A time for everything...

This Sunday is an important date in the calendar; it is the beginning of British Summer Time. Through the long dark days of winter we look forward with eager anticipation to clocks going forward, and the first signs of spring and of people coming out of hibernation. Thinking about, and looking forward to putting all my clocks on one hour has caused to me to wonder about the whole concept of time and exactly what it is.

What is time? This has long been the subject of debate in all sorts of arenas from philosophy to art, and from science to poetry. While there is little dispute about how we measure time, there is no such agreement on its nature and just what it is.  In my life I relate to time in terms of my past, my present and my future. There are moments in my life when I wish that time would stand still and that I could capture the joy and pleasure of a particular experience. There are times too when I want time to hurry along. But these are both things over which I have no control. Time continues to march along, oblivious to my desire to capture and control it. It can at the same time be both my servant and my master.

The bible has some things to say on this whole subject. The book of Ecclesiastes talks about the fact there is a time for everything under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to keep and a time to throw away. These experiences are common to us all and are part and parcel of our life here on earth. However, I also believe that as well as us all sharing time, we also share something beyond time.  The passage in Ecclesiastes goes on to tell us that God has also set eternity in the hearts of men. There is something in us that is drawn to the eternal that is beyond the dimension we call time. Why don’t you take some ‘time’ this week to ponder this marvellous sense of eternity, of something far beyond us?

Mystery of Suffering

I wrote this last Thursday reasy for the column in the Chester Standard , the day before the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan; events like these really do gt me wondering! Many of my wonderings over the years keep coming back to “why questions”. Questions that all of us ask when we start to really think about life and God’s place in it. Probably the biggest “why question” is, ‘why is there suffering?’ This question at times touches all of our lives. In these days of instant communication we are confronted regularly with unbelievable suffering caused by the major horrors of famine, war and natural disasters. Even though we may become immune to such things that happen at a distance, sooner or later suffering strikes closer to home, whether in our own lives or in the lives of those who are close to us.

There is also no problem that impinges more directly on the question of the existence of God. In hundreds of conversations I have had with people about the relevance of the Christian faith, this question has come up more than any other. If there is a God, why does he allow such suffering? I believe that most people, unconsciously or otherwise, resist the idea that God is evil and desires to make life miserable for us. It is easier to reject the idea of God altogether. This solves the problem by removing the dilemma. However, it also raises several other problems. First, there is no one to blame for the suffering. You may complain, but you have no right to complain and no one to complain to. If there is no God, why shouldn't there be suffering? In a godless universe there is no reason at all why there shouldn't be. Second, you have no one to turn to for strength to cope, other than your own limited resources or the resources of other humans, who might, one hopes, care about your suffering.

To rule out the existence of God raises a third problem. How do you explain such things as love, unselfishness, gentleness, goodness, sacrifice, reason, intelligence, and justice? C. S. Lewis, once said: “When I was an atheist...my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A person does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line...Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.”

Sometimes people ask why doesn’t God intervene – the answer is that he did, nearly 2000 years ago, God intervened in the lives and history of man by giving His Son Christ Jesus to share in human suffering. As we go through this season of Lent, this 40-day period, before we celebrate Easter, is it time to stop, to let go and to give away. Maybe, even the time to embrace the mystery of suffering in the light of a loving God.

The beginning of Lent

Are you going to give anything up for Lent this year? A recent poll stated that over half of all Brits who give something up in Lent don’t last the 40 days and give in to temptation! Well I’ve decided this year  not to give something up but to start something up for the first time ever!

Today is the start of Lent. This is the forty-day period before Easter, excluding Sundays; it begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday). The forty days are called Lent because that is the Old English word for spring. Sundays are excluded from the reckoning of the forty days because Sunday is the day on which Christ rose from the dead, so on Sundays we must celebrate Christ's resurrection. Today, Lent is marked by a time of prayer and preparation to celebrate Easter. We seek to recognize and respond afresh to God’s presence in our lives and in our world. We seek to place our needs, our fears, our failures, our hopes, and our very lives in God’s hands, again.

So this year I am going to start to write a blog and I want to invite you to join me. I’ve been thinking about how I can try and use the Internet in such away that can interact with some of you who read this column every week. Now I know people do read what I write , as almost every week I meet someone who tells me!! So now what I write here will also form the basis of a blog that I will write every week during Lent, My aim to is to write 2 blogs week and I invite you to come and comment and contribute. A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ What I like about a blog is that it is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts.  The second thing I’m going to do through Lent is to read the bible every day by following a reading plan; I’m going to link into the Big Bible Project. This is a project which promotes Bible reading within a community setting, whether online or offline and makes use of Tom Wright's book Matthew for Lent. I’ll be blogging about this once a week and also use twitter every day to share a thought, so you can follow me on twitter too.

My hope is that through out this period of Lent we can create a little community and together use this time to prepare for, what for me is the most important Christian festival of the year, Easter. Why don’t you come and join me…