Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, May 2019]

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God (Psalm 46:4)

Wading through cold water in a narrow tunnel 60 feet underground in single file with only torchlight to lighten the darkness does not seem like an enjoyable holiday activity. This happened to me on a holiday in Israel, but it helped that the young lady behind me was laughing and joking most of the time. The real enjoyment was knowing that I was in a place built over 2,500 years ago which we can read about in the Bible.

The tunnel was built by King Hezekiah to bring a secure water supply into the city of Jerusalem, which was about to be besieged by the king of Assyria. “As for the other events of Hezekiah’s reign, all his achievements and how he made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?” (2 Kings 20:20) It was built by men starting at opposite ends as they cut through solid rock until they met in the middle. An inscription commemorating this event was found where they met and is now in a museum. The water was collected in the Pool of Siloam where we came out of the tunnel and where, hundreds of years after it was built, Jesus sent the blind man to wash his eyes so that he could see. It is so encouraging to see the truths of the Bible, and even today the water forms part of the supply for the city of Jerusalem.

Water is so necessary for life, but living water is even more necessary for eternal life and it is why Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37) When we come to Jesus to cleanse us from all we have done wrong in our lives we drink of His living water, the Holy Spirit, and this gives us a new and unending life with Him. But the Holy Spirit living in us and through us also gives us the gifts and the power to serve Him in our daily and church life. As Jesus went on to say as we read in John 7:38, “Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

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[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 05/May/2019]

Last month saw the 35th anniversary of my first visit to Horley Baptist Church. My employer moved me from Warwick to Epsom, and Horley turned out to have the only house that I could afford. Those who befriended me at that time will recall that the house required a ‘certain degree of renovation’ but that was something that I could change. Change is an antidote to stagnation. Horley has changed – you can no longer buy tyres at the Jack Firman or park with impunity on the High Street. Horley Baptist has changed – the manse and the church building have changed, pastors and leadership have changed, the style of music has changed, the demographic of the congregation has changed.

Change has its downsides. We can all think of examples when we would have preferred not to change.

• Change is not always beneficial
• Change does not always last
• Change is not always welcome
• Change does not always satisfy

 
We often speak of a God who never changes. If change is necessary for progress what do we make of a God whose last acclaimed visit was over 20 centuries ago? Does this mean that He is out of date, irrelevant or even obsolete? Is God anti-change?

Consider these words from Daniel chapter 2:
He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. The benefits of God’s changes are always long-lasting and for our good but whether they are welcome and satisfying is up to us.

This period of 35 years represents more than half of my life (so far) and despite the changes HBC has been an example of stability in a life where much else has changed. Henry Lyte also valued the stability of his faith when he wrote these well-known words:
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
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[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, March 2019]

I am always amazed at the complexity of the human body, let alone the rest of creation. A simple example is the way that the eye works. What we see is projected onto the retina but the image we see is upside down. However, the brain turns that picture around so that we see it the right way up. This was proved by an experiment where a person wore a viewer over his eyes, during his waking hours for a few days, which turned his vision upside down. He then saw his surroundings in a completely different way. For instance, he thought that he was walking on the ceiling and when he went to walk through a doorway, he tried to step over the part of the wall which was between the top of the door and the ceiling above it. That was very amusing for those watching him but not to him. After a period of time the brain took over and compensated for what he was seeing so that he was then able to see the right way up. Some time later, the viewer was removed and, surprise, surprise, he now saw everything upside down with his ordinary sight. He had to wait a long while for his brain to correct what he saw and his sight to go back to normal.

We seem to be going through a time when people’s views in general seem to be turning upside down. Whether it is to do with politics and Brexit, questions of faith, morality, knife crime, sexuality, marriage and many others. I’ll leave you to fill in the details. Could this be the beginning of what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3? “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self – control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”. Does any of that sound familiar? It seems to be the way that many people view their lives today.

When Jesus came, He turned the view of His listeners upside down. In His teaching He often said, “You have heard that it was said…….. but I tell you…….”. And He would give them a completely different view to what they thought they already knew. He could say what He did because He is the Son of God and taught the truth of God and not what we human beings think is truth.

Last Sunday, Martin said that we don’t have to earn a new relationship with God we only have to accept it with thanksgiving as a gift from Him. Jesus not only taught that but gave His life on the cross to make it possible. When we believe that truth He turns our life upside down in a new and exciting way. The first Christians showed this in their lives and Paul and Silas were accused of “turning the whole world upside down” as a result.

If we believe this good news in our own lives, we should pray that Jesus will cleanse, renew and empower us by the Holy Spirit as a church to share the good news, so that many in our community will have their own lives turned upside down to know Jesus as Saviour. Then their lives will really be the right way up.

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[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 10/Mar/2019]

Today, as I write the first draft of these thoughts, our puppy has died. She was four months old but had been with us for only 10 days when she died from an allergic reaction to a vaccination that was intended to safeguard her health. Despite her short stay with us she made an impression even amongst a society that generally values animals primarily for their working potential. She shared her kennel with our cats, who seemed to understand her suffering.

At times of loss it is common to turn to the story of Job. We lost one animal, Job lost 11,000 – his livestock was his livelihood. Yet he could say “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1: v21). But in both cases there remains the supplementary question – “Why?”

In the Romanian Orthodox tradition, there is a recognition of an almighty God whose purposes are often beyond our comprehension. There is very little teaching about Jesus as saviour and friend. Rather, the Church places a great deal of importance on those whom it designates as ‘saints’, using their life stories as examples of how we should live our lives. We may not understand what God is up to but we can call upon numerous friends who are there to help us.

For those of us who are saints in the western Baptist interpretation our understanding is different. Jesus is man’s ‘bestest friend ever’. Consider the words of James G Small:
I’ve found a Friend, oh, such a Friend! He bled, He died to save me;
And not alone the gift of life, but His own self He gave me.
Naught that I have my own I call; I hold it for the Giver;
My heart, my strength, my life, my all, are His, and His forever.

For us the critical question is not ‘why’ but ‘who’. Who is your best friend?
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[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, February 2019]

At the prayer meeting just before the service last week, one of those present commented on how time just seems to fly by. It seems like only a short while ago that it was Christmas and here we are about to go into Spring. When I was asked how my week had been, all I could remember was that it had been busy, packed full of things that needed doing. I looked forward to the weekend, when things would be quieter.

A well-known poem by Willian Henry Davies contains the lines:

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass, where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight, streams full of stars, like skies at night…………..
A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

In Mark 1: 38, we are told that very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. I am beginning to see that I can’t just wait for less busy periods – they seldom come. I need to learn, in the hustle and bustle, to make time to pause, to rest and to reflect, to make my requests known to God.

Psalm 23 says that God makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. It would be a shame if we were too busy to appreciate this. It is the person who pauses and appreciates the green pastures and quiet waters who comes back with his soul restored, not the one who like me, has often spent long days at work and then taken work along with him on holiday! I need to learn, in the hustle and bustle, to make time to pause, to rest and to reflect, to give thanks to God for his blessings.

We need also to appreciate and respond to things around us. It struck me that in the parable of the good Samaritan, three people saw the wounded man, but only one person paused and then went on to care for him. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians tells them to bear each other’s burdens. As we travel life’s journey, we should look to help lighten the loads of others that we meet. We are more likely to do this is if we stop long enough in our busy lives, to see the people around us and appreciate what they are going through.

So, in this week that’s up ahead, God is likely to bring various things across our paths – the work colleague going through hard times, the homeless person sleeping rough, glorious sunrises and sunsets… Whatever the situation, let’s resolve to take time not only to stand and stare, but also to care for those in need of our help and to give God thanks for all he has blessed us with.

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[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 27/Jan/2019]

Last Sunday the remains of five Jewish adults and one child murdered in the Holocaust at Auschwitz were buried. They had been found in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, and were laid to rest in a Jewish cemetery outside London. In his eulogy, the UK Chief Rabbi said that they were “stripped of their dignity both in life and in death. And we will now have an opportunity to accord them appropriate dignity with a funeral.”

I remember visiting a vast underground base for Second World War Nazi V2 missiles in France. These bases were built by Jewish slave labour, and in the process more of them died during their labour than Britons were killed by all the V2 rockets launched against our country. Today, half of the base is an amazing exhibition of rockets and satellites as a history of space research, but because of the many Jews who died there the remainder is filled with possessions and pictures in memory of the Holocaust victims.

This was very moving and prepared me for a visit to the awe inspiring site of the Yad Vashem memorial and museum in Jerusalem, built in memory of the more than six million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust. As I was thinking about all this, I told the Israeli guide, a real grandfather figure, that my dad’s mother had been Jewish. He immediately said that my dad was therefore 100% Jewish. When I asked about me, he told me that I was Jewish too (he didn’t say 100%) and that I could apply to emigrate to Israel! I was looking at more of the memories and possessions of the murdered Jewish families when I realized something that shocked me. If the Nazis had invaded and defeated our country in the Second World War, then my father, my uncles and aunts, my many cousins and myself would all have died in the extermination camps because we would have been considered to be Jewish. Since that time the Holocaust has been much more personal to me.

In recent days there has been a rise in anti-Semitism around the world and in this country. In a few years from now, there will be no one left to remember personally the genocide of the Jews, and a recent survey in America showed that most millenials have never heard of Auschwitz. Even some Christians forget that Jesus was humanly speaking a Jew, and so were His disciples and the first Christians. It is important that we remember the Holocaust as a guard against future genocide, not only of the Jews but of other ethnic groups too.

The Bible foretells a time when the Jews in Israel will be almost overrun by their many enemies and at that time they will be rescued by their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, our Saviour, when He comes again. Then Jesus will fulfil all the promises to the Jews in the Bible from Abraham onwards, and as Paul says in Romans 11:26-27, “And so all Israel will be saved. As the Scriptures say, ‘The one who rescues will come from Jerusalem, and he will turn Israel away from ungodliness. And this is my covenant with them, that I will take away their sins’”.

From then on the Jews will live in peace and never face another Holocaust.

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