100 not out

Nearly one in five people currently in the UK will live to see their 100th birthday, according to the government. The Department for Work and Pensions said its figures suggested 10 million people – 17% of the population – would become centenarians. (source – BBC)

There are definitely more older people around now – although the funny thing is that the older I get, the younger the older people seem to be – or is that just me? It is very obvious that we are living longer, and so we should, since medical advances mean that previously fatal conditions are now manageable. So we should perhaps aspire to live to 100 years old. Whether the prediction will be the case when the obesity bomb hits the ground is another matter.

Obediently yours

I don’t know how young I was when I was first disobedient. I am sure that as a baby I showed signs of the disobedience to come – perhaps it was just turning my head away to refuse to eat the food on the spoon in front of me, or perhaps I just refused to do something that I had been told to do. But was that real disobedience, or was it just the case that I didn’t understand the words? As a toddler, I almost certainly refused to do something, even though I fully understood the words. But was that real disobedience, or was it just the case that I didn’t understand the rules? By the time I was at school, I understood both the language and the rules, and I know I was disobedient on many occasions, and punishment followed accordingly.

All of them?

Things have been critical here for the last two weeks. For some people, the bad weather has placed them in critical situations, lives have been endangered and lost. For me, the situation has not been critical in that sense. In fact, the situation has not been critical for me – I have been critical of the situation. I have criticised the local council for their inability to clear the roads of the snow and ice. Very critical. I have to confess that I have got quite angry about it, and felt that the anger was justified.

You cannot make love

During the last week we had a lot of snow (50 cm) where I live. It’s one of these things that is fascinating and beautiful, but then reality bursts in and spoils it all. Everything looks truly stunning, especially when the skies clear and the sun shines, but when you try to walk in snow that deep you discover that it is really difficult. When the snow comes up to your knees every step is a struggle. For the first few days driving was impossible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fear is the key

What are you afraid of? Anything? Lots of things? Everything? Nothing?
Many of us are afraid of flying, but I remember Spike Milligan once saying that he wasn’t in the least frightened of flying. Not in the least! But crashing – that was totally different! He was terrified of that!

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.

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.

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!