Inky Fingers
Inky Fingers
Dear Friends,
Well, here we are approaching Advent again. The shops have been stocking up for weeks (if not months) and we are starting to plan for the Christmas essentials – the cards, the presents and who has Auntie or Grandpa this year. Yes, the season is about preparation – but for something even more important now than Christmas: the next coming of the Lord Jesus at the end of the time. It won’t be like the time before, when humankind had had its preparation through the Fathers and the Prophets. No, this will really sort the wheat from the chaff, we believe.
Of recent months dire things have been happening on the international economics front. In the former Rhodesia an ordinary loaf of bread cost 1.6 trillion Zimbabwean dollars in August and hyperinflation hit 11.2 million per cent per annum – and it still managed to get worse. The stock and housing markets, at home and abroad, performed at their craziest for a generation. The vast amounts brokers, bankers and politicians (attempting to cool matters) dealt with, however, (and I nearly said “gambled”) were not just figures but our life savings, pensions, jobs and homes – already under jeopardy from an eminently approaching global recession. It wasn’t only “red-top” tabloid newspapers that bandied around terms like “Armageddon” and “meltdown”. All the while millions of people continue to die prematurely, or live miserably, under famine, disease or war – but are even further pushed back in the public awareness. To be fair, the “trickle-down” eventually to filter down to them seems almost academic – when you have nothing, you can hardly have even less, can you? Oh, by the way, in the background of all this scientists and engineers had spent billions of dollars and years of planning trying to find the “Doomsday Particle” that may have caused the Big Bang that could have started IT all in the first place: the machine to do this was switched on – and broke down within days. We have to wait a bit longer to find out, it seems, if the light gets switched off as simply as it may have been put on or if the “scheme of things” deconstructs as cataclysmically as it may have been painstakingly “put together” in the first place. There may be some perverse humour in this whole scenario – I do wonder, though, if God is laughing or crying? For me, that is not a hypothetical question.
This is all real, however – it may seem remote but it is happening and is causing stress well beyond normal daily living. I am genuinely glad that the Anglican Church is addressing these and other practical issues through its website – too often churches of all denominations tend to sidestep issues affecting ordinary people as at best of minor significance or merely theoretical. But faith, related to life as it is, is a practical and personal as well communal concern. And anything that makes the Church appear aloof, patronising or irrelevant troubles me greatly.
Now it has to said that the Book of Revelation, alluded to above, does appear impenetrable or menacing to many. Yes, it is a serious and challenging read. Approaching it now, however, we should perhaps bear in mind two particular issues in the first instance: in its time it was addressed specifically to the then emergent churches in Asia Minor, and also that recent events are not without precedent (the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic and the Wall Street Crash, both as recent as the 1920′s, are cases in point). But the most important thing to remember is that we Christians believe that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, so that all who believe in Him might have eternal spiritual life – “for God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3: 16,17 – NIV).
In the course of the forthcoming Camborne Feast celebration we are putting on another Christian musical by Roger Jones (remember “Snakes and Ladders” 3 years or so ago?). “Angel Voices” is based on the Book of Revelation and includes fresh settings of much-loved hymns – among them “O love that will not let me go” (No. 503, Hymns Old & New); you may well care to look it up. I do hope you will be able to come to this production and, hopefully aided thereby, come to cherish the Book of Revelation and not be afraid of it.
So, we shall be eagerly waiting when the time comes (and, personal or communal, no-one knows when that will be), won’t we? Lest all this stuff may appear somewhat heavy going, let me cheer you up and amuse you with a true story. According to Teletext recently, someone in America tried to sue God over their woes and misfortunes. It was thrown out of court. Why? Not for some abstruse judicial reason, but simply because He had no known address at which papers could be served! So there is common sense and justice – and God remains “of no fixed abode”! We know that He is everywhere, through His Spirit – He sees all and knows all!
Yours in fellowship