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?
What do we see at the end of the day as we look in the mirror? What does our life look like as we compare what we value with what we’ve done? Have we ever ended the day looking at who we are and what we want to be?
what would you do if the government declared that prayer was illegal? Daniel didn’t compromise: his routine didn’t alter: the time of prayer persisted, his attitude remained, he did not hide his faith. Daniel demonstrates that through commitment to prayer, the impossible becomes possible.
Jesus knew all too well he had little time on this earth; as with any last words, he shared with his disciples what he believed what was the most important message to leave them with. No time here for parables, lengthy discourse or illustrative phrase just the plain facts in three short words: love one another.
What happens for you when you read the bible? There may be some parts you enjoy more than others but do you wonder if the context, two thousand years later, means the same for us too?
Jesus shares all our fears, concerns, grief, and longings for physical healing, he feels these more deeply than we can image and shares all our emotional and spiritual pain.
David, the Bishop of Basingstoke lead a confirmation service at St Mark’s Church, Pennington on Sunday 28th April at 3pm. Many from St Mark’s congregation, as well as from neighbouring St Thomas’s Church in Lymington and All Saints in Milford came to show their support for our candidates as they were confirmed – and Lauren as she was baptised – together with candidates from Lymington and Milford.
