Thought for the Day

They've changed the system at BBC Radio Bristol. Too many dodgy phone lines has led them to ask us to pre-record our contributions, which have been trimmed to 200 words from 275/85. This left me forgetting to upload to the blog having delivered it, last Thursday. Here it is:

Jesus spoke about not sewing a new patch onto an old garment. Because, he said, when you wash it, the patch will shrink and the hole will be worse.

I'm going to take a punt that some BBC Radio Bristol listeners will remember when jeans were sold as shrink-to-fit. You had to wear them in the bath, until they fitted. Then try to take them off.

We can fool ourselves into thinking that the world has got worse but there are many ways it has improved, not least pre-shrunk clothing.

I am fascinated to learn that archives from the seventeenth century and the reign of James I tell us that people were chronicling the greatest snow ever and the highest water of all time.

Previous generations had storm and tempest too. And plague without vaccine.

This is not going to be a count-your-blessings thought. That is not sensitive to those who are genuinely struggling.

This is straight from Mark chapter 2, on which I am preaching on Sunday. Jesus said that you can't simply add the things he has said onto your own pre-suppositions and carry on. He's not a patch for a life lived wrong. He's a new way to approach your life entirely.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol's Breakfast with Emma Britton and keeping a miraculously straight face during the previous item about a man with an enormous cucumber:

I am happy to be identified as a Christian but often have to make sure that people understand - I am not a Bible-basher, creationist, trendy-vicar or Jesus-freak.

When my sons were young, from time to time a friend or relative would say about one of them 'Hasn't he grown?' It was awkward. Firstly, because the answer was 'of course'. Secondly, as it happened so slowly, we didn't notice it as much as those who visited us twice a year.

Today's stories all have this amazing 'Hasn't he grown' connection.

Any of us who were once used to putting all our clothes in the wash after a night at the pub because they smelled smoky will have noticed our cleaner public air.

Anyone who has had half an eye on technological change will be aware of how much progress we've made over the last twenty years of computer science.

We have such an eye to medical progress today that we can investigate muscle-loss by sending Bristol worms into space.

And we are far more aware of mental health issues than we ever used to be. Plus, we can fix a lot of them.

Things get better.

But there's loads to do. Smoking still kills people. Minorities are under-represented in the tech industries. Mental illness isn't going away any time soon. And Bristol worms-in-space or not, medical research takes time.

Progress is great. It's absence frustrating. The journey essential. So in my theology I am happiest being a seeker-after-truth and sharing occasional clues as to how my understanding has grown. As the late Terry Pratchett once said 'The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.'