When the World was Dark - a Christmas intercession

When the World was Dark

And all was quiet

You came

You crept in beside us.

And no one knew.

Only the few

Who dared to believe

That God might do something different.

Will you do the same this Christmas Lord?

Will you come

Into the darkness of tonight’s world;

Not the friendly darkness

As when sleep rescues us from tiredness,

But in to the fearful darkness,

In which people have stopped believing

• that war will end
• or that food will come
• that government will change
• or that the church cares?

Will you come Lord, into that darkness

And do something different

To save your people from death and despair?

Will you come Lord

Into the quietness of this village

Not the friendly quietness

As when lovers hold hands

But the fearful silence

• When the phone hasn’t rung
• The letter has not come
• The much loved voice no longer speaks
• The doctor’s face says it all?

Will you come Lord

Into that darkness

And do something different

Not to distract but to embrace your people?

And will you come Lord into the darkest corners

And the quiet places of our lives?

We ask this not because we are guilt ridden

Or want to be,

But because the fullness our lives long for

Depends on us being as open and vulnerable to you

As you were to us

When you came

Wrapped in swaddling bands

And trusting human hands

To hold their maker.

Will you come into our lives

If we open them to you

And do something different?

When the World was Dark

And all was quiet

You came

You crept in beside us

Do the same this Christmas, Lord

Do the same this Christmas.

Kitchen Delivery!

All the stuff is being delivered as I write. The landing and stairs have been done, including new wiring (we now have a light in the stairwell!). Some of the pieces are a Bit Long!

Today!

Hey Ho! Plumber's here and removed the kitchen radiator and is now replacing taps and waste in bathroom.

Lots of re-wiring to do for landing light....

Easter day - a bit early!

“Yesterday was Friday but Sunday is coming!”
That, really, in essence, distils everything we believe, and all the promises made to us into just those five words.
“Yesterday was Friday but Sunday is coming!”
That could be said to be the whole Christian way and hope in just five words.
We live in a Friday world, but the promise is that Sunday is coming.
Well tomorrow IS that Sunday and couldn't happen without Friday.
We can't go from Thursday to Sunday without passing through Friday and Saturday.
It's that journey thing again – our faith seems to be one long journey! Jesus started his journey towards that total submission to the Fathers will, on Palm Sunday, an exact mirror and opposite procession to the one that the Roman governor Pilate was at that very moment in. Repressive conquering military Empire versus liberating pacifist Kingdom with it's message of freedom and salvation.

We have to go on that journey with him – in fact if we don't then we also reject him and become subsumed in the other world that is the Roman occupation – the world of oppression, of material slavery – of worshipping idols, not carved images like golden calves, which you remember that the Israelites made when Moses was up on Mt Sinai, but money, status, approbation of our peers.

We have to be first idolised by the crowd, then rejected, scourged, nailed to a cross with all our baggage, all our wounds in full view of a mocking public, the very ones who idolised us just a short while ago, and then finally to rise up into new life, the new life that is so different from our old selves, the selves that died on Friday with Christ and entered that rocky cave, the dark tomb where all our human fears abide. That dark hole in the rock where our most dreaded dreams are met is the very lowest of the low, the ebb of our emotions and feelings.

But then after Saturday, as the dawn breaks on that first day of the rest of our lives, the extraordinary wonder, the release, the excitement, the realisation that we have passed through the fire and not been burned, the waters haven't engulfed us, the dread darkness has NOT won, the tearing of the veil has allowed us to see, even if only for an instant, that light for which we are destined for and which we were made for, from the beginning of creation.

So although we live in a Good Friday world, with all its woes, the wars, the persecutions, the earthquakes, the diseases, the famines, AIDS, child and adult slavery, all the nasty things both human made and occurring naturally, we have this wonderful promise of the Sunday world, the new beginning, the new life that Jesus shows us.

And it's not just new life on earth that we have been given, but also the direct promise of Jesus himself that we shall see him in the face where he is gone.

No-one else in the whole history of the human race has given us that promise.

Friday was yesterday – Tomorrow IS Sunday – Easter Sunday. We are lucky. We are fortunate. The first disciples had no idea, no understanding of what Easter Sunday meant. They certainly knew what had happened, but it was a while before they knew what it MEANT.
Let us rejoice in the certain knowledge that we now have, that the resurrection is not just Jesus’ resurrection, it’s also OUR resurrection – the chance to start again.

May the joy and peace of the glorious
resurrection be with us all for ever. Amen.

Anglicanism and Lay Orders

I just wonder, with the current turmoil in the Church of England and the difficulty in attracting young people in their twenties and thirties, whether a perceived lack of commitment is becoming a stumbling block.
I wonder whether there's a perceived lack of spirituality, open-ness and possible "humbug" seen by the unchurched public.

Maybe there is a place in the Church for  a Lay order of some kind - that people can commit to, can commit to a Rule of Life that may just re-vitalise the Church?

My other Blog!

I also run Windows 7 as a main OS and of course I have an MS Blog!
Here it is, with interesting stuff about Windows on it.
(I'm not a fanatic either way - Linux has stuff that Windows doesn't, and Windows has stuff that Linux doesn't!)
Windows Blog