John Pritchard

All posts tagged John Pritchard

Easter Monday…Continuing journey

Posted by David Ward on 28/03/2016
Posted in: Bible, Lent, Personal thoughts, Pilgrimage, Spirituality. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

[8] But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Acts 1:8 (NIV)

Sometimes we make decisions with far-reaching consequences…

This year, instead of giving something up for Lent, I decided to take something on…the challenge to reflect on the journey to Jerusalem taken by Jesus and his closest friends leading up to events that some of us would say changed the world. It has been tougher than I expected, to daily set aside time not just to read but to try to think deeply and allow the words of scripture to become part of me. I may have missed the odd day of writing, and not every day has been a gem (maybe not many days), but I had made a decision and I have kept to it. I have been grateful for the guidance of John Pritchard, through his book of Lent meditations based on Luke’s account of Jesus’ life.

Bigger still on the cosmic scale of decisions with far-reaching consequences was the decision I took 50+ years ago to become a follower of Jesus. That journey has taken me to places I would not have expected but, despite sometimes long periods of doubt and disaster, today I am still choosing to be a follower of Jesus. Bible college didn’t manage to put me off (as it has for some of my friends), being a part of a church that sorely needs the grace of Jesus has wounded me and made me wary, but failed to diminish either my love for Jesus or my desire to join in Community with others who love him too. My love of evolutionary biology (particularly the evolution of the mind) only increased my sense of something ‘bigger’, and my desire to see the Bible as more than a forensic instruction book to be taken literally at every turn may have lost me friends but has enabled me to draw closer to a God who isn’t full of wrath and violence, as so many have been led to understand, but truly loves us…like the Book says.

I know I’ve influenced some lives for good too, in my small way, and hopefully been a reliable signpost to Jesus in my ‘down’ moments as well as my ‘up’ ones. I still don’t resemble Jesus as much as I’d like to…

In the meantime, I’m reminded of the story of the reporter who asked the elderly long-term resident in the village, “Have you lived here all your life?”

“Not yet!” was the reply.

Who knows where the road will yet take me? My journey has not finished yet. Following Jesus has influenced so much of my journey thus far, and it’s often been times when I’ve metaphorically taken my eyes off him that I’ve slipped up. Like the friendly stranger on the road to Emmaus, he has always walked with me, explaining where I’ve gone wrong and often illuminating my foolishness…but in such a lovely way.

And sometimes my heart has burned within me too (and not just with indigestion)…

Road to Emmaus

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

Day twenty of forty…Spiritual accountancy

Posted by David Ward on 29/02/2016
Posted in: Bible, Lent, Personal thoughts. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

foundToday’s reading is Luke 15: 1-32, familiar stories about things that were lost and found.

The readings I’m using for these posts are based, you may remember, on the book of Lent readings by John Pritchard called “The Journey”, my own reading for Lent.

I’m grateful to John Pritchard for the title of today’s post and for the two quotes that follow.

 

“Deep down I know what Jesus meant. He meant that all our little calculations, our trivial attempts at spiritual accountancy, our doing good and trying to deserve God’s love, all of this was redundant in the light of the reckless, outrageous love God has for every single human being. All of us wear the smudge and stain of messy lives, and our little spiritual games simply break in pieces in the face of God’s liberating passion for forgiving us and letting us flourish.”

The Journey, p 51

And another:

“I suppose grace is always offensive: we find such generosity hard to believe; we find it hard to accept that God doesn’t put people into boxes like we do – older son or younger son, saint or sinner, publican or Pharisee, Jew or Gentile. God’s love is all-inclusive, not either/or.”

The Journey, p 51

 

Forty days minus one

Posted by David Ward on 09/02/2016
Posted in: Books/Articles, Lent, Personal thoughts, Spirituality. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Shrove Tuesday 2016

LentSo, tomorrow is the first day of yet another Lent. I find that the seasons of Lent and Advent provide a wonderful and necessary focus for my monkey-mind. During Advent my focus is on waiting and watching, antidotes to both the fast-food culture of today, that has so often spilled over into our spiritual lives, and to our sense of inertia as we grapple with the tension of being people of faith moving to the rhythms of grace rather than the pressures of our culture.

Then there is Lent, with it’s traditional emphasis on prayer, giving things up and giving to those in need. As I’ve got older I try to do these things throughout the year, but I find it really helpful to have a season when I really try to focus. More than anything, I try to use the time leading up to Easter as a time for a kind of spiritual check-up…am I more like Jesus than I was this time last year? What new things am I struggling with? What sins and habits are diverting me from being like Jesus? What do I need to change to get back on course? Who do I need to forgive? Who needs my help?The Journey cover

This year I’ve chosen John Pritchard’s book, “The Journey” to be a guide and companion during this time. The book provides a creative journey with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross, as told through the eyes of John, probably the youngest follower of Jesus.

Today I read the introductory chapter, in which he sets out what he is hoping to achieve through the book. These words in particular caught my eye:

 

“He had a way of speaking that turned everything upside down in a way that made it seem the right way up. He cut to the heart of faith, bursting through tired ideas and pointless rituals. Sometimes he fretted over the slowness of people’s response, but still he kept to his patient programme of travel, teaching, healing and prayer.

Until the time came for him to turn towards Jerusalem and to say to his friends, ‘Let’s go.’

“The Journey”, John Pritchard

Sometimes it’s not just individual believers that get off track…it’s the whole church. We all have a lot of praying, giving up and giving away to do if we’re to make up for our terrible mistakes of the past so that we can re-capture our reputation as a group of people who look a bit like Jesus and behave a bit like Jesus in the way we treat each other and those who don’t know Jesus yet.

On Sunday someone in our church shared a passionate word of prophecy which included the scripture “For the time has come for judgement, and it must begin first among God’s own children. 1 Peter 4:17 (NLT) Our minister later suggested that among other things the time had come to stop focussing on the wrong stuff (which is often stuff that divides us and gets us off track) and to put Jesus back at the centre.

Britain in 2016 could use people like that.