Sandbags and Good Deeds

Reading the newspapers earlier this week I came across a small column pointing out the limits of sandbags.  Some parts of Scotland have really escaped the severe rain and wind.  The ground isn’t saturated and there has been very little in the way of flooding.  The River Ness has held its course, perhaps intimidated by the river’s flood defences currently being built. Friends who have a house that looks out onto the river have been issued with sandbags just in case of a flood.

The woman in the article said there were much better ways of defending a home.  Sandbags are, by nature, porous.  Given enough time the water will filter through and the house will be flooded.  Far better, she said, to invest in a metal panel of some kind that could be fixed over the door and along the base of the house.  That would certainly stop the water flooding through.  It may not be as cheap as a sandbag, or as easily portable, but it would be far more effective
.

A picture came to mind as I was reading about people piling sandbags in front of the door to protect their property from a flood.  The sandbags they trusted were not really that trustworthy at all.  I thought about what other things people were piling up in the hope they would be safe from another kind of flood. 

Sandbags and Good Deeds

A sandbag is a useless aid

Against the rising tide

You pile them up a hundred high

Behind the wall you hide

But sand can never stop the flood

And water filters through

Sandbags never will defend

The home that’s dear to you

A good deed is a useless aid

Against the judgement tide

You pile them up a hundred high

Behind such goodness hide

But good deeds are inadequate

Before God’s sovereign throne

The cross of Christ’s the only key

That claims you as His own

Walk Slowly

You walk too fast

From here to there

The day is full

No time to spare

You fix your eyes

On urgent things

And trail through mud

And all that clings

You paint a smile

Upon your face

With body poised

You join the race

Walk slowly on

The path today

And gather gems

I cast your way

Witness spring

In small degrees

Stir the buds

On winter trees

See snowdrops weep in

Silent huddles

And rainbows arc in

Oily puddles

As wind tugs clouds

Across the sky

Watch snow swirl down

From way up high

My delights

Are plain to see

So cease from toil

Be still with Me

"I Swear..."

”I swear that I will do my utmost to preserve and enhance confidence in the financial-services industry. So help me God.”

The oath, according to the news on the radio the other day, is the first of its kind in Europe.  For those who break the oath and fail to abide by the rules there are sanctions - blacklisting or facing fines or suspensions. The quarter part of me that is Dutch is very proud.  The three quarters part of me that is British is rather shame faced. If only it was an oath that all bankers are required to give! 

I can see the minions of the Bank of England running about in panic.  They would probably choke on the words and start to hunt for loopholes to exploit!  In the meantime they award themselves obscene bonuses.

I think the “So help me God” was optional and no one was obliged to put a hand on a Bible as they spoke.

It is all very noble but an oath can just a string of words.  People make them and break them every day of the week. Who’s to say how sincere someone is about that string of words? Are they genuinely committed to preserving and enhancing MY confidence in the financial services industry?  Are they really going to be held to account?

”I swear that I will do my utmost to preserve and enhance confidence in God and in His church. So help me God.”

I don’t think the Bible has a particularly positive stance on oath taking.  Our “Yes” should simply be “Yes” without tying it into anything.  We shouldn’t need anything more than that.  Our honesty should stand by itself.  

What promises do Christians make? The first thing that came to mind was baptism. I know that some churches have a particular liturgy that covers certain things.  I was baptised both as a baby and an adult.  Some folks would hold that once is sufficient and twice is going overboard.  I felt that something was required when I came to faith as an adult.  I am not sure that I remember making any particular promises as I emerged from the Mediterranean Sea once cold and breezy spring Sunday afternoon. 

A quick internet search of baptismal promises reveals this set of questions from one denomination.

As a disciple of Christ will you continue in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer?

With the help of God, i will.

Will you proclaim the good news by word and deed, serving Christ in all people?

With the help of God, i will.

Will you work for justice and peace, honouring God in all creation?

With the help of God, i will.

I can’t think of any biblical accounts of baptism where the person being baptised says anything.  It is a presumption that a person will live differently with God at the centre with no need to say that they will.

I am thinking about Lent.  I have a few weeks yet before it begins.  You may take the Roman Catholic girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl! It is just in the last few years that my heart has stayed towards celebrating Lent.  I do it not out of a sense of obligation or guilt, but simply because it’s an opportunity to draw close to God.

           

I found this sentence on a website – “The renewal of our baptismal promises is the goal of Lent.”

It is a time to think about how thoroughly I immerse myself in the teaching of the Bible and whether my fellowship with other Christians, and with God, builds and edifies.  My prayer life might have improved but there is still a long way to go. It’s a time to challenge myself about whether the message I bring to the world, in words and actions, is a clear one, or a powerful one. I talk a lot about justice and peace but have to question whether I am doing anything to bring them about.

I want to work with God to be all that He intends me to be.

With the help of God, i will.

Crows...

A couple of crows on a garden wall

Dressed in black no colour at all

Covetous eyes on food transfixed

Nuts and berries into lard well mixed

Little birds flit, in fear they flee

As the crows hop closer to the apple tree

A flurry of feathers and a stabbing beak

Stuffed and glutted off they streak

From the Twilight Side of the Hill

The folks on the BBC morning programme the other day promised me that humming or singing the national anthem, “God Save the Queen”, would chase off any persistent earworms. An earworm is music or refrains from songs that your mind insists singing or humming over and over again.  I am still humming and it’s not the national anthem.

 My current worm is “Morning Side of the Mountain” sung by Donny and Marie Osmond.  I am sure that if I wasn’t a Donny fan I might have hurled myself under a bus by now! There’s a DJ on a Saturday afternoon who takes his listeners down memory lane.  1974 might have been the year and Donny and Marie were number five.  As an avid fan of Donny, if I had known he was living on the morning side of the mountain, I would have promptly sold my house on the twilight side of the hill.  I wouldn’t have just sung about a destiny that never came to be.

“They never met.  They never kissed.  They never knew what happiness they missed…”

I am thinking about people or groups of people who never meet or never kiss not in the physical sense, but in the sense that they never find common ground and they never strike up a proper conversation.  One group cannot understand where the other group is coming from.   One group is firmly on the morning side of the mountain and the other is on the twilight side of the hill.  The trouble comes when the morning side of the mountain inhabitants would like to demolish the twilight side of the hill. They insist that the morning side of the mountain is the only place to live!  Those that live on the twilight side of the hill are just as bad. They think the hill is the place to be.

I might be taking the analogy too far – but stay with me.

Those that live on the morning side of the mountain are humanists and secularists.  I have been developing a unit of work that has required me to read up on humanists.  My twilight side of the hill are those that believe in God.  The two groups seem to have almost no common ground – they don’t meet and they don’t kiss.

The morning side of the mountain takes a scientific view of the world.  What cannot be seen, cannot be tested in an objective way, cannot be reasoned out with the mind doesn’t exist. What we don’t know right now, we will know some time down the line. Man is the most highly evolved species and if you happen to be watching the new series of “The Tomorrow People” we are still evolving. Any other way of observing the world is about clinging to superstitions and nonsense.  We have moved away from that and “grown up”.

The twilight side of the hill doesn’t ignore science but interprets the world in a different way. Science may answer the “how” questions but doesn’t address the “why”.  Built into the fabric of humanity is a need to worship something greater and not just as an attempt to control or make sense of the world around us. There IS someone greater – Jesus.  We are not dealing with science and these things cannot be tested objectively.  Faith is not objective fact.

I can’t live on the morning side of the mountain.  I wouldn’t want to.  God has woven Himself so thoroughly throughout my life.  I don’t see myself as incapacitated or disabled, mentally or emotionally, because of my faith in God.  Faith for me had been about enabling me to do some very spectacular things – things I would never have considered without faith in God. 

There are times when I would rather not live on the twilight side of the hill either.  I don’t always like what my neighbours get up to.  They can be an obnoxious bunch of people at times.

It is the determination to demolish my hill that I object to.

The Secular Society is almost evangelistic in its aim to push out men and women of faith from their places of influence.  Religious observance should become times of reflection.  Church ministers should not be on committees deciding how schools are planned or how the curriculum is to be developed.  Faith schools should operate an opt-in policy as regards RME and assemblies not an opt-out one.  They seem to be so informed about so much and determined to change things.

The hill dwellers, in comparison, seem to be so passive.  It worries me that we are not as much on the offensive as we should be.  We don’t always know what is going on in the world.  We don’t seem to have the discernment to know what is important and what isn’t and we often lack passion. 

“The hill dwellers need to move to the mountain”, says God who looks over my shoulder as I write.  “Faith life needs to be lived out in close proximity to those who haven’t yet seen authentic faith – otherwise those that who have never seen authentic faith will never see it.  Authentic faith is strong enough to stand firm in a faithless world – it’s not so easily demolished.”