As a child I was fascinated by perspective, or to be specific one aspect of perspective. I was never very good at drawing and yet the concept that you could have two parallel lines that would run on side by side at the same distance apart for infinity. And yet if you introduced just the smallest dot in between the lines and continued with this new trajectory the two lines would begin to get further and further apart.
Emmerdale is currently running a very disturbing story line, and for me I mean that. I know it is a soap and yet the reality of this story line I know is so real it is disturbing me, and that’s not a bad thing.
There are some aspects that are just a tad fanciful like how
all the main characters end up living in Emmerdale but that apart it has a real
tone of authenticity. The story line is
of two young teenagers, a boy and girl who are in a relationship and are
groomed initially to be carriers of ‘soft drugs.’ However, this begins to
develop, and the girl is being lined up to offer sex to ‘clients.’ (In the story line she is sixteen)
There is obviously a lot more behind the story but the couple
manipulating these young people are a mum and adopted son. Both becoming
established as respectable people in the village and as part of their deceit
becoming romantically involved with the grandfather of the young girl and the
son with another woman in the village.
Gradually as the story line continued the tone of the mother
and son changed from being kind and generous to becoming more menacing as they
tricked the younger couple into believing they owed them a considerable amount
of money because during a drug drop the drugs were stolen. But this too was a
deceit to get them hooked and dependent. In the latest episode the woman said
with chilling menace, I now own you and Dillon, and you will do as I say, and I
will keep you and use you for a long time.
If this be true for following a path of destruction, death
and chaos then for certain the opposite must also hold true.
One of my favourite passages of Scripture is the Letter to
the Hebrews and chapters 11 and 12. Chapter 11 is a long litany of all those
who remained firm to faith and then chapter 12 opens with these words that are
so full of encouragement.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of
witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily
entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the
joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat
down at the right hand of the throne of God.
And we have just celebrated All Saints Day, 1st
November. Not that you would know it as the evening before, All Hallow’s Eve, has
morphed into Halloween and confused with Samhain, an ancient Celtic festival
celebrating the beginning of winter. And
somewhere in this conflation we have the whole celebration of darkness, ghouls,
ghosts and monsters. The most grotesque thing for me is the utter confusion,
the Americanisation and all the hype and the cost of it all.
Thankfully the idea of an alternative, Light Parties, and the
like have grown exponentially.
And as with the Gallery of the Faithfull in Hebrews 11 we can
now add a plethora of all the saints, the notable ones who feast days we
celebrate but also all the thousands of ‘saints’ who kept the faith and whose
legacy of faithfulness we have inherited.
But I want to draw us back to perspective once again.
However, this time thinking of the perspective of becoming more and more like
Jesus.
Ephesians 4:11-14
‘So Christ himself gave the
apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and
teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of
Christ may be built up until we all reach
unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become
mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then
we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and
blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and
craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.’
Mesiah Jesus came to share our humanity so that we can come
to share his divinity.
So, here is the challenge. What is the one degree shift we
can make in our life, beginning next week, to help us in the task of realigning
our lives to be more like Christ like.
Prayer, Bible reading, a Psalm for the Day, developing an
attitude of gratitude. It might also be something like a simple act of
kindness, or even as I try and do on most days, to pick up at least one piece
of litter as I am out and about demonstrating a care and concern for God’s
earth and where we live.
What is that one thing we can put in place and allow it to
become positively habit forming.
That one-degree shift can help push us back on course as apprentices
of Jesus and help us shine more brightly as a lights in the world of darkness.
For all the saints....
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