Words for Worship

Ministry Today

A couple of hunters

hired a Canadian bush pilot

to drop them

in a remote location,

then return

in seven days

to pick them up.

 

At the appointed time,

the pilot arrived back

and loaded the hunters

and their gear in the plane.

 

"Wait a minute,"

said the first hunter.

"What about our moose?"

 

"Sorry," said the pilot.

 

"We're at maximum weight

already."  

 

"But our pilot

last year

loaded our moose,

and he had the same size plane

as this one."  

"Really?" asked the pilot,

not wanting to be outdone.

 

"Well, I guess

we could give it a try."  

 

 

With that he strapped

a moose carcass

on each pontoon.

 

They sputtered to the end

of the lake

to get the longest possible takeoff.

 

He shoved the throttle forward;

they began to move,

and finally,

they lifted off the water

, just skimming the trees.

 

But the pilot was right.

 

They were seriously overloaded

and crashed just minutes

into the flight.  

Both hunters

were knocked unconscious,

but came to

at about the same time.

 

The first hunter looked around

at the mess,

moose meat

and plane parts everywhere.  

 

 

"Where are we?"

he asked his partner.  

 

"About 50 yards

from where we crashed

last year."  

 

Well sometimes

we can feel the same

about New Year.

 

We have been here before

and nothing much

has changed.

 

Of course

that is not really true.

 

After all we are all

a year older,

our cars have lost

on average £1000

in depreciation

and all our

fashionable gadgets and clothes

are last year’s models.

 

And so this time of year

makes us

fearfully conscious

of time passing

without any seeming compensation.

 

Indeed, as each year passes

we can become

more fearful of time.

 

Because

without faith

that God

has overcome the world –

we worry that time

is not a gentle milometer

to heaven

but a relentless thief

in the night.

 

Has it then time

for you –

become the merciless bandit

that is stealing life itself?

 

Let’s look at this further.

 

When we in our youth

we greet each year's demise

with relish

in the face

of newer opportunities ahead.

 

Then a change takes place.

 

Somewhere in our 30s

we start looking forward

not the immediate future

but wistfully

to the horizons.

 

And in that

unattainable yearning

we lose something.

 

In truth, we lose

the most precious thing

we have –

we lose life in the present.

 

Or as Stephen Leacock

once wrote:

'How strange

is our little procession called life!

 

The child says,

'When I am big...'

and then,

grown up,

he or she says,

'When I am married.'

 

But then

the thought turns to

'When I am able to retire.'

 

Then when retirement comes,

we look back

over the landscape traversed.

 

A cold wind blows over it.

 

Somehow we have missed it all,

and it is gone.

 

Life, we learn too late,

is in the living,

living in the very tissue

of every day and hour.'

For as

one country and western song

has it:

Some say we'll all be rewarded

when we reach the end
 

And all our lives will be recorded

and replayed again
One day it hit me,

this ain't a movie, now
I'm living in the moment

with the friends I love

I'm living in the moment

with the friends I love

 

Let then our first resolution

for this New Year be –

live in the moment with friends   -

particularly our best friend –

our lord of the eternal present –

Jesus Christ.

 

 

Yet even the living

in each moment

does not

in itself

bring fulfilment.

 

That seems start

by living our moments

in balance.

 

That modern day saint,

Helen Keller

once wrote:

Yuletide is the harvest time of love.

Souls are drawn to other souls.

All that we have read

and thought and hoped

comes to fruition

at this happy time.

 

Our spirits are astir.

 

 No longer do we struggle

to relieve pain,

to sweeten sorrow,

to give the crust of charity.

 

Rather, we dare to give friendship,

service,

the equal loaf of bread and love."

 

This great wisdom then

seems to suggest

we should not attempt

to do all things

in each moment.

 

For honestly

we cannot constantly

meet the insistent demands of work,

the nagging challenge

to be worshipful

or the persistent drain

of serving either someone else

or ourselves.

 

But instead

we best live

each moment

simply in the encouragement

of Jesus

to do what we can

and the peace to leave

what we cannot.

 

We fulfil each moment

through the good sense

of loving our God,

neighbour and ourselves

in equal measure.

 

We ground each moment

by caring for heaven

and earth

with an even hand.

 

Because that seems to be

the very balanced living

of each moment

in the spirit advised

by a recent newspaper article.

 

 

This is what it said:   

Take time to work--it is the price of success.

Take time to think--it is the source of power

Take time to read--it is the fountain of wisdom

Take time to worship--it is the highway to reverence

Take time to be friendly--it is the road to happiness

Take time to laugh--it helps to lift life's load

Take time for God's Word--it brings Christ near and

It washes the dust of earth from your eyes.

Take time for God--it is life's only truly lasting investment.

 

 

It was one o clock at night

when Pierre and Marie Curie

left their little house

on the boulevard kellerman

and made their way

to an old warehouse

that was their laboratory.

 

As Pierre turned the key

in the lock,

Marie said

don’t light the lamps.

 

Then she added

with a little laugh –

do you remember the day

you said to me –

I should like radium

to have a beautiful colour.

 

As they entered

they realised

that the truth

was more entrancing.

 

For, of course, r

adium as a radioactive element,

shines in the dark.

 

She recalled much later

that she would always

remember for ever

that evening of

glow-worms and magic.

 

Well those two intrepid scientists

at that moment

did not give regard

to the long hours

of hard work

just to refine a few milligrams

of a new element.

 

Nor could they foresee

both the blessings

and curses

that radioactivity

would bestow on humankind.

 

As an alternative,

they just lived

in the moment,

they purely savoured

the moment

and then they did

something else.

 

They made their decisions

in that moment.

 

And so it is for us

in a lesser way.

 

Because, it is innate

in the gift of humanity

to be aware of

the responsibilities

from the past

and the opportunities of the future.  

 

Nevertheless we cannot alter the past

wither regretted or lauded

nor we cannot

directly

alter the future.

 

We can but change

this moment

as the keystone of the next.

We can but decide

at this moment

what is best.

 

We can only alter

this moment

in Christian faith

and in spiritual courage

and in Godly vision.

 

Let us then

not just live through

a moment

but live in that moment.

 

Let us too have balance

in each and every moment.

 

However, let us not do so

at the cost of leaving

a single moment

unimproved.

 

For each of those

decisive triumphs

scores off

the calendar of a life

being well lived.

 

For each of these conquests

honours the past

and the builds the future.

 

Moreover, it is

the unbroken succession

of momentary victories

that holds the secret

of eternity

in the ephemera of time.  

 

Because each is then

the pulse step

towards the very heart of God.

 

Or as Minnie Louise Haskins

famously penned

for every tick of the clock:

 

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied,

'Go into the darkness and put your hand

into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light

and safer than a known way!'

 

So I went forth

and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

 

So heart be still!

What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?

 

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention."

 

Amen

 

Our offering will now be received as we sing seated

The Hymn on our screen………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

New year 2009 - Time