Prefixes and suffixes are sets of letters that are added to the beginning or end of another word; by adding these, the meaning of the word is altered. Thus, ‘possible’ is given the opposite meaning by adding the prefix im- to the beginning of the word, creating the word ‘impossible’; by adding the suffix -less to the word ‘hope’, the opposite meaning is created (‘hopeless‘).

For years I have only really considered the prefix ‘un-‘ in a negative light. I could think of plenty of negative words created by this little prefix: unimportant, unkind, unloving, uncouth, unappreciated, unfaithful, uncomfortable, uncommunicative, to name but a few. But today, I realised that this prefix can actually convey positive things as well: think of unworried, unspoiled, unconditional, unruffled and unabashed. In some circumstances, a word with a usually negative connotation (eg unrelenting or unsung) can be positive when applied to specific situations (God’s unrelenting love or an unsung hero, for example.)

When I was younger, my grandparents would often comment on how people were categorised as ‘good ‘uns’ or ‘wrong ‘uns’, depending on their actions. (‘You don’t want to be friends with X; he’s a wrong ‘un.‘) Here, the ‘un’ is a lazy abbreviation of ‘one’, but it did make me smile as I realised that the prefix un- can indeed be classed as good as well as bad, depending on the word it qualifies! Instead of automatically shunning this prefix, I have come to see that there are indeed some ‘good uns’ I should seek to incorporate into my life! Certainly, an unhurried life with Jesus is one thing I long to have:

… and this poster also captures my mood as I face a week of great busyness!

When we first pick up a Bible, it can seem utterly confusing, rather like opening a jigsaw box and seeing pieces strewn everywhere!

We have to understand that the Bible is actually 66 books within one book, all dealing with different aspects of life as God reveals it. These books actually form different genres or categories:

These often form interlocking pieces, helping to understand different aspects of God’s revelation (through the Law, through history, through poetry, through letters and so on.)

Some parts of the Bible may be easier to understand than others, just as some jigsaws are easier than others (3D jigsaws are particularly difficult, for example.)

However, 2 Tim 3:16 reminds us that all Scripture is God-breathed and has a purpose in shaping our lives, teaching, rebuking, correcting and training us in righteousness. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that God’s word  is ‘alive and active and sharper than any double-edged sword’, a word that is better than bread itself, a word that feeds us and sustains us (Matt 4:4) and dwells in us richly (Col 3:16) and creates faith in us (Rom 10:17) so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope. (Rom 15:4) The jigsaw pieces we took home (which had these Bible verses on) remind us of the importance of God’s word in our daily lives and how God wants to shape our piece of the jigsaw into His overall plan to make us like His Son. (Rom 8:28-29)

Mark’s game at the family service looked at using biscuits to make pictures; teams had to re-create pictures using only broken pieces of biscuits! Can you guess what these pictures represent?

These were meant to be a dolphin, a dog, an aeroplane and a Maltese cross!

Tonight’s family service looked at ‘The Bigger Picture’, using the analogy of the jigsaw. Life is rather like a jigsaw and we need to be aware of our part in God’s bigger picture, looking at questions like:

• What’s the bigger picture of life?
• How do all the pieces of life fit together?
• How is God’s story, the ultimate ‘bigger picture,’ told through the Bible?
• How can I understand God’s plan for my life?
• How does my life, my ‘piece of the jigsaw’, fit into God’s story, that massive jigsaw?

Our lives themselves can seem like a jigsaw, with different roles to be fulfilled (daughter, wife, mother, work colleague, friend and so on) and different aspects to life (work, home, leisure, church and so on forming different pieces) to be integrated into the whole. In addition, the Bible itself – God’s guide book to life – can seem like a jigsaw, with different parts which reveal more of God’s plans for our lives.

When doing jigsaws, it’s usually easiest to start with the edges and corners:

When we first read the Bible, we often start with the gospels, since these teach us about Jesus and Jesus really is the heart of the ‘bigger picture’ of life. Paul tells the Colossian church ‘He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’ (Col 1:17)

When the corners and edges of a jigsaw are finished, the distinctive pieces of a jigsaw are usually tackled next: on the picture of the fish below, the fish colours are distinctive in comparison to the blue sea:

In the same way, some parts of the Bible seem easier to understand than others (stories about people, for example) and we can easily become bogged down in genealogies or Levitical laws. However, just as in a jigsaw, every single piece is needed, so we need the whole of the Bible to help us to understand the bigger picture of life: ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.’ (2 Tim 3:16) Rom 15:4 tells us ‘For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.’  We need to absorb the whole of the Bible so that we can know how to live as God wants us to, being convinced (like the Thessalonians) that God’s word is not simply ‘a human word, but… the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.’ (1 Thess 2:13) 

We had four birthdays to celebrate tonight (one was, admittedly, delayed from August!)

Knowing the fulness of God and living in the new covenant means that we are invited to partake in Holy Communion, the sacrament Jesus commanded all His disciples to take. So often, however, it is easy for us to do this without stopping to reflect on what it really means or pondering the significance of these ordinary looking emblems:

Stephen spoke from Matt 26:26-29 this morning, looking at how Jesus invested the Passover feast with new meaning as He took and distributed the bread: ‘This is my body, broken for you.’ All are invited to receive from Him by taking from what He offers us, accepting that there is so much more of God to experience than we have currently tasted. In the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, twelve baskets of bread were left over; there is an abundance in God we can barely comprehend! God always has more for us; His input into us never runs out.

There is nothing physically special about the bread or the wine, but the symbolic meaning behind these ordinary things shows us that God has made a new way for us all to be reconciled to Him. The blood of Christ, shed on the cross for all mankind, is sufficient to atone for all people’s sin, throughout all history. We can come before God now in a clean and holy way, since we are made holy through the sacrifice of Christ. He wants us to know Him all His fulness, and by taking the bread and wine, we can continue on our journey of getting to know God more and more in this fulness. Holy Communion is not simply a man-made ‘tradition’; it is not something we do to fill the space in a service. It is our act of obedience, the way we remember all Christ has done for us and should become, therefore, our means of partaking in the very life of God.