Predictions for the end of the world are running at roughly one a year: the next is on track for 2020. In 2012, polls over twenty countries found that over 40% of people believed the end of the world would come within their life times. Does it mean anything to us: are we focusing on the treasure in heaven that matters – or on ourselves?
There’s a need for clear communication when we need help – be that in sickness or adversity. We and those that we care for all need help at some time or another at some time in our lives and we need to be able to communicate our need with those around us.
Considering prayer: make it a personal conversation, seeing God as father. After all, a father figure is someone to trust; a father will support us in what we need. Have you thought of how you pray? God knows what is in our hearts and minds – there is no wrong way to pray!
So, we’re half way through Ordinary time, the half a year that follows the excitement of Easter and Pentecost. There aren’t seemingly any great feasts to celebrate, no anticipation as with Lent before Easter or Advent before Christmas. Really, ordinary time? More like boring yawn time – wake me up when it’s Christmas and something is happening, alright?
Three times Martha mentions herself in her complaint to Jesus; she was concerned about what was happening to her – had her focus slipped from Jesus well being to her own?
When we approach Jesus, are we looking for the loophole, for the trick, for an excuse: or are we really open to his challenge? Are we willing to accept help – or do we think that help should look a particular way, or come from a particular professional? Are we willing to accept Jesus – on his terms?
What are your first memories of your childhood? Did you feel safe; have fun; feel loved? For many children today, they can’t answer yes to all three – let alone just one. With 4.1 million children living in poverty, the risk of sexual abuse and mental difficulties highlight the importance of charities – such as the Children’s Society.
Why should we settle for recreating ourselves with one more possession, hope, ambition? All the time, Jesus is dying to give us a new life – one we can’t create for ourselves. Can we not instead find Jesus in the darkness of our lives – and in the night time wake anew to a new life with Christ?
Did you ever have an expanding suitcase? Where the clothes could go higher and higher, the lid come over and the racheting down would fit more and more into the case. God’s love for us and our understanding of this through the Holy Spirit is like that: as more and more understanding comes through the Spirit. Jesus last words and actions comforted the disciples in a way that only the Holy Spirit might help them understand: the love that God the Father has for Jesus is the love that Jesus has for each of us – and the Spirit helps us to realise and recognise that power in our lives.
The man they had been following had been crucified. This must have felt like the end – but then Jesus came back to them: but the rollercoaster wasn’t over as Jesus left again, ascended. How would you feel at this point: lonely, confused, upset, sad – or perhaps exhausted! But then the Holy Spirit came – can we be identified as Christians by a bubbling, infectious glow of the Spirit in us as was with the disciples then?
