Last Wednesday, US Federal judge, Justice Vaughn R. Walker struck down California’s ruling that marriage is between a man and a woman, rather than same-sex couples. He radically redefined marriage saying that, “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage”.
What are we to make of all this?

Proposition 8 had been voted into law by a clear majority of voters. But in one audacious act of judicial foot-stamping, California’s voters were told that they had no right to express their opinion. A single unelected judge nullified the will of the voters of California as expressed through the electoral process. In a series of startling ‘findings’ the judge arbitrarily, without counter-argument, swept aside the arguments of centuries and cultures, as well as the evidence of secular research which demonstrates that both children and society suffer when marriage is redefined. Apparently the judge knew better.

Defending the judicial overriding of the people, the New York Times argued that “there are times when legal opinions help lead public opinions.” In other words, there are times when people aren’t sufficiently informed to know what is good for them, and it takes the wiser heads of the law to help and guide. I would agree. We only differ on whose legal opinion counts.

Is it the opinion of a fallible judge, swayed by internal bias and the pressure of lobbies, or is it the opinion of the Creator God who made us, knows how we are made to operate, and who legislates for what is best?

In a single moment, Justice Walker, both grasped and failed to grasp the point. He grasped that a judge sometimes has to overrule the desires people, but he forgot which Judge. At the end of the day we will not stand before Justice Walker to give an account of how we lived our lives, but before the great Judge of all the earth—and it will be no defence to say “I didn’t like your laws”.

The issue always comes back to “What do we base our opinions on?”—on popular opinion, personal preference, ‘the media says’—often choosing whatever one best suits our purpose. Or do we choose the fixed and timeless standard of God’s word, which has both the power to confirm us and challenge us, not simply saying what we want it to say.

The reality is that the civil partnership legislation both here and in California is a thumbing of the nose at God, and is a damaging path for any society in the long-term.

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

The sound of silence, rather than the throaty roar of engines and the screech of tyres, settled over Donegal a couple of weekends ago. The final stages of the rally were cancelled as a mark of respect following the tragic death of Thomas Maguire from Co Meath, on the Knockalla stage on the Saturday.

That was the right and proper decision, I applaud the organisers for again having the decency to put respect for life before the spectacle of the event, and my sympathies go out to the Maguire family.

That Sunday evening in our fellowship we were considering the Bible’s teaching that God has given us Sunday, or the Lord’s Day, as a day to be set aside for him. He gives us that command for our physical and spiritual welfare. Since he made us, he knows best how we should live, and he knows that our ultimate joy is to be found in relationship with him. That’s why he calls us to set aside a day for spending time with him. It allows us to refocus and to recalibrate our thinking from the events of this world, with its passing joys, to the ultimate joy of knowing God, the maker of all joy.

As such, God is not attempting to be a spoilsport when he calls us to give one day to him, instead his concern is for our happiness.

Whenever Adam and Eve rebelled against God they broke this relationship for all of us. It took the intervention of Jesus, his death on the cross, to restore the possibility of this ultimate peace and joy to mankind. And because of his great triumph, although the Jews had been commanded to keep the seventh day sacred, the focus shifted to the first day, the day of Jesus’ resurrection, to help us remember his death and victory.

Something in us knows that in the face of tragedy, a rest from the regular activity is appropriate, as the events of the rally demonstrate. We rest to honour and to commemorate the person and their life. How much more is it appropriate then to rest when the person is not just human, but divine, and his life was lost in order that we might live, and his greatest goal in giving his life was that we might enjoy a right relationship with God. And if the earthly pinnacle of that relationship is found in giving a day to specifically enjoy this relationship with God, what are we saying to Jesus when we just continue with our own pleasure instead?

The rally organisers didn’t trample the memory of Thomas Maguire, but too often we trample over the very day given to remember Jesus and what his life, death and resurrection mean.

It’s finally here. The moment men all over the country have been waiting for. The 2010 World Cup is about to kick off. Football fans across the world eagerly hope that their country will triumph. Girlfriends and wives worldwide resign themselves, once again, to being relegated to second place throughout the competition. Economists expect that each English goal after the group stage will benefit the economy by £126 million, and if they make it to the final, a whopping £2 billion.

As if there wasn’t a high enough burden of expectation on the poor boys’ shoulders, they have to save the economy too!

It will be interesting to watch how the drive for World Cup success will impact players and fans. I’m old enough to remember the ’82 finals and desperate Algerian fans waving money at German and Austrian players who played a mockery of a final group game, ensuring that they both went through and Algeria went out. Sportsmanship will be sacrificed. Players previously regarded for their skill or honesty will throw it aside because winning means more—we all remember Thierry Henry and Diego Maradona for the wrong reasons. We’ll see players dive, fall over, and roll around crying in a manner that would embarrass most girls, in an effort to gain penalties and free kicks.

All in the pursuit of success.

Perhaps too, you remember the tragic case of Andrés Escobar, a Colombian player, who was shot and killed after his own goal in ’94, which caused gambling losses to several powerful drug lords.

All in the name of the Cup.

Of course it would be all too easy to point the finger at these overpaid, over-groomed stars of the ‘world’s greatest game’. For something drives each one of us—it’s just a question of what. It might be success, decency, reputation or standing in our community, it might be money, security, relationships, love, sex, power, acceptance, influence—the list is endless.

We all live in the pursuit of something—very often self. We may not go out and shoot those who get in our way, or who mess up our plans, but how do you react when something gets in the way of your dreams? Or to what lengths are you prepared to go to pursue your dreams?

We need to ask ourselves, does what we pursue make us better people? Or does it cultivate pride, deceit, anger, resentment, fear, or anxiety? They are indicators that we have a wrong primary goal. We are made to pursue something, but unless God takes the first place, then ultimately our desires will either defeat us, disappoint us or dissatisfy us. And en-route we will find some of the above character traits growing in our own lives. When be put God first and live for him, all other things find their rightful place, and he will not disappoint, defeat, or dissatisfy us. And as we follow him, he will change us for good.

What are you living for?

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

Across Europe, more and more couples are shunning marriage in favour of “registered partnerships”. This has been particularly notable in France, where the number of people applying for these partnerships each year is closing in on the marriage figure. So why is this legislation proving so popular?

In short, because it provides the benefits of a traditional marriage while eliminating the drawbacks.

What are the benefits? It's summed up by a French lady who recently entered into such a partnership. “We just wanted to pay less taxes.” At least she's honest.

And what drawbacks does this arrangement manage to eliminate? In a word, commitment. Rather depressingly, advocates are quick to talk up is the ease with which these partnerships can be dissolved. Another key feature is the emphasis on “honesty and openness” at the expense of sexual fidelity.

Surely there's a problem here? This outlook is extraordinarily self centred – it's all about what “I”, rather than “we” can get out of it. “I want to enjoy tax breaks and a financial improvement But I don't want to be tied down - if my partner begins to bore me or loses their looks then at least I can disappear into the sunset.”

Not only is it self centred, it's also short sighted. Traditional marriages based on mutual commitment and sacrifice are surely far more satisfying and enjoyable, nevermind offering a far more suitable environment for raising a family, and greater assurance about the future.

Marriage is a gift from God, who delights in giving his creation good gifts – it's there for the good of mankind to bring happiness and delight, and to form the basis of stable family life. More than that, it also acts as an illustration – it shows us God's unfailing commitment to his people. He won't abandon us because he grows tired of us or because he finds a newer, better model. It shows us what God means when he describes himself as faithful.

Sadly, we're all to quick to abandon God's designs and do things our way. We dismiss the Bible as outdated and irrelevant. We think that in the 21st century, we know better than primitive people from a by-gone era. But we're only hurting ourselves. By ignoring God we ignore his wise counsel and the great gifts he has created for our good.

Ever heard of Paul and Rachel Chandler? You probably have, although you might not recognise the names. They're the couple who were kidnapped by Somali pirates last October. That's right – last October; as I write this they're in their 200th day of captivity.

Originally the pirates demanded a ransom of $7 million, although reports suggest they'll accept a fraction of that. However, that doesn't seem to matter as the British government is not prepared (at least officially) to make payments to kidnappers.

Obviously the Chandler's family have a very different point of view; they're prepared to pay whatever it takes to set the couple free. Perhaps at this point you're asking yourself the question – how much would I pay to secure my loved ones freedom?

Hopefully none of us ever find ourselves in that situation. Few of us can understand the anguish those involved must be facing as the months go by. However, according to the Bible, all human beings are held captive and in a predicament every bit as serious as the Chandlers. You see, God demands that payment be made for all our sin. That may sound cruel, but it isn't – it's the just and fair thing to do. God is simply too pure to ignore evil.

So what does it cost to pay for our sin? Blood has to be spilled, because God takes sin seriously. The good news is that the same God who demands payment also offers to provide it. That's why Jesus was sent to earth – to die in our place. Jesus Christ described himself as a ransom. He offers himself as payment.

This is an offer that is made to everyone, regardless of background, ethnicity or class. It's up to each individual to accept or ignore the offer.

Sadly, we have a tendency to try and pay the price of freedom ourselves. We go through life doing good and trying hard in a desperate bid to make up for our mistakes. But that's not enough – blood has to be spilled.

It comes down to a simple choice – either we pay this colossal cost, or Jesus pays it for us.

It's remarkable that the totally innocent one is prepared to pay the price for our wrongdoing. It would be a real tragedy for anyone to miss Jesus' offer and pay the price themselves.

Writing in the Letters section of the Irish times, Míceál Bolger humorously notes:

“Britain and the Netherlands demanded cash from Iceland, but overlooked one small detail—the Icelandic language does not contain the letter C”

Humour aside, who would have thought that our highly technological society could so easily grind to a halt? We are so used to making our plans—today we will go here, do this, then go here—and so used to them working out mostly without hitch, that we forget that we are not the omnipotent creatures we like to think we are.

In Job 37:5-7 we read:

“God's voice thunders in marvellous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labour.”

While it is ash rather than snow, God’s voice is certainly thundering as the ash circulates above us, disrupting travel. Many who made ‘definite’ plans have been frustrated and forced to take refuge in airports. God has once again stopped a large cross-section of humanity from its labour.

It’s not the first time this year that God’s voice has thundered, stopping man in his work, forcing us to rearrange our plans. Prolonged freezes, unexpected snowfalls, heavy rain, earthquakes, now the eruption of a little-known volcano, and modern man is seen to be not so self-sufficient.

Over the last number of weeks I’ve been preaching on the Old Testament book of Exodus. There we read of God bringing one of the world’s superpowers—Egypt—to a shuddering halt. He had warned and warned, but they refused to listen, and so he sent an escalating series of disasters to get their attention. The events of the last few months strike me as something similar.

As the 20th century closed and as the 21st century has progressed, we have placed unbounded faith in ourselves—despite all evidence to the contrary. A myriad of wars, a society creaking towards chaos, a global financial meltdown—man is not such a great arbiter of his destiny.

God has been shaking the foundations of our beliefs, whether it be in religious institutions, or in our own abilities. He has been trying to get our attention. What should we do? We need to give him our attention!

We need to humble ourselves, turn from our proud self-sufficiency to him, before he needs to turn up the volume another notch to get our attention.

In 1990 it was estimated that 100 million baby girls were missing—victims of abortion, infanticide or neglect—sacrificed by parents who wanted a son. The Economist magazine (and website) has a chilling and sobering investigation of this phenomenon present particularly, but not exclusively, in many Asian countries.

A father is present at a birth in his home, sees his firstborn—a daughter—and cries in disappointment “Useless thing”. A midwife drops the baby into the slops bucket, head first. A journalist is restrained as she tries to intervene, her protest of “That’s a living child” is met with “It’s not a child, it’s a girl baby…girl babies don’t count.”

China has its one-child policy; there is a Hindu saying, “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbour’s garden”—but it isn’t simply traditional preferences for sons, or draconian one-child policies that fuel this slaughter.

Also tied in is imaging technology which allows you to know the gender of your unborn child. Doctors in India have been using the sick but catchy slogan, “Pay 5,000 rupees today and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow” (the price of a dowry). In one hospital the only girls born after ultrasound scans were those mistakenly identified as boys, or who had a male twin. Technology, which has been lifesaving in some places, has become a death warrant for unborn baby girls in others.

Nor is it confined to the East. The preference for small families and the widespread ease of abortion in the West has left the door wide open for gendercide—the targeting and destruction of a baby simply because of its gender. Last year Sweden legalised the practice of sex-selection abortion, but in how many other places does it happen unofficially? It is a natural extension of the so-called ‘pro-choice’ argument.

This has serious consequences. In the next decade China is looking at 40 million young men for whom there are no brides, almost twice the number of all young men in France, Germany and Britain together. Since young males commit the majority of crime and violence, and since marriage has been a taming and settling ground for them, sociologists fear that these millions of men will prove a significant problem.

In addition, female suicide rates in these countries are higher than anywhere else—many feeling unable to live either with the failure to produce a son, or the knowledge that they have aborted or killed their baby girls.

What does God think of all this? Is he indifferent? Often in scripture he is described as the God of the fatherless—an idea that includes any helpless child. Male and female, both created in his image, are equally valuable to him. He is also a God who will come in frightening judgment on those who slaughter the innocent (Psalm 10, 94). He is not indifferent—he will judge, in his time. In the meantime he holds out the offer of forgiveness through his Son (who, ironically, people cast aside like an unwanted baby because he doesn’t fit in with their agenda).

Mark Loughridge is the minister of Milford Reformed Presbyterian Church.

(by Jonny McCollum)
You’re stranded on a ski lift over 30 feet in the air and night is approaching. No-one knows that you’re stuck, and you have no mobile phone. As night arrives the temperature plummets to -18 degrees and the situation seems hopeless. If you jump, you’ll probably break your legs and freeze to death; if you stay on the lift you face a battle against hypothermia. What would you do?

This is exactly the situation Dominik Podolsky, a German snowboarder faced in the Alps recently when the ski lift he was riding was shut down for the night. As the hours went by and his cries for help went unnoticed he tried a different method of communication – fire.

Mr Podolsky had a lighter and several paper handkerchiefs, which he burned in a bid to be spotted. No-one noticed. Next, he burned a series of restaurant bills and business cards, but to no avail. Finally, with his limbs beginning to go numb, and as he struggled to stay awake, he began to ignite the cash from his wallet.

Six hours after getting stuck, the 22 year old was eventually rescued, but not before the fire had consumed the last of his money.

His story had a happy ending, but it came at a cost. In order to ensure his survival, Mr Podolski had to make a difficult sacrifice. If you were in his situation, could you bring yourself to burn your hard earned cash?

Of course you could! 120 euro is a small price to pay for life. All of us would take the steps this snowboarder took, because only a fool would value their wallet above their life.

But maybe we’re not as rational as we like to think. According to the Bible, we’re stuck, night is fast approaching, and doom is imminent. Yet the hope of life is held out – but often we miss it. Why? Partly because we value other things too highly. Our problem is that we have put ourselves and our interests above God. We need to reverse that and accept the offer of forgiveness that Jesus holds out.

The offer Jesus makes is literally a matter of life and death, yet it can be crowded out by the busyness of life. It’s a real tragedy that many never give this offer the consideration it deserves.

Perhaps we can value our wallets (or anything else) above our lives after all.

I wonder how Jerry Flannery feels today. He's been looking forward to the 6 Nations for months, he's put in hours of backbreaking work on the training field, and after 2 matches his involvement may be over. All because of a split second of madness. As I write this, Flannery faces the possibility of a lengthy suspension ruling him out of the tournament.

And what about Welshman Andy Powell? His drunken antics on a golf buggy have brought a premature end to his campaign. I'm sure these two men would love to turn back time and put things right. They'd give anything to be able to walk out for their country next weekend, but they'll almost certainly be absent.

A very different absence caught my eye during the first round of matches. Euan Murray sat out Scotland's opener against Wales, not because of injury or ill discipline, but out of choice. The Scottish prop voluntarily sacrificed the opportunity to play for his nation because it's match was on a Sunday. Murray put his religious convictions above his country and his career.

Why would someone who has dedicated so much of his time to the sport spurn the chance to do what many of his peers can only dream of? Let's hear what Murray has to say. Speaking to the Guardian, he said:

“Ultimately rugby's not what fuels my happiness in life”

This man has tasted success and experienced the prestige, wealth and glitz that are part and parcel of being a prominent sportsman. And what's his verdict? They're like shiny bubbles. Murray explains:

“They're bubbles that appear perfectly spherical, all the colours of the rainbow. They're bright and shiny and light as a feather, and you chase them because it's good fun, but the minute you get them they burst and they're empty.”

We're fixated with chasing the dream – we want fame and fortune, we want to be popular, we want to be the best. Most of us will never fulfil these desires, and even if we do history tells us they won't bring lasting happiness. For that most elusive dream we need to look somewhere else.

Where can we find real happiness? In the same place as Euan Murray. Jesus Christ, died so international sportstars like Euan Murray and average joes like you and me can find a happiness that nothing can take away, and that outweighs all the shiny bubbles this life has to offer.

It was a weekend of tragedy in the county, not least on the roads. Firstly, let me extend sympathy to the grieving families in Carrigart, Ramelton and Bunbeg. But such is the nature of life that by the time this column is printed heartbreak and hurt will have been stamped indelibly across the lives of others.

Where do we find help when tragedy strikes? Let me point you to the familiar words of Psalm 23, also known as ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. If you have a Bible near to hand I would encourage you to read them. I want to comment simply on three phrases.

“He makes me lie down … He restores my soul” – Tragedy tears us apart and leaves us broken and hurting in the innermost recesses of our lives. Sleep becomes difficult, a place where memories haunt us and our tears are the loneliest. The ancient songwriter tells us that God is a God who restores souls. What beautiful imagery – it calls to mind an artist tenderly and carefully piecing together a damaged masterpiece. There is a God you can go to who will restore your soul with such care and tenderness, and in doing so you will find peace even to lie down and sleep.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death … you are with me” – Part of tragedy’s agony is the loneliness it brings. Each person affected feels the pain differently, and so even within a family people can feel isolated. The songwriter tells us from his own experience that in the dark valleys of life he has found a companion, a guide who has been there before, and who knows the hurt and the pain and the loneliness. He is pointing us to Jesus Christ, the one who has gone right through the valley of death and who offers companionship in every dark valley.

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” – In these words we see a God who provides strength and sustenance even in the hardest of times. When the enemies of pain, loss and grief surround us the songwriter tells us that God will provide from the deep resources of his strength.

In this ancient song we find that although the pain does not magically disappear, the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, offers to come to us in our loss and to go through it with us. Whatever your hurt I pray that you will look to and find help from the God who restores, who accompanies and who sustains.

'A week is a long time in politics.' One of the most oft used clichés in the sometimes cliché ridden world of politics. It's true though – political fortunes can change dramatically in the space of 7 days, a shoo-in for election can quickly become a no-hoper, today's hero can become yesterday’s man.

If a week is a long time, what about a year? Last January Barack Obama took to Capitol Hill to become the 44th President of the United States. But he was more than just a president; he was the man who was going to put things right.

He was going to usher in a new era of economic prosperity and improved world relations. He was going to heal the wounds of America's racist past. And he wasn't George Bush.

On that cold January morning, optimism couldn't have been higher. Excited cheers greeted every wave to the crowd, tears of joy ran down onlookers' faces.

What a difference a year makes.

The economy is still in bad shape, Guantanamo bay is still open, and thousands of American troops are still at war.

And now the Democrats are licking their wounds after a humiliating election defeat.

I feel sympathy for the President. He's a talented and charismatic leader, but he's not super human. Expectations were unrealistic.

It's probably not his fault, but many Americans feel let down. They had waited decades for a leader to right the wrongs of history.

It's not unlike 1st century Israel. Jesus Christ sparked similar optimism, and yet many if not most were disappointed. This was the man they had been waiting for. This was the man who would throw off the shackles of the Roman Empire and make the nation great again.

How let down they must have felt as Jesus breathed his last – battered, bruised and helpless on a Roman cross. The dream was over.

And yet by dying, Jesus made a change more profound and wide reaching than any politician ever will. As He hung on the cross, Jesus was punished for wrongdoings of His people.

He made it possible for the ordinary man to approach God, because all who ask can be forgiven. Jesus took the punishment, so everyone who asks can be set free from the tyranny of sin.

In 100 years, Barack Obama will be consigned to history textbooks. 2000 years after his death, Jesus Christ is still making a real difference.

With the publication of the Murphy Report at the end of 2009 the ugly subject of abuse was once again in the spotlight. But clerical abuse is only the tip of the iceberg. 29% of abuse victims are abused by close family, and 60% are abused by someone close to the family. The problem is far wider than often we want to recognise. And more people are wrestling with the trauma of abuse.

An article this length is too short to give detailed help on living with abuse, but let me say 3 things:

Justice: Something deep within us yearns for justice. We can’t simply let the past be past, and move on. Or forgive and forget, as some would put it. But confrontation is rarely satisfying; following the legal channels rarely provides long-term satisfaction. So where do we turn to, particularly if forgiveness hasn’t been sought, or the hope of earthly justice is gone?

What if you could have confidence that one day justice would be done? That is the assurance God gives. God is a God of justice who will open up the great records of our deeds, who will leave no evil unpunished. He is a God who will demand the full price for every wrong act. Though it is delayed, it will come. Trusting this enables you to deal with the resentment, and to know that you can leave it in God’s hands. He will deal with it.

Meaning: Memories linger and resurface unbidden. Part of the reason is that the mind is searching for meaning and purpose in the pain. Talking to someone is good because it helps allay fears, and it can put to rest troublesome questions. Discipline is also required to keep our minds from jumping back constantly into the same old tracks. But yet, where do we find meaning in it? Can we find a good purpose amidst the pain? As a pastor, the only place I can point to is to God’s word where we see that God has the power, and the willingness to bring good out of the bleakest of situations. We need to keep taking our minds there.

Cleansing and Acceptance: When we have been sinned against it leaves a stain on our lives, something that often makes us feel dirty and second rate. Not only that, but at the heart of much abuse lies the issue of insecurity, the desire to be wanted and loved—and after abuse, the feeling of “Who would want anything to do with me?”. The insistent and wonderful answer of the Bible is that almighty God offers to cleanse us not only from sins that we have committed, but from those committed against us. And he wants us, and will accept us and love us, not as second-class citizens, but as his own precious and beloved children.

Much, much more could be said, but these are pointers to where I believe the deepest and most lasting help can be found.

The publication of the Murphy Report on the awful abuse perpetrated and subsequently covered up was the third in a line of long reports that have rocked our nation. What are we to make of these?

First of all, we have to say that there is no place for such abuse, and no place for covering it up in any part of society. We’ll look at help for the hurting next week, but prior to that we need to look at the implications for faith. One reaction would be to have nothing more to do with religion in general and Christianity in particular. Yet that reaction, understandable though it is, would be hasty.

As a contributor to RTE’s Frontline programme commented perceptively, “Ireland has got so caught up in religion that it has forgotten its Christianity”. That says a lot in a few words.

Part of the problem perhaps has been the confusion between what is called Christianity and genuine Christianity. Much of what passes as Christianity is merely religion in a Christian dress. Religion is based on us doing our best to please God through a variety of rituals. The essence of genuine Christianity that we are saved, not because of what we do, but solely because of what Christ has done for us. Belief in this is profoundly humbling.

Belief in the other leads to all sorts of problems: it creates an aura of fear, where the secrets of salvation are held by an elite few, where they become powerful, and blessing is at their say so. That amount of power is then open to abuse. It has been thus since the temples of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Incas.

The Bible is unequivocally condemning in its critique of such religiosity. Just as it is condemning of those who use their religion to hurt and abuse others. Jesus warns those who cause little ones to stumble with regard to God that it would be better for them to be taken out and drowned. He castigates those who use their power to whitewash over all manner of evil within:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence… You are like whitewashed tombs… How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23).

Part of the solution, therefore lies not in the abandonment of religion, but in the embrace of genuine Christianity. When Martin Luther King Jr. confronted the racism endemic in the church-dominated white Southern states, he did not call it to abandon its Christian principles. Instead he called them to be more Christian, rather than less Christian, to be more true to what the Bible says.

We are chronically unaware of what the Bible really teaches, and so, in part, what we need to do is to return to real biblical Christianity. There we will find safeguards; but also Jesus Christ, who brings ultimate hope, justice and cleansing.

Last Sunday hoards of people descended on the Mayo village of Knock in response to a prediction made by Dublin-based clairvoyant Joe Coleman. He forecast that an apparition of the Virgin Mary would appear at 3pm. He made a similar prediction about an appearance near Dungloe last week.

Coleman claims he has had regular visions of Mary since 1986. He said regarding the predicted Knock apparition on Sunday, “She has told me she wants to make the biggest statement she has ever made on this earth.”

What are we to make of all this? Mary was undoubtedly a remarkable woman, ‘highly favoured by God’ as the Bible puts it. She was a young girl when she was landed with news that would turn her life upsidedown—in ways far from pleasant. She was to have a son, outside of marriage—an event in a time and culture where this was unthinkable. She is told that a ‘sword will pierce her heart too’—this son is going to bring great pain and sorrow to her. Yet she shows great fortitude and faith throughout.

But one thing she always does is to direct attention to her son, to step back from the limelight, and to keep him in it. She is presented in scripture as one who ‘ponders and stores things up in her heart’. Even when Christ ascended into Heaven and his followers were meeting in Jerusalem she still doesn’t push herself forward, she remains in the background. It would have been easy to try to claim status in that little group, but in her superb humility she doesn’t—for that would upstage her son, and his message of salvation. What a humility of heart.

I think this is significant, and bears thinking about. Her focus is not on herself, but always on her son. This is fully exemplified in words spoken at his first miracle when she turned to the servants and said, “Do whatever he tells you.” There she is, always directing the attention to Jesus.

And what is it he says? “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” It is Jesus who gives us rest. It is him we are to go to, and focus on.

What are we to make of these recent happenings? I think we should assess them by Holy Scripture’s own criteria. And I think that the biggest statement Mary ever made on earth was delivered somewhere around 30AD at Cana in Galilee, “Do whatever He tells you.” (John 2:5)

A young mother watched her baby son die in her arms after doctors refused to help because he was born two days too soon and therefore ‘just a foetus’.

In October of 2008 Sarah Capewell gave birth to Jayden after 21 weeks and five days of pregnancy. But doctors refused her desperate pleas to place him in intensive care because medical guidelines state that under 22 weeks a baby is a foetus and does not qualify for intensive care treatment.

Doctors refused to even see Jayden, who lived without support for almost two hours before passing away. Midwives had told her “We just have to get you to 22 weeks”, but because the pregnancy was only 21 weeks and 5 days Miss Capewell was not given drugs to delay the labour or help mature her baby’s lungs. Doctors at in Norfolk told her she should consider the labour as a miscarriage rather than a birth.

When Miss Capewell pleaded with a paediatrician “You have got to help”, he replied “No we don’t”. Begging doctors to consider her son’s human right to life, Miss Capewell says she was told: “He hasn’t got a human right, he is a foetus” and so he was refused admission to the special care baby unit.

Sarah Capewell has now launched a campaign to change the national guidelines for NHS hospitals which state that babies born before 22 weeks have such a low chance of survival that no attempt should be made to save them.

Although there are many difficulties with premature babies, it seems that a key factor here is not how much effort we make to save, but how we really regard them. If we regard them as human, we will try everything. The sobering thing about this case is the unwavering attitude of the doctors to stick by a paper rule, rather than to care for the person in front of them.

One wonders how much the protracted debate in the UK over abortion and the consequent need to define at what stage a baby is viable, or even human, has had on the thinking of doctors, medical staff and even the population at large.

Life seems to have become a commodity to be traded, or a burden to be weighed, or something evaluated against ‘quality of life’. Instead we need to see life at whatever end of the age spectrum as a gift from God, and all human beings as made in his image. And we need to see life as not finishing when it ends here.

So read the front page of Monday’s newspaper. It would be easy to just to roll your eyes and move on, but to pause and read the article is to get a glimpse of the hurt involved. The paper was tipped off by a woman who describes herself as a “humiliated wife” who wants this business to close “before more devastation is caused”. There is a world of hurt behind those phrases.

And even that isn’t the whole picture. The glib comment made by some that “at least they’ve the wit to charge” misses out on the fact that most prostitutes aren’t their own masters. According to one survey 80% to 95% of all prostitution is pimp-controlled. The weak and the vulnerable are preyed on. Some may enter it for easy money, but many for desperately needed money, or are lured or forced in. It has a devastating effect on those involved. One fourteen year old, describing the trauma of prostitution and its consequences, stated, “You feel like a piece of hamburger meat—all chopped up and barely holding together”.

Naïve television programmes portray the business as glitzy and that it’s about women being in control, but for the majority of women that imagery lies far from the truth. One writer says, “About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet.” It is a brutal and eventually dehumanising business.

Naivety also plays its part among those who say, “This is just a bit of fun between consenting adults.” We need to ask “Just how consenting is the woman—or is she trapped in a lifestyle she can’t get out of?” On the rare occasions when that question can be addressed satisfactorily—such as a woman wanting to make extra money on the side—the question must also be asked, “What are the wider effects on society, in particular how men see and treat women?”

Prostitution is the end product of a greedy, self-centred society in which pleasure without responsibility has become the goal, where men get their pleasure without thought to the women involved. Sex has become a god to be worshipped and pursued at all costs.

And there is another involved party: God has something to say. The bad news is that he will hold guilty those who use and abuse women, and those who abuse his good gifts. The good news is that he is also a God who offers acceptance and hope to those trapped in the vicious circle, a God who offers cleansing to those despoiled by others, and offers forgiveness to those who have despoiled them.

(For those looking for more information and help, Irish charity Ruhama offers professional help in the practical issues involved in leaving prostitution behind. They can be contacted at www.ruhama.ie or tel. 01 836 0292)

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

Three weeks before his come-back tour was due to commence Michael Jackson, pop legend and troubled soul, suffered a heart attack and died.

His musical career stretched over 5 decades, he had the biggest selling album of all time. He scaled the heights of staggering success, and plumbed the depths of intense personal mockery.

It’s hard to think of a public figure whose sadness was more on display on recent years. Watching him change his race, his looks, his age, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.

A man of immense musical ability, yet as a child he was the victim of his father’s desire for success at all costs. His childhood was taken from him in many ways and he spent much of his life trying to regain it. He yearned to be what he wasn’t and to have what he hadn’t.

He wasn’t particularly good at hiding his brokenness, and his attempts to find himself where evident to all as he yearned for the Paradise that he had lost, or perhaps the Peter Pan Neverland that he tried to build.

In many ways he was a tragic figure: everything that our culture worships—gifted, rich, successful—yet desperately unhappy, tortured and alone.

Not many have their brokenness as publicly displayed as Jackson, but many yearn for what they have lost, or for what they never had, or to be someone other than who they are. The brokenness of their lives is a daily reality for them. What hope is there if all the money and all the fame in the world can’t fix the hurt?

Ironically Michael Jackson wasn’t so far wrong. He yearned for a Paradise he had lost, a childhood he didn’t have. The answer was to be found in the true Paradise, and in becoming a child once more, this time a child in God’s family.

God is all too aware that this world is not the way it’s supposed to be. Paradise, the solution to all our problems will never be found here. Instead God the Son came to provide a way so that broken men and women could find wholeness again. God the Son came so that we could be adopted into the Father’s perfect family and enjoy his care in this broken world until he takes us home to Heaven—Paradise regained.

The solution isn’t to be found here, but in Jesus Christ—that’s where we can find acceptance of who we are, strength to change, and hope for final and glorious transformation.

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

Last week Connie Culp made the news as the first face transplant patient in the US. She had been shot in the face by her husband. The shotgun blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. She underwent 30 operations prior to the face transplant on December 10, 2008. During a 22-hour operation 80 percent of her face was replaced with the face from another woman who had recently died.

For Connie Culp it is the promise of a new life, free from disfigurement.

It provides a modern illustration of a biblical truth. We’ve been studying Paul’s letter to the Romans on Sundays. He has shown that no-one is remotely able to please God, not by being good, or even religious. If our souls had faces, we would be badly disfigured.

No amount of religious or moral makeup can transform the effects of the shotgun blast of our faults. We need radical surgery—a complete soul-facelift, with a perfection and beauty supplied from outside ourselves. The Bible teaches that God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, is willing to be that donor for us.

When we put our trust in his perfectly lived life, instead of trying to patch up our own, his righteousness is given to us. It is this soul-facelift that we need. His perfect life is counted as ours to such an extent that when God the Father looks at a Christian it’s as if he says, “This person looks familiar, they look like my perfect Son, I will accept them.”

This is what the Bible means when it talks about being clothed with Jesus’ perfect righteousness, or being justified. It’s a magnificent truth—accepted, given a new life because of someone else. And it isn’t a cheap case of fooling God, because it is God himself who supplies the facelift that he requires from us. He is both the surgeon and the donor.

And it heralds, for all who accept God’s offer of acceptance based on the perfection of Jesus, a new life of hope and promise, ultimately a life free from disfigurement.

By now the relics of Saint Therese have been and gone from Letterkenny. Reading about the life of Therese I was struck by her sacrifice, suffering and love. As I was thinking about saints and sainthood my mind turned to what the Bible has to say on the subject.

The word occurs nearly 70 times in the Bible and on every occasion it is used to refer to the ordinary followers of God. The apostle Paul uses it in his letters—addressing them to the saints at Corinth or Ephesus etc. Here’s the picture that emerges from the Bible of what a ‘saint’ is:-

• In the Bible a saint is someone who is very much alive. They send greetings, they receive letters, they form the congregations.

• In the Bible it is God who declares people to be saints. The word ‘sanctify’ and ‘saint’ come from the same Greek word. Sanctify means ‘to make holy’, and saint means ‘someone who is holy’. In Hebrews 10:10 we read, “we have been made holy (made saints) through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ.”

• In the Bible a saint isn’t perfect – the people Paul wrote to had many problems, but what made them saints was the fact that God had chosen them, and he was working in them and making them holy. Instead of us having to climb up the ladder to sainthood, God reaches down and lifts us up, removing our faults until in Heaven we will be perfect.

• In the Bible a saint isn’t someone who does miracles, it is God who works the miracle in making someone a saint. Despite their badness, God set his love on them and determined to make them saints, that is, to make them holy. The great miracle is that God is willing to put our sin on his Son, and to take the perfection of his Son and put it on us.

So the picture in the Bible of a saint is not one of a special person, but one of a special relationship with God. How does this relationship come about, how do we become saints? We need to ask God for forgiveness, and ask him to make us holy.

For every believer whose trust is in God alone for salvation God has worked a miracle, he has declared them holy, he is at present making them holy, and one day he will finish his work. They are all saints.

I suspect that by now most of you have seen the clip from the TV show Britain’s Got Talent, featuring a lady who wouldn’t fit into the usual categories of attractiveness, but whose voice took everyone by surprise—as if looks and voice are somehow linked. It’s been all over the web and TV stations around the world; celebrities have sent messages of support and her home has been besieged with media hounds.

It’s been interesting to watch the reaction of the press—rightly condemning the ‘looks’ driven culture in which we live. Yet it is one which they have created and fed with their incessant attention to beautiful people, diets and looks.

It’s hard to know whether we’re victims of our own shallowness, or of clever marketing by Simon Cowell and Co., or whether in true Disney fashion we just like the story of the Frog Princess. Or maybe we feel good about ourselves because we think, “Oh, those awful people sneering at that poor woman, I wouldn’t have made that mistake.”

So, I don’t know who was judging whom: was Susan Boyle judging the judges—exposing their shallowness? Or was Simon Cowell judging us—exposing our own shallowness and self-righteousness?

However the most poignant moment for me was found, not simply in the singing, but in the lyrics. This 47 year-old, single, unattractive woman, who lives alone with her cat, and who had a dream of being a professional singer like Elaine Paige, stood on the stage and sang:

“I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

It seemed to sum up everything that had happened before our eyes—the plainness of her looks, the sneering reaction of the audience—life had killed the dream. Yet here was Simon Cowell, looking on benevolently in some God-like manner, about to resurrect her dream.

And for a moment on our TV screens we had a little parable of the hope that God offers to people who in his eyes are unattractive. And it’s not that he sees the good in us, but he sees all that’s wrong, and offers to rescue us anyway. He offers us far beyond anything we have dreamed, and a transformation beyond anything we could imagine. And best of all, unlike Susan Boyle’s recording contract, it will never end.

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Just a note to invite you to a talk entitled “What are you banking on? What would happen if we applied good investment principles to our spiritual lives?” 8pm Sunday 26th, the Day Centre, Oliver Plunkett Rd, Letterkenny.

• A yearly pension of £693,000 for the former boss of a bank which recorded losses last year of £24 billion.
• People investing for years in pension schemes only to see them crash and leave them with nothing.
• Banks pulling in loans on little customers while writing off colossal debts of bigger ones as ‘unrecoverable’.
• Bankers playing games with figures on paper, while mounting massive debts.
• Chairmen and directors creaming off profits while those at the bottom of the chain get ripped off.
• Developers and banks causing the problems, farmers and the man in the street left to shoulder the burden.
• Small businesses crushed out of existence because bigger ones wouldn’t pay what they owed.
• Faithful customers who regularly pay on time footing the bill for those who don’t.

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Countless other examples could be given. It seems so unfair. What do we do? Four options are: join in, be indifferent, get angry, or despair.

Nothing much needs to be said about joining in. It’s just wrong.

Indifference is a self-centred response—“Me and mine are ok, so I don’t care about anyone else”. But it all changes suddenly when we find out that we are affected.

Anger is fruitless. We get angry and frustrated because we feel—rightly—that something should be done about it, yet we feel so impotent. Even at a basic level we have very little by way of comeback.

Or we despair, simply because we feel there is nothing we can do. What’s the point of trying to be decent and save, and invest wisely, and be a good consumer? And how are we going to cope with these difficulties? It leads to cynicism and a consuming bitterness that eats away at our souls.

Thankfully there is a fifth option. What does God’s word have to say? Psalm 37 is particularly relevant; here are some of its verses (although I’d encourage you to read it all):

“Do not fret because of evil men
or be envious of those who do wrong;
for like the grass they will soon wither,
like green plants they will soon die away.
Trust in the Lord and do good…
Delight yourself in the Lord
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
The wicked borrow and do not repay…
those the Lord blesses will inherit the land…
For the Lord loves the just
and will not forsake his faithful ones.
They will be protected forever,
but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off.

The songwriter acknowledges that life is unfair, but the day is coming when all will give account—they will only get away with it for so long. God sees, and God takes note.

Instead of anger, he calls us to trust in a God who promises to judge all injustice, especially that which oppresses the poor and the needy (v14). Instead of despair he calls us to trust in a God who will provide for his people. Instead of joining in, he calls us to continue living justly, knowing that the time will come when God will reward our obedience.

But there is little point taking comfort in the fact that God’s justice will catch up with others, for it will also catch up with us—and so we need someone to bail us out, not a bank, but the Son of God.

As I write this on Tuesday the world waits with baited breath for the inauguration of Barack Obama as forty-fourth president of the United States. He is hailed as some sort of messiah, the bringer of hope, the solution to America’s, and hence the world’s, problems.

He’s young and charismatic—and he comes to the forefront at a troubled time. What colossal expectations perch on his shoulders. So much hype, so much anticipation; much of it seemingly placed there by a country seeking to atone for its racist past and heaping all its hopes, dreams and penance on this one man.

I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a sacrificial lamb.

You know how it is—we unrealistically place all our hopes on someone, and then when they fail to live up to this improbable ideal we turn on them with savage ferocity, disappointed far more at ourselves than at them, but not having the wit to realise it. Just like the English media does every four years when it finds that its football team aren’t world beaters!

And then starts the recriminations, the blaming, the finger-pointing, the criticisms.

We have looked for a messiah, and they have failed.

Brian Cowen and co. are getting it at the minute. The rugby team will likely get it by the end of the six-nations, for we’ll have looked at them to lift our spirits out of recessional gloom. And we’ll fire Declan Kidney for not being the saviour of Irish rugby and for failing to reverse the economic downturn.

Of course the reality is that we keep looking for a messiah in all the wrong places. And when it comes to the one who is the Messiah we look to him for all the wrong reasons.

We look to Barack Obama to solve the global financial crisis, to bring inter-racial harmony, to solve the crime problem in America, to deal with the carnage in Gaza and to bring peace to both Afghanistan and Iraq—tasks that lie more in the realm of what a god could do. Whether it’s our elected representatives or even our football or rugby teams, we look to them to bring about things far beyond their abilities. That’s unfair—that’s not what they signed up for.

On the other hand we look to Jesus for all the wrong reasons—to sort out our dodgy knee, to find us a parking space, to help us win the Lotto, to get us out of this fix or that. It’s not a Saviour we want, but a supernatural personal assistant/medical expert/lucky star. Then we blame him for not dancing to our tune. That’s unfair—that’s not what he came for.

Of course if he really is God, then he wouldn’t be fitting to our agenda, but calling us to fit into his. But we don’t like to think about that, and instead we persist with looking for saviours amongst our politicians or whatever other heroes we choose, and we dump the small-fry stuff on Jesus.

And when neither of them live up to our unfair, unwarranted expectations we hang them out to dry, proclaiming all along that we knew better.

If we really knew better, we’d look in the right place.

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

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.