April 2013 - The Boys' Brigade

OPEN
TO
GOD?
No one can compare to you, our Lord,
No one at all…
We go to bed and you are with us
We wake up and you’re still there…
From the rising of the sun
To its setting
And to its rising again
You are so faithful.
Help us to rejoice in you
this and every day:
Help us to celebrate that you are our God
And we are your people…
And may we never take for granted
the privilege that is ours
in being called to follow your Son –
the one who bought us this life
and the next… Amen
“Do we see the Christian faith as something
that stops us from doing so much... or do
we see it as a door-opener?”
How much do we recognise that it is, very much,
a privilege to follow Jesus?
And how much are we tempted to think of our
faith as a bind? As something that inhibits us?
Do we see the Christian faith as something that stops us
from doing so much... or do we see it as a door-opener?
Widening our vision to see so much more?
Our response to these questions will pretty much depend
on our experience of the people we have encountered
throughout our engagement with the BB.
If others have been excited about the faith and all it leads to,
then we will be too and we will know for sure that it really is the
most enormous privilege to be counted among God’s people.
If on the other hand, our experience has been of folks who
are more grudging in the way they live their belief in God,
then we may well fi nd that it is more diffi cult to think of faithful
living as something that’s good – never mind a privilege.
Which means that you and I really do need to think about
the message we might be portraying as leaders, chaplains,
boys and girls in the Brigade – in the words we speak as
well as in the things we do.
Other people notice.
They care.
And... we are the ones who will turn them on or off the
Christian faith...
How sobering a thought is that?
But how liberating too.
Because all that is asked of us is honesty.
We need to share what’s tough and even what we feel
might be beyond belief, whilst saying why we choose still
to hang in there. We need to be ourselves. And in the
honesty of saying what it is we fi nd tough and what it is we
fi nd easy, the hope is that others may fi nd the courage to
explore where faith might take them.
Come, Lord Jesus,
you who knew and knows
what makes us tick...
who chooses to come
to us even now
to show us the way to life.
Come and make us whole
that all we do
and say
all we think
may point to you
the one who takes away
all our doubts and our fears
our amazing Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen
The Rev’d Susan Brown
Ist Dornoch
Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland
Minister of Dornoch Cathedral
Church of Scotland
Apr 2013 The Boys’ Brigade Gazette 51