Ukraine - lessons for life

 

All photos courtesy of Unsplash

In February 2022, Ukraine quickly came to dominate news reports worldwide. People who disagree about all kinds of things are united in sorrow at the heart-breaking turn of events and in sympathy for the men, women and children who are suffering so much. Many have worked hard and given generously to help alleviate their plight.

The sad comment of one Ukrainian MP was that “history is just repeating itself time and time again, and I don’t understand what is wrong with us humans and humanity, why we don’t learn from the lessons.” That is true, and in His Word, the Bible, God tells us that we should take heed to and learn from events in the world. We will consider three obvious but vitally essential lessons from the current situation in Ukraine, which will be for your eternal blessing if you pay heed to them and act upon them.

Could you forgive this?

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I have just been preparing a lesson on forgiveness for Year 5 pupils. It is easy to understand what it is, but probably one of the hardest things to actually do!

I was quite young when I first heard about Corrie Ten Boom, she was a lady from the Netherlands who lived with her family in Haarlem not far out of Amsterdam. I was fascinated by history and this story gripped me. For my fortieth birthday we went to the Netherlands and while there visited the jeweller’s shop where the events took place. The shop is a going concern and the house above is a museum telling a great story.

The Ten Boom family were Christians and when Hitler and his forces took control of the Netherlands, they were appalled by the persecution of the Jews. They had a rambling old house and bravely had a hiding place built where they could hide Jews when the Nazis came looking for them. They saved many Jews from being captured. Eventually in 1944 they were betrayed and caught and taken away. Corrie’s father Casper died ten days later in Scheveningen prison and Corrie, with her sister Betsie, was taken to the notorious Ravensbruck Concentration Camp where they were treated worse than cattle and went through beatings and indescribable hardship.

Wonderfully Made - Part 2 - Hair

Our second object of study in the series is, like our first, on the outside of our bodies, that is our hair, especially hair on our heads. 

First some basic facts: each hair grows out of what’s called a follicle for about three to five years, and on average, we lose 50 to 100 strands of hair a day from our heads. When a hair is shed, its follicle rests for about three months before starting to grow hair again. On average a hair grows out of its follicle at a rate of about half a millimetre per day, or about six inches (15 millimetres) per year. Given that on a full head of hair, we have about 100,000 individual hairs (although, interestingly blonds have more!), then that’s 50 metres (or yards) of total hair growth every single day, or in total over ten miles (six kilometres) of hair in a year! In fact, apart from bone marrow, hair is the fastest growing tissue in the body, with facial hair growing the fastest of all. Balding only begins to become visible once you’ve lost over half of the hairs from your head.

Possessions - How do you use them?

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Bible Reading - Mark 11:1-19  

Imagine that I just bought a new car. It is just the model I dreamed about, the pearlescent metallic paint is looking great, the alloys are really cool and the leather seats are ….well what can I say! I have only one problem. Someone has asked me to take a new family (with their children, mucky feet etc) on a very important journey. What should` I do?

 

The passage we are reading today can teach me a lot about how I use the things I own. I do not know how the man came to meet Jesus or if and when he had agreed to give the Him the use of his donkey and colt. All we know about this man is that his house was at a crossroads, the village was not far from Bethany (a village that often frequented), the animals were kept outside and the man knew who the Lord Jesus was.

 

The Lord Jesus knew just how the man would behave. He knew that the man would be quick to respond to the request and generous, v.3. He knew that he was responsible and would not let anyone walk away with his property, v.5. He knew that he would lend the animals to Him willingly, v.6. I wonder what the Lord Jesus would say about me.

 

What did the man achieve by giving his animals to Jesus?

 

1. He helped fulfil scripture as recorded in Matthew chapter 21 verse 4, on the day the Lord Jesus came into Jerusalem as Messiah.

2. He showed his obedience to the Master.

3. He used what he had for the Lord.

4. He hid in the shadows but allowed the Lord Jesus to walk in the limelight.

 

Searching Questions – Do I use what I have for the Lord Jesus? Do I bring the Lord Jesus out into the open or do I promote myself by how I live? 

PS - these lessons are aimed at people who are already believers in Jesus Christ.

What is greatest invention known to man?

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What do we all want to achieve in our lives?

That is a pretty searching question, but, if we are honest, we would all like to think that we have made some significant contribution to the world in the time we have spent here.

Even so, in actual fact, few of us make any real impact on society during our lives.  On the other hand, as we look at history there are some names that stand out in their contribution to the world. 

My education was in the sciences and names like Newton, Kelvin and Faraday were legendary in my experience, but so many of them brought contributions to science which, although they developed the working of science, were mostly theoretical. I am thinking of the Kelvin absolute temperature scale, Newton’s laws of motion and Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction.

Lessons from Lockdown?

All photos courtesy of Unsplash What Was Meant for Evil, God Uses for Good’ The story of Joseph is an amazing take on tragedy and triumph? This young Hebrew man flourished in the midst of tragedy? Twenty years after his brothers sold him into slavery the roles were reversed. Joseph had become Vice Regent of Egypt and his brothers are pleading with him for food and ultimately for their lives. Once they realised that he recognised them they approached them with dread. They were terrified that he would settle old scores and throw them into a pit of their own making. But Joseph didn’t. In his explanation, we find insight into understanding the way that God operates.