Thought for the Day
April 6th
“It was on the Monday” that Jesus had people to meet and places to go. Moving through the crowded festival filled streets of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives and Bethany where he stayed with his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Jesus had things to teach.
So he went to the Temple courts, he watched the rituals and rites as well as the trade. He saw people going about their everyday business. And he taught them how to see life with different eyes. Like the old widow who came quietly, almost unnoticed to the Temple Offering to put in her small coin, leaving with her head bowed. The Temple would never survive on her donations! Ah, but following her came the rich man with his servants carrying the treasure pots that would fill up the Temple’s accounts, no one could miss this gift. The pomp and ceremony which inspired admiration and favour. Who gave the most, said Jesus? Isn’t it obvious? But with other eyes to see we might ask the same question, on whose devotion will the Temple survive?
How irritating? Jesus seems only to have cared about the heart. The heart of the matter is not how much, but how much it meant.
And Holy Week, our journey through it, as with all of Lent, isn’t about how much we give up, or do, but how much the giving up means, how much the doing is from a place of love.
It was on the Monday that Jesus called them to see with new eyes the difference between how much and how much it means to us.
Rachel Haig
April 3rd
We lecturers have split personalities. We are normally very quiet and introverted, but in front of a captive audience, a change comes over us, like Dr Jekyll turning into Mr Hyde. And after so many years, my loud and controlling personality is no longer an act, just another facet. In the last few days, my […]
April 1st
During our time in Derby, I served as a part-time chaplain at the local psychiatric hospital. Situations and conversations there could quickly go off in rather strange directions, none more so than when one day a female patient became convinced that I was Jesus. What disconcerted me most was that she persisted in trying to […]
March 30th
A crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic prompts debates about how we should behave and from where we should seek help. From science or from God? From medicine or from miracles? From action by “them” in government, or by our own attempts to keep ourselves safe? Nearly 500 years ago, the leader of the German Reformation […]
March 27th
Now that the Tyndale building – along with so many others – is completely closed, our weekly services will take a different form. Instead of me filmed standing at the lectern with the beautiful Tyndale backdrop behind, talking and singing (!) – there’ll be a service to watch on-line, with readings, prayers, a sermon, songs […]
March 25th
In this current crisis it is very distressing for many not to work every day – at a business, or a career. Our thoughts are with any whose general anxiety is heightened by extra worries about livelihood – their own, or employees; who can do nothing but watch as years of effort are reduced to […]
March 23rd
Leading a service in the empty (almost) Tyndale was a strange experience. I imagine watching it was a strange experience as well, especially the singing. But it felt right to hold the service in the church. I’ve watched one or two alternatives online, from other churches. A talking head with the laptop camera too close, […]