Wednesday Reflections 3

Chosen reference: 2 Corinthians Chapter 12 Verse 8

He said to me “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”

Paul the Apostle: Therefore l boast all more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

When as a small child in a cot, I caught a virus, Infantile Paralyses (polio), I never knew what difference it would make to future. There was no modern medicine of today but electric shock treatment, iron in the shape of callipers, night splints and great pain. When l say pain it conjures up mental as well as physical.

On reflection l can honestly say I dealt with blows without help from God. I had to wear ugly shoes whereas now l buy modern ones and have them adapted. I went to Sunday school and was confirmed by the Reverend Jacks who also had an affliction to his foot so for many years l wondered ‘How could he really believe in God?’

Over years with going to the YMCA in Lewes three times a week before school for the treatment by electricity hopefully in the understanding it would help. Children were not kind

but looking back l held my own. I left school at fourteen and got a job saying l was fifteen which l was in September (you could in those days) as well as a second job in a well-known chemist positioned in the record department where l sold the first Beatles record ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962.

I will not say life has been easy but l married, had two wonderful sons and now grandchildren whom I love unconditionally. When l was low many years later l knelt in Chester Cathedral and asked for help. This arrived with people of faith who cared and the ability to write poetry. I have been a member of the congregation for over 20 years and now realise l had been given strength l did not know l had.

My story ends. If you can imagine two people in Northumberland sitting on a bench at Nether Springs Retreat House over looking the wonderful countryside and talking of God’s creation. The words of my scripture passage was told to me, “Go and look it up.” This has been with me ever since and l thank the Holy Trinity for My Spirit.

Blessings to all who read our words.

Chosen reference: 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 Verse 13

In a word there are three things that last for ever: faith, hope and love; but the

greatest of them all is love.

Some years ago a very dear friend who I came to the Cathedral with brought me a bookmark back from a holiday. It had this verse on it. When she died years later, her family asked me to read a Bible passage at her funeral. They chose ‘1 Corinthians, Chapter 13’. They knew nothing of the bookmark.

Looking back I realised this passage had been my guide through life.

I, like most people, have had highs and lows. I have two sons but between them, lost a daughter at just 8 days old. The loss of my parents and then the greatest loss, my beloved husband who died very suddenly after 35 years together but despite all this it was my faith, hope and love which got me through.

If everyone lived by faith, hope and love the world would be a better place.

Chosen reference: Romans Chapter 7 Verse 19

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now

if I do what I do not want, It is no longer that I do it, but sin that dwells

within me.

I was a student nurse mid-training, at the Royal London Hospital. I knew the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm and thought that being a Christian was being kind and nice to people so I always said I was a Christian. However, at this time I was very miserable, worn out, bad tempered, anxious and feared that I would have to stop training. I wanted Florence Nightingale as a role model but I felt more like Attila the Hun. A friend invited me to an evening service at her church: I didn’t want to go but I did. We got to the first reading,

Romans 7. All I heard was that someone knew about ME, knew about wanting to do good but letting myself down and feeling bad. To my mind it was obviously someone who had seen me in action, so I scanned the congregation for someone I knew, and drew a blank. I hissed to my friend ‘Who wrote that’? I was a bit nonplussed when she hissed back ‘St. Paul’ because even I knew that St. Paul was dead. That was in October 1967. I finished the nursing course but above all through that chapter I learned of God’s love for me. ONE day I will see God, face to face. What more could I ask for?

Chosen reference: Acts Chapter 2 Verse 42

The Fellowship of the Believers: They devoted themselves to the apostles’

teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Acts 2:42 is the first description of the beginning of something resembling an established church, and lays the basics for what should exist in Christian community. I read the passage to mean; Education, friendship, the sharing of possessions (and food) and to pray and find peace. I moved through a lot of churches whilst at college and university, trying to understand the purpose of church and once I had grasped this passage I knew what to look for. Working for a church for many years now, it is helpful to revisit this passage and its surrounding verses to help me stay on track and focused on what the purpose of this great building, where I spend so much of my life, is. The Cathedral is grand, and the workmanship that has gone into crafting it is quite unfathomable. Nowadays we use it is a multipurpose venue, but this simple short passage, with these four seemingly simple actions helps remind me of what it is truly for. We can come to the Cathedral to learn, to share what we have, to create relationships and find space to pray and take stock of things.

Chosen reference: John Chapter 4 Verse 11

The woman said to Jesus, “Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where

do you get that living water?”

I love this woman’s conversation with Jesus. Her encounter with him is

represented by a cast bronze sculpture situated in the Cathedral Cloister

Garth.

She can see Jesus’s material dilemma quite clearly but she completely misses

his deeper significance. He asks her for a drink of the well’s water and offers

her living water. The idea that Jesus can provide living water is doubly

confusing to the woman. He has no bucket; also, living water in the linguistic

culture of the day could have been understood as stream water, moving water,

not stagnant water nor well water. How could he give her this?

Jesus is of course talking about something very different. If the water in the

well is the source of life, the living water that Jesus gives is the source of new

life in the Kingdom of God. And there is another surprise. The life of this

Kingdom is a liberation. She is both a Samaritan and a woman! Two things that

served to prevent her from any meaningful encounter with a Jewish man like

Jesus, let alone sharing her water with him. The living water of the kingdom

washes away the barriers that divide peoples.

Chosen reference:

Luke Chapter 18 Verses 16-17

But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”.

Children are like spinning tops they don’t stay in the same place for very long. They have the potential to get very excited very quickly and move very fast but they can sit and play very still and quietly.

In all the churches I have been part of I have encouraged a welcoming of children. Children and their parents need to see a space especially for them, which is safe but also bright with interesting things to do. The space needs to be there even if we are not expecting children.

Children are the future of the church. Churches that make children fully welcome are able to see things through children’s eyes. They can experience the wonder of seeing things for the first time.

Sometimes we lose that excitement and enthusiasm and with day to day worries and stresses, watching a child experience something new for the first time helps me remember the wonder of our world and how amazing it is. Sometimes we need to be that child and see things with their eyes.

Chosen reference: Matthew Chapter 25 Verse 35-40

For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink;

when I was a stranger you took me into your home, when naked, you clothed

me, when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited me.

Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did

not do it to me.

The verses in Matthew which I heard regularly as a child have consciously or unconsciously underpinned many decisions in my life. They helped form my political attitudes, and in the churches I attended as I became an adult I recognised them in action. At St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London I volunteered with the social work project, getting to know homeless and lonely individuals I should otherwise not have met or, maybe, should even have avoided.

The values I imbibed from Matthew influenced my career, leading me to teach in schools in poorer parts of London and to work in adult education in Merseyside. I spent my early retirement years very much involved with Asylum Link Liverpool, a centre offering practical help and friendship to asylum seekers. I made friends with people in desperate circumstances from all over the world and tried to offer the best of me.

Although, disappointed with attitudes I found in some churches, regular church attendance disappeared from my life for almost forty years, the New Testament, and especially these verses in Matthew, still gave me a moral foundation to life. Now that I have discovered at Chester Cathedral a community sharing my values my life has come together.