Articles tagged 'church'

God the Builder - crutch or scaffolding?

If you take a look at the parables of Jesus you will see a lot of analogies with things people at the time would have known about.  Farming techniques, fishing, dealing with tax collectors, vineyards and olive groves.  All these were common knowledge for the people he was speaking to.  I wonder if the meaning is lost on us sometimes, because we’re not living amongst vineyards and suchlike.  It takes a lot more effort for us to understand the meaning of the parables, because we have to do research into what it was like at the time, and what the significance of everything was.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when the other day I stumbled across an analogy that was scriptural but relevant to our times.  When I say “scriptural”, it isn’t actually in the Bible, but it does tie in nicely with what is said in the Bible.

First, some background.  It was Back To Church Sunday last week, and as part of the service our vicar invited me up the front to answer a couple of questions.  One of them was something along the lines of “what difference does faith make to your life?”  This isn’t an easy questions for me to answer, because I’ve been a Christian so long that I can’t really compare my life now to my life without God.  However, I did think about it (I had been primed the day before to give me a chance to come up with a suitable answer), and stumbled across this little gem, which is shared in church and felt I could share here too.

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Heaven on earth

This article is based on a sermon I first preached at Christ Church, Surbiton in July 2006. I’ve adapted it and tidied it up for Focus on Faith (you lucky, lucky people) but for those of you too lazy to read it (I’m with you brother/sister by the way) attached is an audio recording of the sermon.

One of my favourite hymns is ‘How great thou art’. The final verse of this hymn goes like this:

When Christ shall come with shout of acclimation
And take me home – what joy shall fill my heart
Then I shall bow in humble adoration
And there proclaim, my God, how great Though art!

I love this song because for me it just captures the majesty and the awesomeness of God and his creation. And this final verse expresses quite how amazing heaven is going to be.

But when you ask people what heaven is going to be like I don’t know how many people would quote hymns to you. Ask the man on the street what they think heaven will be like, and I reckon a popular response would include wings, clouds, harps and Philadelphia crème cheese.

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