We had a wonderful ‘Churches Together’ event at GPCC yesterday. ‘The Narnia Experience’ looked at C. S. Lewis’s ‘Chronicles of Narnia’, especially ‘The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe.’ All year, we have been looking at stories and parables, so it seemed fitting for our last ‘Churches Together’ event of 2023 to look at another popular story and see how this points us to the Christian message of Christ’s love and redemptive sacrifice for us as well as to His resurrection and ultimate victory over evil.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time preparing for this event over months: making a wardrobe, snowflakes, banners and table decorations to turn our building into the magical world of Narnia.

On the day, funding from Dearne Ward Alliances allowed us to do a variety of crafts and to have snow in Goldthorpe!

Crafts included making snow globes, snowflakes, crowns and painting shields and swords (kindly made for us by Stan Bryan) and decorating lion and crown biscuits (made for us by Lisa and Julie, with Zara and Kathy helping the children to create beautiful edible treats!) as well as making sweet wrappers for Turkish Delight.

Our rooms were transformed into a winter wonderland and glory room shimmering with lights and we were privileged to have Julia and Rob from Manvers Photography Club offering families a professional photoshoot at really reasonable prices. (Everything else we did was free for families!)

The Salvation Army, volunteers Bev and Beckie and other food providers such as Lianne Pritchard Birdsall and Greggs, Rotherham Onyx Park gave us a feast fit for kings and queens indeed.

It was lovely to see so many families enjoying the day. We had 168 people attend throughout the event.

The Dearne Churches Together selfie board also got plenty of use!

A seminal moment is a highly influential moment, something which, in its originality and importance, has a deep influence on us. It comes from the Latin word for ‘seed’, and reminds us that from little acorns come great oak trees. Rome wasn’t built in a day, the proverb goes. It takes time to grow the important things in life.

Our family fun days seem ephemeral, to say the least: ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ (I’m full of proverbs today!) But we see each fun day as seminal, in the sense of planting seeds that will, we believe, grow into something sturdy, lasting and beautiful.

The Narnia Epxerience, happening this Saturday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church, is another such seed. We are praying that the beauty of the building’s transformation, the simplicity of a story, the wonder of music and film and art, will, for a short time, transport us to another world and remind us of lasting values such as love, valour, faith, sacrifice, the dangers of envy, covetousness and betrayal.

Can these values really change our ordinary, everyday lives? Can such events really be anything more than another few hours of entertainment in the plethora of Christmas activities happening in the Dearne area?

One of the quotes from “The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe” which has stuck with me is “We have nothing if not belief.” Faith – or belief or trust – is at the heart of Christianity. Hebrews 11 talks about faith being essential to please God, ‘the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living’, as the Message version puts it. We pray that The Narnia Experience will be a seed that helps faith to grow in the families from our local community and that that faith will be the fuel to a life grounded in God.

3D pictures can look really effective, fooling us into believing there is a hole in the pavement when there is not, but they remind us that reality is often more complex than we like to believe. Christianity is often presented as the solution to suffering, and there is truth in this, but to say there will never be any suffering in life once Christ is accepted is not the full story. God does help us; Psalm 18 reminds us that God rescues us and draws us out of situations which overwhelm us; He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. (Ps 46:1) Psalm 34:47 and Psalm 37:39-40 all remind us of God’s deliverance and help, but there are times when suffering comes on us. Jesus reminded us that the world hated Him and will hate us; our very difference to the world means there is an inevitable reaction (see John 15:18-19).

Heb 2:10 reminds us that Jesus was made perfect through what he suffered. He experienced insults, opposition, rejection, betrayal and a tortuous death, but this reminds us that suffering helps us to be complete. (Heb 2:17-18) We grow and develop as we go through problems and suffering. Paul – who was used mightily by God to bring healing and deliverance to others – suffered (see 2 Cor 12:7-10).We do not know the form of his suffering (the ‘thorn in the flesh’) , but he was told by God that his weakness actually reflected God’s glory and the comfort he received from God, he was able to pass on to others. (2 Cor 1:3-5). Suffering equips us to help others.

Suffering produces perseverance in us, teaching us to push through. Suffering is designed to refine us and make us better (not bitter.) We are sustianed through hope (Rom 8:16-17).In any situation, God is able to deliver us from it, heal us from it or take us through it. Any suffering we experience is used by God for the best for us. We can trust God to help us, no matter what.

Envy is listed as one of the seven deadly sins and was certainly a major problem for Saul, as 1 Samuel 18 makes plain. Envy divides people. It destroys relationships, sows discord, and creates a spirit of bitterness and evil. It causes people to act and speak in toxic ways. James tells us, ‘For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.’ (James 3:16)

Envy often arises when we feel insecure and inferior, when we compare ourselves unfavourably to other people. The antidote to this is to recognise who we are in God and to learn godliness with contentment. Paul tells the Romans, ‘Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.’ (Rom 12:3) When we are sure that God loves us and accepts us no matter what, we can live freely, appreciating the differences and qualities of others without being threatened by them. Saul felt threatened by David’s military successes and was afraid of him. We see later on that David had great respect for Saul and did not return his animosity, sparing his life on more than one occasion. He lived without envy or jealousy, but Saul shows us how these emotions, if unchecked and never dealt with, will mushroom into far worse problems. Saul tried to kill David on numerous occasions and plotted so that others might kill him too. His life reflected the fruits of his ongoing disobedience to God, unchecked attitudes and wilful refusal to repent. Envy will always lead us into danger.

1 Samuel 18 shows us the importance of relationships and how these affect us in our everyday lives. We see two very different relationships in this chapter: the loyalty and selflessness of true friendship in how Jonathan (son of the king, Saul) deals with David, and the envy and jealousy of his father towards David which corrodes his relationship with his servant and leads him to attempt to kill him.

Friendship is a precious gift of God, and the friendship between Jonathan and David was very special. (1 Sam 18:1-5) Jonathan, far from being jealous of God’s anointing on David’s life and His decision to make David king after Saul, pledges his allegiance to David and gives him his robe, tunic, sword, bow and belt. His loyalty was to be tested over the next few years, but he remained faithful and true, giving us an example of how to love one’s neighbour as oneself (see Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 19:19; 22:39, Mark 12:31; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8).

Saul, on the other hand, shows us how envy and jealousy can grow from the least little comment, and how this can spill over into violent and irrational behaviour. The root cause of Saul’s growing antipathy to David lay in his fear and insecurity that God had left him and was now blessing David instead. He recognised God’s anointing on David and feared for his reign. Instead of coming to God in repentance for his sins, he projected all the blame onto David and tried to manipulate situations to get him killed. God’s hand on David meant that did not succeed, and so Saul’s fear and animosity grew.

The relationships outlined in this chapter were to take up years of David’s life and we see how important it is to choose God’s ways over our own. Relationships are at the heart of human life; they influence our attitudes and actions more than we perhaps realise. There is always the need for personal responsibility in our relationships; we need to choose God’s ways if we are to rest in His blessing and anointing.