Curate Conundrums

Hark the glad sound! The Saviour comes, The Saviour promised long; Let every heart prepare a throne, And every voice a song. Happy Christmas! So now what? We’re now headed into what I call ‘the slump time’. That weird period between Christmas and New Year, when many people are off work, we’re all full of rich food, or a bit hungover, and nobody has any idea what day of the week it is. Although to be honest, for some people, perhaps we should call 2020 the year of the slump. Though of course our hardworking Key Workers have been doing anything but slumping. This year has been very tough emotionally, physically and financially for many. For Christians the joy of Christmas continues as we celebrate Christmas Season, which carries on until at least the 3 rd of January when we celebrate the feast of ‘The Epiphany’, otherwise known as when the Wise Men visited Jesus. Or for some Christmas continues until the 10 th of January when the baptism of Christ is celebrated. For us this should b...

Sheep are part of a flock, they’re social animals, a bit like us. I suppose that’s where the similarities end, I mean I don’t have hooves, at least not yet. What does being a sheep have to do with abundant life? Abundant life, I think is about being part of the flock. Now back to sheep, what images come into your mind when you think about sheep? Do you count them to go to sleep? Let’s talk about sheep. What are they like? Docile, mostly. They’re white and fluffy, they chew the cud, hang around together. We use their flocks to make our clothes. They’re not threatening. They baa loudly and make noise. Maybe, they’re a bit stupid. So then, why does Jesus call us sheep? It’s a bit of a mixed metaphor isn’t it? I mean if you want to attract people surely, you’d call them a strong animal like a lion, or something beautiful and mystic like a unicorn. Nope, we are plain old sheep. Thanks Jesus! There’s a lot of bad connotations with sheep, if you’re a sheep you blindly ...

Aha! I thought to myself, pulling into Asda carpark, there’s a space here, but what’s that, the person in the other bay hasn’t parked properly. You know the type of thing, when they’re not in the lines. We all come across it, and it’s one of my pet peeves. Right then! I thought, I’m going to teach them a thing or two, I’m going to park in the bay next to them to teach them a lesson. Or so I thought. Arrogantly, I know best. And lo, as I did pull into that space something went terribly wrong, I scratched that car, and mine in the process. Afterwards it was like an opera singer singing MISTAKE! Behind me, and a few choice words shall we say were uttered from my mouth. They weren’t darn it, or blast I can assure you. There are times in life when we respond in the wrong way, and we can feel bad about ourselves, but the question I want to ask you today is who does Jesus call? And How do we respond to that? I believe that Jesus calls the flawed and we need to respond to G...