Searching

The house seemed strangely empty.  My daughter, Lizzie, had gone to Manchester for a couple of weeks.  I had expected to enjoy the peace and quiet – just me and the dogs – but I missed her and the baby, and I felt lost and unsettled.  As I cooked my solitary omelette, I noticed two paper sheep, coloured in by my granddaughter at a family service.  They’d been hearing the Bible stories of ‘The Lost Sheep’ and ‘The Prodigal Son’.  I noticed them, possibly, because, that morning I had only just read the last verse of that great long Psalm 119.  It said, ‘ I have wandered away like a lost sheep – come and find me, for I have not forgotten your commands.’

I thought about my own five children, grown up now, all baptised and confirmed, but only one is still ‘in the fold’; two of them would say they believe and occasionally pray, and of the other two, one can’t be bothered, and the other, who used to be the most ‘spiritually aware’ of all my children, seems to have turned his back on God altogether.  Nevertheless, I see in him such an aching longing for meaning, for purpose, and understanding.  He’s searching for answers in science, physics, and philosophy.  He pushes himself to extremes, whether at work, or at leisure –skiing, surfing, the occasional parachute jump or flying lesson, scuba diving;

He called in here for a quick coffee at the weekend.  ‘How are you?  What’s new?’  I asked.  Well, the latest is that he’s planning a trip to the Philippines, diving on ship wrecks, and in an underground lake in a cave system.  They will enter via a borehole, crawl through narrow, wet tunnels, and dive into the lake.  The next cave system can only be reached by a narrow, underwater entrance, which emerges into a great cavernous, cathedral – like  space. To get out, they must turn around and go back the way they came.

At the risk of sounding a bit ‘kill-joy,’ I said ‘But WHY?  What on earth makes you want to do such dangerous things?’ “I suppose it’s like pushing the boundaries of my existence,” he replied.  “It’s as though I’m on the edge of something amazing, but it’s never quite amazing enough!”

How I long for him to find Jesus – or should I say, for Jesus to find HIM, and all those others like him? My prayer is; ‘Don’t wait too long, Lord – it’s a dangerous world out there; look at Amy Winehouse, and all those young people in that Norwegian Youth Camp!  Please keep our children in the palm of your hand.  Guide their steps; send angels to protect them, even though they don’t yet acknowledge you.  Turn them around to look into your face; awaken them to your infinite love.  Amen.

I love the way scripture puts into words exactly what’s in your heart.  How about this?  ‘O Lord, you have searched me and you know me…. You are familiar with all my ways… Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn – if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.’ (Excerpts from Psalm 139 vs 1 – 10

If we don’t teach our families about God, who on earth will? “We will not hide these truths from our children, but will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord…his laws and decrees, so they might know them – even the children not yet born, that they, in turn, might teach their children, so each generation can set its’ hope anew on God.”

(Excerpts from Psalm 78 v 4 – 7)

Home

Two weeks ago, we rode that great roller-coaster ride of emotions, and settled my darling old Mum and her identical twin into a Care Home.  They are ninety three, and disability, dementia, and yet another fall finally tipped the scales, bringing us to that decision which we always swore we would never make.  The loving care which they need and deserve, we have now delegated to others, which releases us to visit them more often with a new found freedom from anxiety.
In the Home, everything is clean, new, and of the best quality; the staff are cheerful, compassionate, and understanding.  They bring us a tray of tea and chocolate biscuits to the sitting room where we find the twins, identically dressed, sitting arm in arm on the sofa.  There is a clarinet recital going on.  An elderly musician with greying ginger hair, his toupe’ slightly askew, is winding down to the end of his repertoire.  We all clap.  The twins loved it and looked happy and relaxed for the first time in ages.
My two brothers and I decided we would take them for a wheel chair ride around the park, which means going down in the small lift, two at a time.  My Mother suffers from claustrophobia, so I said ‘Close your eyes, Mum, say the Lord’s Prayer slowly, and we’ll be out in no time at all.’  I pressed the large round button.  The lift dropped about two feet and jolted to a halt just below floor level.  I pressed it again – another jolt!  I felt suddenly hot and slightly panicky.  Mum was going through the Lord’s prayer for the third time, with her hands over her eyes.  I pressed and held the button and we bumped to the ground floor, but the doors didn’t open!  Mum’s voice rose to a hysterical crescendo, ‘Thine be the kingdom, the power, and the glory…’  There was only one button in the lift and it wasn’t doing anything!  I peered through the small glass panel to see an empty corridor.  I banged on the metal door – Mum’s claustrophobia invading my being, my hands shaking and clammy.  ‘Can somebody help?’ I shouted.  ‘It’s alright Mum, say it again!’, I said breathlessly.  Then I heard my brother’s voice –‘It’s OK, Jane, I’m getting the Janitor!’         The Janitor apologised profusely and said that he, too, was a claustrophobic twin, and didn’t like that lift either!
With great relief, we stepped outside, across a neatly paved forecourt, through wrought iron gates, and into the quiet peace of the park.  The lawns, newly mown, stretched away like velvet, dappled by sunlight filtered through the leafy canopy above.  The twins thought they were back in the Rectory garden of their childhood home in Yorkshire.  Three Labradors ran up to lick the thin, blue veined hands, outstretched to greet them, then bounded away down the path.  ‘Can we go home now?’ they asked.
We settled them back into their own room.  My daughter, Lizzie and her baby arrived to visit.  ‘Who’s she?’ they asked.  ‘Hello Granny, it’s me, Lizzie.  It’ll soon be your birthday, won’t it?’ ‘Oh, No!  Will it?’ they replied, aghast. ‘ How old are we?’ ‘You’re going to be 94, Granny!’ ‘What?! Ninety Four?’.  They turned to look at each other as though looking in a mirror. ‘Heavens!’ they gasped. ‘ We might as well be dead! But what we want to know is…WHEN can we go HOME!
My heart aches as I write this, and it goes out to those who are struggling about making this same decision about a much loved relative.  I draw comfort from Mum’s unshakable Christian faith, and from the scripture I read this morning from 2 Corinthians, chapter 5:1 – 10.
‘For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down – when we die and leave these bodies – we will have a home in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.  We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long for the day when we will put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will not be spirits without bodies, but we will put on new heavenly bodies.  Our dying bodies make us groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and have no bodies at all.  We want to slip into our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by everlasting life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee, he has given us his Holy Spirit.  So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies, we are not at home with the Lord.  That is why we live by believing and not by seeing.  Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord….. ‘  (Life Application Study Bible)

Abundance in disappointment

Trinity 3 

Isaiah 55.10-13 :  the word of the Lord is sent forth to bear fruit
Romans 8. 1 – 11 :  Christ sets us free to live according to abundant grace
Matthew 13.1-9, 18 -23:  The Parable of the Sower

I am writing this on 4th July, so I have come across some comments on the USA, particularly the following comment in the Telegraph :
“What is needed above all is optimism: it is a prerequisite for the risk-taking needed to invest and start new businesses. Its absence could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy as belief in American decline helps ensure that the halcyon years are indeed in the past.”  (Toby Harnden)

How do I find this connects with the Gospel ? It connects because the Gospel is about the abundant yield of the harvest despite the disappointments along the way; much of the seed is lost or comes to nothing, but there is still enough to yield a great result. And yet, if the sower just thought about all the seed which would not germinate, he might get discouraged and not get on with the job of sowing. So it is that Jesus says to us, “don’t worry about failure, go out with the good news and be confident of success, despite setbacks.”  Often it is the fear of failure that holds us back from mission, and hinders growth.

Within our six parishes, there are many forms of outreach to the wider community. And Hugh has pointed out for us a link which gives many encouraging examples of how churches do not just preach the good news, but live it out, bringing new hope and new life to the communities that they serve : http://www.justmap.org.uk/

And yet optimism is not everything.  Jesus also speaks of himself as the seed which has to die in order to bring about new life (John 12.24 ); so also radical transformation of the church can sometimes feel like a “dying” of the patterns of the past. We need a strong faith and abundant prayer in order to know what to let go of, and what to carry with us into the future. The future will certainly have its challenges for our group of churches : there is a time ahead of us when the numbers of ordained ministers will be much less than we have at the moment.   Yet if we make use of all our resources, and respond to the calling which God is bringing to us, then we can be sure that the Lord will provide, and with an abundance that is beyond our imagining.

A parable means “something which is thrown alongside.”   It is a story or an example thrown alongside life, in order to open our eyes to see things in a new way, or to disclose to us the way in which God is at work. The parables of the Good Samaritan, and of the Prodigal Son, are wonderful examples. Coming back to the Sower, I would like to conclude by sharing with you a couple of poems I have written, which have been prompted by this parable.

Peal of Six
Together we grow,
Six thrown together,
not entirely by chance:
partly by accident of proximity;
and then by churchly strategy
t
o make the funds go round…

Even chance, you know,
can be a thing of beauty,
if we so will,
and grace is with us.
Humankind is full of chance,
to this family, to that
a child is given
and will grow,
please God,
we know not how,
and what we do
is not the end of it.

If we can listen and reach out -
one to another -
we may yet become
what in my mind’s eye
I would hope for us to be:
a peal of bells, each with its own
distinct and gifted quality
but so much more when
adding to the chime
that sets the fields and
hillside ringing
with bridal music
bursting and fading on the ear
with tones of joy.
Words….
Our mouth is a crazy scatter-gun of words,
some useful, some hateful, some profound
some better swallowed whole
than widely distributed.

If each word were a seed,
what kind of crops would we sow ?
I suspect a right tanglewood it would be !

I wonder…. if the Word was made flesh
to deliver us from all our words;
To call us to the centre of ourselves,
to know a stillness in our lives.

If we surrender our words to the Word -
“Lord take my lips that I may speak”-
we will then become a different kind of vessel
anointed, hallowed, like the Name we hallow daily.