Category Archives: Good ideas

A New Hope

A Thought for Today

“This is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent is the church’s New Year.

As Christians we get a few week’s jump on the rest of our community. We can make our New Year’s resolutions now, have time to break them before Christmas and get a second chance to set some more on the first of January. Well maybe…

Last Saturday Festival Singers presented a Christmas concert at St Ninians’, in Karori. We called it From Shadow to Light. We went on a musical journey from Purcell’s 400 year old sombre funeral music for Queen Mary, through to contemporary English composer John Rutter’s Gloria. The Rutter piece is joyous and jolly hard to sing.

We arranged the programme for the concert that way to acknowledge that while Christmas is a happy celebration, it also brings sad memories of loved ones who have passed away and can no longer share it with us.

It’s good to take a little time in Advent to pause and reflect.

The world has troubles. We all have our own troubles and concerns.

Then God’s love breaks through.

The birth of baby Jesus is a symbol of God’s love for us.

We have much to celebrate and to be hopeful about. Amen.”

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From the sermon – A New Hope – 4 December 2012
in Let Your Light Shine Through by Philip C. Garside.

Click to order eBooks: https://payhip.com/b/FJSL

 

Stories – Regret – Work – Workplace

Highlights from our May Selection

Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe. By Richard Holloway.
Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of our place in the universe. Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are.

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The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. By Daniel H. Pink.
Understanding how regret actually works and using those insights to reframe our perspective of it will help us reclaim regret as an indispensable emotion that can help us make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to our lives.

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Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. By Sarah Jaffe.

Jaffe argues that, understanding the trap of the labour of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.

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The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future. By Julia Hobsbawm

Hobsbawm draws on her extensive networks in business, academia, and entrepreneurship across generations to offer new ideas about how to handle hybrid working. She also provides deep insight into how the way we work is being transformed by larger issues such as community, hierarchy, bias, identity, and security.

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Controlled by Love

A Thought for Today

“…The group learned to prepare and lead prayers and then other parts of worship services.

Some of us moved on to try preaching. It is both uncomfortable and exhilarating to preach five sermons in a year and have them critiqued by your peers, to qualify as a lay preacher. Thank you to the members of this congregation for putting up with my first attempts and encouraging me since.

Today, I’m very comfortable choosing music and prayers and putting the rest of a service together, but writing the sermon is always a challenge. I start with some initial personal responses to the Bible readings and have an overall structure in mind. But once I start writing I don’t know exactly what will come out. I’m not in total control. I must let go and let my words be directed the spirit, by intuition, by the mystery and love that flows from God…

Life isn’t like a model railway. I can’t control all of it. Sure, I need to take my duties and responsibilities to my family, business partners, customers and suppliers, church, choir and clubs seriously, but at some point, I must let go control. And that is a relief. I don’t have to do it all. I can let other people give a lead. I can leave room for the spirit to guide me in a new direction.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” “Those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never be thirsty.”

Let’s make room in our lives for the mystery of the love of God as shown through Jesus’ example and enabled through the Holy Spirit.

Let’s re-orient our lives to accept the love of God. We don’t need to be in charge all the time. We can be controlled by love.

Amen.

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From the sermon – Controlled by Love – 12 August 2012
in Let Your Light Shine Through by Philip C. Garside.

Click to order eBooks: https://payhip.com/b/FJSL

 

Love is the point

A Thought for Today

“Do we understand the mechanism by which Jesus healed people? I don’t. Medical science lets doctors remove a cataract and enable people to regain clear eyesight. That makes sense. All people in the gospel reading needed to do was touch Jesus’ cloak, once. How could that logically work? Did these miracles really happen? That’s not the point.

Love is the point. Being involved with others in need is the point…

There is another link to Festival Singers in the song that I’ll play for you before the offering. Rosemary Russell, the composer is the choir’s director. As well as a knack for words and melody, she has a strong faith that shines through all her compositions, and they are all uplifting. Her song is about the choices we make in living our lives and responding to need.

It’s how we live that matters.
It’s who we live for that matters.

God is love, God gives love,
God shows love, we are God’s love.

Amen.

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From the sermon – Love in Action – 22 July 2012
in Let Your Light Shine Through by Philip C. Garside.

Click to order eBooks: https://payhip.com/b/FJSL

 

On a Clear Night

A Thought for Today

“How can we make sense of the stories about the resurrection in the gospels? Did Jesus really appear to the two travellers on the road to Emmaus, to the disciples in a closed room or in the dawn next to the Sea of Galilee?

Our minds and senses today are full and cluttered with television, radio, multi-media, noise, music, business. All these sensations blot out the natural and maybe supernatural world.

On a clear night, in the city, we get a good view of the stars, planets, the Milky Way galaxy, but go out into the countryside where there is no artificial light and then look up at the sky. It is stunning. That view makes me feel small and insignificant.

People in first century must have been more aware of and in touch with nature and with the wonders of God’s creation.

I mentioned that I often feel that my Grandad and Mum are present with me. I can’t see them with my eyes or touch them with my hands, but they are here in my heart.

I imagine therefore that in a less cluttered, noisy age, Jesus’ friends and followers would have had an even stronger sense of his presence with them, after his sudden and shocking death. The resurrection appearance stories might reflect this understanding.“

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From the sermon – Keeping Jesus Alive in Our Hearts – 11 March 2012
in Let Your Light Shine Through by Philip C. Garside.

Click to order eBooks: https://payhip.com/b/FJSL

 

How should we spread the Good News?

A Thought for Today

“…Jonah just stood up in the middle of the street and shouted at people.

The way we tell God’s message needs to be adjusted for each situation.

At this point, I imagine Jonah was expecting to be arrested for disturbing the peace and chucked out of the city. At the very least he could expect to be jeered at and heckled. Or maybe worse, just be ignored. He would have been watching for trouble and scared.

Now the story turns. The Bible says, “And the people of Nineveh believed God.”

They stopped doing evil, repented and turned their lives around.

Jonah’s mission was a total success. He didn’t expect it.

How does Jonah react? If you go on to read Chapter 4 at home, you will see that Jonah sulks. It’s as if he wanted the people of Nineveh to be destroyed by God.

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We need to be sure of our motivation when we tell the Good News.

God used an ordinary, grumpy, ungrateful chap like Jonah to talk to the people of Nineveh.

What then is there to stop us sharing the Good News with the people we meet?…”

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From the sermon – How should we spread the Good News? – 22 January 2012
in Let Your Light Shine Through by Philip C. Garside.

Click to order eBooks: https://payhip.com/b/FJSL

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Breaking through to Love

Thought for the day

“…I’m pleased to be part of a church that welcomes all people to the communion table without demanding to know whether they have been baptised or confirmed. This reflects the radical inclusiveness that Jesus showed.

He would even ask for a drink from a Samaritan woman.
The Samaritans and Jews were neighbours and didn’t get along. Their enmity was deep seated and long standing.

Jesus didn’t ask anything difficult of her at first, just to provide him with a drink of water from the well. A simple act of sharing. Communion is a simple act of sharing, which we did when we poured a cup of water for each other.

The good news of the gospels is that God loves us and is always with us. The life and actions of Jesus are constant reminders of this transforming love.

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Did you try dropping a stone in the water?

Did picking up the stone remind you of something that you would like to change or let go of in your life?

The Samaritan woman was freed by Jesus to make a change in her life.

When we are ready to ask, God’s free, transforming love can also enable us to make changes in our lives. Amen.”

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From the sermon – Breaking through to Love – 27 March 2011, in Let Your Light Shine Through by Philip C. Garside.

Click to order eBooks: https://payhip.com/b/FJSL