Foundling Hospital

Growing up attending Church services yields surprising snippets of information.  This is because during seemingly interminable sermons and sometimes prayers, and lacking the multiple resources of mobile phones, the hymnbook became a permissible and available distraction.  So, for example, I always know (but never need to know) that Charles Wesley lived from 1707 to 1788 because on so many pages a hymn ended;

Charles Wesley 1707-88

More mysteriously an occasional hymn hinted at more exotic origins: Scottish Psalter or Latin 4th Century. And then, in a riddle I have only solved in very recent years, Foundling Hospital Collection. 

This Mothers' Day at Church we thought about the story of London's foundlings, children who were taken in to the Foundling Hospital when a mother could or would no longer care for them.  Great chapel services at the Hospital demanded a hymnbook and this hymn, anonymously written, first appeared there.

We reflected on Psalm 27:10 - Though my father and mother forsake me, Yahweh (the Lord) will receive me.  No human being needs to be entirely abandoned, whatever the vagaries of family or city life may inflict upon them.  It was part of London's story then.  Praise God that in very many ways it remains part of London's story in the 21st century through countless agencies of Christian goodwill to the needy of this metropolis.

Holiday Pics - No 2 The Old Country

The weather isn't very British; the shrubs aren't very British; but what's that?  Nothing could be more British than a red telephone box!

I saw this one in Malta and there were plenty of others there - here's two . . .

Of course we still see them in Britain.  Occasionally.  They are strategically left for tourists to take pictures of them, or rather of themselves beside them.

Perhaps it is a strange thing that places that in other ways have gladly shed their connections to Britain have kept connections with things that Britain has itself abandoned.  If it isn't the telephone boxes it is a random London red double-decker of a kind almost untraceable in London today.

It illustrates how differently we choose to keep rooted or at least referenced.  In London we don't keep red telephone boxes or open back buses, in former connected countries they don't keep the Queen's head on stamps and currency.

In church worship you are more likely to sing an old evangelical hymn during a High Mass or prior to a liberal Bible-denying sermon in a church that kept the hymnbook but gave up trust in the Bible than you are to sing such a hymn in churches that have kept their simple trust in the Bible but given up the hymnbook.

The Curious Incident of the Baptist Beer Barrel (and a Bottle of Whisky)

What might I find in the Church recycling bin?

An old sermon perhaps?  There'll have been a few of those that could be usefully composted I fear.  Some old hymnbooks?  No, you're wrong there.  Churches never throw out old hymnbooks.  Indeed, Christian newspapers contain baleful ads pleading with others to take ancient, useless hymnbooks into new ownership.  I assert you are more likely to find a collection of diamond jewellery in a recycling bin than a hymnbook. 

I suppose  in some churches there might be a weekly wine bottle from the Mass.  In a Baptist Church make that an old grape juice carton.

Yet if there is one thing nearly as unlikely as an old hymnbook in Baptist Church recycling it has to be what we found last week.  A barrel full of beer.  And a bottle full of whisky too!

What did we do?  What could we do?  What should we do?  How could such a thing happen?

We did exactly the same thing as we would have done if we had found old hymn books there.  Concluded it could not have been us, an enemy hath done this,  and called the Police.