Heroes of the Faith

•August 7, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Abraham, Sarah and the Angel, Jan Provoost

Who are your heroes? The people you look up to?

Are they a good example?  Are they worthy of your respect?

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

The Great Faith of God’s People

11 Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what we cannot see. 2 It was their faith that made our ancestors pleasing to God.

3 Because of our faith, we know that the world was made at God’s command. We also know that what can be seen was made out of what cannot be seen.

8 Abraham had faith and obeyed God. He was told to go to the land that God had said would be his, and he left for a country he had never seen. 9 Because Abraham had faith, he lived as a stranger in the promised land. He lived there in a tent, and so did Isaac and Jacob, who were later given the same promise. 10 Abraham did this, because he was waiting for the eternal city that God had planned and built.

11 Even when Sarah was too old to have children, she had faith that God would do what he had promised, and she had a son. 12 Her husband Abraham was almost dead, but he became the ancestor of many people. In fact, there are as many of them as there are stars in the sky or grains of sand along the beach.

13 Every one of those people died. But they still had faith, even though they had not received what they had been promised. They were glad just to see these things from far away, and they agreed that they were only strangers and foreigners on this earth. 14 When people talk this way, it is clear that they are looking for a place to call their own. 15 If they had been talking about the land where they had once lived, they could have gone back at any time. 16 But they were looking forward to a better home in heaven. That’s why God wasn’t ashamed for them to call him their God. He even built a city for them.

This is a roll call of Biblical history.  A list of those who lived by faith, following God.  For some reason the lectionary omits Abel, Enoch and Noah from verses 4-7, I don’t know what they have done to offend!

Some of you may have seen this article last week about teaching our children about the Heroes of Faith.  It argues that we have taught the heroes of the faith, not to teach our children about real human people, with real human foibles, who God still manages to love and use, but rather to use them to teach our Sunday School children to be good little boys and girls.  You may or may not agree…

This passage (if we read it all) tells us about the great figures of our faith, but it also uses them as an example of people who believed – even when they couldn’t see.  Who had to literally walk by faith, because they could see no other way in the situations they were in.  They had no proof, but plenty of hope.

Abraham was no saint.  He believed God’s promises, but also did all he could to make them happen.  He got fed up of waiting for God.  His faith faltered and he forgot that it didn’t rely on him.  His wife Sarah laughed when she heard God’s promises.  She didn’t believe, she was sceptical.  Their lives became difficult from their own efforts to bring about God’s promise.

So how about us?    Have you tried to make things happen yourself, to force God’s hand?  Have you laughed in God’s face when you’ve heard his plans for you?  I know I have.  Sometimes it can be difficult to believe what God says to us.

But that is ok.  Because we are people of faith, not sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).  Some things are hard, if not impossible, to grasp with our minds.  We are human.  People with our own thoughts and feelings, our own hopes and desires, our own plans.  The good news is so were Abraham and Sarah (and Abel and Enoch and Noah).  God has a track record of using very human people, with very human foibles.

We may not be perfect, but by faith we are heroes – for and with God.

We are all strangers and foreigners on earth, walking towards a better place.  So are those we live amongst.  We journey together – not as superior guides, but as fellow travellers.

Lord,
I walk by faith.
I have no other choice,
because life is confusing
and bemusing.
I don’t always understand your ways,
but I trust them.

Posted in bible, calling, faith, God, Lectionary, life, Religion, theology
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We depend on You!

•August 6, 2013 • 3 Comments

Psalm 33:12-22

12 The Lord blesses each nation
that worships only him.
    He blesses his chosen ones.
13 The Lord looks at the world
14     from his throne in heaven,
    and he watches us all.
15 The Lord gave us each a mind,
    and nothing we do
    can be hidden from him.

16 Mighty armies alone
    cannot win wars for a king;
    great strength by itself
    cannot keep a soldier safe.
17 In war the strength of a horse
cannot be trusted
    to take you to safety.
18 But the Lord watches over
all
    who honor him
    and trust his kindness.
19 He protects them from death
    and starvation.

20 We depend on you, Lord,
    to help and protect us.
21 You make our hearts glad
    because we trust you,
    the only God.
22 Be kind and bless us!
    We depend on you.

The Old Testament has a strong understanding of blessing = having done what God wants, and doing what God wants = blessing.  We may see a bigger picture than that, but it was the one the Psalmist is working with.

And who can argue with verses 20-22, whatever your world view?!

Lord we place our hope in you – you are our help.

Posted in bible, faith, God, hope, Lectionary, life, Religion, theology
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Twitter, Threats and High Horses

•August 5, 2013 • 6 Comments

In the past week there has, rightly, been much furore over death, rape and bomb threats on Twitter; not to mention other abusive tweets sent to those trying to stand alongside them.

Yesterday many had a #twittersilence to send a message against online abuse.

It is right and proper to stand up against such awful things.  They have no place in any conversation anywhere.

But what worries me, as I tweeted yesterday morning, is also the little things – the digs, the dismissive comments, the corrections which are not always helpfully put.  They may seem small things, but who knows what is going to be the final straw for someone?  And who of us has any right to make someone else feel bad about themselves?

I’ve blogged about my love/hate relationship with Twitter before.   At the moment I am in a place of despair.  What has happened to the Twitter that used to be such fun, and a great way of connecting with people, as John Popham wrote about?

When did we all become so effortlessly superior?  Why do we need to be the one to be right?  To point out others mistakes so readily?  To joke at others expense?  To argue heatedly over things that don’t really matter?  Have we forgotten that it is ok to disagree?  For people to say what matters to them?

I appreciate that I live in a very small world, of which Twitter has been a large part.  Perhaps it has a disproportionate focus in my life and I see and dwell on things that others shrug off.  But if I see them, someone else must too. And there is a truth in the adage, “If it matters to you, it matters”.   Maybe some people can’t easily shrug off the comments, perhaps they feel so small and stupid that at best they stop saying anything, and at worst begin a downward spiral.

Take, for example, spelling. Much was made last week of tweets containing lightening instead of lightning.  Perhaps a mistake that grates on you.  But I for one was educated in Mr Blunkett’s   wonderful (some irony may be being employed there…) Sheffield in the 1970s.  We weren’t taught grammar and spelling – it might ruin our flow. (And yes I have just procrastinated a long time over where to put the apostrophe in Blunkett)  I know I can’t spell.  I can express myself verbally, but writing it down is not always easy.  That doesn’t mean I’m not uneducated or stupid, just never had the benefit of being taught those particular rules. And sometimes predictive text is more trouble than helpful.  So pointing out my grammatical and spelling errors is not helping me.  Don’t you think I know?! I can however solve quadratic equations and use Pythagoras effectively.  I know a bit about theology.  And the University of Life and Hard Knocks is very educative.  But they don’t help my spelling and grammar. And yes, that hurts.

This is not just about spelling, that’s just one that gets to me.  On Twitter we seem very happy to point out others errors as we see them.  But who are any of us to be the Twitter Police?  To point out others errors?  To judge people so quickly by what they do, say, read, watch etc etc etc.

Are we trying to help, to tidy things up, or just being superior by keeping the other person in their inferior place?  If we do that often enough about enough subjects Twitter will become a very elite place, where the voice of anyone we don’t think says the right things in the right way will be squeezed out.  We should remember that not everyone has had the same life experiences as us – that doesn’t make those experiences less valuable.

And that is my worry.  That Twitter becomes a place where some aren’t good enough.  Where we only accept you if you are a certain way.  I know you have to be able to express yourself in a way that others can understand, but the responsibility for that lies on both sides surely?  Let’s ask gentle questions to tease out the meaning, if we don’t get it, not blunt dismissals – who knows what we might learn.

I’m as guilty as then next person sat on their High Horse of being able to take the Moral High Ground.  But in putting others down what do I achieve?  It doesn’t really make me feel any better, and I’m sure it makes the other feel even worse.  Maybe by writing this I’m doing exactly what I’m complaining about!

So, I’m sorry if I’ve jumped down your throat, exercised my effortless superiority, sneered at your choices or simply pressed “tweet” without thinking of the consequences.

Twitter should be a safe place.  In being so, it should be diverse and friendly and helpful.  It’s the responsibility of us all to make it so, and allow it to be so.

Posted in life, Rants and Ramblings
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