Showing posts with label service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label service. Show all posts

Tuesday, 24 May 2011

Modern Heroes of Faith: Patient & Kind

Rev Peter Lockhart

When I was a student minister there was a man in one of the congregations which I was attached to who has come to epitomise the example of Christian love, which so many hanker after when they use 1 Corinthians 13 at their wedding.

He was well into his eighties when I met him and his wife lived no more than 10 minutes drive by car in a nursing home facility, she suffered from dementia and no longer recognised him.

Because he could no longer drive the man caught 2 buses each day, taking over an hour each way, to go and visit with his wife, sitting with her talking to her her, feeding her, loving her despite the fact she no longer knew him.

As I look back on his commitment I feel privileged to have known him and to realise that there are everyday heroes of faithfulness and love who teach us the meaning of God's love.

These are people who rarely get recognised, nor mentioned for what they do, but people who inspire me to know that God is like this man who would, despite the frailty of age, catch multiple buses to sit with his wife in love and concern even though she failed to recognise him.

This the God who gives so much to come alongside us in Jesus even when we fail to recognise that God is closer to us than breathing.


Thursday, 10 June 2010

Where do we meet Jesus?

by Peter Lockhart

So often we as Christians take a stance of superiority in our engagement with the world around us. We assume that we are the ones who have something to offer - that we have Jesus. Yet Jesus speaking to his disicples about how we will be judged in the future suggests that it is not we who have Jesus but we who are to meet Jesus in others. In Matthew 25, Jesus declares:

"I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcoemd me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."

Whilst we may be gathered into being the body of Chirst when we worship each week on a Sundayand know Jesus' presence there through the power of the Holy Spirit. What might it mean for us to seek to meet Jesus, incarnated (made flesh) in the lives of others - possibly even the "least of these" and the "lost sheep" for whom we believe Jesus came into the world and who so often remains anonymous to us in these situations?