Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 1st October 2023

Dear Friends,

I love bookshops.
 
One small pleasure they offer is the accidental comedy that can arise from the combination of two adjacent titles.
 
Here’s an example I saw online recently: a book called,  “God Is Not Mad At You”; next to it, “He’s Just Not That Into You”.
 
We talk a lot (sometimes) about what we think about God. 
 
And we worry (sometimes) about what God thinks of us.  Loving? Angry?  Indifferent? 
 
I very much like this poem by the Jewish writer Aaron Zeitlin, which gives the whole question a new twist.
 
 
Praise me, says God, I will know that you love me.
Curse me, I will know that you love me.
Praise me or curse me,
I will know that you love me
 
Sing out my graces, says God.
Raise your fist against me and revile, says God.
Sing my graces or revile.
Reviling is also praise, says God.
 
But if you sit fenced off in your apathy,
Entrenched in “I don’t give a damn,” says God
If you look at the stars and yawn, says God
If you see suffering and don’t cry out,
If you don’t praise and don’t revile,
Then I created you in vain, says God.
 
 
Tim

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall)