fidzbit

Jesus is a spiritual big brother for every Christian. Having suffered in  every way  like us He is able to sympathetically come alongside us with grace to help (Hebrews 2:17, 4:15-16). This photograph appeared on the 5th April Telegraph  article reporting that “Covid-19 has killed more than 90 priests as well as dozens of missionaries, monks and nuns” in Italy. In contrast to the regular stories of power abuses by members of the Catholic clergy, this conjures up a much more positive image of the priesthood - identifying with the sick and vulnerable in order to pray with them even at great risk to their own lives. It also reminds me of some verses in the book of Hebrews: “For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed  to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” (Heb. 5:1-2). ‭‭ However, the tragic re...

Two or three weeks into our ‘lockdown’ we are still adapting to the new restrictions. With many more weeks to go, it is beyond most of us to try and imagine what life will look like when we regain our liberty.   Just before dawn on the first Easter Sunday, Jesus’ disciples could not imagine anything changing. His body was still in lockdown: bound in grave clothes, sealed in a tomb, and guarded by Roman soldiers.  Some of the women who followed Him were on their way to the grave with the fragrant spices needed to finish the embalming process. Then something astounding happened. There was an earthquake and the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven to roll the stone away and open the tomb. The soldiers were terrified and collapsed as though they were dead. But this was not the most remarkable occurrence. Jesus was raised back to life. He was not just freed from the tomb and the soldiers. He was also freed from death. As the women arrived they were met by angels who...

There was a tragically sad photograph on a news report yesterday. It showed forty or more simple wooden coffins being buried in a mass grave, somewhere in New York State, which currently has an extremely high number of coronavirus cases. They contained the remains of people who were either too poor to afford a funeral or who had dropped out of regular society, losing their formal identities somewhere along the way. By the end of the first ‘Good Friday’, Jesus too was dead and buried. The soldiers made certain by piercing his side with a spear, rupturing His heart, though it had already stopped beating. Jesus was too poor to afford a grave. He had died alongside two men whose crimes were so socially and politically unacceptable, that their ‘identities’ were being permanently wiped out. His body was eventually taken and laid in a tomb owned by a generous donor. The tomb was sealed with a large stone and a team of Roman soldiers put in place to guard the body. His burial was an impriso...

We are familiar with the idea of a hero giving their life to win freedom for other people. Giving up your freedom to save lives - as we are being asked to do as we voluntarily stay inside during this coronavirus lockdown - is a much more counter-intuitive idea. One dimension of the Christian message which we reflect on at Easter is the way in which Jesus voluntarily gave up His freedoms in order to save lives. If there had been any other way, He would have chosen to avoid the pain and suffering of that first ‘Good Friday’. But there was no other way and He had wrestled the issue through before God in agonising prayer the night before: “ Not My will but Yours be done !” He was committed to being “ obedient unto death - even death on a cross”. Jesus was, if you like, voluntarily ‘imprisoned’ by the will of God. Within the restraints and constraints of the divine purpose Jesus found Himself literally imprisoned. He was betrayed by His disciple Judas, arrested by a team of soldiers,...

The bruised body of an Australian actor pretending to be a Scotsman is stretched out and tortured in front of a blood thirsty crowd. Rather than recanting his opposition to the English king in order to hasten the inevitable end, he resists and then, with all his remaining energy lets out a, by then anatomically impossible, scream: “Freeee-doooom!” We are familiar with the image of someone giving up their life in order to win freedom for other people. “Freedom” is the pet ideal of Western culture. Our heroes fight to win their freedom or they die trying. What we are being asked to do now is the exact opposite of that. Perhaps this is why so many people are ignoring Government advice and social distancing laws. We are now being asked to give up our freedom because it is believed that this will save other people’s lives. It goes completely against the grain of what we are used to. Giving up freedom seems completely mundane, especially when we compare ourselves to the real heroes, t...

Natural disasters, pandemics, and wars raise some big questions. Why does God allow suffering? Why do innocent people suffer? Are we, in some way, facing God’s judgment? If you take the Bible seriously, you cannot ignore this last question. To avoid talking about sin, hell, and judgment would be a serious misrepresentation of Jesus Christ. He had a lot to say on these issues. Christians talk about these things too but I fear that sometimes we do so in a different tone to that of Jesus. Yesterday’s post was about ‘Jesus the Weeping Prophet of Doom’ ( https://fidzbit.blogspot.com/2020/04/jesus-weeping-prophet-of-doom.html ).  This post is about ‘Jesus the Gentle Prophet of Doom’. But first we do have to go through a bit of fire and brimstone! In Matthew’s gospel most of chapter 11 is given over to one of Jesus’ ‘prophecies of doom’. The story goes something like this: Jesus’ colleague and cousin, John the Baptist, is in prison and going through a hard time. He turns ...

There is nothing quite like a global pandemic to bring out the conspiracy theorists and ‘prophets of doom’! I’m sure you have seen them too. No internet discussion forum is complete without the guy who is wearing a virtual ‘end is nigh’ sandwich board. They are not all promoting religious beliefs. Some people wear ‘climate-change’ sandwich boards. Then there are the 'police-are-communist-power-grabbers’ sandwich boards. But there are a fair few Christian ‘end-of-the-world’ voices out there too. Whilst I do not agree with the apocalyptic vision that many of these voices are proclaiming I recognize that the views are held sincerely. Maybe they are right, maybe not. Who knows? It is not my intention to argue with them but on this Tuesday of ‘Holy Week’ I do want to ask them a simple question: Are you weeping? Let me explain why I am asking this. If you follow the Bible narrative closely you will see that it was either the Monday or Tuesday after Palm...

Wouldn’t it be great if you could hear what God is saying at a time like this? There are lots of different opinions on this. Some Christians look at the crisis and conclude that God is saying “Time’s up. You’re all too bad and this is the end”. Some atheists are saying “God is silent as always. This is the proof He does not exist”. Whenever bad things happen in the world there are also people who conclude quite instinctively that God is an angry sadist who shouts: “You thought North Korea was bad - let me show you what I can do!” Remember that, for David, nothing was going right. He was in exile, isolated in the desert. His enemies were trying to kill him. He had to worry about where to sleep, what to eat, and how to find water. He was missing his family and friends, the comfort of home, and the normal routines he used to take for granted. But he did not conclude that God was out to destroy him. He did not conclude that God had abandoned him completely. It might have felt like ...

First, the dark side. Tom is an anaesthetic registrar currently working in ITU (you can read his interview here:  https://fidzbit.blogspot.com/2020/03/real-people-tom-anaesthetic-registrar.html ). Yesterday, after a gruelling 13 hour shift, he discovered that some kind soul had cut through his bike chain and stolen the bike which he uses to get to and from work every day - from right outside the hospital. Trying to give the benefit of the doubt, the best spin I can put on this is that they were rushing home to applaud NHS workers with their neighbours and, without the use of a stolen doctor’s bike, would not have got there in time. Now, the bright side. This story was shared online and, within a couple of hours, Team Ineos’ cyclist Luke Rowe stepped in and promised to give him a replacement bike. It should arrive in time to get to work on Monday. There is a good chance that the new bike will be much better than the old one. Hats off - or maybe, helmets off? - to him, that is a ...

The panic buying we have seen in the last few weeks demonstrates both our wisdom and our folly as human beings. If we know that tough times are coming it makes sense to be prepared. It is wise to fill the cupboards with food that will carry you through the shortages. But the fact we are ‘wise’ in this respect only serves to highlight our folly. The Bible warns us that a day of judgment is coming which will have eternal consequences. If it is wise to prepare for a few weeks of food shortages how much more important is it to prepare for death and eternity? Yet very few people who are fighting over toilet rolls would fight to get hold of a Bible. Very few of the people queuing to get into the supermarket are ever seen queuing to get into church. This is our folly: when it comes to eternal, spiritual realities, we seem unable to apply the simple day to day principles that govern the rest of our lives. Jesus told a story: Jesus told them this parable:  “The ground of a c...

What a horrible decision to have to make!  There are two sick people to every bed. Which one receives the treatment they need? Doctors are trying to prepare themselves anticipating that this situation could come up again and again. Just before non-essential businesses were asked to close, a man in his 60’s collapsed at my local gym. Although he revived a bit with some rest and a sugar drink, he also turned that disturbing grey colour that rings alarm bells: 'heart attack?!' Of course we called for an ambulance, the normal response in such a situation - but no ambulance was available! They were already under such demand that they could only respond to absolute  bona fide  emergencies. One day Jesus was walking through a town. A blind man called Bartimaeus started shouting, trying to get Jesus’ attention over the noise of the crowds. The people told him to be quiet - “He’s too busy for you!” - but Jesus is never too busy. He stopped and called him over. In...

A stream of bright colours which emerges triumphantly out of and over the darkest of clouds: the rainbow makes a brilliant and evocative emblem. 1960's hippies painted it on their VW campers. A recent political equality movement adopted the spectrum of colours to represent their understanding of diversity. Now many children are putting images of rainbows in their windows as a symbol of hope amid the crisis of a global pandemic. This 'new' use of the rainbow is actually very 'old'. In the ancient biblical story of Noah, God saw that the world was getting lost in an ever increasing whirlpool of sin and depravity. He decided to put a stop to this self-imposed cycle of human violence by sending a great flood which would destroy everything except a boat full of people and animals. There was plenty of warning but, tragically, in the end only Noah and his family boarded the rescue ship. To keep them safe, God locked them into this 'ark' for 40 days and 40 nigh...

Fidzbit : Tell us about yourself and what you do. John : My name is John, I'm married with 3 grown  up sons, 2 granddaughters and I've worked in the NHS for 36 years this year. F : What have you been doing during the last ten days to prepare for the coronavirus crisis? J : There has been much organisation by managers and senior staff etc.   Personally I have been carrying on in my role as a Health Care Support Worker in the Surgical Short Stay Unit. The majority of operations have now been cancelled or moved to another hospital.  I move back to the Intensive Care Unit soon so  I have attended training sessions about things that I will have to do there. F : What is the atmosphere like among your nursing colleagues as you anticipate such a critical situation? What is morale like? J :  It's a difficult question to answer because I have not yet been exposed directly to the current healthcare situation.  Atmosphere and morale seem to...

What a horrible scene! When a loved one is on their deathbed the family want to be close by, to hold hands, to say goodbye, to be there. In those final moments we know instinctively that how important presence is. But what if the loved one is in an isolation ward? Being present will put the family at risk of infection. Even if there were enough protective suits to go around such a suit is, in itself, an undesirable barrier. It is impossible to get as close as you would like to be. What a terrible situation! The fact that Jesus is ‘Immanuel’, God with us, is good news but it is still not enough. This is only one side of the bridge - it doesn’t reach the other side of the chasm. God has come to us but how do we get back to God? Our selfish actions need to be forgiven and our selfish hearts need to be washed clean. The Bible teaches that Jesus accomplished this for us by dying in complete isolation - isolation from family and friends and society and isolation from God.  He...

The outbreak of novel Corona virus has taken the world by surprise and turned life upside down. No one quite knows how best to respond. So far there is no way of stopping it - the best we can hope for is to limit the speed at which it spreads. As you read the New Testament you see numerous attempts to stop the gospel spreading. Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians from prison where the powers that be had put him in an attempt to contain the gospel outbreak which was rapidly turning into a grace pandemic throughout The Mediterranean region.  However, the truth of Jesus Christ proved too contagious. Paul wrote: “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.” As James Ross said in his sermon last Sunday, the gospel is “a wonderful promise that cannot be quarantined!” (you can listen to the s...