Paul Long's Ramblings

* It has been a very long time since I posted in this blog. Hope I can be more consistent this year but it is not a New Year's resolution :-) For Pastor’s notes 1 Feb 2015 (i.e. my church's Sunday bulletin) WHAM and the M’Cheyne Bible Reading Programme This Sunday we start on a journey / challenge as a church that hopefully all of us will undertake together: to read through the Bible in a year. To be more accurate, we will be attempting to read through the whole OT once, and the NT and Psalms twice. To assist us, we will be using a Bible reading programme created by a Pastor named Robert Murray M’Cheyne.  A little about M’Cheyne might help inspire you. M’Cheyne passed away in 1843 before he even turned 30. Yet as young as he was, he was known throughout Scotland as  “the saintly M’Cheyne”. We know of him because a friend and colleague Andrew Bonar collected his sermons, messages and papers and published them in a book about his life. Here is an excerpt from t...

For the 6 April 2014 bulletin Giving Thanks for Our Trouble During the week I came across this story that I hope will challenge you as much as it challenged me. Ours is a God who does not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted and does not hide his face from them.” There is always a sense in which great living is found the midst of suffering and tears. An old Yiddish folk story tells of a well-to-do gentleman of leisured much interested in the Hebrew Scriptures. He visited a wise rabbi to ask a question. He said: “I think I grasp the sense and meaning of these writings except for one thing. I cannot understand how we can be expected to give God thanks for our troubles.” The rabbi knew instantly that he could not explain this with mere words. He said to the gentleman: “If you want to understand this, you will have to visit Isaac the water-carrier.” The gentleman was mystified by this, but knowing the rabbi to be wise, crossed to a poor section of the settlemen...

Been neglecting this blog ...  Might be time to resurrect it Pastor's notes for 15 Dec 2013 Listening One important word during the season of Advent is  “WAIT” . Last Sunday I shared an article by Margaret Manning on the theme of waiting. One important reminder she shared was: The season of Advent that precedes Christmas is a season of hope-filled waiting. Advent looks forward in anticipation of Christ’s return, but also remembers all those who awaited his arrival into our world more than two thousand years ago. Advent is a season of stillness and reflection and as such, it is the antithesis of all the busyness and chaos of the Christmas shopping season. This week I would like to add another word for our consideration. And that word is  “LISTEN” . We live in a culture where we are not used to waiting. Popular culture works at conditioning us to want everything now. New quickly becomes old and we being conditioned to be easily distracted and impatient f...

For the 14 July 2013 bulletin A Lesson from back packing? I came across this interesting illustration recently which pulled together a lot of my stray thoughts over the last few days. First the illustration...    Backpacking has taught me the value of traveling light. One seasoned hiker explained it this way. Prepare for a hike by making three piles. The first pile should contain only those things you absolutely cannot live without. In the second pile put the things you would like to have but don't have to have. Then in the third pile, put all those things that would make life on the trail a lot more comfortable but which you could get along without. This is where you put the light weight hammock, the camp chair, and your extra clean clothes. Now, discard everything that is in piles two and three, pick up the first pile and head for the woods. That is what Jesus is advising his disciples to do in today's lesson (i.e. Luke 10). Travel light. Don't get bogged d...

Pastor's notes for the 30 June 2013 bulletin A brief reflection on Joshua’s ordination as a leader. In my reading this week, Numbers 27:18-20 caught my special attention. In them Moses is told by God to “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him.   Make him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight . You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey. (ESV) The phrase in verse 19: “in whom is the Spirit” emphasizes that Joshua position of leadership is God ordained. It marked him out as different from all the many capable leaders of Israel.  It made me ponder again why God chose Joshua to take over from Moses. There were others who were surely eligible for this position. There were for example 70 elders who had experience in leadership, there was Eleazar, Phinehas and even Caleb. Perhaps the most obvious re...

For the 16 June 2013 bulletin The common language of brokenness I read a fascinating story some months back which I filed away that I would like to share. It was about a North Carolina Judge Jesse Caldwell who told a story of Vietnamese woman who was waiting her turn to be examined in a crowded hospital emergency room. She gradually became aware of a frustrating “non-conversation” being attempted a few seats down. A nurse was trying to ask a new patient for some details on her illness. The patient spoke Spanish. The nurse did not. The Vietnamese woman listened for a minute then realized that while she didn’t speak Spanish she did understand the broken-English bits and phrases the Spanish speaking patient offered as answers. Because of her own experience of learning to communicate in “broken English,” the Vietnamese woman could hear the heart and gist of what this other woman was trying to say. The Vietnamese woman offered to “translate” the broken English of the Spanish...

For the 9 June 2013 bulletin How do we use the time God has given to us? Earlier this week, someone posted on FB a link to a NZ Herald story in which a 19 year old Whangarei man who was "sick of playing Xbox" while on home detention asked and was granted his wish to serve the rest of his sentence in jail. He had already served 10 months of an 11-month home detention term and with one month to go "had run out of Xbox games to play", and told the police that if he wasn't picked up and taken to jail, he would breach his home detention sentence.. Apart from the usual expected incredulous reactions to this story, I found myself wondering how I would spend my time if I could not leave my house for 11 months. Psalm 90:12 came to mind : “ So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” .  And it made me wonder:  Would I have wasted my time like this young man or would I have been able to use it wisely? There’s a lot of teaching in the Bible...