not so silent

During our cell group this week we engaged with the reading from Sunday, Galatians 3:25 end. The writer of this passage wants the reader or listener to engage with some challenging ideas pointing us to some divisions and differences that don't seem to a have a place in the church or the kingdom. Or if they have a place in our life for us to identify them and reflect upon them . Many of us crave for difference young people don't want to be like their old people, punks are not like Goths. Team and party colours separate from each other because we don't want to be like them other people.  But not all difference is bad. It is the difference and separation that does not allow the other person to take their full place in our community that should unsettle us enough to examine its cost. When we looked at some issues of difference and division we began to go to default position and say yes but, yes but they, yes but God would not, yes but that don't seem right. We k...

Wider debate about Welfare! One dictionary version of the word on the lips of our government,  welfare ,  a governmental agency that provides funds and aid to people in need, especially those unable to work. So welfare seems to be about distributing money to those in need (not unlike being a parent) and today that focus for the government is the under 25 year olds on housing benefit. Some we are told have become used to getting hand-outs that are taken for granted and not deserved. (Like me when I was a child) So here is what I am pondering what if we move those responsible for Tax Breaks into the same Department of Welfare hopefully in bringing th e two departments together we will discover some synergy (cost savings) redundancy (eventually seeking housing benefit). It seems to my narrow uneducated way of looking at life both departments share the same definitions of Welfare as some of the definitions and language are similar. The role of both departments is to identif...

10:10 on a Friday night and the door bell goes. I turn on the CCTV to see a man I don't recognize.  on opening the door he quietly informs me "get me an ambulance". A quiet and nervous conversation slips by. He can hear the voices, what voices, the voices in my head he tells me. Does he not know i am not on duty for the Mental Health Trust i work for! He is quiet but internally focused as he tells me of his past experience in mental health institutions. His internal voices are encouraging him to kill himself. My concerns for him and me rise, I call the ambulance as he is clearly poorly. The police come (thank you ) the ambulance comes. And my caller becomes agitated by the laughter of the professionals, paranoid, they wont take him seriously. He fears. He seems sure they will take him away and just drop him off somewhere. I try to reassure the calls the professionals have made and the wards they have m...