Thought for the Day
25th September 2020
Last Sunday was International Peace Day and the UN Assembly is meeting all this week online – but wars still rage in Yemen and Syria… So what is peace for us in this time of uncertainty? Restrictions lifted – joy – then re-imposed – frustration! Joblessness for some, heartache for others as families are once more divided. The temptation to resist and make one’s own rules. Yet Gideon, called by God to the mammoth task of driving out the Midianites, could name his altar ‘the Lord is peace’, and Jesus calmed the storm with ‘Peace! Be still!’
That peace is ‘shalom’, meaning so much more than ‘not fighting’: including contentment, harmony, and wholeness. For Gideon perhaps it meant ‘the Lord is with me and gives me His victory’; for Jesus’ disciples it meant recognising His authority and so their safety. We know our Shalom doesn’t come from outside but wells up in our hearts and minds as we centre ourselves on Jesus and feel His presence within and around us. ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee’.
May we experience this, especially in our present situation and share it with people around us through God’s shalom in our hearts enabling us to respond with grace, patience and love to whatever happens.
Lesley Fuller
23rd September 2020
It happened last week – we lost connection with the Internet. Alexa blushed red and said she could not connect, the computer said the same thing, and our ever-watchful IT son said the security cameras had failed. Panic, crisis – what were we to do. Without internet how could I get my Thought for the […]
21st September 2020
One of the books I’ve been reading recently is Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. Although technically fiction, as a child in London, Defoe had witnessed the devastating effects of the plague in 1665. The following year came the Great Fire of London which in popular thinking served to eradicate any vestiges of plague […]
18th September 2020
Vaccines. Clearly the hope for a vaccine, that can protect against coronavirus and make it possible for the world to return to some semblance of normality, is very strong. Not everyone thinks so, however. Some ‘anti-vaxxers’ oppose anything that a government might impose. They seem to imagine that along with the vaccine we might be […]
16th September 2020
The ‘rules-based international order’ is under stress. Uighur and Rohingya folk know this, as do Novichok victims and political prisoners, victims of cross-border drone attacks and various beleaguered populations. Whales in the Southern Ocean, elephants in Africa and folk drinking poisoned water in Asia and the Americas know as well. Asylum seekers wish the order […]
14th September 2020
New restrictions come into force from today, with slight variations across the United Kingdom. The hope must be that by following them Covid 19 will be reduced in scope and effect over the coming weeks, to ease the passage through the winter months. It is difficult, though. This has all been going on for a […]
2nd September 2020
We don’t care much about things until they hit home. I viewed deaths due to the current pandemic with only mild concern, until I found out about the death of one of my lecturers from my student days, John Horton Conway. On a larger scale, when I was setting my part of the Love The […]
31st August 2020
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil… If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all… if your enemies are hungry, feed them; it they are thirsty, give them something to drink… overcome evil with good” (Romans 12.17–21, NRSV). Paul was writing to Christians in Rome at a time […]
28th August 2020
This weekend presents us with the last bank holiday before Christmas – not that bank holidays figure large in my life since retirement. For me, they’re mainly a case of avoiding problems by not going very far or, better still, keeping off the roads altogether, not unlike the restrictions we all knew in the early […]
26th August 2020
From the Newsdesk of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Mama Salome receives refugees from across the Sudanese border and sends them on to the Camp at Bidi-Bidi in Uganda. When a young single mother came with her baby, Mama Salome’s gentle questioning revealed that she had been raped in her home village, had […]