milford reformed presbyterian church

The story of Daniel James has been in the news this last week. The 23-year old rugby player was injured when a scrum collapsed on him during training. He dislocated his spine and was paralysed from the waist down. Unhappy with his “second-class existence”, as his mother termed it, he travelled to Switzerland in September to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland where he ended his life.

The whole issue of assisted suicide is one fraught with emotions. Only the hardest of hearts could watch someone suffer and not wish to see an end to their suffering. So, although suicide is never the answer, I wish to tread carefully amongst the hurt.

The problem in this case is not simply one of suffering but of perspective. Hear Daniel’s mother again: “He was not prepared to live what he felt was a second-class existence”. The first half of that sentence is the key, not the second half—“He was not prepared”.

All he had hoped for had been snatched away from him. The dreams he had of playing the sport he felt he had been made for were shattered. What was there to live for? He wasn’t prepared to live for less than what he had dreamt.

This is a bigger issue than simply Daniel James. It’s bigger than the issue of assisted suicide. It’s for all of us, and how we cope with life.

The problem is not living, it’s the goal we have for living. If we take our lives and build them around something—an activity, a person, a relationship, or a dream—when that dream does not materialise we have to face the question: What will we do now that our hopes have gone?

Are we prepared to keep going? Or will we give up?

Our world has interwoven our identity almost inextricably in with what we do. And if we do not succeed at doing it, then we are nobodies. The young man who weaves his identity around his girlfriend; the business man who gets his identity from his success; the woman who gets her sense of worth from her children; the young girl who gets her acceptance from her peer group or her looks.

What drives you? Where do you get your identity from? What do you do when that thing from which you get your identity fails you? Where do you turn?

None of these things are built to carry that sort of expectation. If we build our hopes on something or someone we run the risk of not being prepared for failure. We may never reach the stage of contemplating suicide, or perhaps we may, but we need to build our lives around something that can carry our expectations whatever comes.

I know of only one such option. Every hope, dream or aspiration will condemn us if we fail it, and everything we look to will hurt us if it fails us. There is only one secure place to build your life around—one who will not fail you, but will give strength to cope when life falls apart. And when you fail him he offers to die for you. Almighty God is the one who can carry the weight of that expectation.

There is more to life than the here and now. It is those who have their perspective located outside of the here and now who will be best able to cope with the disappointments of the now.

Perhaps you are struggling with pain, physical or emotional, or with the disappointment of shattered dreams, which make life unbearable, let me encourage you to put your trust in Jesus, to build your life around him. In him you will find strength, meaning, purpose and significance that enables you to cope amidst the hurt. Please contact us if you would like to talk.

I was down at my parent’s house last week and had a nosey through the Newsletter newspaper. Nestling at the bottom of the letters page was a brief letter signed by my two brothers and some of their friends. It read simply, “We wholeheartedly support the statement from 50+ evangelical Christians in the local game who are opposed to football on the Lord’s Day.” They added their names along with three others who play for the same club.

It was in response to the IFA’s decision to play football games on Sundays. Although commonplace in the UK and here in Ireland, this had been a no-no in the north. Why was that?

It’s because for years they’ve taken seriously God’s word which commands that one day of the week be given over to him. It’s one of the Ten Commandments.

“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God.” (Exodus 20:8-10)

As with all of God’s commands it comes out of kindness and love, not an effort to make life miserable for us. He knows that we need to take a break. He knows that we need to be protected from those who would have us work all the hours available—often ourselves! He wants us to take a break from work, study, and even play.

But God is not simply concerned that we take a break and rest. When he calls us to set aside one day in seven as holy—it means devoted to him, not devoted to us, or our sport. Not a day of rest centred on us, but a day of rest centred on God.

He knows that we need to take our nose off the grindstone and look up, and that we need to do it on a regular basis for we are far too inclined to forget that we are made for eternity. And so he tells us to take a day in the week to focus on the upward dimension of our lives. And we need this, not just for ourselves, but for our children – they need to see that work and play aren’t the only things in life, but that there is a God worth giving a whole day to.

Yet we tend to think we have done a noble thing if we give him an hour on a Sunday, before doing what we want with the rest of the day. And in some cases we can do Sunday’s hour on Saturday evening so that we can have the whole day for ourselves. I’m not convinced that this is what God had in mind when he said to keep the Sabbath day—not hour—holy.

Of course, to enjoy setting aside a day for God, you need to have reason to be delighted with God. That can only be found when you have personally experienced the forgiveness Jesus offers.

And if the very thought of giving a whole day to God exasperates you at the sheer waste of a day, that perhaps indicates the need to take your nose off the grindstone and take time to reconsider what your priorities are and should be.

So this is not a call to some antiquated practice that has no place in the modern world, but something that is even more essential in the live-for-now, frenetic-paced world we live in.

Those five young men who penned the letter finished it with the promise God makes to those who delight in his day,

“If you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honourable… then you will find your joy in the Lord” (Isaiah 58:13-14).

Bread. Could you live on it?

I have a friend who lives on not very much else. I know the nutritionists among you are already coming up with all sorts of queries—where does he get his protein from? Where does he get his vitamins?

He does tend to spread the butter on good and thick. Other than that and a glass of milk, there’s not much more to his diet.

And he’s not fading away either—he’s strong, and can out-work his family on the farm.

In our modern world of multi-choice, multi-ethnic, multi-flavour foods it just seems a bit odd. Surely a person couldn’t survive on bread.

I suspect we are being overly western, and 20th-21st century. Our surprise is perhaps more chronological snobbery than anything else. Bread has been a key dietary staple in many cultures across the world, and throughout time.

One article I read says, “Among some people, bread forms the chief article of food and often almost the entire diet, even at the present time. Bread of some description, whether in the form of loaves, biscuits, or rolls, forms part of each meal in most households. This fact proves that, with the exception of milk, it is more frequently eaten than any other food. A food so constantly used contributes very largely to the family's health if it is properly made.”

So perhaps we need to recalibrate our appreciation of the humble loaf, and all its variations.

Going back 2000 years with our better understanding of the centrality of bread, particularly its contribution to the welfare and health of the individual, we can better understand what Jesus was getting at when he said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry” (John 6:35).

Bread was what sustained them, bread gave life. And Jesus draws the parallel—I am the one who can sustain you, I am the one who gives life.

The Jews had been asking for a miracle—it was just after the feeding of the 5000, and in particular they wanted a repeat performance. They wanted more bread from Heaven. They were also harking back to the time in the desert when the people of Israel had been hungry and God fed them with miraculous bread. And Jesus says to them effectively “Look bread gives life, but the true bread of Heaven gives even better life. You are more hungry than you know, and I am that better bread that will satisfy your deepest hunger.”

He is. He still satisfies that deep spiritual hunger. Like bread, he seems deceptively simple, but he is deeply satisfying. And he gives a life that will cause us to live forever.

So whether you are eating plain loaf, or baguette, or naan, or soda, or wheaten, or malt bread—stop and think about there being a whole other life, and ask yourself “What is satisfying my spiritual hungers?”

Last week we in the Milford congregation had a team of young people working with us, helping us to share the good news about Jesus all over the part of Donegal we live in.

One of the things we did was to distribute a magazine called 4you.ie.

There’s a number of interesting articles in it. One of the big questions that we all have to face is dealt with in the magazine—Is there life after death? That’s an issue we all need to at least have thought about.

Another article that caught my eye was about the Irish professional surfer John McCarthy. His own story disproves the idea that Christianity is only for women, children and weak men. He tells about how he became a Christian and what it means to him.

Barbara Coyle has written a beautiful article on adoption and shows the wonderful illustration it is of what God does for us when we ask him to accept us.

There’s also an article that deals with communication issues. Poor communication is the number one issue that pushes families apart. This article highlights the Bible’s advice on communication and shows the root issue and God-given solution.

Why not have a read? A number of free resources are offered and if you would like any of them, or if you have any questions and want to discuss them, please feel free to get in touch.

We covered a fair bit of ground—Milford, Kilmacrennan, Rathmullan, Ramelton, Kerrykeel, Port Salon, Creeslough, Termon, and Carrigart. We were sorry that we didn’t have the time to cover all the many houses that lie scattered in between. But if you didn’t get a copy of the magazine and would like one, give me a call or an email, and we’ll get one to you.

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted on 074 9123961 or mark@milfordrpc.org. You can read more or listen online at www.milfordrpc.org

There is something morbidly compelling about the news from Austria of Josef Fritzl who hid his own daughter in a secret cellar and fathered seven children with her. We watch in stunned disbelief, and find ourselves wondering how on earth something like that could go undetected for so long. We wonder how on earth the children are going to adjust to the realisation that there is another world outside their bunker-like existence.

To be born into a situation and to know nothing else. To realise that there is another world beyond what you have ever known, to realise everything you ever thought of as normal was far from normal, to find out that you have actually been a prisoner when you thought you were free – it’s simply staggering.

And yet, perhaps, it’s not so unusual.

What if we were all born like that – except not in a literal cellar, but prisoner to a warped and distorted set of values that placed us at the centre of the universe and made the universe revolve around us? What if the way we naturally looked at life was wrong? What if the values we took for granted weren’t valuable? What if our view of life and the world was our cellar?

How often do we hear the phrase “Everyone’s doing it” as an attempt to define normality? But if we all live in the cellar what is normal for us isn’t actually normal.

It’s not enough to measure life by what we have experienced – where would that have left these poor children? They had never seen sky or daylight but that didn’t deny the reality of sky or daylight. They needed outside information. We need it too. We need something to tell us what is truly valuable, what the right values are to live by, where we have gone wrong, and how it can be put to right.

For we are all born captives to a human-centred worldview, a view that revolves everything around us. That’s our cellar. Into this cellar comes the outside communication that the universe is actually made by God and made for God – it is radically God-centred.

So we have a choice: we can either continue to live in the cellar, spinning in our own little personal orbits, or come up out into the light and live the way God intended us to live. It isn’t easy to make that transition from cellar to daylight, and that’s why God himself came down into the cellar to live for a while and to take us slowly and gently up into the “freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). That’s why we need to go to Jesus and seek his help in this radical realisation that we have been living with too small a purpose, in too self-centred a world. It’s just like being born all over again.

So the Olympic torch goes on its way round the world promoting peace, harmony and protest. Some have tried to snatch the torch, others have thrown water bombs at it, some have refused to carry it, politicians have become embroiled in an ‘are-they-going-to-the-opening-ceremony-or-not’ debate, some have pleaded beseechingly for freedom for Tibet as they are hauled off by police, others have maintained that the West is the victim of an anti-China propaganda exercise.

An immense amount of effort has been put into making sure that this flame gets to China, that it stays pure. The importance of the flame, according to the International Olympic Committee, lies in the fact that it “transmits a message of peace and friendship amongst peoples.”

And there lies the irony.

The focus these days is on Tibet and the Chinese crackdown there. But there is a hidden travesty that is much wider, but less reported – the persecution of Chinese Christians.

• In March 2008 twenty-one pastors were sent en masse to labour camps.

• In March 2008 officials seized 11 teenagers at an 'illegal’ Bible study. They were held for 24 hours without relatives being allowed to visit them. Three were later re-arrested and sentenced to 15 days’ detention.

• A pastor, Zhuohua, served three years in jail in 2004-2007 for printing Bibles.

• Jailers in China crippled an elderly Christian prisoner after learning that he had brought 50 of his fellow inmates to Christ. Chen Jingmao, a 72-year-old, was so severely beaten that both his legs were broken. He now has to be carried everywhere. A source told China Aid Association that Chen was beaten because ‘his action, of bringing others to Christianity, had brought shame upon the Communist Party’.

Examples could be multiplied. A friend of mine who visits China speaks of having to visit churches in the dead of night so that they will not be disturbed.

There is an opposition to Christianity, and a persecution of it in China. If there is religious tolerance in China why do Bibles have to be smuggled in to the country?

And that brings us full circle to the Olympics again – the Beijing Olympics website says that “Each traveller is recommended to take no more than one Bible into China.”

Why does that even need to be stated?

In Ireland we have many freedoms – the freedom to meet for worship, the freedom to have and read the Bible, the freedom to believe what we want to believe. We shouldn’t take these freedoms for granted. Nor should we ignore these freedoms. We should make the best use of them we can. And pray and petition for those who experience a restriction of such basic freedoms.

The Golden Compass is this Christmas’s fantasy epic blockbuster. It’s part one of Philip Pullman’s blockbuster trilogy His Dark Materials and it hit the screens last weekend. It has attracted a bucket-load of publicity, mostly for the strongly anti-Christian message of the books.

It’s a fantastically well-made film; it has a great storyline – full of excitement, drama and adventure. Pullman has set out to create a parallel story to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles with talking animals, beautiful witches, giant airships, epic battles and all the rest.

The gist of the story is that in this world your soul walks beside you in the form of an animal. The authoritarian Magisterium are kidnapping children and surgically separating them from their souls in order to keep the kids good (allegedly). The heroes, not surprisingly, want to keep their ability to choose what they want to do, and set out to rescue the kidnapped children – led of course by a child with a magic golden compass that provides answers to all life’s questions. It all culminates, as always, in a battle between good and evil.

It’s spellbinding stuff and kids will love it. Pullman is a brilliant author. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that Pullman’s parallel world is one where things are turned upside-down. God and the church are the bad guys. Pullman hates Christianity; he once complained about the Harry Potter series, “My books are far more subversive. My books are about killing God.” That isn’t seen at all in this first film – the problem isn’t so much there, rather it’s in the next two, where the heroes kill off God. The Golden Compass ends with the heroine heading off to rescue others, leaving the story unfinished and viewers hungry for parts two and three. And that’s where the explosive stuff happens (especially in volume 3).

So parents need to be careful about seeing The Golden Compass and then unthinkingly giving their kids the rest of the series of books.

Of course biblical Christianity is not about to be toppled by a film, nor by a series of fantasy books. Yet we need to be informed about what authors are seeking to do with what they write. And we need to teach our children to think critically about what they are watching or reading – whether it be the Simpsons, the ads on TV, the music they listen to, the whimsical Miracle on 34th Street (where God is compared to Santa!), or The Golden Compass. Sometimes instead of stopping people doing things, we need to teach them to think and evaluate what they are taking in.

And although he is wrong about many things, Pullman is right to criticise authoritarian churches, cults and leaders who expect people to believe without questioning or thinking, and who use authority in an oppressive way.

That, of course, is not biblical Christianity – Jesus spoke with authority, but was not authoritarian. The gospel is even better than the fiction. Jesus was the child who grew to be the rescuer of mankind and the restorer of souls. Freedom is not found by ‘killing God’ but by turning to him. It’s then that we find freedom and forgiveness for our souls.

Its not often I get a chance to sit down on a Tuesday evening and watch the TV. Last week I caught the tail end of a show called “Make me Perfect” – apparently it’s been on for a year or more – all about getting the ultimate make over.

Not only does the participant get her hair, wardrobe and make-up done, she also gets liposuction, her face and body further remodelled, and her teeth made right. Accompanying all this is a day or two of psychological help to enable the subject to overcome the shock of the transformation, and also to overcome the low self-esteem she had.

My wife hadn’t seen it either, and we sat together in open-mouthed shock. Not shock at the processes – although that was part of it; but it was the extent to which this woman was banking on this to change her life that was saddening. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t someone who had been born disfigured, or been horribly scarred as a result of an accident – I can see purpose and kindness in resorting to surgery in such circumstances.

But what saddened me the most was that she was counting on it to really change her, and it couldn’t. Who she is is still the same whether the outside shell changes or not. She gets up and looks in the mirror, and sees her new face and body, and now everyone likes her – how does that help her self-esteem? Now she’s as likely to worry that “They only like me because of my looks, not because of who I am”. The sad thing about the programme is that, instead of helping people, it actually compounds the mindset that caused the problem in the first place. Do we really want to be valued for our appearance? Or is there not a hunger for something more than that?

Added to the hunger for significance is the hunger for deeper change. All the liposuction and reconstructive surgery in the world can’t remove the mistakes of the past, or deal with guilt, or change the attitudes of the heart that boil to the surface when we are under pressure – bitterness, self-pity, anger, jealousy, etc. What’s the use of being made perfect on the outside when you know things are a mess on the inside? You know yourself that you’re just a fake.

What use is it when the cost of getting the outside done is so high that most people can’t afford it? And it still doesn’t prevent the whole deterioration process kicking in again.

On the other hand, I know of a treatment that transforms us from the inside out, it gives freedom from the past, it deals with the guilt and the shame, it treats the symptoms of bitterness and anger etc., it banishes low self-esteem, it brings real and lasting change that doesn’t deteriorate with time. And it costs you nothing.

It’s the ultimate make over and it will result in being made perfect – both inside and out. Why settle for the shabby substitution of TV-land when reality awaits?

(Mark's 'Food for Thought' column for the Tirconaill Tribune)
At midnight last Friday a publishing phenomenon 14 years in the making came to its climactic conclusion when the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series went on sale.

JK Rowling has created a world crammed with adventure, mystery, tragedy, romance, and above all magic. At the heart of the story is the struggle between good and evil, compellingly personified in the characters of Harry and Voldemort. Voldemort is one of the most powerful dark wizards there has ever been. All that stands against him is a boy, whose power to destroy the Dark Lord was foretold in prophecy. They both grow in power, building up to the final confrontation.

All tremendously exciting! And escapist nonsense of course – just what we need to while away a few hours over the summer. But what if it were true?

I’m not suggesting that there really is a dark wizard called Voldemort, or that there is a parallel magical world. But it’s interesting how gripped people are by the storyline of the Harry Potter books, without realising that the storyline of the Bible is very similar. I’m not trying to ‘christianise’ the story, but if people think the fictional story of Harry Potter is gripping, then how much more should they be excited about the plot of the Bible.

Here’s another prophecy. A prophecy that goes back to the very dawn of our race; written down in the book of Genesis. It is a prophecy spoken by the voice of God himself in the Garden of Eden: The LORD God said to the serpent, "I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."

One day a man mysteriously described as “the seed of a woman” will crush the head of the serpent. We usually talk about the seed of the man – but there’s going to be something unusual about this man’s birth. It’s as if a human father won’t feature in his birth, just his mother.

And this man will be given the task of destroying the serpent who tempted the first humans to sin. He will single-handedly put an end to the Prince of Darkness. But did you notice how this will happen? The man will crush the head of the serpent, but in the process he will be terribly, agonisingly wounded. He will stamp on the serpent’s head, but even as he crushes the life out of the serpent, the serpent will strike at the man’s heel and sink its fangs deep into the man’s flesh. The serpent is destroyed, but at a terrible cost to the serpent-crusher.

Voldemort and his Death Eaters try to kill Harry Potter, believing him to be the boy the prophecy refers to. Likewise the serpent knew that this little baby was the one who would crush his head, and so he tried to destroy him first. He sent King Herod to kill all the baby boys born in the Bethlehem area. The serpent did his utmost to destroy the serpent-crusher before he could even grow up.

You’ll have to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to find out how that prophecy is resolved – “Neither can live while the other survives.” Either Voldemort or Harry.

But we already know how the prophecy of Genesis 3:15 was fulfilled. It happened 2000 years ago, in Jerusalem, on a cross. Jesus, the long-awaited serpent crusher defeated the Devil when he was nailed to a cross and died. He suffered excruciating physical agony, but infinitely worse than this was the horror of bearing God’s punishment for the guilt of all the sins of all his people in every age.

JK Rowling has written an exciting story for us. But it’s just a story. The Bible is real and we are characters in its story. We have a far more deadly enemy than Lord Voldemort, but we have an infinitely greater hero than Harry Potter to look to.