Systematic

I’ve never been sure whether the skills of my friend the Systems Consultant are with administrative or computer systems.  He certainly demonstrates great facility with computers, whatever his professional engagement.  For my part, I’ve always found great satisfaction in seeing either sort of system fulfil its intended purposes smoothly and efficiently just the way it was designed.

The life of mankind is a system.  Created in purity and perfection as we read in Genesis, the system has been marred, biffed and battered down the centuries as man has exercised the freedom God provided, but it’s still a functioning system for all that.  The same is true of our individual lives: born, for the most part, in wholeness, but as the years pass, sickness or injury can take their toll on our physical efficiency, as also abuse or mental illness can impair our emotional systems.

God’s church is a system, too.  It was designed to be His body on earth, to spread the Gospel, the good news of God’s love for all mankind, and His provision for our redemption.  In that remarkable book that ends our Bible, the Revelation to John, we can find letters to seven early churches.  Though broadly similar in structure, each letter is tailored to the particular needs of the church to which it is addressed, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses in God’s service.  As we read these letters (Rev. 2:1-3:22), it is worth comparing the characteristics of those early churches to our own.

There are many parallels between the church of the first century and that of the twenty-first.  From time to time we find ourselves fighting opposition from authorities or from the community around us.  We have to test the validity of religious leaders who may be misguided in their revolutionary ideas, or may in fact be wisely challenging our own ill-founded practices.  We can see, for example, that the people of Sardis were only going through the motions of being church.  Beneath the surface they were really half asleep (Rev. 3:1-2): their system was in ‘idle mode’.  Or look at the Laodiceans, whose riches made them blind to their real needs.  Their church system was like an engine with too much lubrication: it was clogged up and, try as it might, it couldn’t run properly.

The church, though, is composed of individuals.  We can blame ‘the system’, and it’s all too easy for us to claim that any inefficiency is down to others or the fault of someone else in particular.  We have to remember, though, that we are all cogs in the same engine.  As individuals within the body of the church, we have responsibilities to each other and to the whole (Rom. 12:5).  We are part of the system: it cannot function as perfectly without us as it can with us.  Let’s pray for guidance in the use of those gifts with which we have been blessed for the good of the whole (I Peter 4:10).

Signs of Life

It rather stuck in my mind.  As I was waiting to collect some goods for delivery one day a few weeks ago, drinking in the unusual warmth in the air, and thinking summer might have arrived at last, I spotted a sign on a unit across the industrial estate.  “A business with no sign is a sign of no business!”  It was crisp, neat and concisely explained the nature of their product. 

Slogans are catchy, occasionally amusing and, above all, they do have this habit of sticking in the mind.  I’m sure many of us can recall advertising slogans that were on TV decades ago – perhaps even selling products that are no longer in existence!  They make use of one key characteristic of the article – something it does, some need that it alone can fulfil. 

At a personal level, most of us have particular sayings that we habitually use.  Who of a certain age can forget the detective who said, in almost every episode, “By Timothy!”?  He was too much of a gentleman to swear with any stronger oath.  Or maybe you remember Jo March in Louisa Alcott’s ‘Little Women’, who would exclaim, “Christopher Columbus!”  Fiction apart, our customary sayings, like advertising slogans, can reveal much about us: what we think, what we believe, the way we conduct our lives. 

Last year, a key member of the Family History Society to which I belong, died.  In a tribute to her in the magazine, reference was made to Jean’s frequent habit of calling her friends and colleagues back to the matter in hand with the words, “Right, let’s get on with it; work to do.” 

Signs, sayings and catch phrases are all around us; and our faith provides us with signs, too.  The Easter story provides us with a special symbol, probably the sign that, in one form or another, appears most often across the whole world: the Cross.  I once had a little bronze, medallion that had belonged to my father (though where he got it from I have no idea!)  Sadly I lost it many years ago, but I remember it fondly; its design and inscription are still clear to me now.  Around the edge were the words, “In hoc signo vinces”, and in the middle of these was a big, plain cross.  Its presence is echoed by the plain wooden cross I now wear every day. 

I recently found out the meaning of those words, and perhaps they can be taken as an indicator of hope for us all in these difficult times, “In this sign you will conquer!”