Thought for the Day
23rd November 2020
“I will be like a shepherd looking for his scattered flock. I will find my sheep and rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on that dark and cloudy day.” Ezekiel 34:12 (NLT).
The resonance between this weeks Old Testament lectionary reading and our current situation is too good to ignore! We are scattered from the Tyndale building at the moment. We cannot gather to worship as once we gathered. Michael and Rachel are preaching in an empty building. We hope to return soon, but will it be the same as before?
The prophet Ezekiel spoke to the people of Israel who had been taken into exile in Babylon. They were far from home, cut off from everything that they knew. They were discovering how to worship God in a place where there was no Temple and no priests to lead them in the ways that were familiar.
Into that cloudy day came a word of hope from the Lord: I will gather you as a shepherd rescues his flock.
World leaders changed and, in time, many of the exiles returned home to Jerusalem. Others remained where they had settled. And for those that did return, life was not the same. They would rebuild a Temple, but it was not the same Temple.
We will gather together at Tyndale again, but it will not be the same Tyndale as before. Do we want to do some things differently? What are the things that we do not want to change? Are we prepared for God to ask us to change things that we do not want to change?
Ian Waddington
20th November 2020
The main families that make up the Christian church are often designated by a single word: Orthodox, Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Congregational. Baptists, without denying the marks so valued by other churches, belong to this last family. Central to their life is the coming together of those committed to Christ in the assembly (‘ecclesia’) of the […]
18th November 2020
In Rachel’s sermon about the talents, I noted 3 things: (1) the enormous sums those slaves were entrusted with; (2) they were given them, they didn’t have to earn them but they were expected to use them; and (3) the sin of the slave who buried his talent was refusing to receive it. Jesus gives […]
16th November 2020
The news – albeit with caveats and caution – that there could be an effective Covid-19 vaccine has brought a new sense of hope. Hopeful signs, too – albeit still with short-term turmoil – in the result of the US Presidential election. Sufficiently hopeful for there to be various expressions of the kind ‘maybe things […]
9th November 2020
Patience has been on display in the last few days. The mechanism of the US election has turned, slowly – too slowly for some – but gradually, day by day, a result has emerged. It is, as is obvious, a slow process. No doubt there have been mistakes. It remains to be seen if there […]
30th October 2020
This week I attended my first online funeral, for a 99-year-old man who had taught physics and gardening at my rural comprehensive. Mr Hall’s reputation as a disciplinarian preceded him: he had previously taught my father, and was famous for many eccentricities, particularly his hawkish protectiveness of the school grass. Woe betide any child who […]
28th October 2020
What is real? It is natural to ask at the moment, with the disruption of normal routines making things seem unreal. We know reality goes beyond what we can see. The covid virus and the threat of global warming are real, even though we can’t see them. It is a pity that the difficulty some […]
26th October 2020
I’ve always been interested in words (no day is complete without a crossword or two), so I was interested to read that, according to a recent survey, many words which will be very familiar to those of us of a certain age are in danger of dying out as the younger generation have never come […]
23rd October 2020
Most of us don’t like being told what to do, especially when there is an implied criticism of something we have just done. I am sure we can all think of examples of how we have been irritated when this happens. Doctors learn very quickly that they have to take great care when trying to persuade […]
21st October 2020
When, through the activities of the Christian Union, I first encountered evangelical Christians in my early student days, I was horrified by all the chorus singing. This wasn’t how I’d been brought up in my parish church at home. Didn’t these people know the joys of Hymns Ancient & Modern or appreciate the occasional challenge of […]