Rivertown United Reformed Church

Minister’s Letter – February 2012

“Truth and balance on the high wire of life”

How balanced are you? If your bodily centre of gravity is, like mine, pretty high, you are more likely to find balance harder to achieve. I once attended a canoeing course in Dover harbour – the morning saw me underwater no less than 6 times! Ad my attempts at a “canoe roll” were positively out of this world! I find even a low level attempt at balance – on one of those long narrow planks – quite nerve racking. Possibly my most nervous experience was when our family took on the high ropes course at Porthmadoc. Now the zip wire was fine – but when it came to what seemed like a good 30 feet above ground, albeit safely harnessed and in no real danger, I found myself almost hyperventilating as I tried to cope.

“Hard-wired love”

It is one thing to put your ideas in the hands of someone else. It is quite another to put yourself in their hands. Christians believe that was what God did in the birth, life and death of Jesus. From start to finish the Bible story is about how people like you and me began to realise that God was not one of many, one of a group of distant dictators doing little more than playing with human fate. God has never sat on the sidelines and fiddled, while humanity tore itself apart. God has wept bitter tears of despair; demonstrated angry jealousy over us his children, when we have fallen under destructive influences. God has, through his chosen leaders and spokespeople, appealed to us, all but begged us to go his way.

The writers of the Bible believed that, throughout history, God had continued to speak to his people through prophets, priests, and kings. And ask great things of them. Things they could not possibly achieve by themselves.

Minister’s Letter October 2011 - “Delivering the goods”

I have a confession to make. I’ve been too soft. Not in the head (though family and friends may beg to differ) but in the garden. I’ve not been pruning enough. As a result the tomato plants, the roses, and goodness know what other plants have been spending all their precious energy making themselves bigger, higher, almost “fatter”. And the fruit, though it has come, has not been anything like as good as it could have been. Not enough, if you like to pass on to others.

Does that thought ring any bells? I hope so, because, as one local gardening expert told me the other day, “it’s been a good year for growing, but not for ripening”. The purpose of any plant is to produce fruit or flower. But, just like us, if it gets too big, the fruit, if not the flowers, suffers. The human race has been acquiring knowledge at an ever increasing rate, especially in the last 50 years.

Minister’s Letter – Sept 2009 “Jesus - the Travelodge”

I have come to be very grateful for the Travelodge. For these “oases” offer rest on the journey – total acceptance, sometimes at a very good price, to travellers of every kind. They are a welcome acknowledgement of the vast distances that we travel these days – for work, study, leisure, even family history research, maintaining personal links with old friends. An acknowledgement of our need, in this express-paced world of ours, for rest, recuperation, so that tiredness does not overcome us and make us a potential danger to other road and motorway users. The time to remember again who we are – and in a faith context, that we are all much more than the journey we are making, the job we do, the family we belong to, the friends and possessions we have accumulated, the skills we have inherited, been born with or achieved through training.

DEESIDE PASTORATE

Minister’s Letter for September 2011
“Love never gives up”

Have you ever considered how amazing it is that this world continues to exist? Given the old Indian proverb, “when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled”, isn’t it almost a miracle that some parts of the world have survived the effects of mortars, shells, semi-nuclear attack? Why was the poppy was chosen for remembrance? Because on the battlefields of Flanders, after fighting had ceased, the poppy was the first thing to spring up into life and blossom. A sign of love from a source beyond time?

And what of “Weed-Power?” No – not a mild version of “Day of the Triffids” (for those who remember the film in which super growing trees seemed to threaten to take over the world). I’m thinking of the way a single weed can, given time, break through solid concrete up to a foot thick. At Harvest time we tend to think of flowers, fruit and vegetables, grown in specially prepared ways and places.

DEESIDE PASTORATE

Minister's letter for August 2011

"The voice of God goes out to all the world"

It was Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who said it: 'this loan is good for us and for the euro. It will come back to us in time". The countries of the Eurozone finally came up with a rescue package of nearly £200biliion, to save their almost bankrupt companions in Greece. And for once the banks are actually going to help! Yes - they had to do it to save the euro, and themselves, but maybe a seed of biblical truth has somehow forced its way into the debate. Just like the tiny irritant that causes the oyster shell to produce the pearl, that we were thinking of at our Cafe Worship on 24th July. The simple truth that, ultimately, we all stand or fall together. Or, it is better to do good than to do evil by doing nothing, whatever the situation.

Minister’s Letter – July 2011 "The Price is Paid?"

Fairtrade has come a long way from its fledgling beginnings with coffee and tea. Yet there are still millions of producers who exist at the breadline level. Public opinion has a long way to go before we are all fully committed to paying a fair price for goods from faraway – to considering and respecting the people behind the products whose availability we take for granted. Perhaps that’s because behind what we buy lies a multi million pound industry, dedicated to perfecting our ability to choose what we want. We don’t have to do anything – just walk in and take it off the shelves!

We are now well into the holiday season. What did you - will you - and I - value most about our holiday? The food, the beach, the sights – the peace, the abolition of the alarm clock, the quality time we are able to spend with our nearest and dearest, and maybe those we haven’t seen for so long.

Minister’s Letter – April 2011 - “It had to happen”

How do you respond to overwhelming evil? Tragedy? There are some things in life that are inevitable. What goes up must come down. Blue and yellow make green. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Love will find a way. We human beings were created - by whatever process - by the One whose power gave us life and love. Our two tasks – as human beings - to care for the world and all its people. As Christians to work with God for the salvation – that means the preserving – of all life, through faith in Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.. Not all will not work with God. So many seeds of human life landed on stony paths, in shallow and hostile soil, among weeds and thorns bushes. Amongst great wealth, or poverty. Turning many to destructive, violent, and desperate measures, visiting on others what they themselves have received.

Minister’s Letter – March 2011 “Living Waters”

Water – isn’t it amazing?! It comes flying through our pipes, at a pretty high pressure, just with just the quickest flick of the tap. It keeps us, our houses and gardens and the whole planet, both clean – and alive! In these days of climate change – which I for one do not doubt – the condition and levels of water across the world provide an instant health check. Yet recent years have shown us water’s power of destruction and devastation. Prolonged heavy rain, high tides, sometimes aided by commercial logging, huge deforestation and undersea volcanic activity, and now fears of Arctic and Antarctic ice melts, simply takes everything – homes, livelihoods, whole towns – creating lakes as large as France and Germany combined.

I have never visited a water treatment plant. The one in Milford Haven was quite smelly.

Minister’s Letter – February 2011

“Roots”

When my parents found a bungalow close to our first manse, in Sompting, West Sussex, there was a lot of work to do on it. Part of that was clearing the pocket-sized back garden. The hugely overgrown trees and bushes had turned it into a cave!

Most of them came up or were trimmed easily. Not so the special apple tree in the centre. My brother-in-law and I dug, pushed and pulled, twisted it until we nearly ended up underneath it. Finally, after what seemed like an age, we uprooted it. If that tree had been a pine, the roots would have been few and shallow – an easy job. But no – the apple tree had multiple roots, all of them long and tough.

This afternoon, at Rhos on Sea church, Ruth and I witnessed the justifiably warm tributes being paid to my colleague Rev Kate Gartside after 7 years there. Our first pastorate had been just like that. Deep roots put down that remain today.