EXPLORING OUR SPIRITUAL SIDE NO BOOM AND BUST, JUST BUST
Do you remember the heady days of the early to mid 2000s? 'Mr Deputy Speaker, we
will not return to boom and bust’, said Gordon Brown in his 2001 Budget statement.
'As I have said before Mr Deputy Speaker: No return to boom and bust,’ he repeated
in the 2006 Budget. 'And we will never return to the old boom and bust’, was the
version in the 2007 budget. By 2008 we had certainly returned to 'bust’, whether
we will ever return to 'boom' is another question: Gordon Brown may well prove to
be right,but not in the way he led us to believe!
A false sense of security
Very few people saw the bust coming. Of the political elite,Vince Cable is generally
credited with having got closest,but, by and large,both they and we were carried
along on the wave of increasing living standards, oblivious to the problems building
up underneath.We were only too pleased to believe Gordon Brown. After all,he was
only saying what we all wanted to hear.
Mañana
The field of economics and finance is not the only area of life where apparent well-being
can seduce us into a false sense of security. Most aspects of life are susceptible
to the same kind of thing, not least the spiritual realm. 'Mañana,' Spanish for 'tomorrow'
or 'not today,maybe later’, sums up many people's attitude to spirituality. We all
know that we have a spiritual side to us, but getting round to doing something about
it? Well that’s another matter!
Holy expectancy
One of the purposes of the church's season of Advent is to act as a corrective to
this. During Advent we look forward with expectancy not only to Christmas, but also
to the time when the risen and ascended Jesus will return in power and we will all
be required to give an account of ourselves and the way we have used our time. Living
with an attitude of ‘holy expectancy' is a thoroughly Biblical way of living and
guards against complacency.
The Advent and Christmas season gives many and varied opportunities for exploring
that spiritual side:please see our 'Christmas Card' for full details. Busy as this
time of year may be, let’s consciously make space for Jesus and his Holy Spirit to
come, expecting to experience 'God with Us' as the shepherds and magi did all those
centuries ago. As we do this the final verse of the famous old carol, 'O Little Town
of Bethlehem' seems to me to be an appropriate prayer:
The Rev'd Keith Nicholls
Rev Keith
O holy Child of Bethlehem Descend to us,we pray Cast out our sin and enter in Be born
to us today We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell O come to us,
abide with us Our Lord Emmanuel
May I take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas and peaceful New
Year.
