It’s all in the name

Sometimes I feel that we Christians say some things because we say them. I am not saying that we don’t understand what we are saying, or don’t mean what we say. I mean that we say them so often that we lose track of the meaning, or the power of the words becomes detached from them. At its worst, the words become a conversation filler.

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Can I help, Mr Cameron?

I was interested to read that Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, is going to spend £2million on measuring the happiness of the British people. Happiness, according to the dictionary is a state of well being and contentment.
I do not see a lot of contentment in the society in which we live at the moment. All our labour-saving devices and technological advances have maybe given some a better quality of life, but this does not necessarily mean a more contented life. In fact, I think the opposite is true in most cases.

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Fearful delight

Why do we do what we do?
Some things we do just because we do – they sort of happen around us and we just go along with the flow. Some we do automatically, out of habit, and sometimes we don’t even know we are doing them. Sometimes that habit can be so compulsive that we cannot stop ourselves from doing it – we have lost control, and the drift into addiction can follow. We do some things out of our emotions – we laugh because we are happy, cry because we are sad, we lash out in anger, scream with fear.

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Believing is seeing

I have had a keen interest in computers for many years. In fact, I wrote my first computer program in 1969. That was a long time ago by anyone’s standards, but in terms of computer development it was way back in the early days! To put it into perspective, there was no internet, no such thing as a PC and Microsoft did not exist. In fact Bill Gates was only 14 years old.
I cannot remember what the program was for, but I do remember that the programming language was Algol and that each line of the program was punched by me sitting at a kind of typewriter, onto special cards – one card for each line of the program. The cards went into a reader which the computer then accessed. I had to carry the cards to the reader and I was very aware that if I dropped the cards I would have to sort them all out into the correct order or the program would not work properly. The computer itself was the size of a house. I remember seeing the computer’s hard disk: it was a sheet of metal about 5 feet in diameter.

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On being a kept woman!

I asked Jesus to come into my heart and life when I was 5 years old. I had been and have been in the church all my life. I’m now in my 5o’s (not too far in yet) and have recently had what I can only describe as “a crisis of faith”. Robert and I recently left the church that I had attended all my life and have started going to another great church where we seem to be putting roots down again. But in the few weeks after leaving the church that had been such a big part of my life and for so long, I began to question what my faith had been in. Was it really in the God whom I had known all my life since 5 years of age, or was it in the church and all that is involved in it? The people, the services, the worship, the programmes, like Alpha etc. that we were involved in.

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I am an addict

The first time I ever saw a drug addict was at a Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park – a long time ago. There were actually two of them, and I remember how awful they looked, but I also remember thinking “Nutters!” As years passed, I saw many more and I have to admit that I felt total disdain for them – they were nothings, and were not to be trusted as they would rob and steal. Time went by, though, and I started to see them in the chemists waiting disconsolately for their methadone. My heart started to change.

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What brought me here

There is a belief or custom in many societies that age brings wisdom. This gave rise to the role of Elder, where the older members of the family or society are in a position of leadership, and this has been incorporated into church life, though here spiritual maturity is normally the qualifying factor rather than physical age. Note that I have said the age brings wisdom, not intelligence or knowledge. I am sure that we have all met someone who is incredibly clever, but who shouldn’t really be allowed out on their own!

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Buried treasure

Do you like a bargain? Do you feel really good when you find one? Earlier this year, Libby and I were in Lytham. We passed a very up-market shop which sells women’s, or perhaps I should say ladies, clothes. It is a very expensive shop, and normally we always pass it, but this time I noticed that a sale had just started about an hour earlier. Libby decided it might be worth a look, so we went in. Libby found a tee shirt was reduced to a slightly less than extortionate price, but then I noticed a coat. It was a very special, very different raincoat, and it really was reduced – 80% off. Libby looked great in it, so we bought it. It was so different and such a bargain that Libby tells everyone about it.

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Piggy in the middle

I have heard some daft ideas in my time, but there was one which I came across years and years ago which has stuck in my mind ever since I first heard it. It wasn’t so much an idea, as a theory of life and I think it is also used to show the importance of logic in an argument.

The theory states that I am the only person in the world. No one else exists, just me. That is when the argument starts, because you chip in with the comment that you are there too, so I am wrong. Ah, but you are only there as part of my imagination. I am making you say that you are there.

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To be or not to be

They say that what you are is what you eat. I have never really understood that. OK, I can see that if you do not eat meat you can be called a vegetarian or a vegan, but that is really as far as it goes – it puts you into a category, but that is only part of what you are, part of what you do.

So, what else can define what you are? Your fashion or your taste in music can suggest what age group you fall into. Your accent can suggest where you come from. The car you drive, or your lack of a car, can point to your income group, but not necessarily. The way your children behave can possibly show how good a parent you are. How you behave might point to what you have been through earlier in life. But all these things only show a bit of you – they are not what you are, who you are. Like nationality or political affiliation, they might classify part of you, but they don’t define you.

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Identify yourself

We read a lot these days about identity theft. In the last year it cost £1.9bn in the UK, affecting an estimated 1.8 million people.

Wikipedia states that “the victim of identity theft (here meaning the person whose identity has been assumed by the identity thief) can suffer adverse consequences if he or she is held accountable for the perpetrator’s actions. Organizations and individuals who are duped or defrauded by the identity thief can also suffer adverse consequences and losses, and to that extent are also victims.”

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