Where will it All End?

It happened that I was driving quite slowly in the outside lane, with nothing in the nearside lane.  I pulled over to see what was holding things up and discovered that, a short way ahead, was a small car trying to overtake something only marginally slower than itself.  At the time, I was listening to a sermon podcast in which the preacher  questioned how Joseph might have felt when the angel told him to get up in the night, pack up and flee to Egypt (Matt. 2:13).  As we know, he obediently did as he was bid, but did he wonder whether he’d bitten off more than he could chew?  He’d taken Mary as his wife, become the step-father of God’s Son and known the adulation of these rich foreigners ... but now the Child was under a death threat: a danger against which he was powerless!

I related what I was hearing to what I could see on the road in front of me.  Had the driver of the small car the same misgivings of Joseph?  Did he now wonder whether he’d bitten off more than he could chew?  Had he made a mistake when he estimated the speed of the vehicle he was trying to overtake?  Would he make it, or would he have to pull back in an admission of failure?

The preacher seemed to be leading towards Jesus’ own possible thoughts years later, as He faced the opposition of the Pharisees to His ministry, and suffered the declining experiences of betrayal and arrest, desertion by His friends and not one but three trials, before torture and a painful execution.  However, the sermon actually focussed on an apparent contradiction, when Jesus said to His disciples, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.”  (John 16:33).  The speaker refrained from singing, as he quoted the Fred Astaire song, “There may be troubles ahead ...”

I recalled some wise words that had been given to me by my Rector many years ago, when I was going through one of life’s many distressing phases.  Basically his advice amounted to this.  “It may be tough for you at the moment, but one day you will look back on this time and, as a result of what you’re going through now, you will be able to help others as they suffer in the same way.”  Only weeks ago, I found myself in just such a situation.  I was able to share my experiences with a friend in need, and pray with him as he now trod the same path that I once had.  Those wise words had proved true for me.

A popular hymn begins, “I do not know what lies ahead, the way I cannot see; yet One stands near to be my guide, He’ll show the way to me.”  We do well to remember these thoughts when we pass through times of uncertainty; that our Lord guaranteed that, through His Holy Spirit, He would be with us always.

Where do you Belong?

Have you noticed how our American cousins tend to ‘complete the address’ when they refer to a place?  I confess I find it irritating to hear ‘Pittsburg, Pennsylvania’, or ‘Dallas, Texas’.  I mean, who doesn’t know where these places are?

Sometimes, of course, this suffix is often useful.  I questioned the need for ‘Paris, France’, until I learned that the USA has its own Parises in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas; and even ‘London, England’ has a purpose, for it distinguishes our own capital from the Canadian city in Ontario.

Many years ago, when I started researching my family history, I wasn’t surprised to discover that in each register index there were pages and pages of Evanses, a large proportion of whom were Welsh.  I was reminded of apocryphal stories about Welsh communities where the majority of the population were either Jones or Evans.  Distinction was provided by the addition of their trade, such as ‘Jones the Milk’ or ‘Evans the Post’.

And this brings us to the question of what distinction is necessary - or appropriate - for us, whether in our own country, or even in our own town.  There is an obvious distinction to be drawn if we have cousins with the same name; we might refer to ‘Peter in Tunbridge’, for example, to avoid confusion with ‘Peter in Harrogate’.  Are you ever referred to as ‘Eileen the Christian’, or ‘William from St Paul’s’?  How would you feel if you were?

We are taught that we should be in the world but not of the world.  This is important, because our faith shouldn’t be something we keep to ourselves, like the light hidden under a bowl (Matthew 5:15).  Instead, we should put our faith to some form of practical use, for ‘faith without works is dead’ (James. 2:17).  Not that good works are necessary to create faith, but they ought to be a natural product of an effervescent faith that cannot rest without outward expression.

Consider the last week.  Can you think of something you did to help others or to bring comfort to someone, a public-spirited gesture or contribution to the life of your church?  Is your faith bubbling over to be expressed?  Does your ‘trade’ as a Christian merit the identifying tag?  Next time you hear someone from ‘across the pond’ speaking, just wait for the ‘full address’ construction, and remember its significance in your own life.

Mucking In and Out

My father was a farm worker all of his life, and I dare to say he was proud of the fact. Were he here now, he would say that a lifetime’s hard work was nothing to be ashamed of.  Part of that time was spent with horses, a time when muck was a daily part of his life, but for a few weeks every spring, horses or not, our home became perfumed by the all-pervasive smell of muck-spreading, for muck is (as the Oxford English Dictionary confirms by according it to the word as its first definition) ‘farmyard manure’.  

As well as its spreading, ‘muck’ provides other compounds too.  Every horse-owner knows the importance of mucking out: removing the ordure and refreshing the stable with new straw.  This was also a term that I heard in childhood, to refer to spring cleaning. From time to time – and not just in the spring – it’s a good idea to get into the farthest corners and remove the stubborn dirt and any accumulated rubbish.  This is a laudable task for, as George Herbert wrote in the seventeenth century, ‘Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws makes that [i.e. drudgery] and the action fine’ (from the hymn Teach me, my God and King, based on Herbert’s poem Elixir).

An expression not heard so much these days is ‘mucking in’, an expression of working, or facing adversity, together; helping one another meet a common need.  It’s a gesture we’ve seen on our TV newsreels in recent weeks as Somerset farmers have mucked in and helped each other save their animals from the floods.  The Israelites who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, faced by the taunts and conspiracies of Tobiah, Sanballat and their friends, worked together, some at the walls doing the actual rebuilding, some equipped with bows, spears and body-armour to defend them, and others carrying materials, weapons in hand (Nehemiah ch. 4).  They were mucking in so that their combined efforts would succeed.  St Paul also emphasised this ‘all-for-one-and-one-for-all’ attitude to community life in his letter to the Corinthians, where he compares the inter-dependence of the parts of the body to that of each member of the church (I Cor. ch. 12).  

Even in these mechanised days, to those either living or spending their leisure hours in the countryside, muck is still an inevitable aroma of spring.  As the year and its Lenten, or growing, season open up before us, let’s think of this word and its many meanings, as they remind us to remove the rubbish of the past from our lives; to join in with communal activities, and to spread God's love among all whom we meet in our daily lives.