What a lovely idyllic picture we have in our reading from Isaiah today.
Woody Allen once said of this vision: “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. But the lamb won’t get much sleep!”
Tag: Ian Banks
Frisky and frolicking
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centred; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly
Shortly after the destruction, the cathedral stonemason noticed that two of the charred medieval roof timbers had fallen in the shape of a cross.
He set them up in the ruins where they were later placed on an altar of rubble with the moving words ‘Father Forgive’ inscribed on the Sanctuary wall.
Another cross was fashioned from three medieval nails by a local priest. The Cross of Nails has become the symbol of Coventry’s ministry of reconciliation.
The servant girl and Naaman
Into the story comes a tiny, unnamed, Israelite slave girl.
She would have been on the bottom rung of society, if she was on the ladder at all. A slave, female, foreign and young. In modern parlance we’d say she’d been trafficked.
And that should bring us up short. It’s too easy to dismiss slavery as something which happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. Another time, another place.
But this still happens today. It should still make us uncomfortable.
Jigsaw by Lawrence Kushner
Last Sunday we used the ‘Jigsaw’ poem by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner as part of a celebration service at Christ Church Walmersley.
Often we have little idea of either the impact that we have on others or of our interconnectedness.
Sometimes though you can meet someone for the very first time and know straight away that there’s a reason why you met. You’ve changed them and they’ve changed you.
Mind the gap
The message from Nigel and I is: go, share your experience, tell about what you’ve seen, testify to what you know to be true.
Because whether you know it or not, or like it or not, you’re all preachers! You each have a story to tell, a testimony to give.
It can be over a cup of coffee or at the checkout or from a lectern or a pulpit. But go.