Thought for the Day
12th August 2020
There is a character in the Old Testament I admire and that’s Abraham. There he was, happily living in Haran, one of great centres of the civilised world, when God told him to leave his home, his family, give up his security and move. He started on his journey simply trusting God would show him the way and lead him to a new land, a land of promise.
Here’s a man with an adventurous faith. There must have been many times when he wondered what he was doing. How he must have wished he could see where it was all going to end. That however is not the way of faith. Those who put their faith in God launch out into the unknown, they are like foreigners in another land, learning, exploring all the time, never being allowed to settle.
In the NT the writer to the Hebrews describes Abraham as “living in tents” (Hebrews 11:9). Now the great thing about a tent is that you take it with you. You put it up where you want and when you’ve finished your time there you pack it up and move on. The Church’s way of faith is the same.
This, of course, is more easily said than done. In our confusing, frightening, changing world, it is hard to think of a church on the move. It’s more natural to want to stay put. It’s natural for us to seek stability, security, and comfort in the Church but that doesn’t mean ‘no change’. Let us not look for permanence, if by that we mean some kind of sanctuary, untouched by the world at large. We must learn from Abraham’s experience that the tent, rather than the building is the symbol of the church.
Peter Webb
10th August 2020
I wonder if you happened to see the remarkable footage on The One Show last week which showed young fledglings about to leave their nest in the hollow of a tree. They sat on the edge of the hole of the tree, I could sense them plucking up courage to try out their wings and […]
7th August 2020
Do you know the village of Rodney Stoke on the main road from Axbridge to Cheddar? At the entrance to the village the sign says ‘RODNEY STOKE a Thankful Village’. Not a ‘Fair Trade’ village or ‘Winner of Britain in Bloom’, but what is a ‘Thankful Village’? It is one which lost no men in […]
5th August 2020
There has been a gap in my life for the last few years – I am no longer on any committees! At one time I lost count of them all. I had been a parish councillor, a school governor and on various “secular” committees, but mostly they were to do with church life. When I […]
3rd August 2020
There was a time when the wearing of masks was the habit of those up to no good, trying to hide their identity. Then there was that cheap and rightly censured remark of the prime minister comparing Moslem women wearing the burka to pillar boxes. Whilst today some resist the widespread requirement that we wear […]
31st July 2020
Face masks – when Tyndale re-opens in September one of the stipulations will be that everyone wears a face mask – in line with what’s happening everywhere. Gradually we’re getting used to seeing folk wearing face masks. It’s not something we take to easily in this country – folk from other countries have been wearing […]
29th July 2020
We were helpfully reminded last week of the need to smile. Some comedians recently agreed that, although the loss and grief of the coronavirus crisis should not be ignored, nevertheless there was a funny side… A few weeks ago, when the government’s advice first began to change, there was a TV sketch, “stay at home… […]
27th July 2020
We are making plans, hopefully to re-open Tyndale on Sunday 6th September. It will (though predictions are best avoided) be a very different experience. Details are being finalised, but it will, of course, involve much of the Covid-19 paraphernalia with which we are becoming, sadly, all too familiar. Through all this, though, we still want […]
24th July 2020
Having a daughter working for CircoMedia, the circus school in St. Paul’s, my wife and I have been to many performances by her students and we have learned to appreciate their skills as they train to become trapeze artists, acrobats, jugglers and clowns. I particularly like clowns with their painted faces, false noses and baggy […]
22nd July 2020
The day before my 10th birthday, I came home for lunch – school was only round the corner – and I sat listening to the one o’clock news on the radio, mesmerised by a faint ‘beep… beep… beep’ coming all the way from Sputnik 1, the first satellite, orbiting the earth! By the time I […]