PHILIP AND GOD: DEEP WISDOM FOR TODAY'S CHRISTIAN

HOW MY FATHER DISCOVERED THAT HE HAD A GIFT OF HEALING.

When my father, the Rev Edgar Bell, was a young Vicar the clergy of his area held a monthly meeting called "The way of renewal".
This was a monthly study course to help local clergy bring fresh light into their ministries.

At one such meeting they discussed what Jesus meant when he said, "Preach the gospel, heal the sick" (Luke's Gospel chapter 9, verses 1 and 2). They also remembered an instruction by one of the apostles and found in the letter of St.James: "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. (See the letter of James in the New Testament, chapter 5, verses 14 - 16).

My Dad had given a lift in his car to a neighbouring Vicar who had a little daughter who was seriously ill with infantile eczema. In those days there was nothing doctors could do to treat this.

My Father said, "I suppose that if we took this teaching to heart, we ought to be able to help your little girl."

Those were days when the only telephone in any area was at the Post Office. After a few days Dad received a Telegram from his friend ... "Please come and do what you said".

Nowhere could Dad find a prayer book with a service in it for anointing the sick and laying on hands to pray for healing. In the end the two of them blessed some olive oil and went together to the hospital.

What they saw there would have broken your heart.... The child lay on her back in a cot. Each hand and foot was tied to the side of the cot by a bandage. This was to prevent scratching which would have covered her in blood.

My Father dipped his finger in the oil and anointed her head in the shape of a cross on her forehead. Then he laid his hands on her and prayed, "Lord, we have obeyed the words of your Son and of Holy Scripture. We pray that you would give healing to this child, in the name of Jesus, Amen".

A day or two later Dad received a telegram to say that she had improved. The following week my parents decided to attend the garden fete at the vicarage of this child's parents. I must leave it to your imagination, to think what my father's feelings were when the little girl came running across the grass to greet my father and take his hand.

That was how my father realised a calling to minister to the sick in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is all the more remarkable because it was at a time when such things were almost unheard-of.

Some time later, after he had spent many years praying for healing and had seen many miraculous recoveries, Dad gave a series of talks about the gift and ministry of Christian healing. These talks were published in a booklet which is now out of print. However, you can find them now at http://godschool.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/christian-healing/

3 parts can be read and the rest will follow.

Who knows what God could do through us, if we only have the faith to believe his word and trust in the love and mercy of Jesus?

It's quite a thought.

Jesus invites us to live simply

Surely poverty isn’t good. In fact the church has committed itself to trying to end poverty. So I always used to puzzle as to why Jesus said “Blessed are the poor.”

Now I begin to understand. St Matthew’s Gospel says “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

What do you suppose that means?

I’ve read various explanations of being ‘poor in spirit’, including the idea that if you realise and acknowledge to yourself and to God that you are not much good (poor) spiritually, then God is able to help you because you are humble enough to admit that you are not perfect and you are in need. Even if we have enough materially, our spirits are in poverty until they are enriched by the mercy and love of our Saviour.

I would not quarrel with that.

But there is another meaning which appeals to me. If a friend invites me to attend a special occasion, and I can’t go, I’m likely to say “I will be with you in spirit!” By this I mean “I’ll be thinking of you, just as if I were there.”

If we apply this meaning to ‘the poor in spirit’, it can also mean “I am not materially or financially poor like some people, but I can think about them and try to live ‘as if’ I had practically nothing, and give away as much as I can to those who are truly in need.

When John Taylor was Bishop of Winchester he wrote a book called ‘Enough is Enough’. He pointed out that we do not need many luxuries to live happy lives, and we can be contented with the necessities of life. This explains why so often you see smiles on the faces of really poor people in other countries. If they have enough to get through the week, they are happy!

In our western world, as we have seen very recently with the expenses scandal, even rich people may try to defraud their company or the government. This makes it even more important to take to heart our Lord’s words about true riches and true poverty.

Modern advertising appeals to human greed and envy to encourage us to buy things which we either do not need or can’t afford. ‘Buy now and pay later’ they say. Some children become obsessed with the urge to have designer clothes and footwear, and often their parents run into debt in the effort to give them what they want.

Debt is one of the most widespread of our present social evils. It seems to get worse and worse and often leads to marriage breakdown or even to crime. It seems so sad to me that this is so, and that it can often be avoided if we were willing to live more simply and give up our desire to have more and more things.

Oh yes, there is a lot to be said for the simple life and the contented mind! Jesus was right, as usual.

I think it would be great if we could encourage each other NOT to buy lots of things, and to send the money we might have spent to one of the many excellent charities that deals with debt counselling or acute poverty.

The poor really do! What do you think?

Hello all,

I am pleased to say that my father's little book on Christian healing, called 'Redemptive Healing', is now available to read on our family blog at http://godschool.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/christian-healing/

It is being posted a chapter at a time, and two chapters are now up.

My father was an Anglican priest with a gift of healing, and in this booklet, which is a series of talks he gave in the 1950s, he explains his understanding of the healing ministry. He was very much ahead of his time, but his vision has now become a reality.

He also gives examples of the illnesses of the people who came to him, and the nature and extent of their healing.

I hope his thoughts bless you as they have blessed our family.

Philip

Material gain - and spiritual loss
Although I think that it’s good for clergy to have sufficient money to live on now, the point I want to make is that we no longer have to rely on God for necessities in our modern western world.

Today, I am retired, but I have enough to live on. I enjoy being like this, although I am still not quite used to it! – but it is true to say that the need for reliance on God for material things has gone.

We are part of the materialistic world, in a country where living standards for so many people have been going up and up ever since the 1960’s. I know there are people who still live below the poverty line, but we are very lucky in this country with the welfare state, and our poverty bears no resemblance to the acute poverty of other countries.

Being better-off is both a gain and a spiritual loss.

But does it matter?

The big question for Christians is this:
what sort of Christian church will this increased affluence create in the future?

I believe it is very important to remember that we do not belong just to an English or British church. How many English Christians have now realised that the majority of Christians on planet Earth live south of the Equator?

Europeans are definitely in a minority as far as numbers of Christians go. Our missionary societies are finding that the really vibrant Christian missionaries are now coming from Asia and Africa to this country, because we are more in need of spiritual help than they are.

Jesus once exclaimed that it was so hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. We need to take this to heart and to realise ‘that’s us!’

Materially rich but spiritually poor?
We should not be surprised, then, to learn that outside our western, wealthy, materialistic culture, the poorer countries have seen remarkable growth in the size of their church membership. In contrast to this, in our area of the globe there are some countries where the state maintains the church buildings; some where old endowments and property have been sufficiently well-managed to produce millions of pounds a year; some where wealthy people support their local church (I am not saying that any of this is bad or wrong).

But by and large, if you want to find a vitally alive church composed of people filled by the Holy Spirit, endowed with real Christian love, devotion, enthusiasm and yet very practical in helping others, then the places to look are among the poor and the needy.

Here, we moan about the reduction of full-time ministers, and sometimes church people are reluctant to take on extra work for God on top of their normal jobs. But churches in poor countries, with no endowments and very little money, cannot afford many clergy either. So, once again, if you want to find lay people taking services and doing all manner of work in and through the church, then the best place to see it is where real poverty exists, and ordained ministries are very thin on the ground.

In the past we have made the mistake of exporting our Church of England services and our English culture to areas where some of our missionaries went.

Some of this legacy is good, and some of it is still bitter to national Christians. Once, when I visited northern Nigeria, I went to a church which was originally built for white expatriates. It was just like stepping into the Church of England of my childhood in the 1920’s! And what a contrast with other churches, where the music was Nigerian and the words in Hausa. There was spiritual life for you!

Materially poor but spiritually rich!
Lessons have been learnt since the days of the British Empire, and other countries now have their own liturgies and ways of self-expression in public worship. Their material poverty is producing spiritual riches. My daughter tells me of a service at Christmas, where the women’s fellowship in her Nigerian church sang in Hausa in a very lively way with beaten pots and drums ‘Bring, bring Christmas offerings!’

As they sang, scores of people made their way to the front of the huge church with offerings – not just money, but bags of grain and even chickens. People who had almost nothing, but were willing to be generous to those who had even less. What struck her most were the beaming smiles on everyone’s faces. They were enjoying giving away what they could not really afford!

Again, it is from the areas of the poor or the persecuted, that we find a faith which affects every part of life: work, recreation, home and politics too.

Unless you go to cardboard city, unless you go to the ‘two-thirds world’, you just do not realise how wealthy we really are! Often, when I was in Nigeria, people would call out “Take me to your rich land, Englishman!” Is it our material riches which make our nation one of the most godless in the world, I wonder?

Jesus, as usual, has something wise and relevant to say to my question, and I want to look at what he says next time.

My discovery that our real needs are mysteriously met

Because clergy life was a constant challenge to make ends meet, it meant that for many of us the vocation to the ministry was a vocation to comparative poverty. You were forced by law to live in a house and grounds which you could not afford, and you just had to rely on God and a few people’s goodness to exist.

No Christmas dinner?
I remember so well the first year in my father’s vicarage in Blackburn in 1937. It was lunchtime on the Sunday before Christmas Day. My father put his hand in his pocket and took out a sixpenny piece which he put on the table. “That is all I have until I am paid in January,” he said. “I’m overdrawn at the bank to the limit, so I’m afraid it means we cannot have a Christmas dinner this year.”

A few days later, when my mother was going out of the front door to spend the last remains of her housekeeping money(for things like cheese and bread), there, on the doorstep, were two paper bags filled with all we could want for Christmas dinner! We never found out who had given these to us.

No holiday?
Roughly fifteen years later, when I was married and working south London, it was a year when we could not go to the Church Army holiday home (because you were not allowed to go two years running). For some reason I had not been able to fix up a ‘locum’ holiday for the period allocated to us for a summer vacation. “Whatever shall we do for a holiday?” my wife asked.

This was an important question, because clergy work 6 days a week, and we often started at 6am and would finish at midnight. Life was hectic and by the time summer came we were exhausted. I said “don’t worry”, if the good Lord wants us to have a holiday away from the house, He will provide it.”

A few days before we were due for our summer break, I received a letter from the Bishop of Southwark, saying that a solicitor in Sawbridgeworth had written to ask if any young clergyman and his family needed a holiday, and would they like to use his house for three weeks? He even left his German Aupair to help us.

How grateful we were!!

Can’t pay the bill?
On another occasion we had an unexpectedly large bill for over £100 and no money . Out of the blue came almost the exact amount from a source which would not normally enter our heads as a ‘benefactor’ in time of need. It was, in fact, a cheque from the Inland Revenue for income tax that had been overpaid!

God, Not chance!
I could multiply these examples. You just could not put these experiences down to lucky chance. What it meant in our lives was that we learned to trust God that he would provide whatever was really needed. As in the case of the holiday in Sawbridgeworth, we learned that if something could not be provided from our own resources, then the thing to do was to pray, to trust and to wait, and to know that if it was God’s will then the need would be met.

It’s different now!
Today, the policy is quite rightly followed that the parish pays the working expenses of the clergy, while clergy stipends (incomes) have gradually increased and levelled, so that all clergy get the same rate of pay, no longer dependent on the wealth or poverty of their parish. The income received by Anglican ministers these days is very considerably less than other professional people with the same higher education, but that is offset by their living in a house where the council tax is paid for them and the diocese takes responsibility for the maintenance of the fabric, (although not the interior decoration).

Mind you, when clergy retire they have then to find somewhere to live, and somehow find the money to rent or buy a house, because a clergy house is a ‘tied’ house and goes with the church, and must be vacated ready for the next minister.

This is still a real problem for some clergy, particularly if they have not been in the ministry long enough to qualify for a full pension, and if they do not own their own property. The Church of England Pensions Board has a number of options to help clergy find somewhere to live, such as part-ownership.

On the other hand, many clergy are now coming into the ordained ministry when they have had a secular job for some years, and usually their spouse is working as well, so they often have their own home already. These days, this means that a clergy family may have two incomes. This was unheard of in days past, when a ‘good’ clergy wife always stayed at home, looked after the house which was usually huge and a great deal of work, cared for the family, answered the door and the phone, got involved in parish life and generally helped her husband.

The modern clerical family therefore has more money in real terms than some of the past generations, and that makes life easier because the cost of feeding, clothing and educating families, paying rent or mortgage for their personal property if they have one, domestic bills, managing a car (or two) etc continues to spiral upwards.

So what?
By now you may be asking ‘What’s the point of all this?’ and I want to answer that question in my next posting.

Because vicarages and rectories were such large houses, standing in their own grounds, everybody in former days subconsciously classed the Anglican clergy as ‘gentry’ and assumed that they could manage financially, and were even well-off.

The reality was often very different.

Clothing

What many of us did was to apply to the charity the Poor Clergy Relief Corporation for clothing. One of the great excitements of my childhood days, when my father was vicar of the little village of Molland in North Devon, was the arrival at the railway station five miles away of two big canvas-covered bundles, labelled ‘cushions’.

My parents would have filled in a form showing their exact financial position, and stating their essential needs for clothing for themselves and their two sons. The clothing we received was usually good quality second-hand items, though on rare occasions some things looked new.

Picture us in the big bedroom at the back of the house undoing these parcels, lifting out the clothes, holding them up and trying them on for size! I can still smell the (quite pleasant) scent of these garments.

The same charity helped my wife and I during our marriage, and my eldest daughter still remembers the bundles arriving, and trying on the second-hand suits in the ‘swinging sixties’ when her better-off schoolmates were buying miniskirts and jeans.

As for me, I did not know what it was like to go to a shop and buy new clothes, up until the very end of the 1950s. There was never enough money to live on until the late 1960s.

Holidays

For holidays there were two things which most of us did. One was to take a locum parish; for example, one summer I went to Sandown on the Isle of Wight, where we lived in the vicarage while the incumbent was away having his holiday. I took Sunday services, saw to emergencies, and my wife and I kept the garden and house tidy. It made quite a good self-catering holiday for the weekdays.

The other way to get a break was to go to one of the Church Army (not Salvation Army) clergy holiday houses. One was at Birchington-on-Sea in Kent, and the other at Clevedon in North Somerset. We paid a modest sum for board and lodging, and the whole family shared one bedroom. (Imagine six of us in one room for a fortnight!)

At mealtimes, all the adults sat at one table and the children at another. Each clergyman took a day in turn to say prayers at breakfast and grace before and after main meals. We always remember one of them who had a different grace for each meal. I don’t know how we kept from bursting into laughter when he said, very solemnly at the end of breakfast

“For porridge, tea and buttered toast,

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost”!

These holidays could be good fun, especially if the children met up with boys and girls of their own age. Sometimes there were clergy who wanted to explain that they had the most difficult parish in England, but by and large each family was free to do its own thing and enjoy the time by the sea as they wished.

I remember talking to one of the ladies in Clevedon who had worked at the clergy holiday house there ever since it opened when she had just left school. She was from a working-class family, and she told me how shocked she had been in the 1920s when she saw the worn-out clothes and poverty of the clergy and their families. “I told my father,” she said, “that I had not seen anything like it in Clevedon.”

Well, it is all very different now. I am not writing this in order to complain – indeed, I think I grew up just assuming that that was the nature of our life! But I do have a purpose for talking about the past days of clerical poverty.

(to be continued)

THE POOR DO.

When I was younger you often heard this phrase: "it's a poor do!" It's not a phrase you hear so much these days. It means "I don't think much of that" or "that's not very good". However, that is not the meaning I have in mind now. I will explain why I have titled these postings 'The Poor Do' as I go along.

While I was at school I was always aware that my parents were financially much poorer than the parents of the other boys, and it was clear that I always had less pocket money than they had. Like many people, I had a penny every Saturday for pocket money until I went away to a boarding school, where it went up to a shilling a week.

Those were the days when some town children ran around the streets barefoot in the summer, and their clothes were usually torn, patched hand-me-downs – as we can see from photos of that period.

But people still thought of clergymen as ‘gentlemen of private means’, and even as late as 1938 one of my school friends, knowing, by then, that I hoped to be ordained into the church ministry, said to me: “But I thought you had to have independent means if you wanted to go into the church.”

My father, ordained at the end of World War I, was among a growing number of clergy with no money at all, except the income of the parish where he worked.

At that time, a vicar’s income depended on whatever endowments had been given to the parish by past generations. The stipend could be as little as one or two hundred pounds a year, though there were a small number of ‘plum livings’ where the incumbent (or clergyman) was well-off. (This can be seen in novels such as Anthony Trollope’s ‘Barchester Towers’ or ‘The Warden’, and Jane Austen’s novels where young clergymen wanting to marry cannot do so unless they are given a ‘good living’. The livings in those days were endowed by the patrons, which is why Mr Collins in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is so anxious to please Lady Catherine, who is his patron.)

When my father was working, and right up into the late 1960’s, it was taken for granted by the parishioners and the church authorities that the parson would provide and pay for a car, telephone, postage, travel, office equipment and expenses, rates on his large house which went with the job, and a thing called ‘dilapidations’ – which meant that an architect arrived every five years and decided what outside painting and fabric repairs or domestic utilities replacements would be needed from then until his next visit. This total was divided into five, and the appropriate sum paid annually. I recall, when we went to Crawley rectory near Winchester in the 1960s, the rates came to just under £100 and the dilapidations to £120 a year. I had to pay this out of a salary of £720 per year, and we had four children to look after too.

Any interior decoration was entirely up to the family living there. So if you do the sums you will see that money was very tight indeed. Fortunately for all of us, Dilys was always absolutely wonderful at making a little go a very long way!

(to be continued)

Recently I have been writing my memoirs and I would like to share the latest chapter which describes my life with Dilys, my wife of 62 years who died earlier this year.

Look, I know this is not exactly a cheerful topic, but I am posting it in the hope that it will be of help to anybody who has experienced bereavement, especially if the death was a close relative like a husband or son or daughter.

So let me begin ...

For my wife Dilys, the last few years of her life were very uncomfortable as there was no relief from the severe arthritis in her knees and legs.

She would sometimes say two things to me ... One was, "I hope I die first because I could not cope alone, whereas I know that you could". She also said, "If the doctor said, "You only have a few weeks to live", I would be pleased."

In February she became more and more frail,until one Friday morning she could not speak to Paul our live-in Carer, or to me.

We called an ambulance. When it arrived I was so thankful to find that the driver was Colin from St Mary Magdalen's Church in Hilperton Marsh, well-known to me (his wife Val is Churchwarden there). He decided to take Dilys to Casualty at the R.U.H.,(Royal United Hospital in Bath).

I was still in my pyjamas, so Paul went with them. I phoned the family, dressed and waited for news.

Dilys' treatment would not bear results for some time and she remained unconscious, so Paul came home and later that afternoon my (elder) daughter Gilliian and her husband Geoff came down from Birmingham and stayed with her. She seemed to be responding to treatment,so they called here on their way to stay with friends in Devizes,(a few miles from here.)

At 1a.m. the hospital phoned Gill to say that Dilys had died.

I shall always remember with deep gratitude the great kindness of Paul when he awoke me to tell me.

It was about 2.30am, the early morning of Saturday, 21st February. The hospital said that, as everything closed down for the weekend, we would not be able to see Dilys until Monday, unless we went immediately, therefore my son-in-law Geoff drove us straight there.

When we arrived the whole hospital was in darkness, but a nurse met us and guided us to the ward where Dilys was. The three of us prayed, then I asked to be left for a few minutes. I was thankful for the quietness to spend some time with her on my own.

We returned home and to bed. The following day (Saturday)Gill stayed on with me whilst Geoff went back to Birmingham as he was taking a service on Sunday. That evening the Rev Annie(a local priest and good friend) came to give a Requiem Communion for Gill and myself, which was peaceful, beautiful and very comforting. Most of the special prayers she used were so lovely and appropriate that we included them in composing Dilys' Thanksgiving Service.

On the Monday Gill discovered that we could not collect Dilys' body because a second doctor had not been found to sign her death certificate at the hospital. On Wednesday the coroner's office phoned, to apologise for the delay, and to explain that they were working hard to track down the locum doctor who had first attended to Dilys on her arrival at hospital. Lizzie my second daughter had already arrived and started work to register the death and was advised this would be best done through Bath. It was not until the end of the week that the certificate was finally signed, which was extremely frustrating and I hope you did not have the same experience. My undertaker friend Patrik from Melksham, was able to collect the body and take Dilys to his own chapel of rest, meanwhile Gill had returned home. Lizzie stayed for a while and then my younger son Chris came to spend a few days with me and help me with the practical arrangements for Dilys' funeral and thanksgiving.

Later on, Sian, one of Dilys' and my carers, and I went to the Chapel of Rest to see Dilys. This room is one of the most beautiful we had ever seen. In the coffin Dilys looked beautiful, dressed in her favorite clothes and holding the Valentine card I had sent her only two weeks previously, recording the fact that she had been my valentine for 64 years.

All this was a great help to me. Instead of thinking about the dark scene in the middle of the night at the hospital, this beautiful, light and colourful scene came to mind instead. I was very much helped by this.

I have often thought about the comment of a lady, the widow of a friend who died of cancer... she said, "Remember - tears and laughter are both gifts of God".

Meanwhile, we had arranged Friday 6 March for a family cremation service followed by a buffet lunch at the Pilot Inn near our house. The main Thanksgiving Service was planned for St Michael's Church, Hilperton the same afternoon at 4pm.

Gillian and I worked hard together, sending out the news about Dilys, and inviting people to the service we were composing, which we planned would be taken by members of our wider family. It took even longer to find out who was willing to take a share in it, and to allocate parts to each. We were very much supported by Stephen the vicar of St Michael's Hilperton. (This was my parish before retirement and Stephen was the third vicar after me. In recent years Dilys and I where frequently welcomed there.)

A copy of the service and of what each person said, including the appreciation by my cousin Rt Rev Anthony Priddis,Bishop of Hereford, has been recorded for the family. So many came to the service - 150 people - that chairs had to be brought in to seat them all. Unfortunately for me the loop system had broken down and I could not hear what was said, but all the talks were sent to me afterwards by email so I could read them.

At the end of the service the family and I went to the site where the ashes where to be buried, near the church porch. John, the Archdeacon of Wiltshire, took the prayers and then the bells rang a beautiful half-muffled peal. Patrik had already laid the lovely tributes of spring flowers around the site, which Paul had taken a great deal of time and care to arrange. My own posy, of red roses, had been placed on top of the casket at the front of the church throughout the service.

As I had already greeted everybody as they arrived, Geoff drove us to the Village Hall for a tea, where we were joined by most of those who had been at the service.

The Thanksgiving Service had been a great success, and everybody, both family and friends, had given Dilys the send-off she deserved. My elder son Michael spent the weekend with me, which was a great help and comfort.

After all this, my main task has been to learn how best to live with just my carers, in rotation, an occasional caller or medical appointment, cotinuing my 'Blog', and keeping in touch with my friends and extended family. I am still doing jobs in the garden and I try to go for a walk most days. I decided that my motto must be, "KEEP BUSY".

Unfortunately Annette, my weekly P.A., had fallen and broken an arm, which was in a sling, but she still managed one-handed to send a letter or email to over 70 people to thank them for sending condolence cards.

Paul is an excellent asset because, not only is he an expert chef and has encouraged me to have friends for meals, but also loves flower-gardening, weeding and lawn cutting - an interest we share. Sian has a car and takes us out for shopping and other things, and she has now learned how to do vegetable work like planting onion sets and broad beans. Both carers look after my needs very efficiently, especially regarding my poor sight and hearing. They both work hard at housework, laundry and ironing.

Social Services provided extra steps and hand-rails in the garden. I continue to receive excellent support from all agencies, staff and family.

I am very pleased to be able to remain in my own home and with the garden I originally constructed out of builder's rubble.

Of course, I still miss Dilys very much, but am thankful that she rests within the love of God and in a place where there is "no more pain".

So, inspite of now being a widower, I can sincerely say,
Who could be more fortunate than I ?

JESUS' ATTITUDE TO CHILDREN

(See end of Gospel reading for Trinity 17)

It is surprising how recent some modern medical practices are.
Take scans, for example, (as used for pregnant women). When I lived on a remote island where there was no such thing, a lady entered the tiny hospital to have a baby. Just after the baby was born she looked down at herself and said, "But my tummy has not gone down". "Half a mo", said the doctor, "There's another one here!". So to everyone's surprise she had twins.

Its the same with modern pills. When my uncle Ted found that he had Diabetes in the mid 1920's all he could do was to take insulin and follow a complicated diet. Today I am a diabetic and just take a pill to keep my sugar level right. For my cancer I take three pills a day which keep me comfortable.

If you go back 2000 years to the days of Jesus there was very little that could be done for common illnesses. When people heard about Jesus' marvelous gift of healing, they came in crowds to seek his help. Try to picture the scene where everybody wanted to see the miracles of healing. When people heard that he was in their little town, the men would stop their work, and the women would stop sweeping the floor or cooking, and those with a young family would have to bring the children with them. Imagine a mother saying, "Come on kids, Jesus the healer is here. Let's go and see."

When the 12 disciples saw the children, imagine their saying to each other, "look at all these wretched children ! We had better move them out of the way. They will only be a nuisance to Jesus."

Our Lord, however, who always paid attention to anyone being overlooked, said, "Let the children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." (Mark Ch.10 vers 13-16.)

What a surprise for every one! Think how happy the children would have felt and picture how proud the parents would have been when they saw Jesus blessing them.

I wonder what you think of children in church, and how their needs should be provided for? When a friend of mine was at a family Communion service recently, he observed the children returning from the altar rail having been blessed, looking very happy and dancing with joy.

Surely their example has a message for all of us!.

I won't tell you his name, as there is a remote chance that he might see it on his computer, but you can picture my story ...

There was a man who went to spend a weekend with his married niece.
It was the last Sunday in September and the couple said they were going to church and said, "Will you come with us, uncle ?" Well, he had not been much of a church-goer, but he said, "Alright, I will".

When they arrived he was surprised to find the whole church decorated with Michaelmas daisies. (These flowers have very long, very hard stems with a cluster of flowers near the top). Later in the service he was surprised to hear a prayer about angels. This was because he thought Michael was the name of a saint.

I would like to give you some very interesting information about Michaelmas. As it is rather hard to find this on the net, I am putting it here.

Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”.

There are traditionally four “quarter days” in a year (Lady Day (25th March), Midsummer (24th June), Michaelmas (29th September) and Christmas (25th December)). They are spaced three months apart, on religious festivals, usually close to the solstices or equinoxes. They were the four dates on which servants were hired, rents due or leases begun. It used to be said that harvest had to be completed by Michaelmas, almost like the marking of the end of the productive season and the beginning of the new cycle of farming. It was the time at which new servants were hired or land was exchanged and debts were paid. This is how it came to be that Michaelmas was the time for electing magistrates and also the beginning of legal and university terms.

St Michael is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels. As Michaelmas is the time that the darker nights and colder days begin - the edge into winter - the celebration of Michaelmas is associated with encouraging protection during these dark months. It was believed that negative forces were stronger in darkness and so families would require stronger defences during the later months of the year.

Traditionally, in the British Isles, a well-fattened goose, fed on the stubble from the fields after the harvest, is eaten to protect against financial need in the family for the next year.

Sometimes the day was also known as “Goose Day” and goose fairs were held. Even now, the famous Nottingham Goose Fair is still held on or around the 3rd of October. It could also have developed through the role of Michaelmas Day as the debts were due; tenants requiring a delay in payment may have tried to persuade their landlords to accept gifts of geese!

The Michaelmas Daisy, which flowers late in the growing season between late August and early October, provides colour and warmth to gardens at a time when the majority of flowers are coming to an end. As suggested by the saying below, the daisy is probably associated with this celebration because, as mentioned previously, St Michael is celebrated as a protector from darkness and evil, just as the daisy fights against the advancing gloom of Autumn and Winter.

“The Michaelmas Daisies, among dede weeds,
Bloom for St Michael's valorous deeds.
And seems the last of flowers that stood,
Till the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude.”

(The Feast of St. Simon and Jude is 28 October)

The act of giving a Michaelmas Daisy symbolises saying farewell, perhaps in the same way as Michaelmas Day is seen to say farewell to the productive year and welcome in the new cycle.

I will end with a prayer which is often used on this day.

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen