What a mess!

December 2021

Dear Friends

Sometimes a bit of advice is all we need when we mostly know what we’re doing.  However, when we’re really stuck, mere advice is the last thing we need. 

“You should have removed the widget first.”
“Yes, I can see that, but it’s too late because now I’ve broken the whole thing!”

“You need to take a firm control of this situation.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do all along!  Do you think I messed this up deliberately?”

When we’re really making a mess of something then we don’t just need someone to tell us what to do, we need someone to get down into the mess we’ve made, to come alongside us to help us, or perhaps to fix the problem for us.

That’s what Jesus was doing when he came to us.  We had God’s instructions, but we didn’t and couldn’t keep them.  We already had a good idea what wise living would look like, but we were incapable of breaking out of our foolishness.  We knew what kind of behaviour threatened the peace of our family, village and  nation but we had no power to change.

And so Jesus, God’s eternal Son, came to us in our mess.  If you don’t accept that Jesus is God’s Son let me gently ask whether you have read one of the Gospel eye-witness accounts recently?  How else do you account for Jesus’ extraordinary life and the unparalleled influence he has across the world?

Jesus did not come to show us up (though it’s true that our self-absorbed ways don’t  look good against his selflessness).  Jesus did not come merely to instruct us (although there would be much to learn from him if we were able to take it in).  Jesus became one of  us – he shared in our weakness, he submitted himself to the treachery of his own people and the cruelty of Roman execution – to save us from a messy end.

He joined us in our mess, not to tell us to sort it out but to generously do that for us.  Now he calls us to simply trust him as he invites us to join his mess-free family with Jesus as our brother, his Father as our father and his Spirit to live in us.

That’s Christmas Joy!

Graham Burrows

A problem shared ...

November 2021, to the people of Holme

Dear Friends

You will have received with this Parish Newsletter a Tower Appeal leaflet which explains the extensive repair work that needs to be done at Holy Trinity church.  Stonework needs repointing to keep the rain out and rotten floors must be replaced throughout the full height of the tower.  The leaflet gives much more detail on all that needs to be done.

Some people have been working hard for over 18 months to reach this point.  Thorough investigations have taken place to find the cause of the pervasive damp in the tower and to discover the extent of damage to wooden joists and floorboards.  We have worked with historic building and church clock specialists, our church architect and a structural engineer to draw up a specification for the work that needs to be done and we have obtained the necessary permission for the restoration to take place.  Contractors have been invited to tender for the work and by the time this goes to print we should know who we intend to appoint to carry out the project.  The congregation have been invited to give towards the repairs (and a few others have become aware of the need) and I am pleased to say that more than £18,000 has already been given or pledged.  That is amazing – thank you!

But now it is time to ask everyone in the village and others with links to Holme to consider supporting this work if you can.  Holme Church, like all churches, is not funded from government taxes or central Church of England finances but primarily by the generous giving of local people.  The giving of the congregation pays the day-to-day bills and the costs of ministry and for routine maintenance but a large project like this is beyond our means.  And yet we know that many who live here value the presence of this building built in the heart of the village for the public worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Many want it to be safeguarded for the future and kept in good repair.  If you can help in any way we would be very grateful.

You can find more information on the repair work and how you can give:

·         In the Church Tower Appeal leaflet

·         At our Open Afternoon on Sunday 21^st November

·         On our church website at www.burtonandholmechurches.org/tower-repairs

·         On the Burton and Holme Churches YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/R-jzuQil3DE

With many thanks,

Graham Burrows

Rafters and Rainwater

November 2021, to the people of Burton

Dear Friends

Thank you to everyone who came to our Autumn Fair.  I think we’ve really missed such events of late!  Thank you too for your generosity, £1003.95 was raised from takings and donations and will go towards the repairs needed to keep St James Church open for the public worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Here's an update on the work that is in progress or planned:  

In April 2021, as we were investigating rainwater leaks into the Atkinson Room (south-east corner of the church), we discovered significant problems with the 16^th Century oak beam roof structure which required urgent attention.  The Atkinson Room is used for children’s work, group meetings and for serving refreshments.  We quickly installed scaffolding to support the roof and to give access for investigation and expert advice.  Seven months later we are drawing to the close of a project to replace rotten oak purlins and rafters before replastering sections of the ceiling with traditional lath and plaster.  This work has cost thousands and leaves the church with very little money in the bank for future building works. 

You may have seen that we have been digging shallow trenches in the churchyard.  We have been finding out where the blocked storm-water drains go to – the answer … nowhere!  Over time this will undermine the foundations of the church so as soon as we can raise sufficient funds we plan to lay new pipes from all the gullies to proper soakaways within the churchyard.

We have been working towards the next major project – to repair the vestry, which was built in 1872 on the north side of the church.  This small but important room is used to prepare for services, to store church records and to house our lovely 1850 pipe organ.  Falling internal plaster has been a sure sign of rain-water ingress which has now been thoroughly investigated.  The repair and restoration work – outside and inside – has been costed at £55,000. Thank you very much to all those who have already given money towards this project – as I write £25,837 has already been given, nearly half of the total.  Thank you very much!

More information on the repair work is available:

·         At our Open Afternoon on 31^st October

·         On our church website at www.burtonandholmechurches.org/vestryrepairs

·         On the Burton and Holme Churches YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/TC8OIVaZLyo

With many thanks,

Graham Burrows

Fruit and Veg

October 2021

Dear Friends

Why would people bring apples, beans, tinned meat, potatoes, or packets of noodles into church, of all places?  Not to feed the vicar.  And certainly not to feed God who needs nothing from us – he is the one who has generously given us food, life and everything else.  People in our village have done this for years and years, piling up produce on windowsills and along pews and steps as a tangible thank-you to God for his kindness.  We have food to eat because God keeps his promise to maintain the seasons and because the risen Lord Jesus continues to sustain everything, every moment of every day, by his powerful command. (Genesis 8:22, Hebrews 1:3)  And so every year we have Harvest Thanksgiving.

Fruit and veg also remind us, Jesus says, that who we are, deep down, will determine what grows in our life.  Oranges don’t grow on apple trees.  If our hearts are far from our loving Creator and we are pursuing our own agenda then that will show.  “Each tree is recognised by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn-bushes, or grapes from briers.” (Luke 6:44)

Jesus and his apostles also tell us that he has the power to so deeply transform us that, miraculously, we do begin to produce a different kind of fruit:  “Now the works of the flesh are evident … But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:19-22)  What a glorious fruit-laden tree that is!!

And, finally, Jesus says that God has given us harvest time so that we never forget his judgment.  Just as every good farmer must separate wheat from weeds or good apples from bad apples, so Jesus must one day separate us from others according to our response to him.  Jesus says, “at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"  (Matthew 13:30)

Our Harvest Thanksgiving this year is on Sunday 3^rd October, and you are very welcome to join us.  Produce to decorate the church can be brought to the church on Saturday 2^nd October between 10am and 11am.  After Harvest we will send non-perishables to the King’s Food Bank in Kendal and we will find a good home for the fresh food.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

The other side of the wall

 

September 2021

Dear Friends

Where is God when skies are darkening, relationships are not working, family members are not thriving, businesses are failing, illness is not retreating and help is not arriving?

Is he far away?  No.  “He is not far from each one of us.  `For in him we live and move and have our being.’”  (Acts 17:27-28)

Is he uninterested in us?  Nope.  “The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.” (Psalm 145:9)

Is he powerless to help us?  Na.  "I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”  (Jeremiah 32:27)

Is he unkind or cruel?  No way. “I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth”  (Jeremiah 9:24)

So where is he then?

Some people were recently reminded that people they have never met live within a few feet of them.  They were near enough to someone the other side of the wall, in the next-door flat, with Coronavirus, for the NHS app to ‘ping’ them.  It is possible to live close to someone but not to know them at all because you are separated from them by a wall.

God is also the other side of a wall.   He is not unable or unwilling to rescue us but our rebellious disobedience towards him is a wall that makes him seem like a distant stranger: “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God”  (Isaiah 59:1-2)

That’s it.  God is not far away, but there is a wall of our own making.  This barrier was represented in the Jerusalem temple by a huge curtain (reckoned to be 60 feet high and 4 inches thick!) that kept people out of God’s presence. As Jesus died on the cross,  carrying the sin of the world, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.”  (Matthew 27:51)  The invitation was clear: put all your trust in Jesus Christ and the wall comes down, there is a way back to the one who made you.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Down, but not Out

 

July 2021

Dear Friends

I am writing this on 15 June.  Yesterday our Prime Minister postponed ‘Freedom Day’ for four weeks until 19 July.  Some think he did the right thing; others disagree.  I think the delay will do more harm than good so I am disappointed, but not devastated.  All human governments are temporary, even the unelected tyrannies that some people in our world live under, and God has promised to Jesus Christ the kingdoms of the world.  So whether I support or oppose our government I must also wait patiently for Christ’s kingdom to mature.  Our true Freedom Day is his alone to give.

Last night I phoned a couple who are due to get married in church in three weeks’ time.  Their wedding has been postponed twice already; this is another big blow.  They’re perplexed but not in despair.  They know that being married is more important than what can or can’t happen on their wedding day.  And they know that our marriages are reflections of The True Marriage that lies at the heart of history, the forming of a deep eternal bond between the perfect groom, God’s Son, and all those called together to collectively form his bride.  No lockdown can postpone That Day.

Today I buried a man who died on the day he received a vaccine injection.  No vaccine can remove our vulnerability to the last enemy, death.  But our great enemy cannot forever prevail against Jesus who broke the bonds of death and rose again.  He promises that those who trust him, even if they are struck down, will not be knocked out.  Our Resurrection Day will certainly come and no human authority can cancel it.

So what’s ahead of us now? Just a four-week delay, deeply damaging to a few but a minor inconvenience to most?  Or a new world where we continue to be so scared of illness that we keep shutting down life?  I don’t know, although I know which I hope for.

Ultimately my hope is not in anything created – in health or governments or vaccines – but in the Creator and his Son.  As Paul the apostle wrote:

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”   2 Corinthians 4:8-10

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Unbroken

 

June 2021

Dear Friends

“A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”  That’s from the blurb on the book I’ve just been reading, ‘Unbroken’ by Laura Hillenbrand.  The book was every bit as good as the blurb suggests.  Published in 2010 (and since made into a film directed by Angelina Jolie) it tells the true story of Italian American Louie Zamperini, a runner at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as he becomes a bombardier with the Army Air Forces during World War II.  When his plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean in 1943 he drifts on a life raft for 47 days before being captured by the Japanese.  Cruelly tortured, starved and beaten for more than 2 years until the war ends, he remains unbroken.  But when Louie finally returns home it is his constant nightmares and out-of-control anger and drinking that nearly destroys him and those he loves.

The book details the shockingly cruel treatment of Prisoners of War by many, though not all, of their Japanese captors.  By contrast the treatment of PoWs by the Americans led one Japanese veteran to refer to his experience as ‘lucky prison life’.  When this man returned home to Japan and learned what his Allied counterparts had endured in a camp in his own village, he was horrified.

What accounts for the difference in behaviour between these two peoples?  Certainly not an inherent moral distinction – what a terrible thought – but, I suggest, the fact that one culture had been deeply influenced over centuries by the account of an extraordinary man who attacked and denounced evil while longing for people to turn away from their wrong and to be made new; a man who could accept terrible suffering while praying for his tormentors, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."  (Luke 23:34)

The message of forgiveness through Christ is one that many Japanese have come to accept, not least because men like Louie Zamperini later went back to Japan to offer his own forgiveness and the forgiveness of Christ.  And, sadly, it’s a message that many Americans (and Brits) have now come to see as something alien and unnecessary.  Laura Hillenbrand has written the kind of startling book that might wake us up to what we have lost.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Those whom God has joined together …

 

May 2021

Dear Friends

One of the saddest consequences of the Coronavirus restrictions has been the disruption to so many  weddings.  Cancellations, postponements or agonising decisions about who to dis-invite have all marred what should be a day of serious joy.  We’re not yet back to how it was but I’m delighted that, God willing, the first weddings in a long time will soon be celebrated in our churches.

The church wedding diary has lots of space – it may even be easier than trying to book a haircut.

Although most of us have heard the same vows made many times it would be hard to deny that something very significant is happening as bride and groom face each other and speak those gripping words of commitment.  We are witnessing the beginning of true love, not the first feelings of attraction and desire but the public commitment to love, to do good to another person.  We hear them promise that they will maintain this true love not until the sparkle appears to have gone out of the relationship but all the way to their dying breath.

But the church marriage service says something about the bride and groom that may seem puzzling:  “It is God’s purpose that they shall be united in that love as Christ is united with his Church.”  What does that mean?  It means that God himself designed human marriage to be a miniature reflection of the big event that lies at the centre of our world’s story, a marriage to eclipse all marriages, the forming of a deep eternal bond between the perfect groom, God’s Royal Son Jesus, and all those called together by God to collectively form his Son’s bride.

Imagine the delight that a young child feels at the GP surgery when she sees that something like the toy medical kit that she plays with at home actually exists in the real world too – there really are stethoscopes and thermometers and syringes!  In the same way our weddings are small-scale copies – the real thing exists too, there is a dream wedding and for all who trust in Christ it’s our big day!

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

A new beginning

 

April 2021

Dear friends

A new beginning for Britain.  We’re not there yet but there’s hope for a summer of renewing contact with people we’ve missed, enjoying normal activities away from our homes and rebuilding businesses or finding new jobs after the “worst economic slump since 1706”.  The Governor of the Bank of England said he was “positive but with large doses of cautionary realism”.  For some, the effects of the last year are not going to be easily shrugged off.  We are still going to need to offer support and help to each other.

A new beginning for Jesus.  Some say that Easter Sunday is a celebration based on a ridiculous claim – that a man who had been flogged and executed by professional soldiers and then left in a rock tomb for two nights could somehow return to life on the third day; but that’s only the half of it!  Christians also believe that Jesus received the upgrade, the renewed version of his human body that would never again be subject to suffering or exhaustion or death.  His post-Easter body was so much more solid and more real than the bodies we have that it appears Jesus could pass through the physical objects of our world, like locked doors, as if they were merely a mist.  Christians also believe that the abundant evidence for all this – in the eye-witness accounts, in the sudden extraordinary courage of Jesus’ timid followers, and in the transformation of the world over the last 2000 years – is enough to make trusting in Christ the opposite of a leap in the dark.

A new beginning for you?  This same Jesus made clear that his own upgraded human life was the prototype for many others.  In his agonizing Good Friday suffering he was paying for an Easter Sunday for all those who are joined to him by trusting completely in him.  “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” (Romans 6:5)

May God make this a happy Easter for you!

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

A megaphone to rouse a deaf world

 

March 2021

Dear Friends,

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (from ‘The Problem of Pain’ by C S Lewis, author of The Narnia Chronicles).

Over the past year you may feel that God has been using his megaphone more often than usual through the pain of illness, bereavement, loneliness, fear, dashed hopes, shredded plans and trashed finances.

To say that God sometimes shouts at us is likely to make us think that God loses it with us, he rants at us.  More volume equals more anger.  But that is not what Lewis means at all.  Most of us who are parents will have shouted at our children like that, with exasperation, even though we know that it was not the right thing to do – we may have got our way but it did not lead to the change of heart in our children that was really needed.

But there is another kind of parental shouting – very loud but without anger.  It is the shout when our child is close to noisy traffic, or a long way from us, or oblivious to the danger they are in, or daydreaming or when they have loud music playing in their ear-buds.  It is a shout to warn of danger, to attract their attention or to make sure they don’t miss the delicious meal on the kitchen table.  It is loud because the message is important, their deafness is great, their understanding of what is truly good is limited and we love them very much.  More volume equals more love.

C S Lewis explains that God’s love is nothing like our ‘kindness’.  “Kindness cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering”.  True love, God’s love, would rather see loved ones suffer than be content with a fragile happiness that cannot last and which masks how estranged we are from our loving Creator, who is the true source of the one and only river of deep and everlasting happiness.

If he has been using his megaphone a lot this past year then perhaps we should ask ourselves what our loving Creator and Lord might be wanting to say to us all.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

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