Posts Tagged ‘thought for the week’

World falling apart?

// March 14th, 2011 // Comments Off // Thought for the week

Earthquake!It’s been a nasty few weeks out there in the world: Earthquakes, Tsunami, civil wars and unrest and today I read about churches being blown up and Christians attacked in Egypt. That’s all out there in the wide world, but even in our local area we have people losing their jobs, not able to find work and worried about feeding their families. The Bournemouth food bank run by Vineyard say they’ve given out 173kg of food parcels on wed alone last week.

It can all leave you feeling like there’s nothing you can do and wondering whether there’s any sense in the world at all. As Christians we believe that God made the world, and is still in charge, but he’s given us the job of caring for it and of caring for each other. We don’t have the answer to why these things happen, but Jesus doesn’t ask us to understand why, he asks us to be his hands in the world until he comes back and fixes the problems permanently.

With so many worthy causes it can be difficult to see how we can be of any help at all. There’s not enough money or time in our hands to fix these problems, but that’s not a reason to do nothing. God is not expecting us to fix the world – even Jesus didn’t fix all the problems around him when he was here, he told us ‘you will always have the poor with you’. He focussed on spreading God’s love and kindness to those around him, and then told us to go and do likewise.

So you can’t fix everything… Pick something you care about and focus on that. Fix something. Help someone. Do what you can, and do it today.

Be a light for Jesus in a darkening world.

From the prayer meeting

// March 18th, 2010 // Comments Off // thought for the week

Since there’s no special news this week other than building work, I thought I start a series of ‘thought for the week’ (don’t worry, I’ll get other people to do them too).

Prayer Wheel “The prayer meeting is the most important meeting of the week”. That’s one of those sayings that you hear thrown around a lot, but when you turn up to a meeting like the last couple it really starts to feel like it’s true.

Unfortunately in many churches, it’s often also one of the worst attended meetings of the week. We’ve really picked up on attendance at our meetings over the last year, and the effects of regular prayer together are starting to show in the people who are attending. Once God gets hold of you things really start to get scary, but it’s never a bad thing. If we can take some of the spirit that turns up in the prayer meetings (i.e. the Spirit) and carry the momentum through to the rest of our church life and our everyday lives, there’s no limit on what can happen.

I think we’re really going to start to see things rock in Springbourne this year (and I don’t just mean the music).

Get in on the ground floor. Get in to the prayer meetings.