Life in Goldthorpe is busy!

This Sunday, we have our morning meeting at Cherry Tree Court at 10.30 a.m. and then a special evening service focussing on the forthcoming mission trip to India at 6 p.m. Please come along to find out more about the trip, what to pray for during the trip and how best to support the team going out to Bangalore. We leave on 9th April and return either on 16th April (Garry and Julie) or 23rd April (the rest of the team). We are in the process of sorting electronic visas, so please pray this goes through smoothly.

Next week we are hosting a military funeral for Tom Nowell, formerly of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. This will be on Wednesday 15th April at 10.30 a.m., with refreshments after the service at the crematorium (12:10 p.m.) being served at our church. Any volunteers to help with this would be really useful, as we are expecting a large number of mourners to pay their respects. Tom was 94 when he died, but won a military medal for his role in the Korean War in the 1950s and lived in Goldthorpe all his life apart from during his time in the army.

On Thursday 16th March (10 a.m. – 12 noon), the WEA is running an aromatherapy taster session at the Snap Tin Cafe (situated in the former Dearne Enterprise Centre on Barnburgh Lane);  the following week (23rd March), the session will be on creative writing. These sessions are free to attend and will give a taster of what will be happening at the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival later in the year (1 & 2 September). Radio Sheffield will be featuring this festival on Monday 13th March between 11 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. if anyone wants to know more! We were really pleased this week to have Ian McMillan (Barnsley Bard and well-known poet) confirm he will be hosting a creative writing workshop on Friday 1st September (2-3.30 p.m.) at the festival.

Ian McMillan (photo by Adrian Mealing):

Advance notice of a free concert which I’m sure will be fantastic: Watoto Children’s Choir from Uganda will be performing at Grimethorpe Pentecostal Church on Saturday 1st April at 6:30 p.m. This will be an opportunity to hear the sound of a transformed generation, orphans whose joy and testimonies are truly inspiring. All welcome.

Before moving on from the sin of sloth, I feel I must also point out that sloth does not always look like a lager lout sprawled out on a couch in front of the TV.

Someone who is slothful may also look extremely busy to everyone else and never consider themselves slothful. Consider, for example, a man who is a workaholic. He spends every waking hour at work to provide for his family; he is industrious, responsible, a model citizen. Yet in prioritising paid employment over his role as husband, father and church member, he is perhaps avoiding things which God considers important and is neglecting spiritual disciplines which ultimately are more important than earning money.

Busyness can actually be the sin of sloth in disguise. We fill our lives with things – things which in themselves are not sinful – because we do not want the discipline of slowing down and attending to God. We think that by being busy, we are obviously doing God’s will. It’s easier to say ‘yes’ to everything than to risk offending people or to actually seek God for His specific will for our lives. Busy people must be doing something right, we affirm. If you want something doing, ask a busy person!

Underlying busyness, however, can be the desire to appear important and significant because we actually are not sure that we are important and significant. Eugene Peterson writes, ‘I let people who do not understand the work of the pastor write the agenda for my day’s work because I am too slipshod to write it myself.’ (‘The Contemplative Pastor’, Eugene Peterson) This is why Sabbath rest, a weekly reorienting in God’s presence, is crucial to spiritual health, and why we need also the daily practice of prayer and reading God’s Word, so that we can actually differentiate between our wills and God’s will, between what is important and urgent, between what is essential and what is useful. During Lent, let’s examine our schedules and fix God at the centre of every day, taking time daily to be still and know that He is God (Ps 46:10) so that our busyness stems from His strength and energy, rather than from our own.

A sloth is a slow-moving tropical American mammal that hangs upside down from the branches of trees using its long limbs and hooked claws. Flanders and Swann wrote a wonderful song about the sloth which says,

‘A Bradypus, or Sloth, am I,
I live a life of ease
Contented not to do or die,
But idle as I please
I have three toes on either foot, or half a doz on both
With leaves and fruits, and shoots to eat,
How sweet to be a Sloth.

The world is such a cheerful place
When viewed from upside-down;
It makes a rise of every fall,
A smile of every frown;
I watch the fleeting flutter by
Of butterfly or moth
And think of all the things I’d try
If I were not a Sloth.

I could climb the very highest Himalayas,
Be among the greatest ever tennis players,
Win at chess or marry a Princess or
Study hard and be an eminent professor.
I could be a millionaire, play the clarinet,
Travel everywhere,
Learn to cook, catch a crook,
Win a war then write a book about it.

I could paint a Mona Lisa,
I could be another Caesar.
Compose an oratorio that was sublime.
The door’s not shut on my genius but
I just don’t have the time!

For days and days among the trees
I sleep and dream and doze
Just gently swaying in the breeze
Suspended by my toes
While eager beavers overhead
Rush through the undergrowth
I watch the clouds beneath my feet;
How sweet to be a Sloth.’

Many of us see nothing wrong in sloth or laziness. Being apathetic or listless, passive or lethargic hardly seems to rank with pride, lust or envy as sins. Even if we acknowledge that we are lazy in some areas, we think this is no great sin, and since we are rarely lazy in everything, this sin is hardly even noticed by many. Yet the Bible has much to say about sloth, often contrasting the ways of sluggards with the ways of the ant (see Prov 6:6-11, Prov 19:24, Prov 21:25, Prov 26:13-15).

There is obviously a need for balance in life, with work contrasted with rest. The Sabbath is God’s principle of rest, given to help us. Night is given us for sleep. We do well not to burn ourselves out. Yet we also need to be aware of the heart’s tendency to desire ease, to sit back and rest even at the expense of doing the known will of God. Whatever we do in life requires effort, and so often, it’s this idea of effort which repels us. We want to be able to progress in the spiritual life without effort.

When we are slothful, we are careless, not planning ahead, not putting in effort, feeling that life is just not worth living. Paul reminds us, ‘Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.’ (Gal 6:7-10) He urges us to ‘always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.’ (1 Cor 15:58) There is a need for effort and perseverance in a life of faith, and we have to examine our hearts to see if we are shirking these things and preferring a life of ease to the life of service God requires.

I hate gardening with a passion, though I do love to look at other people’s gardens. The reason I dislike gardening so much is fundamentally because I am lazy and it is hard work. Weeding is one job I particularly dislike, since weeds seem to grow so much more quickly and prolifically than the flowers I want to flourish, so this is a job which never seems to be done.

Sin in our lives is rather like weeds; it seems to flourish and grow more quickly than virtues, which require a lot of cultivation! It’s much easier to lose our tempers than it is to be patient. It’s much easier to hold on to grudges than it is to forgive. We live in a world where the weeds grow alongside the good seed (Matt 13:24-30), and we have to be diligent in rooting out attitudes and thoughts and actions which don’t conform to God’s Word.

Envy is another of those sins which poisons and corrodes us from within. Like greed and lust, it is characterised by an insatiable desire. It can be described as a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else. It’s linked to covetousness, one of the things God warns about in the Ten Commandments (Ex 20:17, Deut 5:21), and leads to resentment, bitterness and meanness, all of which are far from the generosity and open-handedness which are characteristics of God (see 2 Cor 9:6-11).

Envious people are focussed on themselves and look at others without love. We need to refuse to compare ourselves to other people and rest secure in our identity as God’s children. Generosity and kindness are the characteristics we should be growing; envy and covetousness the weeds we need to dig out with diligence and determination.

Lust is another of the seven deadly sins which can easily ensnare our hearts. Lust is usually associated with sexual sins, though it is actually defined as an ‘intense desire’ for something, which can, of course, refer to other things (such as a lust for power or money, for example). Sexual sins are prevalent in our society, as they ever have been; what is perhaps more worrying nowadays is that so often, we do not even recognise these as sins. Instead, we talk of lust as simply fulfilling our desires and see little wrong in adultery, sleeping with different people or homosexual practices.

Lust has as its focus pleasing oneself, and it often leads to unwholesome actions to fulfil one’s desires with no regard to the consequences. Lust is about possession and greed, and is therefore the antithesis of love, which always looks to the needs of the other person above one’s own needs. The Christian faith is about selflessness and is marked by holy living (1 Thess 4:3-8; 2 Tim 1:9, Heb 12:14, 1 Pet 1:15-16). We need to guard our hearts (Prov 4:23), because Jesus made it clear that actions arise from our hearts (see Matt 5:27-30, Mark 7:21).

Over this Lenten period, we need to examine our hearts for lust. This can be seen in our thoughts, our speech and how we spend our time. Pornography is an increasing problem; we need to be ruthless in how we spend our time and on what we focus. The media constantly churns out justification for sexual sin and it can be hard to avoid images which tempt us, but we are urged to flee from anything that would trip us up (see 1 Tim 6:11, 2 Tim 2:22). This may well mean considering what Facebook images and videos we look at, what jokes we listen to and how we speak of other people. The Marquis de Sade, best known for his violent behaviour (sadism is named after him), said, “Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all – ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.” Lust should have no part in our lives, for our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20) and we need to be holy, even as God is holy.

God does not change (Ps 55:19, Mal 3:6). This is tremendously reassuring to us. James reminds us that He is not like the shifting shadows, but is a reliable, generous, faithful God. (James 1:17) Heb 13:8 reminds us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. We cna be secure even in an insecure, changing, volatile world because God remains the constant in all of life’s changes.

Matt Redman’s song ‘We Shall Not Be Shaken’ reminds us of who God is: ‘You never change, You never fail, You never fade…‘ God’s sovereignty, power and love remain unchanged, no matter how difficult our circumstances may seem to us. When everything is shaking, God remains unshaken (see Heb 12:28-29). It’s much easier to cope with the changes in life if we fix our focus on God, rather than the outside factors which change. Mother Theresa remins us that we are not called to be successful; we are called to be faithful. By fixing our eyes on God, we have an anchor point for life’s journey.