Great (Hymn) One Liners 12. Conscience

Growing up with evening services I have memories of setting sunlight on pews and sometimes quite doleful evening music with quite doleful evening congregations.  There were, happily, many exceptions to this.  Overall I used to, and still do, prefer evening services to morning ones.  London thankfully has many evening services but there are many English towns with hardly one at all.

So it is rare today that a congregation sings At even e.er the sun was set, a hymn which is full of great lines but strangely the only one of Henry Twells' hymns to make it into 20th century consciousness before the 21st century snuffed it out.

I think a special line, describing gathered worshippers, recognises a genuine mark of holiness:

and they who fain would serve thee best are conscious most of wrong within

Too many of us worship with an attitude of entitlement, but a God-sensitive conscience will never allow this.

For other blogs in this series click on the 'hymnline' tag

Holiday Pics - No 5 Beware Pedestrians

So there in the middle of Falmouth is the narrow shopping street which, fortunately, is pedestrian only.  Except than when you walk down it you have to stay on the sidewalk because so many vehicles are flouting the rules.  Or so you'd believe.  There are buses and vans and cars and motorbikes - often in a line.  It is the least pedestrian-friendly pedestrian only street that I know.

At the end of the street is this sign.  When I read the sign I understood my several years of quiet fury at the hoards of drivers invading the pedestrian space.  They aren't.

Access to off-street parking at any time renders the whole point of a pedestrian street meaningless - after all a thousand cars an hour could head down the street to see if there is a space in a quayside car park.  And they do.  So do the motorbikes (with more hope of a space).  The buses are allowed too.  And taxis.  And for all but five hours vehicles to load.  

It struck me, looking at the sign, that this is exactly the way a person, a family, a nation, creeps into the chaos of rebellion against God:  an exception here, another here, some excuses over there and a permissiveness in a few things too.  Before you know it the semblance of God's ways have become obliterated even though there are signs - perhaps a church spire, or a personal self-identity that say there is faith here.

The exceptions we take to God's plan destroy our ability to enjoy God's plan - which was always the best.  

We look forward to the upcoming further deregulation of Sunday trading and the first smatterings of euthanasia.

In Circles

There is on ancient Celtic poem which reads;

He drew a ring which shut me out

Heretic, rebel, things to flout.

But Love and I had wit to win.

We drew a circle that took him in.

I might be misinterpreting the signs of the times here, but I think that as we move further into the 21st Century and the Information Age we are developing a new taste for drawing circles that shut people out.  It is true that in this country at present we cannot publicly lynch people but we can rapidly turn people into Public Enemy Number One.

That's been difficult in the past week with Jimmy Savile and Jihadi John who cannot both have top/bottom spot at once.  The one being dead and the other distant attention has turned to anybody who may have been in their 'circle'.  So cameras are camped outside a random kind of house in London where Jihadi John once lived and Stoke Mandeville Hospital as if to capture the entrails of guilt that might not have been gathered up with their departure.

To understand Jesus we have to understand that he became as despised and rejected as this.  The circle was drawn with him outside, and by the super-righteous authorities and, eventually, the democratic shout of the crowd.  It is not comfortable.

Yet what is more amazing is the way that God draws circles.  Without any touch of irony or hypocrisy God could comfortably and justifiably draw a circle of holiness that leaves not just Mr Savile and JJ outside but their fellow-humans one and all too.  Heaven had never had a human in it, let alone a former sinful being, and had been rocking along fine.

The story of Easter is that He drew a Circle of Love that included humans - sinful ones - in.

Paul Flowers

For a host of reasons I am reluctant to comment on the evident and alleged sins of others, especially when the media is busy at it.  In the case of Paul Flowers my policy serves me especially well as with each succeeding day I am increasingly bereft of anything to write that adequately expresses my amazement.  Less a case of not casting the first stone; more of being too gobsmacked to think of even looking for one to pick up.

 

 

In this context I was in a service this week where we sang the following words.  They are a translation from the French (well, if you look closely one key word is not translated) by John Wesley.  With his brother's prodigious hymn output it is slightly surprising that he tapped into a European mystic's hymn except that Antoinette Bourignon's words exactly describe the desires for consecrated holiness for which Methodism was born.  It's a long way back from here.  But God is gracious . . .

 

While in this region here below,
No other good will I pursue;
I'll bid this world of noise and show,
With all its glittering snares, adieu!

 

That path, with humble speed, I'll seek,
In which my Saviour's footsteps shine;
Nor will I hear, nor will I speak,
Of any other love but thine.

 

Henceforth may no profane delight
Divide this consecrated soul;
Possess it thou, who hast the right,
As Lord and Master of the whole.

 

Wealth, honour, pleasure, and what else
This short-enduring world can give,
Tempt as ye will, my soul repels,
To Christ alone resolved to live.

Grounded

"You cannot leave the ground where you are", declared the Controller.

The people crowded toward the place where they would set off up into the clouds.

Beyond them, however, smoke and ash billowed forth.  It was going to be a long wait.  Just as well not to try and go up, though.  Health and safety.

Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because Yahweh descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently . . . Yahweh descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up and Yahweh said to him, "Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see Yahweh and many of them perish."

What a hardship people have suffered in the past week trying to get home with a flying ban because of airborne ash from an unprounouncable Icelandic volcano.

But theirs has been a short wait compared to how long we'd have to wait to get up into God's presence.  It's never going to happen, really.  Good that he came down.