Ooh! aren’t they lovely – a couple of rather unusual visitors check in at Lunch Club

If you thought our Senior’s Lunch Club was little more than a bunch of people sitting round, drinking tea and playing bingo then you need to think again. Last week Laura Thompson lined up a couple of very unusual visitors in the form of a blue otugnued skink and what to me (although I’ll bet I’m wrong) looked like a giant tortoise.

I have to confess I’m much more of a dog or cat man but many thanks to John Hornby for passing these pictures on… I just hope they all washed their hands before they moved through to the Sports Hall for lunch!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some thoughts on Pastor Paula White’s prayer for President Trump

Paula White, is pastor of the New Destiny Christian Center, she is also President Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser. Here is the text of her prayer at his inauguration.

We come to you, heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus with grateful hearts, thanking you for this great country that you have decreed to your people. We acknowledge we are a blessed nation with a rich history of faith and fortitude, with a future that is filled with promise and purpose.

 We recognize that every good and every perfect gift comes from you and the United States of America is your gift, for which we proclaim our gratitude.

As a nation, we now pray for our president, Donald John Trump, vice president, Michael Richard Pence, and their families. We ask that you would bestow upon our president the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation, the grace to unify us, and the strength to stand for what is honorable and right in your sight.

In Proverbs 21:1, you instruct us that our leader’s heart is in your hands. Gracious God, reveal unto our president the ability to know the will, your will, the confidence to lead us in justice and righteousness, and the compassion to yield to our better angels.

While we know there are many challenges before us, in every generation you have provided the strength and power to become that blessed nation. Guide us in discernment, Lord, and give us that strength to persevere and thrive.

Now bind and heal our wounds and divisions, and join our nation to your purpose. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, the psalmists declared.

Let your favor be upon this one nation under God. Let these United States of America be that beacon of hope to all people and nations under your dominion, a true hope for humankind.

Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Haddon Willmer writes: There is much in this prayer which disquiets me. It is a complacent ‘America first’ prayer. Not being an American nor a Trump-fan, I find it hard to get past its nationalism to find a Christian prayer I can join in with.

Confession of sin is a key component of Christian prayer: there is not a hint of it here. The USA is simply ‘the gift of God’. It is called to be, and is confidently proud that it will be, a ‘beacon of hope to all people and nations… a true hope for humankind’. Without qualification, we ask God to give Donald Trump ‘the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation, the grace to unify us, and the strength to stand for what is honourable and right in your sight’. We have no sense, it seems, that if this prayer is real, we are here asking God for a massive miracle, bringing about a painful uprooting and an unimaginable remaking, a radical conversion for the Donald Trump we have come to know and have to live with for the next four years, at least. Could Donald Trump accept such a miracle? There is little evidence that he would. He certainly does not imagine it is necessary.

This prayer is made ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’. If those words mean anything at all, they remind us that our prayer goes through the filter of Jesus Christ, so that it fits faithfully with Jesus Christ. In his words and actions, in his self-giving and dying, Jesus calls us to repentance, humility, and truthfulness. He saw through the self-assured illusions of the Pharisee at prayer in the public glare and stood with the broken tax-collector, who could do only pray, God be merciful to me, a sinner (Luke 18.9-14).

Haddon Willmer shares the obituary of Zygmunt Bauman, “a prophetic man” and a former colleague at the University of Leeds

Emeritus Professor Zygmunt Bauman

Colleagues will be sorry to hear of the death of Emeritus Professor Zygmunt Bauman, former Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology. Formerly of the University of Warsaw, he joined the University in 1972 as its first Professor of Sociology. He was an inspirational teacher and academic leader who served two terms as Head of Department and during his time here published widely, continuing to do so after his retirement in 1990. In 2004 the University awarded him an honorary degree in recognition of his extensive contribution to modern sociological thought, and in 2010 founded the Bauman Institute for Theory and Society, which seeks to address specificities such as the social impact of the global financial crisis alongside broader themes such as how we understand liberty and choice, identity and citizenship, and collective responsibility in modern societies. The following tribute has been contributed by Dr Mark Davis, Director of the Bauman Institute and was also published in the Guardian. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/secretariat/obituaries/2017/bauman_zygmunt.html

In a book published in 2000, the Polish-born sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who has died aged 91, deployed a metaphor since taken up by the anti-globalisation movement around the world. Liquid Modernity analysed the disappearance of the solid structures and institutions that once provided the stable foundations for well-ordered modern societies, and the consequences for individuals and communities.

Bauman, professor of sociology at Leeds University (1972-90, and then emeritus), argued that our “liquid modern” world was unable to stand still and keep its shape for long. Everything seems to change – the fashions we follow, the events that catch our attention, the things we dream of and the things we fear. An increasing polarisation between the elite and the rest, our growing tolerance of ever-expanding inequalities, and a separation between power and politics remained constant themes in his writings – in all he produced more than 60 books. As the state and the market vie for supremacy within the space of global capitalism, the fate of poor and vulnerable people assumes particular importance. As he put it: “When elephants fight, pity the grass.”

His work was especially influential among progressive young activists in Spain, Italy and across central and South America. “See the world through the eyes of society’s weakest members,” he said, “and then tell anyone honestly that our societies are good, civilised, advanced, free.”

His best-known book, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), provided a stark warning of the genocidal potential latent within every modern bureaucratic society to privilege process, order and efficiency over morals, responsibility and care for the other. It was shaped by the memoir Winter in the Morning (1986) by his wife, Janina (nee Lewinson), later revised as Beyond These Walls: Escaping the Warsaw Ghetto – A Young Girl’s Story (2006), and his own experience of 20th-century horrors.

Always wary of offering any alternative blueprint for the future, Bauman declined to profess any concrete solution to our common plight. But he retained a commitment to a form of socialism that remained counter-cultural, even when an avowedly socialist government was pulling the levers of power. He believed that a truly good society was one that could never be satisfied that it was good enough.

As people choose to manage their individualised concerns as consumers, hoping to find solutions to their private troubles by shopping, they have largely ceased to act collectively as citizens who share common public issues. In his words: “Can notions of equality, democracy and self-determination survive when society is seen less and less as a product of shared labour and common values and far more as a mere container of goods and services to be grabbed by competing individual hands?”

With the evacuation of trust from political leaders has come a loss of faith and a demand to “take back control” from self-interested elites. Bauman pointed, for instance, to the bank bailout of 2007-08 as the instantaneous creation of “a welfare state for the rich”. Having lived through two forms of totalitarianism, he warned that the change demanded would be authoritarian in character.

A native of Poznań, in western central Poland, he was first a victim of the Nazis, then the communists. The son of Moritz Bauman, an accountant, and his wife, Sophia (nee Cohn), he fled with his family at the outbreak of the second world war to the Soviet Union, and was awarded Poland’s Military Cross of Valour for fighting against the Nazis.

He married Janina in 1948 and lectured in sociology at Warsaw University, becoming a professor in 1964. Four years later he and his family – now with three daughters, Lydia, Irena and Anna – were exiled as a consequence of an antisemitic campaign by the ruling communist regime. He thus became a refugee for a second time and his experiences of poverty, marginalisation and exile led him towards an explicitly morally driven sociology. After temporary posts at universities in Tel Aviv (despite being a critic of the treatment of Palestinians), and then more briefly in both Haifa and Melbourne, Australia, in 1971 Bauman and his family settled in Britain. There he headed the sociology department at Leeds. A prolific and disciplined writer, he started before sunrise. In the 1980s, those tidying up after a staff-student party recall him striding purposefully into the building at 4.30am and into his office to start work. He continued to publish for the rest of his life.

In recent years Bauman analysed the refugee crisis and the rise of rightwing populism across Europe and the US as a “crisis of humanity”. The promise of a socially progressive Europe meant a great deal to him. He believed ardently that the European Union stood as a safeguard for hard-won rights and for shared protection against war and social insecurity. In what proved to be his final lecture at Leeds last October, he drew parallels between the Holocaust and the capacity of today’s populism to make everyone “other”, without compassion or remorse.

His many honours included the Theodor W Adorno prize (1998). For the award ceremony in Frankfurt, neither the Polish nor British national anthems seemed appropriate to him, feeling a stranger in both lands, and so he settled on the Ode to Joy, the anthem of Europe. His work serves as a reminder that our world has been made by human hands and so it can be remade by them too. For all his passion and pessimism, he wrote because he believed that that challenge could and should be confronted.

Janina died in 2009. Six years later Bauman married Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, also a sociologist. She survives him, along with his daughters, three granddaughters and three grandsons.

Zygmunt will be remembered by students and colleagues alike as one of the great social thinkers, and with genuine affection and warmth for his energy, his compassion and his ability to bring out the very best of others. A private family funeral has taken place, during which, as a mark of respect, the flag on the Parkinson Building (left) was flown at half-mast.

 

To some this is rocket science, to others it’s just a stroll in the park: it’s the latter we need to connect with

Nowadays one of the most important elements of almost any act of worship is what is delivered via a church’s audio/visual system. Here at Moortown Baptist Church this can include the setting up of a simple PowerPoint presentation, creating a live link to a Youtube video, projecting the text of a responsive prayer or bible reading, balancing the worship band’s mics and amps of course keeping up with the words to a song or hymn.

Currently, each Sunday morning, a small team of AV volunteers work on a rota basis which inevitably means that the smaller the pool the more times they are called upon.

At present John Duffy and Martyn Gray are the linchpins of that team, and right now they are keen to recruit more people to help deliver this essential service.

If you are interested in joining the team, if you are prepared to give of your time and most importantly if you are willing to learn John and Martyn are prepared to provide full training.

Both John and Martyn are in church most Sundays so please speak with them directly.

Alternatively if for some reason you can’t locate them please send your contact details via an email headed AV TEAM to the MBC office moortown.baptist@btconnect.com and we’ll make sure it’s passed through to them.

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two messages from MRSG (Moortown Romania Support Group) One an appeal from Norman Hiley, the other hard evidence of how our gifts make a very real difference.

On behalf of the church MRSG (Moortown Romania Support Group) are hoping to send financial help to the 4 churches we are now linked with in Romania.  These churches are quite different – i.e. 2 are Baptist Churches in the large city of Cluj; and 2 are small village churches in Transylvania (Northern Romania) which is Hungarian speaking.

These 2 village churches are pastored by Noami at Cerefalva and her daughter Szuszi at Bikafalva. All four churches have one thing in common in that they evangelise widely by the use of Summer Camps for young people who are led to faith in Jesus.

We wish to continue to support this evangelical outreach. At the same time we also give financial help to a Gypsy Church at Floresti and to the support of a Christian Home for abandoned children run by our friends Nicu and his wife Rita.

Any gifts, whether large or small, are welcome as this is the only means MRSG has in raising money to help this essential ministry in Romania.

Contributions can be made through the church and any cheques should indicate that the gift is for Romania. This will also attract a tax repayment of 20% as well. Other gifts should be made to MRSG direct to me and should be made payable to ‘MBC Romania Aid Fund.’

All gifts will be sent before Easter as an encouragement to our Christian friends in Romania.

Thank you.

Norman Hiley – Treasurer MRSG

The pictures on this part of the page were taken at a Sunday evening youth service by Rod Russell on a recent visit to Stegeris ( Cerefalva in Hungarian).

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In addition Rod has just sent this in which not only says a little bit more about where our gifts go but also gives some wonderful examples of exactly how much difference they make.

As well as helping needy families and funding an annual youth camp (this has been happening for 20 years now and in that time four people (two male and two female) from the village have become Pastors) MBC’s financial support also goes into a Bursary Fund which helps poorer students purchase text books for their university studies. This fund is administered by a small committee who we have found to be very reliable. Here are a few messages we have recently received from some of the students we help to support. Rod.

Dear brothers in Christ. We thank you for your prayers and for your financial support that you sent us in 2016. God bless you! Together with your financial participation, thirty two needy families were helped and six young students received scholarships. In the following lines you some thoughts from these young people who were blessed through you. Here are the messages that our students wrote to thank you for the money they received.

Thank you and we pray for your blessing. 2 Corinthians 9:11

Hi. I’m Laura Siminiciuc and i’m studying for a master degree in molecular Biotechnology. I just moved to Cluj Napoca this year and I’m one of the many that received a blessing coming through you. Thank you for being the ones that God can use to help otheres. Thank you for your great example of love and caring for your brothers and sisters around the world. May God bless you and help you in every way.My name is Ilinof Rebeca and I am a student in first year of college in Cluj and I study Marketing at Babes Bolyai University. I am from a little town 350 kilometers from Cluj. I want to thank you for the financial support you have given to me. It is both a blessing and a proof that God takes care of His children in His own wonderful ways. May God bless you and I’m sure He will reward your beautiful gesture of kindness.

I want to thank you that, although you don`t know yet who I am, you wanted to make me part of a blessing. My name is Ramona Pop, and I come from Arad, a city in western Romania, hear Hungary. I learned to play the piano at age of 5, so my parents decided for me to stady at a music school in my town. In high school I also studied the music theory, and in 2013 I decided to come to Cluj-Napocato continue my musical studies on the theoretical part, named Musicology.

So, with God help, today I am in the final year at “Gheorghe Dima” Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca and I will finish this college next year. Also, I am in second year at the Faculty of Economics in Cluj, where I study Accountings by a „distance learning ” program.

One of the greatest blessing that I have recevied here at Cluj was the Church in Manastur. Here I sing in the choir and in a worship group, and sometimes, with the help of brother Ken Tucker I am directing the choir.

I thank you for your love an I want to greet you with Psalm 36, verse 5 and 6: “Your love, Lord, Reaches to the Heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep.  You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.”

 May God bless you and keep you in His love. With gratitude, Ramona Pop.

Hello, my name is David Costea. I have forteen years  and i was born from a family with hear dizability. My parents and my brother and sister are deaf and I am the only from my family who cand hear, and i take this like a blessing because I help my family, I am as a translator for them in different situations related with people who hear and speak. I love my family even they don`t hear, because for me how is family now, is perfect, and they are perfect how they are.

Me and my family are very thankful for your support. I hope these donations will help more people needfull, Thank you very much! Peace!

I really want to thank you for believing  that you could invest in people like me, God bless you! My name is Sebastian Muresan and I am 22 years old. I come from a christian femily here in Cluj and since i was little i was fascinated by music and tehnology, and that`s why I decided to build a career as an engineer and work with the music group from church. I love playng the drums and I had many people suporting me here at Manastur church.

I would like to thank you once more and I hope that everyone appreciates your support. God bless, Muresan Sebastian

From Maria Jantea. I am writing this note, in order to express my gratefulness for your financial support. I pray that Lord God bless you abundantly and reward you. I am a conducting student in the senior year of College. As it can be easily seen, music is my primary passion among reading and foreign languages. I love conducting orchestras, this being my speciality. I also practice choir conducting in church Manastur nr. 1.

I’m very grateful for your kindness. God bless you.

Yours sincerely, Maria Jantea

Family Church, Messy Church, Impact… children, families and all age – some important dates for January/February.

 

Sunday 8th –     KS1 Genesis 1-10         KS2 Prayer

Friday 13th –    Messy Church – New Beginnings looking at Samuel –All age

Sunday 15th –    KS1 Genesis 1-10         KS2 Prayer

Friday 20th –     Impact – Youth Club for children school age from 6-7:30pm with games/crafts/baking and discussion

Sunday 22nd –   All together – Children (3-11’s) meet in the Music Room from 10:20am for activities, worship and teaching

Friday 27th –     Impact

Sunday 29th –   KS1 Genesis 1-10         KS2 Prayer

Family Time. Time for parents, grandparents and carers to meet teachers and one another

Friday 3rd–        Impact

Sunday 5th –     KS1 Noah/Abraham and Isaac            KS2 Psalms

Friday 10th –     Messy Church – Treasure hunting – come along and invite your friends- All age

Sunday 12th –   KS1 Noah/Abraham and Isaac            KS2 Psalms

Friday 17th –     Family Time. Meet at Roundhay Park, Street Lane car park at 10:45am with a packed lunch for a walk around the park and fellowship together (feel free to invite your friends)

Sunday 19th–    KS1 Noah/Abraham and Isaac            KS2 Psalms

Friday 24th –     Impact

Sunday 26th–    All together – Children (3-11’s) meet in the Music Room from 10:20am for activities, worship and teaching

 

 

Haddon Willmer shares some “moving and illuminating” prayers that he heard on Radio 3’s Choral Evensong

revd_canonnigelhand-600x399I was driving round town last Wednesday afternoon, when Choral Evensong from Birmingham Cathedral was being broadcast on Radio 3. It was a beautiful service, with excellent music and interesting readings. But most moving and illuminating were the final prayers.

So I wrote to the Dean, Catherine Ogle, many years ago a student of mine, and asked for the text, which Canon Nigel Hand (pictured right) has now kindly sent me.

Here they are:

Living God,
deliver us from a world without justice
and a future without mercy;
in your mercy, establish justice,
and in your justice, remember the mercy
revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, you are the source of all goodness, generosity and love.
We pray for the people of Mosul in Iraq and of Aleppo in Syria
as conflicts rage and innocent lives are put again in the firing line.
We thank you for opening the hearts of many
to those who are fleeing for their lives.
Help us now to open our arms in welcome,
and reach out our hands in support.

That the desperate may find new hope,
and lives torn apart be restored.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord,
who fled persecution at His birth
and at His last triumphed over death.

Amen.

O Saviour Christ,
in whose way of life lies the secret of all life,
and the hopes of all the people,
we pray for quiet courage to meet this hour.
We did not choose to be born
or to live in such an age.

But let its problems challenge us,
its discoveries exhilarate us,
its injustice anger us,
its possibilities inspire us,
and its vigour renew us
for your Kingdom’s sake.

O Christ, the King and Lord of all,
Teach us to know that with you
Nothing is too bad to be cured,
Nothing too good to be hoped for,
Nothing too hard to be attempted:
And nothing so precious that it cannot be surrendered for your sake;
Who lives and reigns
With the Father
In the Unity of the Spirit
For ever and ever.

Amen.

O God, who would fold both heaven and earth in a single peace:
let the design of thy great love
lighten upon the waste of our wraths and sorrows:
and give peace to thy Church,
peace among nations,
peace in our dwellings,
and peace in our hearts:
through thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.

All these prayers we bring together as we say together the words of the Grace ……..

You can listen to the service in full via the BBC Radio 3 Podcast by flowing this link  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z7dcw   

Nathaniel Darling shares his thoughts following a week spent working with the Child Theology Movement

The week before last saw a consultation on the future of the Child Theology Movement take place at High Leigh conference centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. This is a movement Haddon Willmer has been closely involved with from its beginnings in the late 1990s, and I was fortunate to be able to participate in last week’s consultation as a note-taker and administrator.

CTM (3) (300x95)Child Theology is a young term, with no clearly defined subject matter, so a wide range of topics were discussed: the role of human rights’ declarations in guarding the well-being of children, theology and child activism, children and the Bible. We also heard the personal reflections of Frances Young, a Christian theologian whose work has grappled theologically with her experience of caring for her now 49 year-old son with severe learning difficulties.

Throughout all these discussions, however, there were two recurring themes which helped me to understand what Child Theology might be and who it might be for.

Firstly, it became clear that Child Theology is not a separate branch of theology, specifically for children, or for those who work with children. It is not an end in itself; it is not a particular ideology; and it is not competing with other theologies. Rather, it takes a particular starting point – the child – and asks how she might be a clue or a sign towards God as revealed in Jesus Christ. In Matthew 18, when the disciples were having an argument about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of God, Jesus placed a child in their midst. Child Theology asks what difference this child might make for our own theological arguments today.

Secondly, it emerged for me in the consultation that Child Theology makes this challenge to all of us, because we are all theologians. Theology, the consultation showed me, is not primarily an academic field, but a way of speaking that no Christian can do without. It is, after all, talking to, of and with God. The Child Theology Movement talks serious theology with the child in the midst, but it does so with practical people—Christian practitioners, activists and ministers—as well as with academic theologians. So following the clue of the child placed in the midst by Jesus is an invitation to each one of us.

At the end of the consultation, we meditated on the Lord’s Prayer. One person wrote a prayer that I thought others may also appreciate. It is a way of ‘saying the Lord’s prayer from a different perspective’.

Saying the Lord’s Prayer from a different perspective

Deliver us from the evil – of ever giving up praying this prayer

whatever the pressure of temptation.

Deliver us from losing the ‘our’ to make the Father ‘mine’.

Deliver us from claiming the Kingdom now rather than steadily praying for it to Come.

Deliver us from seeking the Father in heaven as though he has abandoned the earth

where there is stomach hunger for missing daily bread

where there is sinning up to seventy times seven

Deliver us from escaping the Father’s house to seek our misfortune in the far country

Rather let us ever and again find our way back to our Father’s welcome feast with all the household

So let his name, Father, be credible, to all in all things for ever

PACE IN SWEDEN AND WESTMINSTER… by Haddon Willmer

Earlier this month Hilary and Haddon Willmer visited Sweden, at the invitation of Sven-Gunnar Liden, a leader in the anti-trafficking movement in Sweden and in the European Baptist Federation. Hilary told large audiences of professionals and parents why parents are crucial frontline agents when children are sexually exploited, and why agencies like police and social services should support and work with parents for the sake of the children.  The picture below shows Hilary with Sven-Gunnar Liden.

Doc6Since then, Hilary and Graham have been to Westminster, launching the latest Pace publication, Parents Speak Out, to Police and Crime Commissioners, politicians and others. The document, the cover of which you can see above, can be downloaded and saved from https://www.moortownbaptistchurch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Parents-Speak-Out-final.pdf

Here is the sermon Haddon preached in Sven-Gunnar Liden’s church.

 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BEGINNING

For 20 years, Hilary and I have been active in the charity known as Pace, Parents against Child Sexual exploitation.

I have heard many parents tell their story about how they act for their children, against sexual exploitation.

When a parent discovers one of their children is being groomed, they are surprised, horrified, distraught, confused, and feel weak in this disaster…

But being committed to their child, they are also resilient, aroused, driven to do anything they can…

They go searching, through the night, in dangerous places, sometimes in faraway towns, looking for their missing child…

When they see the child, they tell her they love her, through everything; they do everything they can think of to win her back from the insidious corrupting pull of the grooming and from the distrust and resistance it builds up in her….

They do anything they can to stop and disempower the exploiters, acting on their own and in cooperation with police and other agencies …

They do this for as long as it takes, often months, sometimes years, even when no end is in sight, and they hold on through one crisis after another….

I am deeply impressed by so many parents who respond in this way, rising to a task they are not prepared for by experience or training – they are not professionals, who deal with CSE every day.

What is so impressive about parents of this sort?   What is their secret?   Can we all share it? Will understanding them help us all to find strength and wisdom for our living?

Besides parents, there are many people who respond with care and competence to young people who are sexually exploited.   Many Police and social workers, medics and politicians, journalists and theoreticians.     They bring resources to bear on the issue which parents do not have.   But parents have something they do not have.   What is that?

Let me explain it this way:

When a young person is in trouble, and sexual exploitation might be the cause, social workers and police get involved with the family, often for the first time.   So their first sight is a teenager in a bad way,   physically harmed, disturbed in mind and spirit, alienated from family and friends, unable to break free of devious controllers.

The parent sees all this, but sees more, much more, and sees it vividly and powerfully.   For what the parent sees is not just this present moment, this teenage aberration, but the whole life of this precious human being from the beginning.   They look with the eyes of the parent who has accompanied the child from birth onwards.   The parent looks at the teenager and sees her for what she is now and responds to it realistically.   But at the same time, the child is like a transparency to the parent: through the teenager the parent sees the baby they remember and the child they have lived with through the years.

So the parent sees what the professional cannot be expected to see or give weight to. And the parent sees all the yesterdays, which the teenager, eager for life today and tomorrow, may be running away from, not seeing any worth in it. The parent holds on to something about the child which the child finds it difficult to appreciate and build on. The child wants to get away from parents and family and home, which has become boring. It is right for children to grow up and away from childhood; but we all need to grow up in a healthy way, not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

We none of us remember our own birth, our own beginning. But parents were there unforgettably.   The living memory of the child, from the beginning and through all the years, is a source of the parents’ commitment, strength, hope, determination, wisdom.   The parents share in making the beginning. They experience the wonder of seeing a new person, a radical novelty, coming into the world. They find themselves committed deeply to an awesome, lifelong responsibility. This happening does something to empower them to love and they find themselves tested and enriched by loving.

Listen to the testimony of Irene Ivison, the woman who founded what is now Pace, back in 1997. Her daughter Fiona was groomed by a notorious pimp, and then murdered by a man buying sex in 1995. Irene wrote a book, Fiona’s Story, and I quote from the Introduction.   She speaks directly to the man who murdered her daughter –

Did you ever love a child, Duffy?

Seventeen years later you murdered this precious infant of mine.

Did you never love a child like that?

You can’t have or you would never have harmed her.

Can you conceive of the suffering you caused me when you unleashed your anger and frustration upon my beautiful girl?

I loved her then and for every minute of her seventeen years, no matter what she did.

She was Fiona, a special child, I had held her close, nurtured and cared for her, and you smashed her in your blind, unthinking, murderous rage.

I will never understand what you did to Fiona and my family. There are no answers.

I only know that when I held Fiona at her birth, I loved her so much that I would have died rather than see her hurt – my precious, beautiful, wonderful child.

Parents share in the making of the new. Thinking that they ‘make the child’ is a mistake to avoid,   they share actively in the making and it leaves a near indelible print.

Parents are there at the beginning.   To be involved in the beginning of anything, like being a founder member of a church,  is a deeply formative experience. It is an experience that lives on, and may grow over time.

Seeing parents as people involved in a significant beginning helps us to see God more clearly.   In a little way, being involved in the beginnings of a child helps us to understand better the witness of the Bible to God the creator of all ‘in the beginning’, the Source and sustainer and redeemer of all things.

Look again at our reading today:   Isaiah 43. 1-7

This passage is the answer to the question of Isaiah 40.27: Why do you say, God does not see, God does not care, God does nothing to help? This is the question of the exiled people, just as it is the question of trafficked and oppressed people, and of parents who wonder whether their child will ever get free of the exploitation and the damage it is doing.   Who cares? Who helps? Sometimes it seems, no one or earth or in heaven notices.   Isaiah offers an answer to this question. It is not an easy one. You may think it is no answer at all to the pressing question. In exile, we want a solution to our problem now. We want release from our oppressors now. The prophet, speaking for God, does not point us directly to the solution happening now.   Instead he asks us to look to the beginning, and to understand our present from ‘the foundations of the earth (40.21). Lift up your eyes and see all things as created by the One who is eternally the Beginning, not in time but outside it (40.26). Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth?  See this, and trust God enough to wait for God in constant undemanding readiness.

So we can read chapter 43 expansively:

Thus says the Lord, He who created you, who formed you

Your beginning is by my choice and free act, my commitment to you is rooted there

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;   I have called you by name, you are mine

You are precious in my eyes and honoured and I love you

So, when you pass through the waters, trafficked, exploited, distraught,

I will be with you.

I will say to the north Give Up and to the south, Do not Withhold Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth Everyone who is called by my name You are precious in my eyes and honoured and I love you I am the Lord who created and formed you, I redeem you, I am committed to you

This text invites us all, whatever the trouble, worry, exile we are in, to lift up our eyes and find anew the strength that is given to those who wait for the Lord.

How do we wait for the Lord?   We watch, we wait actively, we wait engaging in life from day to day – and then we are met by the Lord, the creator, who is not a remote once upon a time starter of the world, but is present, the faithful giver and sustainer of all life and goodness.

When we watch and wait for the Lord in our parenting, we find we are close and active companions of God in the world. We are walking with the Lord who gives life, who calls and loves human beings to be his friends and companions, who struggles with us and gives us a share in his struggle.

To be a parent is not an easy ride, not a fair-weather trip. It demands our life and time, our energy and wisdom, our love and grace, and often more than we seem to have.

To be the creator of the world, committed totally to its Shalom and fulfilment, is not a fair-weather trip.   It is not easy for God.   So we see in the Bible, and most of all in Jesus Christ, that the way God takes in the world is the way of suffering with the sufferers, of holding on in hope, in trying again and again to put things right, and not giving up – this is the everlasting God, the inexhaustible God, the resilient God of resurrection.  Resurrection tells us, God is not dead. God is not giving up. We see in the life, death and raising of Jesus, God, who says an unequivocal, irreversible Yes to his creation, a God who wills good.

We are invited to live our lives with this God and no other, in the Spirit of God.   And if we are parents whose children are at risk of being sexually exploited, the steady resolve of God to see his creation blossom fully, to realise its beauty, can inspire us and challenge us to go on, even through the dark night.

The Spirit we see in God can be our spirit.

I like the way St Athanasius in the 4th century put it in his book, On the Incarnation of the Word (6), an inspiring rational proclamation of the good news of God in Jesus Christ.

It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon human being by the devil.

It was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits.

As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, What then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning?

The question that came to God, as Athanasius pictured it, is the question that comes to parents:  If you see the precious creation being ruined, what are you to do?

What then was God, being Good, to do?   Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them?

The parent cannot walk away. You cannot say, it doesn’t matter, it counts for nothing.   It is precious. So you have to get engaged, and stay engaged, looking actively for ways of doing something effective about the problem.

God does that, says Athanasius, by the incarnation of the Word, by God coming as God into human life, as human being, to redeem and rescue humanity going to ruin, in contradiction to its beginning in God.   God comes as the enlightening Word, so that we see God’s way and can walk with God in it, and not be lost in exile, wandering in darkness and waste.

That is how God answers the Question: What are you, being good, to do when you see what you made in the beginning on the road to ruin?

God’s Question is our question too. And God answers it in a way that we can walk in with God.

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