THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Everything is farther away now than it used to be.

It is twice as far to the corner - and they've added a hill, I've noticed. I have given up running for the bus - it leaves faster than it used to. It seems to me they are making steps steeper than in the old days, and have you noticed the smaller print they use in the newspaper and the telephone books?

There is no sense in asking people to read aloud - everyone speaks in such a low voice that I can hardly hear them. The material in dresses is getting so skimpy - especially around the waist and hips.

Even people are changing .... they are much younger than they used to be when I was their age. On the other hand, people my own age are so much older than I am. I ran into an old friend the other day and she had aged so much that she didn't recognise me.

I got to thinking about the poor thing while I was combing my hair this morning and in doing so I glanced at my reflection - and would you believe they don't make mirrors like they used to?

THE IMPOSTER

In an Oxfordshire village an old saint lay dying. For over 80 years she had been on pilgrimage to Zion and her face had grown bright with heaven’s
approaching glory. A priest, under the misapprehension that none of his parishioners could find access to the city unless he unlocked the gate, called to visit her.

“Madam,” he said “I have come to grant you absolution.”

And she in her simplicity, not knowing what the word meant, enquired, 
“What is that?”

“I have come to forgive your sins,” came the reply.

“May I look at your hands,” she answered.

Gazing at the hands of the priest she said, “Sir, you are an impostor!”

“Impostor?” the scandalized cleric protested.

“Yes, sir, an impostor. 
The man who forgives my sins has nail prints in his hands!”

TAKE TIME FOR TEN THINGS

1. Take time to WORSHIP - it is the highway to reverence
   and washes the dust of earth from our eyes.

2. Take time to LOVE - it is the sacrament of Life.
3. Take time to DREAM - it hitches the soul to the stars.
4. Take time to HELP & ENJOY FRIENDS - it is the source of happiness.
5. Take time to READ - it is the foundation of knowledge.
6. Take time to WORK - it is the price of success.
7. Take time to THINK - it is the source of power.
8. Take time to PLAY - it is the secret of youth.
9. Take time to LAUGH - it is the singing that helps with life's load.
10. Take time to PLAN -It is the secret of being able to
    TAKE TIME for the first nine things.

Listening to the sermon at our recent Harvest meeting 
on the Parable of the Sower, 
one was moved to feel 
how wonderful 
were the parables 
given us by Our Lord. 
How they have been quoted, 
and preached on through all those years, 
and yet still have a freshness, 
and are as applicable to us today, 
as they have been to all generations, 
and as they will be to all generations yet to come. 
Quite incredible!

Y2000 - Shouldn't it be Christmas?

At the end of this month we shall be celebrating the New Year 2000. 
But should we not really be celebrating at Christmas, which will be the 
2000th anniversary of Our Lord’s birth, when the Angels brought the 
Glad Tidings of the Gospel to the Shepherds on the hills of Bethlehem. 
The Gospel that has been preached to all generations down through 
those 2000 years. 

(After all 2000 AD means exactly that - 2000 years since Our Lords Birth.).

With that thought in mind, you will, no doubt, have visited ancient village 
churches when on holiday, or even our own chapel on a week day when 
no one else is there, and been awe-struck by the feeling of reverence and 
the hallowedness of the atmosphere. This is not surprising when you realise 
that generations of saints communing with their Maker, and the incense of 
myriad prayers rising have hallowed the very walls of the building. Even the 
pews, on which our forefathers have sat and worshipped, have a patina all 
of their very own.

But it is no more so than
to cause a smile to come to child's lips,

to change an attitude,

to impart an ideal,

to change the quality of the day for someone
through a pleasant greeting,

to bring a spark of courage to a heart belaboured
with despair or defeat,

or to bring about a moment of happiness.

.

THE BREAD OF LIFE by F.H.A. (Master Baker)

It is appropriate that at Harvest-time we should consider our Daily Bread; still the Staff of Life, despite the multiplicity of today's fast foods, so readily available in our super markets. The making of bread is a very complex matter and involves complicated techniques and much applied chemistry to understand the chemical changes, the effects of temperature changes, which all have a bearing on its production, but these things have only been known and understood for the past 100 years or so and some only in recent years.

It has always been a great source of wonder to me that by God's divine providence he allowed man to discover how to make bread from the earliest stone age times purely by rule of thumb methods discovered almost by accident. As you will be aware, bread is mentioned in the very early chapters of Genesis, and the Baker was a specialist by the time of Joseph. So bread has been produced from the earliest days until this century in more or less the same way and in very similar form, and in ignorance. Let us imagine how this happened....

Roaming the grassy plains, the wild wheat man found berry fatter and more pleasant to eat than other grass seeds, so eventually he started to till the ground and cultivate wheat as a crop. One presumes that the women tried and succeeded in finding more attractive ways of presenting the resultant grain at mealtimes. Perhaps elder members of the family had lost their teeth, so Mother, ever thoughtful, tried grinding the grain between two rough stones or in a primitive pestle and mortar. She probably next made the meal she had ground into a soft gruel by adding some water, then, when water was short one day, she made a stiffer mixture, that rubbery gelatinous substance that we call dough. Came a very cold night, so she cooked some over an open fire. Then, in due course, constructed a very simple earthen oven, and bread was born!

Unbeknown to her, or to anyone else until comparatively recent years, when the Lord created the earth He also created the single-cell micro-organism which we call Yeast. This organism is minute, invisible to the naked eye, wild, and blowing freely about in the air we breathe. It has wonderful properties, feeding on starch and sugar through its cell wall (process called 'Osmosis') by enzyme action it changes this food into Alcohol and Carbon Dioxide gas, which it breathes out.

When the wild yeast cell finds the right conditions of food and temperature, it breeds very rapidly and multiplies by cell division. This whole process we now call Fermentation, though the Bible calls it Leaven. Here we might note that the two elements of Holy Communion, the bread and the wine, both utilise the same leavening process of the yeast cell.

Back to our Stone Age man or woman: suppose something urgent cropped up just as she had made her dough and she was called away, leaving the lump of dough lying by the fire or somewhere warm. Wild yeast would settle on the dough, feed on the starch and natural sugars in the dough, multiply rapidly and the carbon dioxide gas breathed out by the yeast would be trapped in the rubbery gluten of the dough forming little balloons, which expand, causing the whole lump of dough to grow in size. On baking, the resulting bread would be much bigger, much lighter to eat and more palatable. This is Leavened bread, it therefore follows that the Unleavened bread so often mentioned in the Bible is made by baking the dough immediately after mixing and before any wild yeast could settle on the dough.

The only other essential ingredient as far as taste is concerned is Salt. Just when man added this to bread is not known, suffice it to say it must have been well before the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, as we know that they were involved in the salt trade.

Our wonderful God not only provides us with our food to eat, but in His bounty provides the ways and means to make it attractive and pleasant and enjoyable to eat. It is at Harvest-time that we especially remember this and offer Him our Thanksgiving, whilst also remembering what Our Lord said in John chapter 6...

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.

Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.