Reflection: Sunday 11th September and for the week ahead:Scripture:‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ (1Timothy 1.15)Reflection:The religious leaders of Jesus’s time despised him for consorting with ‘sinners’ - a blanket term covering not only the immoral and the actual wrongdoers, but all those they dismissed as ‘unclean’: misfits and outcasts of every sort, including the diseased and disabled, not to mention women! To associate with such people would be to be made unclean oneself.But the love and care of Jesus for the despised of society gave such people a new self respect, new hope, new confidence, a new way of living. In our churches, in our community, in our places of work and in our chance encounters, we are not called to disapprove of and avoid those whose are not ‘like us’, but to actively seek ‘the likeness of Christ’ in all God’s children. Not always easy. But who ever said that to follow Jesus would be easy? Certainly not Jesus himself.Revd Rosemary Kobus van Wengen
Reflection: Sunday 28th August and for the week ahead:Scripture:‘ I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. Because you are lukewarm, I am about to spit you out of my mouth!’ (Revelation 3 15-16)Reflection:Buddhism describes ‘ego’ as a wall that we build around ourselves of things that we are attached to - comfort, possessions, money, houses etc. The more self sufficient we are, the less we have need of God. When the ‘ego’ wall comes crumbling down, perhaps due to ill health or financial problems we find ourselves in need of help outside of our own provision. We might describe this state of being as ‘lukewarm’ - we turn to something outside ourselves only when we can’t do it for ourselves! If we treated our friends like that, we wouldn’t have their friendship for long. Right now, you may be ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ - for or against God - and that’s OK; just don’t do yourself or God the disservice of being lukewarm. It is better to live your entire life as if God does exist, and find out in the end that He doesn’t, than the other way round! Vicki Young
