Friday 16 January 2015

Compassion

Taken at the Benedictine foundation at the traditional site of the miracle of the feeding of the 4000
Mark 8: 1 - 5
The miracle of the feeding of the four thousand starts from the place of God's compassion. Jesus sees a crowd of hungry people and turns to his disciples and says 'I want to feed this rabble because I care so much about them'. The disciples are horrified: how can we do this, we do not have the resources, we have barely enough to feed ourselves. The story that unfolds tells of a miracle, of the multiplication of those scarce resources. It says to me that our response, as a small church, to the needs in our community is not good enough. We say 'we can't do it, we don't have the people or the money.'

My question is, where is the need in our community, who do you discern God has compassion for?

A while back a local pastor wrote these prophetic words for our church community, 'Guard yourselves well and make it your aim to be fruitful and feed others with the fruit you grow.'

I pray we can make headway with this task in the year to come.

Thursday 1 January 2015

New year reflections


At this time of year I am often reminded of the story behind King George VI's 1939 Christmas broadcast. Those of us who watched The King's Speech will remember seeing the dramatisation of his speech to the nation at the outbreak of World War II, but this broadcast is possibly better known, because it included some lines from a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins.

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

The story is that Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, had seen the poem and brought it to the attention of the king, and after it was read out on air (much to the surprise of its author) it quickly caught on in popular imagination. The poem was later read at the Queen Mother's funeral in 2002. I used to have a copy of it that I kept as a bookmark for many years. Some believed Minnie Haskins was American or Canadian, but in fact she came from the Bristol area, and was a Congregationalist who studied and lectured at the London School of Economics, and published a few books of poetry as well.

Surprisingly, the poem was written many years previously, having been published in 1908,yet it captures perfectly the sense of dread that must have been felt by so many in the early days of the Second World War, when Britain and the Empire were isolated, and the fear of what could happen if Germany invaded our nation made the future seem very bleak.

The poem reminds us that when we are faced with an unknown future there is only one remedy, and that is to put our trust in God. Too often fear can be paralysing, and stop us moving forward, but we are told to go forward boldly into the darkness, because it is only there that we will find the guiding hand of our God. The rest of Minnie Haskin's poem is not well known, but is worth reading. I would like to quote one more verse, which includes the original title to the poem, God knows.


God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.