Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
12th July 2024
While on holiday recently, the phrase, ‘You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars’ cropped up in conversation. If your formative years were the 60s and 70s, you’ll recognise it comes from the Desiderata, or ‘things to be desired’ for a good and well-balanced life. Beloved of the hippy generation, it’s a prose poem created by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945), an American poet, writer and attorney. You may even have once owned a wall poster version!
Reading it again many years later, I’m touched to rediscover its excellent, common sense and wise reflection. The hippy dream of love, peace and universal brotherhood was a worthy one no doubt, but, sadly, it never materialised, bringing disillusionment for quite a few. What was lacking was a realistic understanding of human nature and the way things can go in this world. If they’d read the Desiderata more carefully, they’d have found an approach to life that combined positive optimism with guidance for dealing with the doubts, setbacks and hard times we must all encounter.
If I have any criticism of the poem, it’s that this facing up to life apparently has to emerge from within ourselves. God does get a mention, and we’re to be ‘at peace’ with him, but he’s not necessarily the Christian God. There’s no explicit sense of him supporting and strengthening us through life’s trials and disappointments – more a benevolent presence watching how we do. So, while I’m glad to have been reconnected of the wisdom of the Desiderata, I know I also need the peace of God ‘which surpasses all understanding’ (Phil 4:7).
Ken Stewart
10th July 2024
What’s on your wish list for what the new Government might achieve I wonder? I was heartened that they’d brought in someone who knows something about prisons, wonder what’s in store for our health and social care services – and can but dream that one day reliance on food banks could become a thing of […]
5th July 2024
‘ONE LOT OF SINNERS OUT – ANOTHER LOT OF SINNERS IN’. So proclaimed a poster outside a Baptist Church in Leeds immediately after the 1945 general election which Labour unexpectedly won. The author was a young Welsh minister, Howard Williams, destined eventually to become minister of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church in London and famed for […]
28th June 2024
Boiled cabbage! The smell of boiled cabbage permeated the whole of a Baptist church. Not a very pleasant smell and hardly conducive to worship! I had gone there, as a child, with my parents and that is my abiding memory of it. This was during the war and the church had opened a canteen in […]
26th June 2024
UNHOLY DEATH The world we live in is encumbered with all too many unholy deaths – whether because of human conflict, natural phenomena such as floods and droughts, or violence in the home, or in the city. How do we bring such a problematical and violent world before God in our intercessions? We are perplexed […]
21st June 2024
HOLY DEATH A protestant over-concern with sin can lead to a warped theology of death as the ultimate enemy – ‘the wages of sin’ [Romans 6] – but this is probably as much the consequence of a lack of confidence in life after death, than biblical interpretation. At the same time a certain secular madness […]
14th June 2024
You may feel that you have already had quite enough of the coming general election. I certainly do, I find myself leaving the room to avoid hearing certain politicians who, yet again, have found their way onto my TV screen. But as I write this there are still over three weeks to go and we […]
7th June 2024
Have you noticed that virtually every month/week/day has now been appropriated by some charity or campaign? The National Trust is keen to bring them to the attention of volunteers each week. Otherwise, I would not know about most of them. So far this year from February I remember LGBT History Month, Blossom Month, Mental Health […]
5th June 2024
I’m sure many of you will be familiar with the poem ‘Love bade me welcome’ by the metaphysical poet, George Herbert; and if you’re not, it’s time that were changed. Its formal title is Love (III), and it presents Love offering generous welcome and hospitality to a guest shamed to the core to be receiving […]
31st May 2024
Did you catch a recent BBC “The One Show” piece on “Primary School Assembly Bangers”. It would seem there’s quite a bit of nostalgia for, and some fond memories of, these primary school assembly songs. The programme featured a music teacher who is doing a national tour of singalongs – the one at the Hen […]