Thought for the day – Saturday 25 April

Thought for the day - Saturday 25 April
Dear Reader
If we haven’t needed to exercise our limited patience in the past, we’ve certainly had to these past thirty-plus days as we continue with our restrictions. I get the feeling that patience for some is just about spent and what comes next is anyone’s guess. There are good days and bad days for sure and some of us are definitely more patient than others.
Although I’ve started to write about ‘patience’ I don’t want to continue with that theme, but rather think briefly about the various God-given gifts we have in our church and in our society. In one of my more contemplative moods, I set to thinking how I would fare if I had to start from scratch with no food, shelter or clothing. A bit like Robinson Crusoe.
We all wear clothes, live in houses, drive cars, eat food etc that we didn’t manufacture, build or grow. Loner or no loner, none of us are ‘Robinson Crusoe’s’, and none of us can be said to be truly independent. This is true in an international sense too. Very few countries are entirely self-sufficient and international trade is essential, we know that only too well if there is a shortage of one kind or another. Happily, though, there is currently an accelerated international effort with willing and enthusiastic cooperation to try and find a vaccine for Covid 19. I think it would make the world a better place if we could continue in the same vein.
Have we not also become acutely aware of the importance of the so-called, ‘lesser skilled ‘ workers? If I started to give examples I would probably miss someone out and I think you know well enough those people we have taken for granted and for so long. Every day of our lives we depend on someone else. Of that, there is no doubt whatsoever.
Although Paul was speaking in the context of the infant ‘church’, what he said is surely applicable in a very general sense today. He does speak of the ‘Spirit giving gifts to each for the common good’. We sometimes say of certain individuals that they are ‘talented and gifted’ and by unintended inference others not. Well! I think all of you are gifted.
Our value and importance to one another is realised sometimes in general and at other times in particular. On a Sunday at church, we are collectively a congregation and although much focus is on a few individuals yet in our differing relationships with each other we can express and appreciate more fully our own and others’ particular gifts. It’s not only the ‘seen’ that is important but quite often the ‘unseen’.
The importance, however, is not really the point. Is it not interdependence?
”No man is an island, no man is self-sufficient, everyone relies on the other……” John Donne.
Today I ask you to think/meditate on these things.
God bless you!

Jim

JBoag@churchofscotland.org.uk

1 CORINTHIANS 12: 4-11

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit,to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

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