When fear goes rogue

 

February 2021

“Once, an engine attached to a train was afraid of a few drops of rain.  
It went into a tunnel and squeaked through its funnel and wouldn't come out again!” 

You may remember that the engine was Henry and his fear was that the rain would spoil his green paint with red stripes.  The story (at least in its original version) has a sad end.  Having failed to get Henry to come out, the Fat Controller has the rails taken away and the tunnel bricked up with Henry still inside.

Healthy fear is good: those without fear should not be allowed near busy roads; fear of the sea is a qualification for being a sailor, not a handicap.  But fear can be misdirected or disproportionate.  If I am so afraid of traffic that I never leave my house then I am trapped by my fear.  If I am so afraid of flying that I choose instead to travel by motorbike then my irrational fear is putting me in even greater danger.

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).  God (like the sea) is good, but God (like the sea) is dangerous too.  Jesus knew that he could not offer his brand-new disciples a ‘safe working environment’.  As he sent them out to be his representatives they would be like sheep among wolves, in constant danger of being hated, arrested and killed.  But the greater danger was that their fear might lead them to abandon their trust in Jesus and let go of his promise to give forgiveness and abundant life to those who keep trusting him to the end.  We understandably fear anything or anyone that has the power to end our life but Jesus wants us to be much more concerned about meeting him as our Judge.

The Fat Controller may have lacked warmth and compassion in his appeal to Henry but Jesus does not:  “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father … So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”  (Matthew 10:29,31)

Does your fear face in the right direction?

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

According to plan

 

December 2020

Dear Friends,

2020 has been the year when we’ve all had to tear up the script and start again, more than once.  As I write this, we’ve made plans for Christmas and New Year church events but we’ve no idea whether they will all happen as planned.  Do check the ‘Coming Up’ diary on our church website which will always have the most up-to-date information about the next few services or events.  We will also aim to provide information on notice boards and village Facebook pages.  Feel free to ring me too.  We plan to return to Sunday morning services in our church building from the beginning of December if lockdown lifts then.  In this newsletter you will find details of Sunday services, a Christmas Day family service and our family events – Christingle at Home and our Advent Trail.  Keep an eye out for information on a Carol Service just before Christmas.

For most of us, plans for 2020 went in the bin in March, but God’s plan for the birth of his Son suffered no such fate.  The Bible says that the plan was hatched even before the world was created.  And right through the time of the Old Testament, God was mapping out in history the blueprint for His Son’s life.  There were kings over God’s people before the coming of The King of Kings, and prophets who were God’s mouthpieces before the coming of The Word.  The priests who made sacrifices for sin foreshadowed The Priest who would give his own life as The Sacrifice for our sin.  Every story in the Old Testament, from beginning to end, whispers the name of Jesus.  Every word teaches us about Jesus, shows us our need of Jesus or prepares us to receive Jesus.  So, if 2020 has been for you a story of increasing worries, sadness and frustration, then I encourage you to join us as we take comfort again from the account of a daring rescue that went to plan and that continues to give joy and solid hope to so many.

 “All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ – which means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:22-23)

Happy Christmas!

Graham Burrows

A deadly disease

 

November 2020

How is it transmitted?  How serious is it?  How can we avoid catching it?  Can you catch it, or do we all have it from birth?  I’m talking, of course, about the disease of bad behaviour, the disorder that results in the rejection of even loving authority – or what the Bible just calls ‘sin’.

The standard view in our culture is that this disease is caught.  That’s why we try to isolate children from bad influences and to shield them from unhelpful friends.  It’s why we think that a good environment should produce good people.  But the older view was that this deadly disease is in us all at birth, even from conception.  That’s what the Bible teaches: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)

What you believe about the source of human wrongdoing will affect your response to the current deep disagreements over politics, race and Coronavirus.  If all people are born good but some get corrupted then we will be angry at those who have allowed themselves to be duped by ‘selfish politics’, ‘blind prejudice’ or ‘ridiculous responses to the virus’.  But if we are all born sinners then my criticism of others is tempered by the humbling awareness that I am made of the same fallible stuff and that I too need correcting and saving from my own in-built foolishness.

If we think that children are born good then we will be distressed when they don’t manage to ‘follow their dreams’ and ‘become whatever they want to be’.  But if we understand that all of us are born with this deadly disease then we will be strangely liberated from angst and shock when our children get things wrong.  Instead we will understand that we must make every effort to train them to do the right thing and we will long that somehow, through someone, their future will be so much better than we, or they, deserve.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Wastelands in Bloom

October 2020

Imagine that a well-known garden expert decides to pay a visit to Holme and Burton.  Whose garden would he want to see?  Perhaps you can think of a few gardens that would top his list – filled with carefully-chosen plants, lovingly and expertly cared for.  Perhaps you would hope that he would choose to drop in on your garden.  But we’re assuming that this expert would be coming to enjoy the very best gardens and praise their hard-working creators.  We might instead be shocked to find that he preferred to visit my garden where grass and bushes are barely under control and weeding means getting out the strimmer.  What if the expert only wanted to see gardens like mine – the least well-kept gardens with the most weeds?  Perhaps we would then have to change our mind and conclude that he had not come to praise good gardeners but to help bad gardeners and to transform our wastelands into something much better. 

Saul made a similar mistake.  It’s clear from the Bible that he assumed that the long-awaited Messiah would come to praise the efforts of Pharisees like him whose well-manicured lives displayed the fruit of living according to the best rules and traditions.  This led Saul to conclude that Jesus was definitely not the one they were waiting for – he seemed to seek out those whose lives were obviously not going well, those who were struggling to keep the weeds down and who knew that there was nothing praiseworthy about their lives.  But Jesus had not come to hand out prizes – he rolled up his sleeves and got to work rescuing wastelands.  It took the famous encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road to convince Saul that he had been so wrong about Jesus and wrong to think that he did not need Jesus’ help.  His pride was gone; in its place a deep gratitude that Jesus had shown him such kindness. 

He wrote later, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.”  (1 Timothy 1:15-16)

What might the Gardener do with your life?

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

781210

vicarburtonholme@gmail.com

 

All at sea

 

September 2020

A small dinghy needs a painter, not someone with a paintbrush to keep the boat looking great but a length of rope for tying it to a larger boat or to moor it.  You can’t just park your boat on the water and hope it will be there when you next come back!  Even ships need ropes to attach them to something immovable like the dockside.  But ‘dry land’ is only relatively immovable.  Mooring posts can fail, banks can give way.  Some people who experience an earthquake say how deeply unsettling it is to discover that solid ground is not as solid as they had thought – if even the ground can move what is there left to moor our lives to?!

Last month, tragically, many in Beirut discovered the fragility of their world as the terrifying explosion in their port destroyed homes and businesses and flung lethal shards of glass at them.  This year many have been shocked to see a new virus taking lives all over the world while our collective reaction has destroyed livelihoods, businesses and dreams in a moment, with the sad expectation that the peak of the wave of economic misery is yet to come.

And in smaller, but no less painful, ways many find that the rocks in our life – like relationships, health, and jobs – can be surprisingly wobbly.  That is why the Bible has always urged us to build on a more secure foundation, to tie our boat to a more solid post, to anchor our lives on the Rock that never moves. 

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.  Trust in the Lord for ever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.”  (Isaiah 26:3-4)  Jesus’ life was engulfed by the flood of hatred and jealousy that took him to a painful and humiliating death for us but God raised him to new life and installed him as the Commander of the Universe.  Our trust in the Lord Jesus is like an unbreakable rope anchoring us forever to the fixed centre of the universe, firm and secure through any storm that might batter us, in life or death.

What’s your painter tied to?

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Smuggled Goods

August 2020

What would you do if your business was declared illegal but you were convinced that it was good and necessary?

That was the dilemma that faced William Tyndale when his chosen trade was getting him into hot water; he wanted to print English Bibles.  Amazingly, apart from a few English Bibles read secretly for fear of execution, the only Bibles in England at the time were in Latin, which hardly anyone understood.  The pre-Reformation church and Henry VIII did not want people to know what this dangerous book actually said – they might realise that the church had been teaching nonsense, and that the king himself had things to answer for.

So in 1524 Tyndale fled England having declared to a hostile clergyman, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”  Living as a hunted exile he translated the New Testament from the original Greek into English, had them printed in Antwerp and smuggled back into England where they were eagerly bought and read.  Ordinary people would pay as much as a load of hay just to get a few pages, and would sit up all night hearing the Scriptures read.  The authorities did all they could to seize and burn those books.

Tyndale went on to translate part of the Old Testament too but in 1535 an Englishman secretly working for the King betrayed Tyndale, he was imprisoned near Brussels for 18 months and then convicted of heresy.  Tied to a stake, but before he was strangled and his body burnt, he called out, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”  Two years later Henry VIII ordered that an English Bible be placed in every church in England.  These Bibles were revised versions of the texts that Tyndale had created.

500 years on, where is the hunger for God’s Word that was so characteristic of England in Tyndale’s day, and how many of us would risk our lives to defy Bible ‘gagging orders’ or to handle smuggled Bibles?  “Lord, open England’s eyes again!”

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Open again

July 2020

The church is a lifeboat, not a cruise ship.  It’s not a place to indulge ourselves as we float in luxury to our destination.  The church is a ship’s lifeboat – perhaps uncomfortable, but better than drowning – and those of us who have been hauled into the boat should not be idle but looking for others to pluck from the sea.  We should be working very hard to be welcoming to anyone at all who might be looking for rescue.  “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” is the description of the constant flow through the open-door of the first New Testament church (Acts 2:47).

It has therefore been frustrating that our church doors have been closed for the past few months even though individual church members have been doing all they can to look out for and to support others.  I’m pleased to say that restrictions are lifting and we are re-opening our buildings.

I wrote this on 20^th June and the situation may now have changed so do please look for updates on our website www.burtonandholmechurches.org

The church building is now open for Private Prayer each Wednesday, 11am-12noon.  Anyone who would like to make use of the quiet space for thinking or prayer is more than welcome to come in, whether for the full hour or just for a few minutes.

Funerals in church are now allowed (though still with restrictions on numbers etc).  A Christian funeral service in church followed by burial in the churchyard or elsewhere can be requested for anyone with a connection to the village.  I also take Christian funeral services at Beetham Hall Crematorium, Dalton Woodland Burial Ground and other places.  Please feel free to contact me directly to talk about funerals, or you can tell a funeral director that you would like my involvement and they will check with me before dates are fixed.

Sunday Services in church may be allowed to begin again sometime in July.  If you have discovered our online services in recent weeks then you will be very welcome to come and take part in the real thing.  We will still be subject to various restrictions but over time we hope that these will diminish.

And for those who will not be ready to join us yet we also expect to continue some form of Online Sunday Service that will be open to anyone who would like to ‘tune in’ via our website.

Finally, LegoBuilders Online continues with new videos arriving every Monday on our website www.burtonandholmechurches.org under 'Children and Families'.

‘Lockdown’ has been very hard for some but what follows could be even harder as ongoing restrictions and closed businesses continue to impact many and to put some people and families under huge pressure.  If I, or someone from one of our congregations, might be able to help please do get in touch.  It would be very good to talk to you and to pray for you.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows