Words from Bede Circuit

Dear Friends,

I’m writing this from self-isolation, having brought back American Covid at the weekend! Thankfully, unlike everything else in the USA, it isn’t bigger than ours, I’ve only got mild symptoms and expect to be back to normality (whatever that is for me!!) soon. We had a great time with our daughter and grandchildren and experienced the full range of weather, from ice storms and snow to pleasant sunny days. Fortunately our flight home left a few hours before the worst snow storm for several years hit the eastern seaboard!

Our daughter lives in what seems a very prosperous, suburban part of America, North Carolina, where new homes are being built at a rapid rate, with huge shopping malls, well-kept parks (almost all with clean public toilets!) and smart church buildings on every other street. However, a closer inspection would reveal the run-down shacks hidden in the trees and the homeless men begging at the traffic intersections, without venturing into the inner cities where problems of poverty and dereliction would be much worse. It’s very easy to take things, wherever we go and here at home too, at face value and not to bother ourselves with what lies below the surface. But we serve a God who is more interested in what lies beneath, in our world and in our hearts, than in superficiality and I believe he calls us to be the same – concerned about what’s really going on in our world, in peoples’ lives, and to do what we can to make things as good and just as we can. Maybe there’s someone you know who may seem fine on the outside but is facing fears, anxieties, money worries, even depression and needs a friend to lean on – can you be that friend to them?

A further thought about those smart American churches and a country which on the surface appears far more Christian than ours. We didn’t manage to attend a church service because on both the Sundays we were there most churches had cancelled their services – the first Sunday because an ice storm was forecast (where rain falls and instantly freezes) and the second for a forecast of snow. They seemed very ready to cancel worship services well before the bad weather had actually arrived – maybe for several reasons, including a paranoia about being sued by someone who falls but especially because absolutely no one travels to church on foot, everyone drives (everywhere, including from one store on the mall to another – it’s enough to make you despair for the future of the planet). But reflecting on those services we’ve attended in the past I wonder also whether there may be an element of superficiality in their commitment to God for some, by no means all, church-goers and the ‘Christian’ nature of America isn’t all it seems to be on the surface.

Despite my scepticism about America, my first experience after returning of a British public toilet (on York station) made me wish that there were some things we could do as well as them! And no doubt the first time I take my British grandchildren to a playground I’ll be thinking the same, even though they are mostly a lot better here than they were when my children were small.

Let’s all seek to look below the surface and not be satisfied with the superficial, knowing that we serve a God who knows and sees everything and desires his people to be those who make a real and lasting difference in his world.

With my love and prayers

Rev Paul Worsnop
on behalf of the Bede Circuit Staff