All of us here at Trinity wish you a peaceful year.

It would be a good day to visit us.

(Mother Theresa)

What a challenge Mother Theresa gives us – as individuals
and what a challenge she gives us – as a church

Difficult I know, but just think! If this was the impact we had on just 10% of the people we met, how many more friends would we have? How much better would our community be? How much larger would we at Trinity be?!!

The crucial question is, are we focussed on our agenda and what we want or what we think is best? or are we focussed on the other person and what they think, on what they want, and on their happiness?

Isn’t this what loving our neighbour is all about?

In the pursuit of happiness half the world (often including ourselves) is on the wrong track. They think it consists in having and getting – getting!  Having and getting material possessions, getting what you want, getting what you want done, getting others to do things for you, getting others to do what you think they should do.

However, happiness is really found in giving and in serving others – both their happiness and profoundly also our own!

When we pray each day for our Lord to give us our daily bread, let’s pray that our daily bread may be God’s Spirit and God’s love and His empowerment of us – to truly love our neighbour. And who is our neighbour? Simply the people we meet in our daily life.

Our neighbour is both the people we plan to meet – later today or tomorrow or next week; and the people we just bump into in the car-park, in the shop, in the street.

Let’s pray that everyone who comes into contact with us should leave us better and happier for having met us, for having been with us.

Let’s not think about ourselves and what we’re trying to do, but about the other person. Let’s focus on helping them, on helping them succeed for it’s in their success that we ourselves succeed.

I appreciate that we ourselves have many difficulties and needs. And so, in the rush and noise of life, as we have intervals, let’s step home within ourselves and be still. Wait upon God and feel His good presence. Let’s ask for His grace and very appropriately at this time of Pentecost – let’s ask for His Spirit – Come! Holy Spirit, Come!

This will carry us through whatever the day may have in store for us.

And let us be about our Master’s business – showing in how we treat and relate to those we meet, Christ’s love and care for them – whoever they may be!

Let our objective be that for everyone who speaks to us, they may be glad to have done so. Let our sense of justice and what’s right (for us) – recognising that sometimes (frequently ?) this is just our pride! – be tempered with love and mercy.

And let’s:

Give-up complaining – focus on gratitude

Give-up pessimism – become an optimist

Give-up harsh judgements – think kindly thoughts

Give-up worry – trust Divine Providence

Give-up discouragement – be full of hope

Give-up bitterness – turn to forgiveness

Give-up hatred – return good for evil

Give-up being negative – be positive

Give-up anger – be more patient

Give-up pettiness – become mature

Give-up gloom – enjoy the beauty that is all around us

Give-up jealousy – pray for trust

Give-up gossiping – control our tongue

Give-up sin – turn to virtue

Give-up giving-up – hang in there!

And let’s:

Give-up focussing on ourselves – focus on the other person

And:

Let no one ever come to you, come to me
without leaving better and happier
glad that they’ve met us
wanting to again

Let this be our daily bread:

through knowing and loving God
for us to love our neighbour

And let us pray each day to Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost

Give us this day our daily bread
Amen
(Inspired and adapted from A Lenten Reflection in the magazine of Hope URC, Weymouth)

And what a vision this could be for Trinity

To be known as a place where everyone is loved and cared for

a place focussed on helping each one succeed however they define it

focussed on their/(our) interests not Trinity’s

as it’s in they/(our) achieving their/(our) interests, that Trinity see themselves succeed

Counter-cultural, difficult I know!

But isn’t that what we should be doing?

Isn’t this the Christian life ?

And as an incidental effect

If we really did this

(and none of us, including myself, has been anywhere near this!)

Trinity would have more than doubled in size by Christmas!

Why don’t we ?

And where is God now ?!!

A few days previous, I had been reading a book by Madame Guyon – the 17th century French mystic, who was making the very good point that God is with us when everything seems to be going wrong just as much as when everything seems fine. God was with Joseph just as much during his years in prison as He was in the Palace. God was with Daniel just as much in the Palace as in the Lion’s den.

God is with us just as much when we’re feeling dreadful as when we’re feeling great. Just as much when our circumstances are difficult as when they’re easy.

It’s important we remember this, for our faith often otherwise goes up and down with our feelings or circumstances.

When we value the creation above the Creator we have a problem! What is important is God Himself, not His gifts and if our focussing on His blessings and gifts takes us away from He Himself, then His gifts are no longer blessings and the actual way for God to then bless us is by taking His gifts from us! We then no longer can put our trust in the gift, but must return to the Giver.

Madame Guyon at times is extremely profound and from hard personal experience she had learnt

Affliction is mercy in disguise
We possess by first being deprived
Death precedes life
Destruction is the spiritual experience that leads to renovation
Out of the sorrows and silence of inward crucifixion
and from no other source
must grow the jubilees of everlasting bliss

We’re now in the run-up to Easter, we think of how the Cross had to come before the Resurrection. We think of what God the Father’s pain and suffering must have been in not just seeing us mock and torture His wonderful Son, but in allowing it to happen. And then even more – for Jesus the Holy One of God to actually die for us, sinning humanity.

What love of God the Father for us!  What love of God the Son for us! Can tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword, separate us from this love?

No!  Paul was persuaded that nothing could separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

When we look to the disaster in Japan – 9,080 people confirmed dead; 13,561 missing; we see the devastation and the hundreds of thousands of people living in temporary shelters and the further hundreds of thousands in their own homes but still without electricity after 11 days  (as at 22/3/2011), it can be difficult to remember this.

But we mustn’t let death … nor things present, nor things to come… nor any created thing nor the destruction of any created thing shake our trust and faith in God and His love to us in Jesus Christ. We overcome all these things through Christ Jesus who loves us.

(Romans 8.35, 37-39 paraphrased)

When we look at the troubles of this world and our faith is shaken thereby, let us look to the Cross. Let us this Easter look to the Cross and see that nothing can negate such love. And let us remember that Jesus never said that our lives would be without troubles. What he said was, In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

(John 16.33).

Where was God on March 11^th ?   Right there!

Where’s God now?  Right here! Suffering with us!

It’s sometimes difficult for us to see. When we find it so difficult, let’s pray to Him to reveal Himself to us – that we may sense His Presence – the Presence of God!

And let us pray that out of this disaster, good may come!  We’ve already seen North Korea unilaterally and unconditionally agree to return to the 6-way talks. A number of other jurisdictions are having second thoughts about their nuclear ambitions. And the world at large, including China, Russia and the US, have rallied round offering support and practical help to Japan. Maybe mankind will recognise that humanity is not the greatest force in the world! Maybe our rulers and leaders will come to learn who is! the great I AM!

Something like this puts other problems and disputes into perspective. It gives us the opportunity to think about what really is important in life. Maybe good indeed will come out of it. We should certainly hope so. But as Christians we should have faith in this, we should believe this.

There seems no rhyme or reason why it should have been Japan that was so hard hit. So many countries can, in the common expression, say, “there but for the grace of God goes I”. But that simply gives us a greater sympathy, a greater empathy.

Let’s pray for the people of Japan that in all their difficulties, and in all their pain and suffering they may know the world stands by them. And also that God stands by them. That they may know both the human love and care of our common humanity, but also that they may sense here and now amidst all the tragedy the loving presence of God.

At Easter we look to the Cross and that changes our perspective on everything. Good does come out of suffering. Death and pain do not have the last word. Good does overcome evil! And the sufferings of this world are nothing to the joys of the next – and of course it’s the eternity ahead of us that’s what really matters.

Let’s not put our trust in temporal things. We then won’t be shaken when they fail.

And in the words of Madame Guyon, let’s not be satisfied with

consolation and peace

the gift of God rather than the Giver

but rather, let’s seek for

not merely consolation, but the God of consolation

not merely peace, but the God of peace.

And remember that the Cross proves that God loves us and cares for us – nothing can negate this!

And that although it doesn’t always seem like it whilst we’re in this world, yet

all things work for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

(Romans 8.28)

If I’m honest I should also admit that my birthday tends to come in the period of Lent and this has rather constrained my willingness to give up things! However, it’s not always so!  I was born on Shrove Tuesday and in the over 50 years since then 4 times my birthday has not been in the period of Lent. And, this year of 2011 will be the 5th!!

So, perhaps this year would be a good year to think about giving something up! Or perhaps to take something up!!

We are all creatures of habit – we all have good habits, we all have bad habits and also various habits that are neutral. If we want to get out of a bad habit or start a new habit, Lent is actually a good time to start – 40 days, is sufficient time for a behaviour to become habitual.

Why not?   Or why not take a bit of time this Lent to perhaps deliberately focus on what God may be saying to you or to think about why your Christian faith is important to you and why therefore it might be important to someone else.

We as a Church must regain the art of apologetics and the simple sharing of the meaning of our faith to us. The Tough Questions on a Sunday evening is aimed at trying to help us with this – to help us with our faith – yes – but also thereby to help us in talking to other people.

Also in this context, the Churches Together Lent Course this year looks very interesting: Scripture, Science and The Gospel – We will look together at our foundation in the Scripture in the light of science with a view to giving us confidence to speak of our faith in Jesus Christ.

Each evening will take the three themes of Scripture, Science and the Gospel and explore them from a particular point of view:

• Tues 15th March – Wonders – our shared passion for beauty
• Tues 22^nd March – Eternity – the size of it all
• Tues 29^th March – Wrestling – the struggles between faith and science
• Tues 5^th April – Truth – living with reality
• Tues 12^th April – Celebration – in all things being fully alive

I do recommend these to you. If you can’t come to them all, why not come to the one or two you can. They are all at the Methodist Church from 20.00 to 21.30 and the series is being led by Alan Keeler.

It’s good to think about these things and to ensure that we don’t just take-on subliminally the atheistic assumptions of much of our culture.

I recently came again upon this rather good narrative:

The ignorant man perceived himself to be his own master in a stationary world.

In time he was persuaded otherwise.

If round, then he must be on the topside and centred in a shallow cosmos.

This too was proven false.

He finally accepted that he was riding a dust speck in a vast universe.

Yet he clung to the notion that there could be no intelligence higher than his own.

Therefore he felt compelled to devise theories of origin, disregarding the evidence of a grand design.

The wise man looked up and confessed to his Creator

“I don’t know. Help me to understand”

Let’s take this opportunity of Lent to improve some of our habits and in particular to maybe improve our habits re God and our Lord Jesus Christ – and to think, to reflect, and to pray!

But first there’s an open event on Sunday 25 January, again at 3 p.m. where you can come along and find out if Alpha is for you.  Please do join us on this Sunday afternoon – who knows where it will lead?

Sorry to disappoint.

Sorry to disappoint.