Sunday Reflection

What a week it's been! Gales and rain and floods still batter us, and much time is spent, head down, making sure the livestock is fed and safe - its been such a hard Winter for them. We were blessed with a visit from granddaughter Breagha and my daughter and son-in-law, there was a big community meeting about the future of our Estate, and a million other things to be fitted in.

 And there was a fairly major controversy in the Church of Scotland, which took several twists and turns, and resulted in our Presbytery distancing itself from the action. It left us feeling bewildered and rather shell-shocked, as we struggled to understand what was happening. For me, though, it was the duplicity of the actions by the Church council - that our Church could work with an organisation which wants to remove Christianity from our schools, to actually - well - remove Christianity from our schools! Then they tried to wriggle out of it, by saying they didn't agree to that at all. So here we are, in a Church which is either totally naive, or lying, and worse than that, has completely forgotten their sole purpose, which is to proclaim the redemptive Gospel of Jesus!

In a way, I am not too concerned about some aspects of the proposed change of name to "Time for Reflection" in schools. At the moment, parents can choose to opt their children out of religious observance, and so they often spend this time sitting in another classroom with a book. I always imagine Jesus sitting outside with the opted out ones, as He always tended to do, so- getting everyone together is a good thing. What this proposal might do though, is to stop Christian chaplains from witnessing for Christ in school, or any religious leaders from talking about their faith. 

Ho-hum - it is so easy to get caught up in the drama of who said what when, what it means, what they didn't say, web pages being deleted  - blah, blah blah. This whole episode has reminded me at least to focus on Christ. He should be centre of  everything I do, and as I said in last week's post, I need to look up more.  Today, in church, our sermon was taken from Numbers 11: 1-15, where the Israelites are grumbling and complaining. They have just been delivered from generations of  bondage, witnessed God's Power countless times working to free them, and yet...they took their eyes away from Him to complain about the catering. I do this - countless times a day, I find myself whining on about some trivial thing or other, completely forgetting about how blessed I am. I even do it here, and it is not lost on me that the Minister who delivered today's thoughtful and considered sermon was one I moaned about a few weeks ago. How we learn! But, I believe it is all part of the journey - we only see as far as the next corner, but God can see the whole map, and I am thankful that I keep being reminded of that. I am sad that my Church appears to have lost its focus on Jesus, I hope and pray that it will find its way back, but I trust that God has a purpose for this incident, and that can only be good. Wishing you all God's blessing on the week ahead. xx