Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
26th July 2024
To keep abreast of recent developments in politics and public life, I watch daily TV programmes like Politics Live and Newsnight, and weekly listen to radio programmes like Thinking Allowed, Beyond Belief and the Moral Maze. Time and again, those partaking are political or social commentators from a bewildering array of policy institutes, think tanks, research groups, charitable institutions and the like. Mostly it impossible to guess from their title whether they lean to the Left or Right, or are fiercely independent. Some may have some kind of religious motivation for their existence; many will not.
So many analysts must increase the talking no end, much of it speculative; quite a lot, when all is said and done, a waste of time. That is reinforced by the way in which many of these matters come to be resolved in the long term.
It could be said of this that ‘when all is said and done, more is said than done’. Lately, many in Britain think this particularly true of politics. And before we, as Christians, begin to feel ‘holier than thou’, we need to be sure that this is not true of our faith, individually or as churches. Scripture encourages us to stop being spectators, and get involved in the games. In that wonderful little book of James in the New Testament, there’s a strong theme of looking after someone’s physical needs before their spiritual ones; food then faith.
I wonder how many of these analysts might be more use to society by getting into the thick of it, rather than sitting commenting on it?
Dave Bell
24th July 2024
Churches, at their best, can be a brilliant meeting place for the generations; the youngest and the oldest can get to know each other in a safe, supportive and friendly environment. A recent service, led by Elizabeth and Alex, reminded us of the rich resource that is offered to the rest of us by older […]
17th July 2024
I once knew a psychiatrist who sometimes prepared reports for courts to assist with sentencing those found guilty. He described this as “trying to distinguish the mad, the sad and the bad”. I was reminded of this by the new prisons minister saying that about one third of those in prison needed to be there […]
12th July 2024
While on holiday recently, the phrase, ‘You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars’ cropped up in conversation. If your formative years were the 60s and 70s, you’ll recognise it comes from the Desiderata, or ‘things to be desired’ for a good and well-balanced life. Beloved of the […]
10th July 2024
What’s on your wish list for what the new Government might achieve I wonder? I was heartened that they’d brought in someone who knows something about prisons, wonder what’s in store for our health and social care services – and can but dream that one day reliance on food banks could become a thing of […]
5th July 2024
‘ONE LOT OF SINNERS OUT – ANOTHER LOT OF SINNERS IN’. So proclaimed a poster outside a Baptist Church in Leeds immediately after the 1945 general election which Labour unexpectedly won. The author was a young Welsh minister, Howard Williams, destined eventually to become minister of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church in London and famed for […]
28th June 2024
Boiled cabbage! The smell of boiled cabbage permeated the whole of a Baptist church. Not a very pleasant smell and hardly conducive to worship! I had gone there, as a child, with my parents and that is my abiding memory of it. This was during the war and the church had opened a canteen in […]
26th June 2024
UNHOLY DEATH The world we live in is encumbered with all too many unholy deaths – whether because of human conflict, natural phenomena such as floods and droughts, or violence in the home, or in the city. How do we bring such a problematical and violent world before God in our intercessions? We are perplexed […]
21st June 2024
HOLY DEATH A protestant over-concern with sin can lead to a warped theology of death as the ultimate enemy – ‘the wages of sin’ [Romans 6] – but this is probably as much the consequence of a lack of confidence in life after death, than biblical interpretation. At the same time a certain secular madness […]
14th June 2024
You may feel that you have already had quite enough of the coming general election. I certainly do, I find myself leaving the room to avoid hearing certain politicians who, yet again, have found their way onto my TV screen. But as I write this there are still over three weeks to go and we […]