Great sermon....
http://richardbauckham.co.uk/uploads/Sermons/Water%20into%20Wine.pdf
Greater miracle
Enjoy
Saturday 21 January 2012
Board Meeting 15.01.2012
Board Meeting 15 January 2012 Thankfulness
This week – leaving aside the tragedy of the four badly burnt children – has been the week of the dog. And so I start with a story about a dog which has been with me from my earliest years.
Although I didn’t take possession of the certificate until after his death in 1985, I well remember my dad, Jim, relating the events of the day in 1946 as a consequence of which he was awarded the RSPCA Silver Medallion. At the time he was a policeman in small town called Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire. News came to him that a dog was trapped on rocks high above the town. Unlike me, he was no lover of dogs and, more to the point, unlike me, neither was he a rock climber. In spite of this, he made his way up to the animal – the certificate says 460 feet – took hold of it, secured it to his person using, if I recall correctly, a belt and carried it down to safety. Hence the award, which now takes pride of place on my dining room wall.
What always sticks in my mind, however, is what the certificate does not say, which is what the dog did after he had placed it on the ground. That’s right. It bit him! An object lesson in ingratitude if ever there was one! My thought day, then, concerns gratitude or thankfulness.
From where does thankfulness originate? Right perception. A particular way of looking at the world. Circumstances change and so too our moods, but there is always a different angle from which things must be viewed. I suppose that the Christian ‘angle’ would be called faith.
Although doggerel, I have always liked this little piece
The difference between
an optimist and a pessimist is droll.
One sees the donut
the other sees the whole
And so, instead of thinking that the world owes us a living, let’s take the time to receive all that we have as a gift. This idea undergirds the word grace, one use of which, is to describe the prayer said before a meal, which for generations acted as a thrice daily reminder of point I am trying to make. ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ as the Lord’s Prayer puts it, says pretty much the same thing, from the other end as it were.
Before he was based in Mytholmroyd, my father had worked in the pit villages of the Wakefield area during the early 1930’s and witnessed the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus one of his stock sayings if you were quibbling about a particular item on the menu was, ‘You ought to go hungry’. He had see hunger and so knew what he was talking about. Jam or butter, but not both, was the order of the day in many of the homes he visited.
Before I veer off into Monty Python’s ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ Sketch, two stories which illustrate the new perspective that a spirit of thankfulness brings. The first features the 17C Chester divine, Matthew Henry. After being relieved of his possessions by a thief, his response was this:
“Let me be thankful. First, I was never robbed before. Second, although they took my purse, they didn’t take my life. Third, although they took my all, it was not much. Fourth, let me be thankful because it was I who was robbed and not I who did the robbing.”
The second features the German hymn writer, Martin Rinkhart,from around the same time. Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty years war. The walled city of Eilenberg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenberg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!
This week – leaving aside the tragedy of the four badly burnt children – has been the week of the dog. And so I start with a story about a dog which has been with me from my earliest years.
Although I didn’t take possession of the certificate until after his death in 1985, I well remember my dad, Jim, relating the events of the day in 1946 as a consequence of which he was awarded the RSPCA Silver Medallion. At the time he was a policeman in small town called Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire. News came to him that a dog was trapped on rocks high above the town. Unlike me, he was no lover of dogs and, more to the point, unlike me, neither was he a rock climber. In spite of this, he made his way up to the animal – the certificate says 460 feet – took hold of it, secured it to his person using, if I recall correctly, a belt and carried it down to safety. Hence the award, which now takes pride of place on my dining room wall.
What always sticks in my mind, however, is what the certificate does not say, which is what the dog did after he had placed it on the ground. That’s right. It bit him! An object lesson in ingratitude if ever there was one! My thought day, then, concerns gratitude or thankfulness.
From where does thankfulness originate? Right perception. A particular way of looking at the world. Circumstances change and so too our moods, but there is always a different angle from which things must be viewed. I suppose that the Christian ‘angle’ would be called faith.
Although doggerel, I have always liked this little piece
The difference between
an optimist and a pessimist is droll.
One sees the donut
the other sees the whole
And so, instead of thinking that the world owes us a living, let’s take the time to receive all that we have as a gift. This idea undergirds the word grace, one use of which, is to describe the prayer said before a meal, which for generations acted as a thrice daily reminder of point I am trying to make. ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ as the Lord’s Prayer puts it, says pretty much the same thing, from the other end as it were.
Before he was based in Mytholmroyd, my father had worked in the pit villages of the Wakefield area during the early 1930’s and witnessed the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus one of his stock sayings if you were quibbling about a particular item on the menu was, ‘You ought to go hungry’. He had see hunger and so knew what he was talking about. Jam or butter, but not both, was the order of the day in many of the homes he visited.
Before I veer off into Monty Python’s ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ Sketch, two stories which illustrate the new perspective that a spirit of thankfulness brings. The first features the 17C Chester divine, Matthew Henry. After being relieved of his possessions by a thief, his response was this:
“Let me be thankful. First, I was never robbed before. Second, although they took my purse, they didn’t take my life. Third, although they took my all, it was not much. Fourth, let me be thankful because it was I who was robbed and not I who did the robbing.”
The second features the German hymn writer, Martin Rinkhart,from around the same time. Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty years war. The walled city of Eilenberg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenberg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!
Board Meeting 08.01.202
Board Meeting 08 January 2012 Endurance
My theme today is endurance. I suspect that it will have a certain resonance with most of us in the room, whether we are approaching the end of our tour, are nearing the half-way point, or have just begun.
My first thought, by way of introduction, was to review the successes – and failures – of Ernest Shackleton, the eleventh most famous Britain of all time, who died on 05 January 1922. The Shackleton family motto was "Fortitudine Vincimus," (by endurance we conquer) and it was after this motto that the ship chosen for the1914, British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was named. This was prescient, for The Endurance became entrapped and the subsequent survival and escape of the 27 crew members is now legendary.
Then, I wondered about the famous or, better, infamous, British ‘retreat from Kabul’ which commenced on 06 January 1842. Out of a total of 4,500 military personnel and 12,000 camp followers only a handful survived the 90 mile march to Jahalabad, one of them being Dr John Brydon. It seems that doctors were no less eccentric – or should that be canny – then, than now, because although part of his skull was sheared off by an Afghan sword, Brydon made it because he had stuffed a copy of Blackwood's Magazine into his hat to fight the intense cold and it was the magazine took most of the blow, saving his life!
In the end, I decided upon something a little more contemporary and so turned to the record books and the exploits of a serving member of 2 Para, Paddy Doyle
Guinness Physical fitness record challenge 16/02/2005 18 hrs. 56 mins , B'ham UK
12 mile run
12 mile walk {25 lb back pack}
1,250 push ups
1,250 star jumps
3,250 sit ups
1,250 hip flexors {10 lb weight}
110 mile cycle
20 mile rowing
20 mile cross trainer
Weights 300,000 lb {various lifts}
2 mile swim
Press ups 24 hours 01/05/1989 {Guinness Record}
The most press ups in 24 hours is 37,350. Venue B'ham City Centre UK.
Moving on from those extremes, it is worth noting that endurance takes many different forms and the remarkable thing about Shackleton, if I may return to him for a moment, is the whole package - physical, mental and I think we may say, spiritual. Given the different ways in which the word endurance may be applied, I don’t think it inappropriate to use the E word of our own exploits here on Op Herrick.
On that note, a few weeks ago, a member of my church sent me a newspaper clipping containing an excerpt from a book, the title of which says all that needs to be said about Ops. The book is by Max Bentz, who served with the Scots Guards in Afghanistan in 2010. Its title is – Six months without Sunday’s. That is the challenge that most, if not all of us, have had or will have to face, give or take a few weeks. The title is perceptive, because it is the absence of the usual weekly staging posts like weekends, days off and holidays, that, I believe, makes being here as tough as it is (though I don’t wish to overstate the case)
How then are we to endure? We will each have our own strategies. Whichever we adopt, a simple rule of thumb is that we can only give out what we put in and that, as a result, if we are not somehow, somewhere, in some way or other, taking resources on board, eventually we will go under. If we are not doing this, we can only be surviving by eating into our reserves and this cannot go on indefinitely.
For the Christian, the supreme resource is God Himself and our encounter with Him. Going back to the title ‘Six months without Sundays’, a famous Eighteenth Century Cambridge cleric, Charles Simeon, notable amongst other things for the early adoption of the umbrella, used to say, ‘I am a eight day clock which must be wound once a week’. Maybe the once a week is not so easy here, but the principle remains valid.
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40
My theme today is endurance. I suspect that it will have a certain resonance with most of us in the room, whether we are approaching the end of our tour, are nearing the half-way point, or have just begun.
My first thought, by way of introduction, was to review the successes – and failures – of Ernest Shackleton, the eleventh most famous Britain of all time, who died on 05 January 1922. The Shackleton family motto was "Fortitudine Vincimus," (by endurance we conquer) and it was after this motto that the ship chosen for the1914, British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was named. This was prescient, for The Endurance became entrapped and the subsequent survival and escape of the 27 crew members is now legendary.
Then, I wondered about the famous or, better, infamous, British ‘retreat from Kabul’ which commenced on 06 January 1842. Out of a total of 4,500 military personnel and 12,000 camp followers only a handful survived the 90 mile march to Jahalabad, one of them being Dr John Brydon. It seems that doctors were no less eccentric – or should that be canny – then, than now, because although part of his skull was sheared off by an Afghan sword, Brydon made it because he had stuffed a copy of Blackwood's Magazine into his hat to fight the intense cold and it was the magazine took most of the blow, saving his life!
In the end, I decided upon something a little more contemporary and so turned to the record books and the exploits of a serving member of 2 Para, Paddy Doyle
Guinness Physical fitness record challenge 16/02/2005 18 hrs. 56 mins , B'ham UK
12 mile run
12 mile walk {25 lb back pack}
1,250 push ups
1,250 star jumps
3,250 sit ups
1,250 hip flexors {10 lb weight}
110 mile cycle
20 mile rowing
20 mile cross trainer
Weights 300,000 lb {various lifts}
2 mile swim
Press ups 24 hours 01/05/1989 {Guinness Record}
The most press ups in 24 hours is 37,350. Venue B'ham City Centre UK.
Moving on from those extremes, it is worth noting that endurance takes many different forms and the remarkable thing about Shackleton, if I may return to him for a moment, is the whole package - physical, mental and I think we may say, spiritual. Given the different ways in which the word endurance may be applied, I don’t think it inappropriate to use the E word of our own exploits here on Op Herrick.
On that note, a few weeks ago, a member of my church sent me a newspaper clipping containing an excerpt from a book, the title of which says all that needs to be said about Ops. The book is by Max Bentz, who served with the Scots Guards in Afghanistan in 2010. Its title is – Six months without Sunday’s. That is the challenge that most, if not all of us, have had or will have to face, give or take a few weeks. The title is perceptive, because it is the absence of the usual weekly staging posts like weekends, days off and holidays, that, I believe, makes being here as tough as it is (though I don’t wish to overstate the case)
How then are we to endure? We will each have our own strategies. Whichever we adopt, a simple rule of thumb is that we can only give out what we put in and that, as a result, if we are not somehow, somewhere, in some way or other, taking resources on board, eventually we will go under. If we are not doing this, we can only be surviving by eating into our reserves and this cannot go on indefinitely.
For the Christian, the supreme resource is God Himself and our encounter with Him. Going back to the title ‘Six months without Sundays’, a famous Eighteenth Century Cambridge cleric, Charles Simeon, notable amongst other things for the early adoption of the umbrella, used to say, ‘I am a eight day clock which must be wound once a week’. Maybe the once a week is not so easy here, but the principle remains valid.
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40
Board Meeting 25.12.12
Board Meeting 25.12.11
Communication
The One Ronnie
Many of you heard a lot from me yesterday and so just a few thoughts on the theme of communication all derived from the central feature of the Christmas story, the incarnation of Christ.
John 1.14
1. Get on people’s level. If that means taking a few steps down, so be it.
2. Where possible, do it face to face.( c.f. email)
3. Aim for the heart as well as the head
4. Make it your aim to put the interests of others first and your own second
5. Never speak at people, but to them
6. Always remember that you have got two ears and one mouth and that is for a reason
God our Father,
whose Word has come among us
in the Holy Child of Bethlehem:
may the light of faith illumine our hearts
and shine in our words and deeds;
through him who is Christ the Lord.
Amen.
Communication
The One Ronnie
Many of you heard a lot from me yesterday and so just a few thoughts on the theme of communication all derived from the central feature of the Christmas story, the incarnation of Christ.
John 1.14
1. Get on people’s level. If that means taking a few steps down, so be it.
2. Where possible, do it face to face.( c.f. email)
3. Aim for the heart as well as the head
4. Make it your aim to put the interests of others first and your own second
5. Never speak at people, but to them
6. Always remember that you have got two ears and one mouth and that is for a reason
God our Father,
whose Word has come among us
in the Holy Child of Bethlehem:
may the light of faith illumine our hearts
and shine in our words and deeds;
through him who is Christ the Lord.
Amen.
Board Meeting Talk 18 December
Advent Talk 4 18 December 2011 Keep Calm and Carry On
1. Various iterations on the theme
Keep Calm and Go Shopping (US PX)
Keep Calm and Drink Beer (unlikely)
Keep Calm and Sleep In (cough!)
Keep Calm and Turn It On and Off Again (IT)
Keep Calm and Do It Yourself (Control Freaks)
Keep Calm and Look Busy (A bit of that about)
Keep Calm and Spread Good Cheer (Xmas)
Keep Calm and Carry a Sonic Screwdriver (Surgeons)
Keep Calm and Get It On (Jonny & Andre)
2. The History
The poster was initially produced by the UK Ministry of Information in 1939. The aim was to use it to strengthen morale in the event of a wartime disaster. 2,500,000 copies were printed, although the poster was distributed only in limited numbers. Two originals remain. The poster was third in a series of three. The previous two posters from the series, "Freedom Is In Peril. Defend It With All Your Might" (400,000 printed) and "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" (800,000 printed) The posters were designed to have a uniform device, be a design associated with the Ministry of Information, and have a unique and recognisable lettering, with a message from the King to his people.
In 2000, a copy of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was rediscovered in Barter Books, a second-hand bookshop in Alnwick, Northumberland and took off a few years later. It has appeared on the walls of places as diverse as the Prime Minister's strategy unit at 10 Downing Street (TB), the Lord Chamberlain's office at Buckingham Palace, and the United States embassy in Belgium. Merchandise with the image has been ordered in bulk by American financial firms, advertising agencies, and Germans.
3. Significance
• To state the obvious, it has become a cliché – hence the derivative versions
• Nevertheless, I think that it continues to work fairly well as a piece of pop psychology
• As originally conceived, you can also see how it tapped in to the National mood at the outbreak of WW 2, both the stiff upper lip and, more importantly, the belief shared by all those who opposed Hitler that, in the end, right would prevail over might.
• Finally, and here we arrive at Advent, the poster poses the question, ‘Why keep calm and carry on?’ In 1939, there was, of course, a far greater moral or we might even say, theological, component to people’s thinking whether in UK, US or Denmark. We knew that God didn’t have favourites, but we also knew that, on this particular issue, He was on our side.
• As a Christian, the ultimate reason I believe that I can ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ is because God encourages me to do so and it always heartens me to recall that the injunction to, ‘Fear Not’, which amounts to much the same thing as KCCO, occurs 366 times in the Bible – once for each day of the year with one over just to make sure (!) The most significant ‘cluster’ of the injunction to ‘Fear Not’ comes in the Christmas storywith the first occasion being the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary
God our Father,
the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary
that she was to be the mother of your Son.
Though Mary was afraid,
she responded to your call with joy.
Help us, whom you call to serve you,
to share like her in your great work
of bringing to our world your love and healing.
We ask this through Jesus Christ,
the light who is coming into the world.
Amen.
1. Various iterations on the theme
Keep Calm and Go Shopping (US PX)
Keep Calm and Drink Beer (unlikely)
Keep Calm and Sleep In (cough!)
Keep Calm and Turn It On and Off Again (IT)
Keep Calm and Do It Yourself (Control Freaks)
Keep Calm and Look Busy (A bit of that about)
Keep Calm and Spread Good Cheer (Xmas)
Keep Calm and Carry a Sonic Screwdriver (Surgeons)
Keep Calm and Get It On (Jonny & Andre)
2. The History
The poster was initially produced by the UK Ministry of Information in 1939. The aim was to use it to strengthen morale in the event of a wartime disaster. 2,500,000 copies were printed, although the poster was distributed only in limited numbers. Two originals remain. The poster was third in a series of three. The previous two posters from the series, "Freedom Is In Peril. Defend It With All Your Might" (400,000 printed) and "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" (800,000 printed) The posters were designed to have a uniform device, be a design associated with the Ministry of Information, and have a unique and recognisable lettering, with a message from the King to his people.
In 2000, a copy of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was rediscovered in Barter Books, a second-hand bookshop in Alnwick, Northumberland and took off a few years later. It has appeared on the walls of places as diverse as the Prime Minister's strategy unit at 10 Downing Street (TB), the Lord Chamberlain's office at Buckingham Palace, and the United States embassy in Belgium. Merchandise with the image has been ordered in bulk by American financial firms, advertising agencies, and Germans.
3. Significance
• To state the obvious, it has become a cliché – hence the derivative versions
• Nevertheless, I think that it continues to work fairly well as a piece of pop psychology
• As originally conceived, you can also see how it tapped in to the National mood at the outbreak of WW 2, both the stiff upper lip and, more importantly, the belief shared by all those who opposed Hitler that, in the end, right would prevail over might.
• Finally, and here we arrive at Advent, the poster poses the question, ‘Why keep calm and carry on?’ In 1939, there was, of course, a far greater moral or we might even say, theological, component to people’s thinking whether in UK, US or Denmark. We knew that God didn’t have favourites, but we also knew that, on this particular issue, He was on our side.
• As a Christian, the ultimate reason I believe that I can ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ is because God encourages me to do so and it always heartens me to recall that the injunction to, ‘Fear Not’, which amounts to much the same thing as KCCO, occurs 366 times in the Bible – once for each day of the year with one over just to make sure (!) The most significant ‘cluster’ of the injunction to ‘Fear Not’ comes in the Christmas storywith the first occasion being the Annunciation by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary
God our Father,
the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary
that she was to be the mother of your Son.
Though Mary was afraid,
she responded to your call with joy.
Help us, whom you call to serve you,
to share like her in your great work
of bringing to our world your love and healing.
We ask this through Jesus Christ,
the light who is coming into the world.
Amen.
Monday 9 January 2012
Fwd: Your result from Camp Bastion parkrun, Event #19 on 07-01-2012.
Slower this week, but there again it was minus 5!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Office <office@parkrun.com>
Date: 8 January 2012 15:29
Subject: Your result from Camp Bastion parkrun, Event #19 on 07-01-2012.
To: mike@thenewmanfamily.org
From: Office <office@parkrun.com>
Date: 8 January 2012 15:29
Subject: Your result from Camp Bastion parkrun, Event #19 on 07-01-2012.
To: mike@thenewmanfamily.org
 | ||
| Hello Mike | ||
| This free event is brought to you by our volunteers and our sponsors: | ||
   | ||
| Camp Bastion results for event #19. Your time was 23:42. | ||
| ||
| You achieved an age-graded score of 63.22%. For an explanation of age-grading, please see the WAVA age grading overview. | ||
| You have earned 78 points for this run, giving a total of 539 points in this year's Camp Bastion points competition. | ||
| Your parkrun depends on you volunteering 3 times a year. If you'd like to be included on our volunteer mailing list, please drop us an email. | ||
| Got a problem? If you didn't run today or if there's a problem with this result then please let us know by replying to this email. | ||
Click  to edit your details, unsubscribe from the newsletter, get your barcode, add your Freedom run and view your results. | ||
| parkrun Freedom allows you to run any of our parkruns at a time more convenient to yourself and have your result recorded online. | ||
| Happy running! Camp Bastion Team campbastionOffice@parkrun.com | |
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| Many thanks to our supporters for their vital contribution to parkrun | |
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Sunday 1 January 2012
Bastion Half Marathon
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