Free News!

There are very many things that you see in London that you are unlikely to see in many, or any, other places in the UK.  

This seems to be such a thing, outside one of our nearby underground stations.  A Jewish Newspaper stand.

The big word FREE also made me think.  The message of Jesus the Messiah is surely the most wonderful free news ever to be disseminated to the world from the Jewish people, and we pray that many of them, as well as others, in London and beyond may learn to embrace it by faith.

Barsanuphius

I'm not the greatest authority on Saints Days but today being that of Barsanuphius I thought he deserved some attention. In fact attention was exactly what he didn't have as he disappeared for 50 years as a hermit and communicated by correspondence only. That has a certain appeal as a lifestyle when faced with an unsympathetic culture, but he also wrote many things that offered wisdom to those more engaged with the world than he . . .

Do not demand love from your neighbour, because you will suffer if you don’t receive it; but better still, you indicate your love toward your neighbour and you will settle down. In this way, you will lead your neighbour toward love.

Don’t exchange your love toward your neighbour for some type of object, because in having love toward your neighbour, you acquire within yourself Him who is most precious in the whole world.

Forsake the petty so as to acquire the great; spurn the excessive and everything meaningless so as to acquire the valuable.

Shelter the sinner if it brings you no harm. Through this you will encourage him toward repentance and reform — and attract the Lord’s mercy to yourself. With a kind word and all possible means, fortify the infirm and the sorrowful and that Right Arm that controls everything, will also support you. With prayers and sorrow of your heart, share your lot with the aggrieved and the source of God’s mercy will open to your entreaties.

Do not distinguish the worthy from the unworthy. Let everyone be equal to you for good deeds, so that you may be able to also attract the unworthy toward goodness, because through outside acts, the soul quickly learns to be reverent before God.

Do not annoy or hate anyone – neither for faith, nor for his evil deeds… If you want to convert someone to truth, then grieve over him, with tears and love say a word or two to him, but do not burst out in anger, and may he not see any sign of hatred on your part, because love is not able to hate, or become irritated, or reproach anyone with passion…

Tallulah

This week we read the great story of the missing tortoise, a story with a good deal more to teach about life.

Tallulah the tortoise went on a six month journey - amounting to 350 yards - from her Oxford home to a nearby school.  On Homelessness Sunday we ask - when was she homeless?

One answer is never - she carries her home with her!  But this wasn't quite as good as it seemed because she had become less than fully fit without the care of her owners.

Another answer is that she became homeless the moment she left the garden via a fox hole.  Though it is difficult to argue that if she had returned through the hole the next day.  It would have been a day trip rather than homelessness.

A third answer is that she became homeless at the point when her owners gave up looking for her.  This seems close to the truth though the microchip they had given her meant that even after they had stopped looking, she was capable of being returned home as she shortly will be.

Homelessness seems to me to be something about having no-one looking out for you - and no microchip.  You may have a very nice house and car and fine life or none of these things.  But you do not have a home.

It is the inestimable privilege of the child of God that, whether they have gone through an unfortunate fox hole or not, they always have a home.  Someone always has them on His heart.

Making Tomorrow a Better Place

This has not been a good weekend for Carillion, a megalithic construction company whose strap-line is (was) Making Tomorrow a Better Place.  Tomorrow (i.e. today) turned out to be a liquidation place.

Growing up on a fairly grim estate in a quiet town in post war decades I was not pessimistic about life but nor was I fooled into unfounded optimism by it.  It was with mild amusement that we heard distant stories of American preachers in Drive Thru churches churning out endless here-and-now optimism in exchange for a donation and a cheap pen by return. 

With a little envy, it must be said, we observed the 1970s arrival of Schuller's Crystal Cathedral, which might have been characterised as the Reformed Church of America's Southern California Church Plant but was more accurately Rev Schuller's entrepreneurial possibility-thinking mega project.  Today the old structure is a Roman Catholic Cathedral and the Reformed Church of America is as distant from influence in Southern California as it was when he started. Dream it and you'll have it, turned out to not be right at all.

Far from making tomorrow a better place, Carillion has succeeded only in leaving unbuilt roads, unfinished hospitals, bills for the taxpayers and unemployment and threats of bankruptcies to employees and other smaller businesses.

The contrast with the Gospel is amazing.  In its earthly promises the Gospel is full of challenge.  Yes. it will be amazing in its results but it will also be tough.  There will be persecution, misrepresentation, ostracism and cross-bearing of all kinds on the way.  All the sweeping promises of unmixed joy are for a New Order of things that we will likely not see until we see them on the dawning of a New Day.

It seems to me that if God himself does not promise an earthly fix of unbridled sunshine, it is singularly unwise to trust the human beings and agencies that peddle it.