Rev Chris Weekly Update – 14/08

Dear all,

Water is very much on everyone’s minds at the moment as we, once again, experience soaring temperatures, hosepipe bans and requests to use water wisely. I have some recollections of the drought from 1976 and of standpipes on the street corner where I lived. That drought passed and this one will as well, but it highlights the importance of water and the impact of climate change.

Water is a fundamental element at the heart of the development, and survival, of all living things on this planet and its lack can have disastrous consequences, as we have seen in many places around the world, and now get a sense of in our more ‘temperate’ regions.

For the writers of various books that went on to be part of the bible we also get a sense of the importance of water. The bible, as a collection of 66 books, presents a relationship between humanity and God that reaches its conclusion in the person of Jesus Christ, the God man. In Christ there is this divine/human connection that brings past, present, and future into a new reality. Things written of in the bible, including the ‘ordinary stuff’ of life, take on a new meaning that is about ‘spirituality’ as much as it is about ‘physicality’.

Water is one of those physical elements that takes on a new ‘spiritual’ meaning through the biblical narrative and in our Christian context that comes to a climax through the sacrament of baptism where the symbolism and metaphor around being washed, refreshed, and renewed becomes evident. This ‘spiritual’ water becomes as necessary for our flourishing as the physical water that we drink.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13,14

Every blessing,

Rev Chris

 

PS. CHURCH CAR PARK TIDY UP
Thank you to all those who came to help tidy the car park, Ted the Gardener has just been and trimmed the tops of the hedges and now it is looking much better! Thank you.