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Holiday due... hooray

We are all going on a summer holiday...

Less than two weeks to go now and we will be in the beloved Lake District.

We are staying in a caravan at Troutbeck and Hannah and Simon are hoping to get up too. Fantastic!

Rachel is keen to bag a few more Wainrights and I will be happy to drink a few more Wainrights!!

Jack... I suspect he may be dreading more Wainrights, but having said that he did brilliantly last year and completed many miles very well indeed.

June 21st 2015

I offer this weeks sermon.!!

I know I am pretty awful at keeping up to date here... my apologies

The face of tyranny surrounds us probably on a daily basis.

We do not have to listen to the TV for very long before we see its face in some guise.

The plight of people crammed into small un-seaworthy boats escaping from what was and is supposed to be their home.

The Young men and women traveling to Syria and becoming suicide bombers, and the children that are unwittingly caught up in this.

Children and adults abused in a society which otherwise prides itself on decency and safety.

Men women and children experiencing daily privation and suffering and apparently sidelined by others who are better off.

Tyranny can indeed take on many forms, and somewhere you and I might have felt we have even experienced some shape or form of it ourselves.

We pray Almighty God you have  broken the tyranny of sin… and yet we still witness it and feel it.

What as Christians can we do or say about this… certainly to be real in our  world it is not sufficient to say or speak platitudes which bring comfort and hope to nobody.

I work alongside people suffering from poor mental health. This can be more symptomatic at some times than at other times. It can be difficult to experience, it can feel very frightening too. (on many levels). Many people who I look after feel that as well as bearing their poor health they have to bear to tyranny of being misunderstood, and of being side-lined in society, or even in their own families.

The tyranny of sin is that which seeks to keep people, whoever they are or whatever they suffer from the Grace and love of God. There are many ways of expressing or showing that somebody may not be so loved by God as someone else, and sadly the church has in the past been a perpetrator of this “measuring out of God’s grace”

When Jesus set out with his disciples across the Sea of Galilee in a small boat, possibly of a similar size that Shetland Fishermen set out with on the seas around these islands, they did not realise that they were going to experience the tyranny of bad weather and heavy seas. They literally described their experience as if they were perishing or about to at least.

The storm they faced was more than they could cope with. Fear and terror would have been very present.

Jesus we are told calmed the storm and the sense of Peace was as equally as tangible as the storm had been previously.

We can  witness the sense of peace brought about by people who reach out in love I tyrannical situations of all types. Aid workers risking their own health and well being are clear examples of this. Yet on a more daily basis I see the difference a positive response can bring to those suffering in a particular moment from poor mental health.

No matter who we are as Christians we really do have the power to bring an end to the tyranny of Sin.

We are Jesus hands and voice today, our actions are as if they were his actions. Our world can be a better place because we are in it.

We can bring peace and calm to storm tossed lives. We can be the difference for many between life and death.

May we have the grace to dedicate our freedom to love in the service of God and of each other.

May our hearts and bodies be directed and sanctified by God grace making its home and flowing in us.