Hello everyone. Thank you for returning for a quick read. I hope that you have had a good week. We are all well here, all things taken into consideration. I don't know about you, but I am not exactly rushing to put the news on at the moment.
I remember many years ago, sitting in the back of a van on the way to some kind of youth jolly. I was sitting with a girl who had a highly developed interest in what we used to call "end-time theology". I hadn't been a Christian for that long, so I was quite interested in the things she was saying. Apparently, the world would end ( I can't remember how, but I think it included horses and skeletons riding them) when
(a) There was blood on the moon, suggesting, she felt, an accident in a moon-based space station or similar, and
(b) When the world turned against Israel, and there was a big battle up a hill.
Ok, so the finer details may not be entirely accurate, but we were on the way to see Martyn Joseph at the Jesus Centre ( we used to sit on floor cushions like it was 1965), so I was a bit distracted and it all seemed a bit full on to me. I mean, I'm from Bolton, we don't really have a handle on the Apocalypse on a day-to-day basis. I did ask my old school Christian Dad about her once, expecting a deep theological debate. He would only reply, "They're not all locked up, you know," which wasn't the tone I was expecting.
You may well be thinking that she retired to her garage with bottled water, lots of tins of baked beans and a big sword. We lost touch, but I heard that my end-times enthusiast ran off and married a devastatingly handsome Indian restaurant owner and lived happily ever after, looking after their four children. So she certainly didn't let the end of the world hold her back. Good for her, I say.
I sometimes think about her when I watch the news. When mad scientists talk about setting up a Space 1999 settlement on the moon, or when international diplomacy seems to be run by mad billionaires, and politicians seem to be too frightened to say "er...I don't think that's quite right".
I'm sure that politics is a complicated business. Certainly, a lot of politicians blather on as if it is and that we don't know what is good for us. Politicians are more unpopular than they have ever been, and they don't seem to know why. If I had a glorious rule, do you know what I would do? Certainly in the UK. I would do the Big Good first. I would take the Contaminated Blood scandal, the Post Office scandal and Grenfell and the Cladding scandal and I would wipe them out - agree with all recommendations, apologise like billy-o, give them every penny that they deserve and make every building safe. (We all know that they can find the money when they want to.) Then, legally pursue all those who carried on making money out of these things. You watch your popularity shoot off up the scale then O, great leaders. Instead, they mumble on the sidelines while people with bad teeth steal voters who just want something concrete to happen.
Sadly, though, my Glorious Rule is unlikely to begin anytime soon. So we carry with what Anne Lamott calls "doing love". Although the more I think about it, the more I wonder if that could have a bigger scope for the rest of us. Should the people in the examples above be left to their own devices, standing outside public buildings alone, holding up placards and photos of their lost loved ones? Whatever your thoughts on assisted dying, the legislation seemed to leave a lot of disabled people sobbing in the street, so there is certainly something not right with it.
Spinning on a sixpence, yesterday, in Messy Church. It was quiet, as the last one of the term always is. We give out ice cream with all the toppings to put on at my table - that's what I call a craft activity. The best bit was being asked by a very bright six-year-old who was examining his spoon very suspiciously - "Are these spoons clean?" "Straight out of the dishwasher", I lied. He's still at the age where he believes everything a trusted adult tells him, and they were clean enough. Probably. It's a low level doing love, really, but there you are.
I really do hope and pray that you have a good week, and I really mean it. There's a lot going on in the world, and we don't know where any of it is going, so I am deciding to shake my fists at various newspaper front pages but do the love bit - even with annoying people, if I can. And, when it gets really weird and confusing, we have a Teacher and full-throated supporter to help us be wise. My friend in the back of the church minibus often felt that she knew exactly how things were going to go, then her attention was taken by a young man in a sparkling white waiter's outfit, and everything seemed much rosier. You really never do know for sure.
Your teacher will be right there, local and on the job, urging you on whenever you wander left or right: “This is the right road. Walk down this road.” You’ll scrap your expensive and fashionable god-images. You’ll throw them in the trash as so much garbage, saying, “Good riddance!”
Isaiah 30
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