Word in the Hand

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. Ephesians 2:10‘For we are God’s work of art’ Reflection A wonderful phrase and how often do you hear the cynical or self-depreciating reply – Then I must be a Picasso! Why do we find it so difficult? We are amazed by God’s hand on the rest of creation, the millions of species; the thousands of galaxies; the myriad of wonders that science uncovers every day. We marvel at the idea that of all the snowflakes that have ever fell – ever – no two have been alike. And yet we refuse to acknowledge the wonder in ourselves; the children that God holds in his hand. Perhaps we have the wrong idea about art. We envisage it as something perfect, ideal, without blemish. Maybe if you are looking at an Ikea print for the living room you could apply those standards but not to Art with a capital A. Art is about communication, realisation, the need to create something outside normal definitions, the challenge to...

Ephesians 2:4-10 God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ – it is through grace that you have been saved – and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus. This was to show for all ages to come, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, how infinitely rich he is in grace. Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it. Today is Mothering Sunday - the time when Christians are meant to take the opportunity to thank the Church for caring for us and for everyone to thank their own mothers for doing the same. And I know that we now are wise enough to include nans, aunties, carers, teachers and ev...

One thing that has changed in hospitals is that they don't wake you up at dawn for whatever reason they used to. You may get woken up at other times but that's on a medicinal 'need to know' basis. Because of his illness crossed with being a teenager, my son sleeps on and on and on. Unfortunately Catholic guilt stops me from lying in the bed next to him, even if I am reading, even if I am tired too. So when I hear the staff starting their changeover circuit, I get up, fold the bed back into its space and tidy up, as if in readiness for a military inspection; after all this I don't want them to think I am a bad mother. After saying hello and finding out which nurse is 'ours' for the day (they are all lovely but they have their own ways and we have learnt to adapt ours) I head out into the main hospital and down to the restaurant for breakfast. It started off feeling somewhat unnerving, knowing that everyone around you is either staff or other parents sta...

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. Mark 10:17 "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Reflection There is something satisfying about following the rules. Even when they are hard and difficult to obey it is still a good feeling - knowing where you are and where you should be. I was a good child – despite the jeers of my friends, I listened to the Law and I tried to obey it. Each rule, each word spoken by the priests gave my life direction and purpose. Whenever a new situation came along there was no problem – I could simply look to the Law and I would know the right way to behave. I could go to bed at night and offer my day to the Lord knowing that I had met all His demands; that I had been a good and faithful servant. When I came to listen to the prophet it was with confidence, with the knowledge that I was not the same as the rest of the crowd. He seemed to attract those who knew nothing about the rules; who didn...

The Children's Hospital is in an old Victorian building, better suited to the old days of large wards with the beds lined up in military fashion down each side and, you can imagine, a matron who didn't stand for any nonsense! Our ward has been split up into cubicles with three sides and a glass partition onto the corridor. The children here are all chronic cases of one kind or another so need to be in isolation as far as it can be managed. The cubicles start off bare, then an incubator, cot, bed or theatre stretcher appears with or without a child. Then the child, hopefully with family. Various monitors, pumps and other apparatus are wheeled in - beeps, buzzers, counters and flashing lights illuminating the effect of what the illness is having on the child's health. Parents hover nervously in the background feeling they are in the way or pose forcefully over their child like a defending archangel defying the doctors not to do their best. Walking up and down the corr...

3rd Sunday of Lent John 2:13-24 Just before the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple he found people selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting at their counters there. Making a whip out of some cord, he drove them all out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over and said to the pigeon-sellers, ‘Take all this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market.’ Then his disciples remembered the words of scripture: Zeal for your house will devour me. The Jews intervened and said, ‘What sign can you show us to justify what you have done?’ Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this sanctuary: are you going to raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said th...

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. Matthew 26:74 "I don't know the man!" Reflection I know who I am. Or rather I thought I did. A simple man, even by my own admission: and proud to be. I know what I need to know; the stars, the wind, the sails, the nets. I can smell a storm and be in the tavern before the first drop of rain; I can look at cloud shadows on the waves and find the shoals hidden in deep water. I know the price of fish… But I don’t know the man. I’m no Temple man; my brother is the one for that: knows his letters and his Scripture; prays enough for the both of us. Has to… the fish don’t keep the Sabbath; feeding the family is my job, my living. I know what I am good at. But I don’t know the man. And I still don’t know what happened, when Andrew brought him to the quay, when he took my hand and called me to him. I’m not one for the road, for the desert. Not one for crowds, for teaching, for preaching, ...

Wh en I began this blog, it was Lent 2008. With the cycle of the Church I am reminded that although I am on this journey towards… often the path spirals back on itself; allowing me, allowing all of us, to revisit a time, an experience, a preconception or two. In the introduction to the blog I said that it would be about my faith, that there were parts of my life that I would not share, that I regarded as personal. And yet, as the year has gone on, this has shown itself to be false. If my reflections were only based on scripture study and preaching a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ philosophy then they would be no use to anybody- even me. Perhaps I do not report specific incidents, mention names, place and dates but my faith is my life therefore something of my life is surely in every posting. And that is as it should be; after all I do not leave God in the Tabernacle, at the door of the church, at the door of my home, at the door of my heart. God’s around and about me interfering with every...

St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians 13: 5-9 Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourself regular check-ups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it; I hope the test won’t show that we have failed. But if it comes to that we’d rather the test showed our failure than yours. We’re desperate for the truth to win out in you. We couldn’t possibly be otherwise. We don’t just put up with our limitations; we celebrate them, and then go on to celebrate every strength, every triumph of the truth in you. We pray hard that it will all come together in your lives. Here St Paul gives us some reasoning behind the idea of the Lenten promise. As Christians, we all know somewhere inside that we are on a journey of faith, that we should be practicing and getting better at. But with all the other demands on our lives, all the other distractio...

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. Luke 2:34 ‘The pain of a sword-thrust through you.’ Reflection I know the image you have of me; young and beautiful, the contentment of motherhood showing on my face. My arms held wide in the openhearted gesture of a mother to all those who have been given to me. In the beginning, only he was given to me; he was the ‘Yes’ of my life, my heart and my soul. The ethereal otherness of him was wrapped in prophecy, his baby eyes were wide with the guileless love that my gaze returned. Our future lives were given into God’s care, to His Will. At the Temple I wore the simple veil of a proud, young mother, knowing that, despite the gossips, my child had every right to this moment, this presentation into his Father’s hands; confident that he would receive His blessing as I had been blessed. That Love was ours. Then Simeon’s words; the veil lifted to reveal an unwelcome truth – A reminder that love i...