The best paid plans...

Sue and I have been big Strictly Come Dancing fans for several years now, and so I was delighted to receive an e-mail from Leicester's De Montfort Hall (DMH) last week with the news that Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacace, two former Strictly professional dancers, will be coming to DMH in April 2016 to perform their show The Last Tango.  Our tickets are booked and we are already looking forward to the show, even though it is a year away!

I must admit to being the kind of person who likes to plan things well in advance where posible.  The advantage of doing so is that I can then look forward to whatever has been planned.  For example, I find that a large part of the fun of a holiday is the anticipation before the event.  

Yet the truth is that our plans don't always work out as we had expected.  The well know saying, "The best laid plans of mice and men..." comes from a poem, 'To A Mouse' written by Robert Burns back on 1786.  It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest. The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse:

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.

The Biblical letter of James brings home in a very forceful way the pitfalls of making our own plans and assuming that they will automatically come to fruition:

'Look here, you people who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to such and such a town, stay there a year, and open up a profitable business.” How do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? For the length of your lives is as uncertain as the morning fog - now you see it; soon it is gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we shall live and do this or that.”' (James 4:13-15)

This was brought home to me in a very forceful way when, on the same day I booked the tickets for the show at DMH in a year's time, I received the shocking news that my younger brother, Phil (who is the baby of the family, being the youngest of 6 children), had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, and medically speaking the outlook is very bleak.  We are, of course, praying for God to intervene in a miraculous way in Phil's situation, but nevertheless I was suddenly brought face-to-face with the reality of the frailty of human life.

There is, I suppose, nothing wrong with making plans as such, and sometimes it's very helpful.  However, as James reminds us in his letter, none of us knows for certain what will happen tomorrow!  We need to understand that we are not complete masters of our own destiny.  There are so many thoughts going round in my head at the moment, but just a few bullet points will suffice for now.

• Never take life for granted, but value each new day;
• Appreciate every moment spent with friends and family;
• Don't hold back on expressing love to those dear to you;
• Understand that most of the things we argue about don't really matter;
• Never put off until tomorrow what you need to do today, for tomorrow may never come;
• Try to recognise those things in life which are of real value (e.g. relationships, not possessions);
• Put your plans into God's hands, and recognise that he is in control;
• God's promise to us is, 'I will never leave you, I will never forsake you' (Hebrews 13:5).
• Our time here on earth is temporary, but if our faith is in Jesus our eternal destiny is secure.

If you are a praying person, please pray for Phil, his wife Monika, and their two children Mike and Emily.

Why go to church?

There's an old tale of a conversation which goes something like this:

Mum: "Come on son, it's time to get up and go to church."
Son: "But mum, I don't want to go to church!"
Mum: "Why don't you want to go to church, son?"
Son: "Because I don't like going to church; it's boring, there are some very strange people there, and what's more, nobody there likes me."
Mum: "But son, I'm afraid you have to go to church."
Son: "Why do I have to go to church, mum?"
Mum: "Because you're the vicar!"

That story came to mind because I have been thinking this week about the statement which I have heard a few times over the years, "I don't need to go to church to be a Christian."  And of course, in a literal sense that must be true, for some Christians find themselves unable to attend church due to illness or infirmity.  There are also some who live in countries where Christians are forbidden to gather together to worship.

Yet there are still some people who claim to be Christian believers who could, if they so chose, be part of a local church, but have decided not to be so.  There may be a number of reasons for their choice, but there are those who would say that they are quite happy living their Christian lives without the need for involvement with church.  So are they right?

My mind has been prompted along this line of thought through reading Henry Blackaby's book, 'Experiencing God Together.'  This is a follow-on to his previous book, 'Experiencing God.'  In the book Blackaby addresses the issue of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the context of a local Christian community (i.e. the church).  He makes the point that the life of Christian discipleship was never intended by God to be lived in isolation from others.  Christians are called to help, encourage and support one another, something which we cannot do if we never meet together or get to know one another. We have been studying the book in fellowship groups in one of my churches.  I was particularly struck by one paragraph in Blackaby's book:

'A church is not just a place where you can go to be comforted, but also a place where you can give comfort and support for others who are hurting.  Some have told me, "I don't need others' support."  But let me ask you this, "Do others need your support?"'

A good question indeed!

To hurt or to heal?

It hardly seems possible that it’s not too long now before I am due to reach my 60^th birthday.  Where have all the years gone?  “Time flies” as the saying goes.  As I ponder what society was like in my childhood, it seems in so many ways to be light years away from where we are today.  Some aspects of modern society could hardly have been imagined back in the mid-1950s.

One of the significant elements of modern life is the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook etc.  For many, the use of social media has become a vital part of everyday life, and an important means of communication.  Of course there are inherent dangers of which we do need to be aware, and there are many instances of social media being abused and causing real harm.  On the other hand, it can be used in positive ways.  Social media is not harmful in itself, its effects depend on how it is used.  It’s about choice.

Of course I am a user of social media myself.  One of the things I like to do is to tweet short sayings or phrases which I come across which I find helpful or thought-provoking.  A saying which I came across recently was the following from Louie Giglio:

‘Words are free. You can freely build others at no cost to you. Or freely tear them down at great cost to them. Speak well.’

A great point made well.  The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me” is, as we all know, absolute rubbish.  Bones will mend in due course, but the immense damage which words can cause sometimes takes a very long time to heal.  The writer of the Biblical book of Proverbs tells us, ‘What you say can preserve life or destroy it; so you must accept the consequences of your words’ (Proverbs 18:21).

Do we choose to build people up or to tear them down?  Do we use our words to encourage or to discourage?  It’s not always easy to keep our tongue under control (I know that I fail at times), but how much better the world would be if more of us made an effort to do so.