Here we are, moving slowly out of lockdown, each week looking at the rules and working out what they mean to us. Many people have expressed frustration with the rules, masks, limited indoor activity, it is all too hard to understand and to abide by these rules.
Humanity has always had to live by rules for our survival and to help structure our lives.
The Christian faith and the guidance of Scripture has always helped form some of that structure in this nation and I believe it still can today.
The Old Testament, Exodus 20, gives us the 10 commandments, we might find it hard to remember and live by all 10, but many of them are sensible rules to live by, for people of faith and people of doubt.
‘You shall have no other gods but me. You shall not make or worship any idols.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
Respect your parents. You must not murder. You must not take someone else’s spouse.
You must not steal. You must not lie. You must not be envious.’
Jesus, in his life and ministry, was often challenged about his perceived rule-breaking, but his response was to reinterpret and add to the rules, and he introduced the rule of love (Matthew 22:37-39), “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbour as yourself”, something that can be found as a rule in almost all faiths and societies.
In our Christian calendar we are in the season of Easter; with the tragedy of Good Friday, where many rebelled against Jesus and his teachings and the crowds and authorities had him crucified.
Easter day and Jesus’ resurrection marks a new start, Spring is sprung, Love has won, and our restrictions and rules are changing for the better ….Remember to live each day with hope and maybe we could use the words of Galatians 5:22-23 to live by, ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no rule’.
Helene
Benefice church services in May (subject to change)
- 2 May – Milverton 9.30am. Daily Prayer
- 2 May – Halse 11.15am. Patronal Communion Service
- 9 May – Ash Priors 9.30am. Communion Service
- 9 May 9 – Fitzhead 11.15am. Rogation
- 16 May – Milverton 9.30am. Communion Service
- 16 May – Halse 11.15am with Ash Priors. Rogation
- 23 May – Fitzhead 9.30am. Communion Service
- 23 May – Ash Priors 11.15am with Halse. Pentecost Praise
- 30 May – Ash Priors 11.15am. Patronal celebration
