did - the Creator's dignity of his creation and the power of God to change a society by the agency of godly (not religious) people serving him and others.  

As Mary wrote to one of her prayer partners,

"I have always said that I have no idea how or why God has carried me over so many funny and hard places, and made these hordes of people submit to me, or why the Government should have given me the privilege of a Magistrate among them, except in answer to prayer made at home for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way I can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on, the power lies that way."

Aberfan

Yesterday I spoke at a Primary School Harvest Assembly.  One of the songs that was sung - by Year 3  (7/8 year olds) - was All things bright and beautiful.  Perhaps nobody else in the 400 plus people in the room realised the poignancy of singing that hymn this week.

On the morning of October 21, 1966 the primary school children sang it in assembly at the primary school in Aberfan, South Wales.  The assembly lasted from 9:00am to 9:15am.  I was many miles away in eastern England, though would have been an 8 year old in that assembly had Aberfan been my home.

Which is why I've thought about it a lot this week.  For 88 children just like me died at 9:15am straight after that assembly when the National Coal Board's reckless mountain of slag swept down the hillside and buried the school, sending into eternity a generation of my contemporaries, aged 7-9 and 28 adults.

There are many sad ironies about that particular hymn being sung which both at the time and on reflection have occurred to many observers.  Although we often blame Nature (and by extension its Creator who also makes the bright and the beautiful) for disasters, the Aberfan disaster lay squarely on the shoulders of man.  In South Wales at the time all that was dark and ugly in the landscape was man-made and all that was bright and beautiful was created by God.  But the hymn still feels wrong somehow,

Yet maybe today as the old school site has a peaceful memorial garden it is more helpful to think of the bright and beautiful as the long-term and the dark disasters as short term.  Of course they do not seem very short term to a village that lost a generation.  Yet worldwide from Cambodia to Congo to Hiroshima to St Petersburg there are places haunted by ancient awfulness which have returned to a brightness and beauty in their time.

I thought of that a couple of years ago when visiting the mountain retreat of the Third Reich in the Alps.  Beauty outlasts the Beast.  In the end nobody in heaven sings songs of mourning - not even the martyrs.

Staying Safe

However dirty the child might be parents do need to be careful.

Pre Seasons

The new Football League season kicks off at about the time everyone is off on their holidays.  The reason is next summer's World Cup in Brazil and the need for the English season to be wrapped up well before it.

 

Here, then, ends preseason.  This is a strange time of sweaty endeavour to get fit for the winter to come.  In blistering heat the lads run themselves into shape for the wet and windy nights in some football outpost on a Tuesday night in November and blistering heat is a distant, incredible memory.

 

The disconcerting thought occurs to me, though, that the actual season is also a preseason - which is why it starts so early.  Beyond the parochial ranks of the local supporters the big world of football is looking at next summer and the season for which we have just had the preseason is itself a preseason.

This week hundreds of local families in and around Wycombe will have sent their children and teenagers to Lighthouse Holiday Clubs and Fresh Cafe youth nights.  These are brilliant events.  We are very blessed to have them.

 

Certainly one way of approaching Children and Youth ministry is that it is a kind of preseason.  This is alarming for two reasons - the most obvious being that children and young people are real people (and may not make adulthood) and need to know forgiveness and faith right where they are. The second reason is that the attrition between children's ministry and adult faith is appallingly high.  No truism seems less true now than the old maxim, Give me the child for seven years and I will give you the man.

 

I am somewhat of the view that, like the season about to unfold, the whole season of life is preseason.  Admittedly the World Cup with its gathering of the nations under a near equatorial sun seems a distant dream right now.  Yet it is shaping everything about football in months to come.

 

And so our whole life, even to what we misleadingly describe as our last breath, is a season that is really a preseason.  And under the same Son that we now live, the nations will gather for the Real Thing and the momentary things of preseason will give way in the shadow of its glory.

 

Maranatha.

Christmas is a very stressful time . . .

 

The Baptism of Children

I'm not a fan of this because

a) Infants cannot profess repentence and faith
b) Young children express learned phrases and their profession is less secure
c) There are enough things that can go wrong at the front of a church without introducing another one . . . !

Young

Yesterday we had an Evening Service where the average age of the participants was under 20 years old.  And no-one was as old as half my age.  I like that.



I thought about it when I read about the UK Youth Parliament.  I think that is a great idea too.  But what I noticed about that is that it is three days - not three full days mind - in the summer hols.  I am confident no young person I have met even knows it exists.  I am not entirely convinced that most politicians know it exists.

Here's the blurb: 'For the last ten years MYPs from all across the UK have come together to take part in workshops, debates, and develop the UK Youth Parliament’s campaigns for the year ahead at our annual summit.'

Laudable, but definitely not powerful.

When young people - indeed when children - lead times of worship and reflection on the much greater things of God the amazing thing is this: they are often more able and powerful than adults.  And certainly, as heaven looks down, heaven does not think,

'Oh, it's just a Youth-led Service tonight'

Advent - a study in waiting

Fathers' Day

So what? Very many voices declare that fatherhood is simply a poorer version of motherhood which is where true parenting happens. A man - maybe even two men - who behave like a mother are ‘supportive assets’ to children but so might be a single mum’s circle of friends. Parenting and supportive assets are in, fatherhood is history.

History perhaps, but also divine history. In the Bible’s world the pinnacle of relationships was that of a father with his son and it is one of the key pictures of God’s internal being.
What does fatherhood do? A father-son relationship always has a generational future and past whereas a marriage belongs only to one generation. Where there is true fatherhood and sonship these are the questions that are more often and widely asked; ‘How can I shape the future?’, ‘What can I learn from your experience?’. A world where these questions are asked less is a lesser world.

Fathering lacks the bodily intimacy that creation grants to marriage and motherhood. But fatherly love is manifested, among other ways, in a wide and wise strategic interest. At every strategic high point in Christ’s ministry a father’s voice is heard: This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. It sounds to us like a joke but it was a profound old saying that while mother and daughter work in the kitchen, father and son look out of the window. If no relationship gazes beyond, many journeys will never begin.