Great (Hymn) One Liners 2. God's Hands

 In this series of blogs I'm looking at some of the great lines in hymns and songs in the Christian faith.  Of course these do not carry the weight of great texts from the Bible, but many summarise vast ideas in poetic genius. The series can be selected by using the 'hymnline' tag.

Two things that are easily but wrongly assumed are that:

1. Old hymns have depth and new ones don't

2. People who write many hymns and songs write lines that cannot have lasting significance.

This blog series will debunk Point 1. On Point 2, nearly all hymn/song writers have written vast amounts of material, much of which has long been discarded (in some cases by the writer themselves).

With this in mind my second one-liner in this series comes from my own lifetime - and Spring Harvest, and Graham Kendrick.:

Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered.

No matter that the stars were not flung, this line profoundly describes the bewildering sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ.  

My surrender to him can never match his surrender for me.

Our Church flags: 1. Latvia

Over the years in London we have met people from all over the world.  London (pre-Covid) has been likened to an International Airport, with people from the world crossing one another's paths in most unlikely combinations.

Like other London churches, we often celebrate this by displaying or talking about national flags.  Let me reflect on some we have thought about over the years.

One thing about flags is that you cannot tell how interesting they are by how they look.  Some sophisticated-looking flags have little story and others that look thoroughly uninteresting - like this one - are a story that needs to be told.

What we loved about this flag is that it has a Christian connotation without intending one.  The story goes - and as it is a 700 year old story it is not fact-checkable - that the flag derives from a sheet on which a warrior's body was laid when bleeding.  The white representing the body, the crimson the blood.

And we thought about it in the context of Communion.

Communion, where we might sing the words of Isaac Watts (though this verse from 'When I survey the wondrous cross' is rarely sung)

 His dying crimson, like a robe,

Spreads o'er hi body on the tree;

Then am I dead to all the globe,

And all the globe is dead to me.

No Island is an Island

Her Majesty the Queen and dozens of Commonwealth leaders have gathered in Malta - and with some relief one imagines.  Threats have been issued (of course) and security strengthened (of course) but in the whole scheme of things a small Mediterranean island looks like a good idea just now.

Yet even a modicum of historical awareness suggests otherwise for, as we were reminded during our  family holiday in Malta, this is an island whose history is bathed in blood.  In living memory it was the heroics of the Second World War when, as effectively the allied mid-Med military base the island was mercilessly, but unsuccessfully, attacked by Axis forces.

But the really bloody story of Malta is that of the Great Siege - a historical epic of mind-numbing proportions when the Knights of St John, representing Christian Europe and based in Malta, held out against an Ottoman siege by four or more times as many men through a whole summer.

Soberingly, given the cheap view of life demonstrated recently in Paris, a historian wrote thus, 'The disregard of human life among the Ottoman Turks at this time was almost incredible: to try to attain their end in war they sacrificed thousands upon thousands of men with callous indifference.'

In five hundred years humanity has not learned very much, for all its apparent learning.

Happy Christmas. But get real about it . . .

Gift

Years ago I stood on the streets of an American city giving out leaflets for a Josh McDowell event.

I was not happy. My borrowed car had needed to be returned and I had been given something of a wreck in its place, complete with straw in the back. Diane had been to the dentist and had a sore mouth. I had Hay Fever big-time. The sun was beating down in a way that the British always think we'd like it to until it does and then we don't like it to.

Just standing there was an effort; standing there looking even faintly interested in what I was doing was a BIG effort. The old Christians used to call it 'adorning the gospel', and in those terms I was in a very unpolished state.

Then the girl came by. She looked the part, an elegant friendly-looking young woman. It made the smile easier than usual but still hard to come by.

Then the refusal. This is what she said,

"I don't take anything given away".

Given away!!!??? Hey, girl, I'm suffering here to give this to you (I felt like saying).

This Sunday I'm beginning a series in the Book of Romans in the Bible. It tells us explicitly that God's salvation is given away. Some people, like that girl, don't like that. Yet although it looks free when the preacher, the writer, the evangelist, the teacher, offers the Good News to us we do well to remember that the free offer comes at quite a price; not heat and hay fever but the life and death of Jesus the Messiah.