Maybe someone's been praying especially hard for me. Maybe I'm on a post-holiday high. But yesterday was a particularly good day. As I wrote yesterday, I appreciated the service from Greenbelt on the radio. Then it was good meeting friends again at the real church service here. There was a large baptism party there; I always enjoy it when people, by hook or by crook, are welcomed into the church. Jane was on crèche duty, looking after the youngest children. One dad came in who'd lived his whole life in Grove and had never entered the church before. I hope he was pleasantly surprised by how friendly and normal Christians can be - like Jane!
It was a pleasant sunny day, which always helps, and as Jane hadn't had a service in the morning we took ourselves off to St Aldate's church in Oxford, after I'd set the record button on
Songs of Praise and
Countryfile on TV. We'd hoped for some up-lifting worship, but when we got there and had a chair removed for my wheelchair, the church seemed a quarter full (it
did get fuller!), there was no sign of the band, and eventually the curate stood up and told us to be ready for anything. We looked at each other, thinking, "Bank Holiday weekend - maybe everyone, including the musicians, is having a night off - leaving one chap to wing it!" So it was a great relief when he invited the band up, and the worship songs started. It was a good relaxed service. Best, for me, was the sermon given by Laura Gallacher, the young student pastor, on "The Spirit who satisfies". The Bible passage was John 7.37-39, where Jesus stands up in the Temple at the climax of the Festival of Tabernacles and cries out,
"If anyone thirsts, let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of their heart will flow rivers of living water.'" St John comments that Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit who had not yet been poured out. (
Listen to "The Spirit who satisfies" here.)
Because of the way the sermon was structured I can still recall its main points. The message was that thirst is a universal human condition, spiritually as well as physically, and that Jesus satisfies the thirst of
all: the parched (who've never tasted His Spirit's refreshing), the quenched (who have tasted it in the past, but have run dry), the waiting (those who feel He won't return), and the wanting (those who have taken to substitutes to satisfy their thirst). There was more of course to the sermon than that. Two more points come back to me. The Bible's story of God's dealing with humanity begins and finishes with flowing water, with the rivers in Eden and the river flowing from the throne for the healing of the nations in Revelation. But there's also meant to be this river in the middle of the story, flowing from those who believe in Jesus - which is why it's so vital that we take up Jesus' loud invitation, "Let them come to me," because that's the source of spiritual refreshing for a parched society. The other point was that the opening of the floodgates for the Spirit began when Jesus shared the universal human condition on the cross,
"I thirst," as St John also records. (I remember the great Bible teacher, John McKay, commenting that the sour wine He then drank inaugurated the Kingdom.) It was a challenging but realistic sermon. We were glad we'd driven in. On the way home there was a spectacular sunset to our right.
Then, before going to bed, I thought I'd see what
Songs of Praise had been like. It was advertised as "The Great Outdoors" with Eamonn Holmes - not very promising, I thought; probably one of these cobbled-together holiday-type programmes frequent in the summer. I had to eat my thoughts! The hymns were mainly traditional, but they tied in with the interviews. A bit slow, but interesting light accompaniments. However, the three interviews were cracking, especially the first with a champion surfer, called Andy Hill. "
A former atheist, Andy says a period of illness 11 years ago put big life questions back on the table. He researched a lot of religions looking for answers and Christianity was the only one that made sense. Now, his faith is everything and he’s an enthusiastic member of his local church. While he still loves surfing – and still competes – he’s just as passionate about sharing his faith with others." He was an example, it seemed to me, of someone who'd found his thirst satisfied by Jesus and who was a conduit to others. The same was true of the other two interviewees: with a couple of Ulster's rugby team and with a hard-core mountain-biker. As a bonus, there was an item from the excellent band, Rend Collective Experiment, "
Build Your Kingdom here", and the different but equally good, Keith and Kristyn Getty. Altogether a rich programme, to end a refreshing day.
It occurs to me that I tend to use this blog for down-beat moments. But what about those times when things are going all right? Is there something to say then? At the moment things are quite sunny here, both literally and metaphorically - and I'm grateful. I've written elsewhere about my cousin, Grace Sheppard, wife of the cricketing bishop, who even when she was suffering the same cancer as had killed her husband, maintained her attitude of gratitude to the end. She wrote a beautiful book about caring for her husband, David, called Living with Dying. It seems to me that if Grace could be full of thankfulness in such a hard situation, then when "the sun's shining down on me" there's no excuse for not saying, "Blessed be your Name!".jpg)
Ironically, I've just discovered from the lovely iBenedictine nuns that today Catholics remember Our Lady of Sorrows. That's of course Mary, the mother of Jesus, and recalls the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce her soul - looking forward to the agony of seeing her Son tortured to death before her eyes. I cannot conceive of the depth of suffering that was for her. I am fairly sure that she'd have said what a friend once said to me: "I wish it had been me, not him." There's no comfort for that moment, just the company of "the beloved disciple". I can't imagine there was blessing in her mind at that point, just bewilderment. Maybe she thought back to her poem of praise when her Son was conceived and she said about the Almighty, "Holy is his name" - meaning that his nature is incomprehensibly different.
