Word in the Hand

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. James 1:22 ‘keep oneself unstained by the world’ Reflection ‘Dirty Old Town?’ It is easy to see all that is wrong with the world. You have only to turn on the television to see terrifying pictures of what is going on all around us. And even the so-called entertainment often seems cruel and demeaning. The radio, the internet, the newspapers have the same focus – we question the decency and behaviour of others. We ask ourselves ‘what is the world coming to?’ Just reading that paragraph makes me feel old. I remember being young enough to be able to laugh off such comments, to wonder why anyone would spend their time worrying about things that did not concern them and that they could do nothing about. Because my life was fine, the lives of those around me were fine. My world was very small. If you had said to me then ‘keep yourself unstained by the world’, I would have said ‘I do. I don’t get i...

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. St Paul to the Ephesians 5:21 ‘give way to one another in obedience to Christ’ Reflection ‘Who do you belong to?’ When the feminist movement got off the ground in the 20th century; one of their first actions was to remove the vow to ‘obey’ from the marriage vows. St Paul was derided as sexist and as someone who hated women; no-one would read him. Yet Paul’s writings refer over and over again to his admiration and reliance on women in their nurturing of the early church. But Paul is infamous for his ability to produce ‘soundbites’ - nuggets of a phrase that stick in the mind and can be used like virtual weapons in a discussion. Please don’t read Paul in ‘soundbites’; his letters answer important questions that we don’t even know; yet hold enough in them to talk to us now. But never mind obeying our husbands; as a society we don’t much like obeying anyone; unless we can see the sense in it. ...

Opening Prayer Here I am Lord, Listening Speak to me within my heart and soul. I am listening. Luke 1:45 Blessed woman, who believed what God said, believed every word would come true! Reflection ‘Who do you trust?’ You would imagine that for God to decide to come to us as a human being, He must have had something in mind; must have had a Grand Plan. Yet, when you consider the circumstances of Jesus’ arrival; surely, even now, we must wonder why God decided to do it this way. Why such a people? How long had Israel belonged to God yet look how low they had come – had He not been paying attention? Why such a place? The Galilee was a place you ‘overlooked’ if you had any sense. Perhaps He hadn’t been paying attention. Why such a person? To have had less rank in the community would have been difficult, although Mary managed that by her ‘questionable’ condition. You’d imagine He didn’t want the attention. Even though the writings are there, the archaeologists; the cultural histor...