Be Still And Know

READ: Psalm 24:1 NLT 'The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is in it, the world, and all who live in it.' Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage climate activist, has been amazingly effective in helping the world to wake up to the reality of our abuse of this planet. She said to a UN Climate Summit,” Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything. And I’m sure the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: we can still fix this. But the opportunity to do so will not last for long. We must start today. We have no more excuses.” I think the psalmist would have shouted, “Hallelujah” to Greta’s words. His starting point was that the world is the Lord’s, and so we have the responsibility to care for the world that God has given us. We are answerable for this majestic planet and will have to give an account to God for the way in which we have looked after it. The truth is

READ: Psalm 23:4 NLT 'Even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid of anything, because You are with me.' Life and death live alongside one another. It has been said that we all live with a terminal disease – it’s called life! But that doesn’t mean that we necessarily find the idea of death easy. When I was a little boy I was terrified at the thought of death. I lived in a loving, happy and secure home and I was appalled by the thought that it could ever come to an end. David is completely straightforward about the challenges of life and death and was clear that, even in the darkest moments, God was there beside him. There was never any need for him to be afraid, even when he stared death in the face as he did on many occasions. When I was twelve years old I decided to follow Jesus, and one of the most immediate consequences of that decision was that my fear of death evaporated. I still have plenty of questions about death and what comes next. The Bible doesn’t provide us wit

READ: Psalm 23:1 NLT The Lord is my Shepherd. I will have everything I need. When I was a student minister I was given responsibility for a wonderful little Baptist church in rural Oxfordshire. It had eight members and the largest congregation I ever saw was 19. It was a great experience and the church secretary was a shepherd, by occupation. He loved to talk about his sheep and helped me to understand a great deal more about how challenging our woolly friends can be. But above all I came to realise that he really knew his sheep and he loved them as individuals. David was writing out of his own personal experience. Unlike my friend, David couldn’t go home at night. He cared for his sheep 24/7. He exposed himself to the threats of challenging weather, dangerous terrain, fierce wolves and sheep rustlers. He was totally committed to his sheep and he, better than anyone else, knew exactly what they needed. I am quite sure that, as a King, David often reflected on his earlier experiences as a shepherd and he knew

READ: Mark 6:37 NLT Jesus said to his disciples, “You feed them.” “With what?” they asked. “We’d have to work for months to earn enough money to buy food for all these people!” “How much bread do you have?” he asked. “Go and find out.” They came back and reported, “We have five loaves of bread and two fish.” Jesus’ disciples were on a very steep learning curve on this particular day. The day began by them seeking to get away from the hordes of people who were eager to listen to Jesus. Jesus himself suggested that it would be good for them to go away to a quiet place and get some rest. That spectacularly failed as the people rushed round the lake to the quiet place even before Jesus and his disciples got there! The first lesson of the day was that with Jesus things don’t necessarily work out in the way that you expect. The disciples accept that their quiet time with Jesus isn’t going to happen and sit back to listen to his teaching. But the moment comes when they’ve had enough and they suggest to Jesus that be

READ: Mark 4:26,27 NLT Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens.” We have the privilege of being foster parents and my day often begins by having breakfast with our foster daughter. She is ten years old and has a sharp and enquiring mind. Very often she will come up with a question like “Why don’t birds fly into one another?” or “How do bees smell?” I rarely have any idea of the answer and particularly at that time in the morning! Our foster daughter will then normally say, “Well google it then!” Googling is great and gives us speedy access to libraries of knowledge. But even so the world is still full of mysteries. In these verses Jesus speaks of the mystery of the Kingdom of God. Day and night, rain and shine, the kingdom of God grows. Just as a farmer has no understanding of how growth happens, so we too cannot fathom how God works. It is simply an ama

READ: Mark 4:21 NLT Then Jesus asked them, “Would anyone light a lamp and then put it under a basket or under a bed? Of course not! A lamp is placed on a stand, where its light will shine.” After leaving University I spent two years working in South India. I lived in a large Victorian mission house with an Indian Christian family. The house had mains electricity but every day the power would go off for a few hours and so we depended on candles. It grew dark around 6pm throughout the year and so there were many hours when we would be reading, eating or chatting to candlelight. What I love about candles is their incredible power to expel the darkness, small as they may be, and India helped me to acquire a much deeper appreciation of them. The idea of lighting a lamp and putting it under a basket or a bed is simply absurd. No one in their right mind would do that. The point that Jesus is making is clear. God has given us light and our responsibility is to pass it on to others and so the idea of keeping it to our

READ: Mark 2:27 NLT Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.” The Pharisees were out to get Jesus and were clearly delighted to have spotted his disciples breaking the Sabbath laws. The disciples were entitled to eat but they had broken the law when they picked the ears of corn because that was considered to be reaping. The Pharisees were driven by their commitment to obey every detail of the law and they had no doubt that they had caught Jesus’ disciples out. Jesus doesn’t deny that his disciples may have disobeyed a detail of the law, but informs the Pharisees that they have totally missed the point. The Sabbath was not designed by God to be a miserable day hedged around by oppressive rules and regulations. The Sabbath was God’s loving gift to humankind at the dawn of creation as a day to bring blessing, refreshment and renewal. In 1985 Keep Sunday Special was launched by Dr Michael Schluter to help our society to re

READ: Mark 2:21 NLT ‘Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before.’ Let’s be honest. We all make mistakes. We do things we don’t mean to do and say things we regret. When we own up to our mistakes a common response is to decide to try better next time or to turn over a new leaf. But Jesus rejects the idea that this patching up technique really works. Patching can in fact just make things worse. His answer was that there needs to be complete renewal. Pouring wine into cracked old wineskins is a waste of time. What you need is to pour your lovely new wine into brand new wineskins. Jesus said something very similar when he met a Pharisee called Nicodemus. Jesus told him that he needed to be born again. Nicodemus received this with consternation. He couldn’t make any sense out of what Jesus was saying. Jesus patiently explained himself and informed this thoughtful religious man that he needed to allow

READ: Mark 2:15 NLT Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) Levi’s first action after becoming a follower of Jesus was to invite him home for a meal so that he could meet his friends. Levi was one of the much hated tax collectors whose job was to rake in money for the hated Roman occupying power. His circle of friends was, on the face of it, as unpleasant a group as Jerusalem could produce. When I was a minister in Suffolk one of the children in our Sunday club went home one day and spoke with her father who didn’t attend church. She asked him to remind her of the job that he did. Very importantly he told her that he was one of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Taxes. “Oh dear,” said the little girl, ”At church this morning we learnt that tax inspectors are very bad people”. So, ever since, I have been at pains to point out that everything is very different th

READ: Mark 4:2 NLT ‘They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus.’ Can you imagine what it must have been like? The house is filled with people eagerly listening to Jesus’ teaching when they are suddenly aware that the roof is being dismantled. Now don’t think of your own roof. Think of a typical Middle Eastern flat-roofed one storey building with an exterior staircase and a roof constructed out of branches and hard-baked mud. But even so it made a commotion and the owner of the house probably wasn’t too pleased! What impresses me is that these four friends were real friends. They were determined that their paralysed companion should meet Jesus and nothing was going to stop them. Going to the trouble of dismantling a roof shows just how much they cared for their friend and how imaginative they were in working out a way of achieving their goal. I’m sure that many other people would h

READ: Mark 1:35-37 NLT Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” Jesus’ ministry has just begun and he’s much in demand and so very early in the morning he escapes to have some quiet time with his heavenly Father. He needed to carve out protected time for his relationship with God, but it wasn’t easy to find that time and within a short while the disciples are after him, informing him that everyone was looking for him. I have to believe that if Jesus the Son of God needed that protected time, then so do we. It’s the easiest thing in the world to stuff our lives full of activity. Anyone can do it. But amidst the activity we desperately need to stop and listen to God. I wonder how you find time to listen to God. Some have a definite amount of time that they set aside for God every morning or evening. Some people read through the bible each year and other

READ: Mark 1:16-17 NLT Jesus called out to Simon and Andrew, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” And they left their nets at once and followed him. I love the way Jesus worked because it’s so different from the way I would have gone about things. Jesus came up to the fishermen and immediately told them the work he wanted them to do. My approach, by way of contrast, would have been to spend some days chilling with Simon and Andrew getting to know them and building up a good relationship. And then after a few days in a calm moment I would have subtly suggested that if they didn’t mind it would be great if they could do some recruiting for me. Not Jesus. He calls them and immediately gives them a job! We learn something very important from this. It’s that following Jesus and recruiting others belong together. We all have different gifts, but all of us can contribute to inviting others to follow him. Inviting friends to a meeting, encouraging them to listen to Premier, giving them a boo

READ: Mark 1:16-17 NLT One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me” Jesus kept doing surprising things! Here we find him at the beginning of his ministry as he is doing the crucial job of recruiting followers. If it had been me I would have waited for Simon and Andrew to have a lunch break, or get to the end of the day, and suggest they might like to follow me. Not Jesus. Jesus comes to them when they are right in the middle of their busy working day. They are doing the demanding job of throwing their net into the water. They are eagerly preparing for their next catch. Presumably the worst possible time to be interrupted? But Jesus has more important work for them to do. “Come, follow me” he says, and that’s just what they did.Jesus comes to us right in the middle of our busy lives. Our immediate response might well be that it would be much better

Psalm 25:6-7 NLT  'Remember, O Lord, your compassion and unfailing love, which you have shown from long ages past. Do not remember the rebellious sins of my youth. Remember me in the light of your unfailing love, for you are merciful, O Lord.' When a global crisis emerges, such as coronavirus, we find ourselves considering the character of God’s “unfailing love”. Firstly, we are confronted with our own fears and anxieties. Many spoke in the early weeks of increased levels of anxiety, both for themselves and their families.   I recognised that even within the Oratory’s prayer life, I could be equally subject to such worry. Yet, I also found my mechanisms established over the years served me well. God has me in his embrace, a place of safety and comfort. I can retain my confidence that my life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3)and, no matter what befalls, nothing can separate me from God’s love (Romans 8:35).  Perhaps the problem is that we too easily become drawn into the rhythms of life and lose

Psalm 25:4-5 NLT  'Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you.' When I talk with school teachers, they tell me that the critical element in maintaining classroom order and a safe and effective learning environment is discipline. The challenge presented to the teacher is to keep the class on track so that the curriculum is effectively covered, and the students are prepared for exams. Teachers have three tools at their disposal: prevention, support and correction. The skill is to determine which tool to use with individual students.  When my daughter was at school, some teachers pointed out where she might improve by identifying where they were disappointed in her performance. I would explain that she was wired to respond to encouragement. Those teachers who first spoke of what she did well and identified how she might improve further saw her respond positively.   Just as in our scho

Psalm 86:11 NLT  'Teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth! Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor you.' As I mentioned before, I recently took my Trinity certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. It was the most demanding and intensive learning experience I’ve ever participated in. Throughout my course I had to concentrate, for my background is training, not teaching. Training demands I impart skills, while teaching demands I communicate information.   Walking God’s ways is a lifelong process of learning. Anyone of us can get stuck along the way. We often confuse information with knowledge. But true knowledge is when I know how to apply all the information I have gained. There are so many teaching resources today that none of us can fail to know a great deal about our Christian faith. Yet, how this information influences the way we live our lives is more complicated. It does demand an undivided heart since many of the cultural norms that surround us pro

Psalm 130:7-8 NLT  'O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is unfailing love. His redemption overflows. He himself will redeem Israel from every kind of sin.'  How hopeful are you? The media bombards us with reasons for anguish. But hope can still be born within the human heart, arising from trust, desire and aspiration. For me, circumstances joined with my mood and perspective can all too easily kill hope in its infancy. All that grows from such barren soil is cynicism and self-interest.   I have recently been doing some research into the early Church, in the days before the emperor Constantine legalised Christianity. The Christians met in secret for fear of persecution and therefore it was challenging for individuals to convert. The wider community, however, was grateful to the Christians, for everyone knew that in times of plague or famine, the Christians would offer care, financial help and support. They lived as instructed by Jesus, which is why we read in Acts that while not everyone joined

Psalm 130:5-6 NLT  'I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.' During the coronavirus lockdown, for many of us, life changed radically. Living with our families, or alone, the rhythms that measured our day were gone, as we no longer had to travel to work. We now had to build a new daily routine. Positively, this offered many people a grace gift of freedom.   God was as present in the stillness that fell across our cities and neighbourhoods as when they had been filled with the sounds of commuters and shoppers. In the Oratory we re-evaluated everything we were doing. Jayne was working from home. So we rejuvenated out rhythms of prayer. We considered how we related to God in the anxieties that surfaced within us. We took the opportunity to engage more frequently and intentionally with God.  One family spoke powerfully of how they discovered something they had always lo

Psalm 130:4 NLT  'But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.' Being forgiven means to have a debt paid off. When I had to give up work to care for the one I loved, I began to run up debts. When she eventually died after 18 years, I faced up to the debt I’d accumulated. I discovered the weight of it as I failed to find work with a suitable salary to service it effectively. That weight was lifted when an aunt left me some money in her will. As one might expect with God in charge, the inheritance matched the entire debt. In an instant, it was wiped out. The relief was immense. I wondered, if God had taken care of this obstacle, why was I worried about anything in life? It proved a profound learning point.  In our walk with God we each are aware of sin; it drives a wedge between us and God. We’re also aware of his love and forgiveness, so do not need to carry the weight of sin on our own shoulders. The problem is I often want to keep a foot in both camps. I want God most definitely, yet I also en

Psalm 130:3 NLT   'Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?' One thing the coronavirus lockdown has done is to test our ability to spend a lot of time with whoever else lives with us – although, of course, living alone brings with it different challenges. For many people, the rhythms of leaving and returning from work, attending church gatherings (large and small), having personal space, all disappeared.   I reflected on how fortunate we were to have a house with many rooms and a large garden. There were open and enclosed spaces we might occupy together and alone. We were thrown back upon our own resources, individually and as a couple, and these were tested.   We resolved to talk, pray and reflect. Some in the church quickly decided the pandemic was God’s judgement, but is this the character of God? Surely God seeks to woo and win hearts rather than enforce his kingdom.   As mentioned earlier, governments anticipate three pandemics a century. There was the 1918 flu pandemic th