This is an item I put in the local Pioneer magazine recently - I hope you like it!

A Pearl of Great Price?

In my pocket I carry with me a large white marble. From time to time I take it out and hold it for a moment, or feel its smooth roundness in my pocket. I do it to remind me of certain important things. I do it especially when I'm feeling lonely or misunderstood, or when things aren't going my way. In short, when I'm tempted to feel a bit unloved and a bit down.

The marble reminds me of a story Jesus told - the story of the pearl of great price. There was a merchant, He said, who was a dealer in fine pearls. One day he found one of such exceptional beauty and lustre that he sold all that he had to buy it. On the face of it, Jesus was saying that we ought to value God's presence and love so much that everything else fades by comparison. It's a great message for these cynical times when we seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It's our fixation with greedy materialism that landed us in recession.

But we can also turn the story round. What if it is not about us searching for God, but God searching for us? Is He the merchant hunting for pearls? If so, it means He gave everything, His best and finest, in order to have us. This is just what the life of Jesus tells us. He came among us so He could lay down His life for us on the cross. He gave everything to have us. We are His pearl of great price.

So that's what my little marble reminds me of. I'm not lonely or unwanted or insignificant or worthless - even when my circumstances or emotions say I am. I am God's pearl, for love of whom He gave everything. Wow.

Sadly I haven't got a real pearl of great price for my reminder - can't afford it! And it's just as well really, because that reminds me I don't have to be anything special for God to love me. Ordinary people, with all their up and downs, are precious to God. So much so that He gave Jesus for them.

Have you found your pearl yet?

with love in Jesus from Colin.

Coming home

I've been threatening for some time to put my conversion story on to the blog - after all, it is the best thing that's happened to me. At last I've got round to it. A quieter summer period helps, and so did Jeremy, asking for stories to put in a booklet of testimonies so we can all see how God has worked in the lives of people at St Matthew's. Here's what I wrote:

I was a tortured soul as a youth. My parents had moved constantly while I was younger, usually to totally different parts of the country. I went through the experience of losing friends and trying to make new ones so many times that in the end I just gave up - what was the point? I'd soon be saying goodbye again. I became lonely and withdrawn.

I'd always believed there was a God since I first thought about it. I hadn't been brought up with this - my parents didn't take us to church or tell us about their beliefs. But somehow this conviction had taken hold of my life. The difficulty was, I couldn't seem to find this God I believed in. I tried lots of things - Eastern spirituality was in fashion - and thought that if you rolled all the beliefs about God together you be bound to come up with something like the truth in the end. But none of it filled the deep emptiness I felt within. I began to wonder if God didn't want me.

Then my father died very suddenly of a heart attack and things got a great deal worse. I found I had nothing inside to help me care for my mum, who was devastated, nor for my brothers, when they most needed me. We fell apart a bit. God seemed further away than ever. I sank into depression. Life had no meaning or purpose whatever.

Bedtime many months later: as I got ready for bed I prayed, "God, if you're there at all, you can have my life. It's no use to me." I fell asleep immediately, something I had been unable to do for a long time.

The following day I felt a strange urge to get up and go out into the streets. I remembered what I had prayed. "This is a strange urge," I thought, "Could this be God answering my prayer?" So off I went. I bumped into someone who was actually going along to an evening service at my local parish church. It was the last place on earth I'd thought of to go looking for God. But over a period of weeks, as I heard and responded to what I heard there, I came to realise that the way to find God is through Jesus.

I remember the night it finally dawned on me that God really loved me: a warm Devon night in August. I had gone away with the Church Youth for a week's houseparty and a brilliant speaker had seemed to speak straight into my heart. I went out and lay on the grass, looking up at the stars, and finally felt that there was a place for me in the universe.

What about you? If you're at St Matthew's and you have a story of what God has done for you, please let Jeremy have it, and soon! Don't forget they're supposed to be anonymous (sorry about that Jeremy - can a blogging vicar be a special case?)

Colin.

Ok, so the Times isn't listening...

I've got annoyed with the Times again, especially with their commentator Matthew Parris, who clearly hates God and has it in for Christians. Every time he writes on this subject he tries to put across to the public that faith equals foaming at the mouth fanaticism. Well, the Christians I know just aren't like that. Most of them seem fairly sane and committed to loving their neighbours, not blowing them up!

Tony Blair's recent speech on the role of faith in political life gave Mr Parris a field day for his prejudices, so I wrote in to the Editor. Of course I know they won't bother with my letter, so I'm posting it up here instead...

... not that I agree with Tony Blair about lots of things. Iraq for example. The problem here isn't that Tony Blair was too Christian but rather that he wasn't Christian enough. Love your neighbour, for example, means war must be a last resort, not a first resort, and as for the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction...

But in spite of Mr Blair's example, Christianity has had a superb track record in changing the lot of mankind for the better. But now I'm going over my letter in advance. Why not just read it.

Sir, I don't recognise the Christianity so disgracefully caricatured by Matthew Parris in his comments on Saturday 5 April. Jesus commanded his followers to love their neighbours, to show compassion, to offer practical help, to forgive, to avoid judging others. If this is fanaticism, the world needs a lot more of it.

We don't always live up to our Master's teachings, but it is because we have too little Christianity, not too much. As Jonathan Swift wrote, we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.

Christians have such a lot to offer in the public arena, as the lives of Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, William Wilberforce, William Gladstone, the Earl of Shaftesbury, General Booth, the founders of Oxfam, The Samaritans and many other agencies that improve the lives of countless people all demonstrate. Frankly, I don't think secularism has nearly such a good track record, probably because atheists don't have the same values and motivation. If Mr Parris, who clearly has his own fanaticism, ever got his wish to see Christianity stamped out of public life, it would be a very very sad blow against the wellbeing of the human race.

Colin Gibson.

Sounding Off

It's been a while since I last blogged - things got busy for a bit and then I went off for a break. So I hope you haven't given up looking at the blog from time to time.

Actually I'm using the blog to paste up a letter I just wrote to The Times. Their correspondent decided to sound off against Christian magistrates, doctors, foster parents and adoption agencies who opt out of cases where their ethical beliefs would be compromised. Her proposal was that Christians should simply be banned from holding any such posts. I hope you agree with me that the exclusion of christianity from public life in this way would be an extremely worrying development.

Anyway, here's my letter. I doubt The Times will print it but at least someone can read it now. Please let me know what you think.

"Sir,

Should we decide ethical issues by majority, as your correspondent Carol Sarler opines in Monday's Thunderer Article? Hitler famously won a majority while Jesus Christ was rejected by the people of his day. I know whose ethics I prefer!

The tendency of the article was to support the elimination of Christians from public office because of their stance on family issues, sexuality and abortion. This is deplorable. Christian ethical vision underlies many of the most significant social developments in our culture: Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade, Shaftesbury and the Factory Acts, Gladstone and the Reform Acts, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Third World Relief, Drop the Debt... Christian passion and conviction has constantly renewed our society and has improved the lives of millions of people, often in the teeth of bitter opposition from the majority. We should not allow this the main stream of our moral heritage to be extirpated from civic life without serious prior reflection.

The Reverend Colin Gibson
Walsall"

A love letter from Jesus?

Last Sunday was Paula's priesting here at St Matthew's, along with Sue, Liz and Rob. We had a very splendid service with a bishop and archdeacon, processions here and there and more vicars than you can shake a stick at. The bishop asked me to preach, so I chose 2 Corinthians 3:1-6, which is about being a living letter from Jesus.

Afterwards someone was kind enough to ask for a copy of the sermon, so I promised to put it on the blog. Here it is!

A nervous young vicar was wandering around his new parish, feeling slightly self-conscious in his shiny clerical collar. He saw an old gaffer working in his garden and decided he ought to do his part to spread the word.
"Good morning!" he called. "You and the Lord together have made a beautiful job of that garden!"
"You're right, vicar," said the old gaffer, "But you should have seen it when He had it on His own!"

Ever since God gave the task of ruling and nurturing the world to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 He has chosen to work through us human beings. Supremely He has done this through the Son of Man, who is the ultimate expression of His purposes in human form; and since Jesus ascended into heaven He continues to use us His people to communicate with His world.

But how can we be an effective communication? Communication is a dark art, fraught with difficulties and misunderstandings: like the young man who decided to say it with flowers:

A young man was very much in love with a beautiful girl. One day she told him that the next day was her birthday. He told her he would send her a bouquet of roses, one for each year of her life.
That evening he called the local florist and ordered twenty-one roses with instructions that they be delivered first thing the next morning. As the florist was preparing the order, she decided that since the young man was such a good customer, she would put an extra dozen roses in the bouquet...
He never did find out why the girl never spoke to him again.

Today's reading describes that communication as a living letter, written on human hearts (v.3), known and read by everybody (v.2). How can we be a letter from Jesus more effectively? 3 ways:-

1. be a love letter.
• above all the message of Jesus is a message of love: "God so loved the world..." If people don't see God's love in us then we are not an authentic letter from Jesus because we are not conveying his message.
• My biggest mistakes in ministry have been when I've become too absorbed in tasks and not given enough time to people. If people can't see God's love in us we have lost the plot. But it's so easy when you sit down in front of your to do list.
• in 1907 there were around 50k clergy serving a population of some 40m. in 2007 there are not much over 10k clergy serving 60m. Of course we're hard pressed...
• but let's see people who come to us not as interruptions but as messengers from God, reminding us to re-prioritise. The rotas and timetables and agendas and meetings and reports and returns are not the most important things. People need to know you love them!
• Not only that, but if we are not a love letter, nobody will want to read us. People are fed up of reading of a church that is judgmental, stuffy, that fudges everything, hypocritical and inward-looking. People are crying out for an authentic spirituality: for Christians, that means love.
• Above all, give people time - a precious gift in an over busy age - as Jesus did.

2. be human
• God's ultimate communication was not through the prophets or written laws. It was through a human being - "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Jesus was not afraid to be vulnerable - hungry, thirsty, tired, angry, sad, happy, suffering, tempted - and nor should we.
• Our humanity is therefore not an obstruction to God's work in our lives, but the very vehicle and living channel of it - because that's how it was for Jesus. Our humanity is God's gift!
• Christian testimony is not "look at me, I'm perfect!" - that's the testimony of the Pharisees. Christian testimony says, "I'm fallen - but I have somebody with me who keeps on picking me up"
• So don't keep up a front! People aren't helped by that. They feel, "I can't live up to that" and they go away discouraged. That's the letter that kills, v.6.

3. hand written
• No word processors for Paul! everything was written by hand. In the same way, we, God's letter to the world, need to have His fingerprints all over us.
• The Holy Spirit's role is absolutely essential - v.3: vital to keep the channel of communication with God wide open! Even the apostle Paul couldn't do it on his own, v.5: how much less can we. We simply must have the Spirit for thi ministry, v.6.
• The Spirit should be writing the story of our lives, shaping our attitudes, outlook, values, vision, relationships... Footballers have ghost writers to help them tell their story and we need a Holy Ghost writer to work with uson the story of our lives.
• That's why we pray for the Spirit's anointing at a priesting - and at confirmations...

Conclusion
• ... you see this isn't just about Paula, Liz, Sue and Rob, with me as the grizzled old veteran addressing the rookies and telling them how to do it. For one thing, Paula, Liz, Sue and Rob already have loads of experience!
• This is about everyone here! Letter addressed to everyone in the church at Corinth.
• Some have special roles, like our new priests - to help prepare the letter (v.3). But we all together are that letter.

So what kind of letter are you?
- A love letter?
- is your humanity showing?
- are you handwritten by the Spirit?
What do people read when they look into your life?

Young people of today...

What a fantastic weekend! A bunch of young people from Church Hill Praise / Queen Mary's Joint Christian Union spent last weekend washing cars (including mine), picking up litter, doing up people's gardens - and they appeared to enjoy every minute of it! They also offered a free barbecue to all comers and rounded off with a brilliant evening of praise and testimony in the St Matthew's Community Centre.

Why? Because that's how they feel they should serve Jesus, who loved us and washed his disciples feet. That's how they wanted to reach out to other people, not by hitting them first with the message, but by warming them first with practical love. It worked for one lady in her 80s, who responded to the praise night by telling us that it was the best night of her life!

It was hard to disagree with her. You could feel the warmth and joy coming off these young people, and see it in the way they treated each other. It is such a privilege to have so many passionate, enthusiastic and caring young people coming to our church - thank you so much! And it wasn't as if they made some great duty out of it. They were all having fun.

Jesus said, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." I think our young people demonstrated that last weekend. And I think some of our older people, myself included, may need to learn it all over again from them.

Rootless?

I've always felt like rather a rootless person. My dad was a Scot who left his roots and came to England: my mother was born in India in the days of the Raj and had to leave in 1947. Before I was born they had moved several times and they carried on doing so as I grew up, together with my brothers, Ian, Andrew and Douglas. At first it was because Dad was in the army. I remember a lovely spell in Cyprus when he was posted there. After he left the Army our moves continued, because of work and the housing market.

I think the crunch came when I was 13 and we had what turned out to be the last move for some years, to Kent. I had reached the age where the childish innocence that does not look too far ahead was no longer available to me. I knew that I would never see the friends I had made in our last place again. I gave up trying to make new friends. What was the point? I would only lose them again. I became miserable and withdrawn. I failed to appreciate the good points of my travels - that I had met lots of people and lived in lots of places that I would never have seen if I had stayed in the same town all my life.

This sense of loneliness and emptiness had a lot to do with my conversion - but I'll do another entry about that. Finding that God loved me was a great healer for my personality and helped me to open up to other people in new ways. I'll never be a Graham Norton or a Muhammad Ali (thank goodness!) but at least I'm not permanently stuck in wallflower mode. However when God called me to be a vicar I knew I would be facing more moves, more farewells and more heartache. I sometimes look with envy at communities like Walsall, where many people have known one another all their lives and have deep friendships going back to childhood.

So it was one of the highlights of my year to meet up with some old university friends recently. I suppose my sense of the inevitability of the loss of friends had influenced me not to keep in touch with them as I could easily have done. Sometimes we collude with our own negative attitudes and turn them into self-fulfilling prophecies. So thank God for Chris, who put the energy in and brought us all together: Chris, Simon, Max, Jon and myself. I was the most centrally located, so we all had lunch at my place and a wonderful time of catching up.

For we were The Five - a bunch of Christians who were all poets! We'd even managed to publish a small anthology. We soon discovered that our main inspiration came from unrequited love, so we took a vow that if any of us got engaged we would be ceremonially dumped in the River Cam by the others. I'm pleased to say I've escaped so far - Weil's and who knows what other diseases lurk that way. I did however receive, soon after meeting Elisa, an envelope marked "Warning! Contains 10,000 gallons of dehydrated Cam water". Anyway, we're all married now, so the only thing to do would be to all jump in together.

Although we have all been marked and changed in various ways by life's experiences, it was such a golden time to be together. We worked out that we were within a few days of our 30th anniversary of leaving university and splitting up. I can't tell you how our reunion has lifted me. "I have got friendships going back 30 years! I'm not so different from the people around me who have roots - I have a rootlet or five myself!" And of course we're going to meet again very soon, and make it a regular event, and re-explore those roots.

Ultimately we all share a longing for roots. This longing reflects our needs for identity and security. We sometimes look for roots in places - that's why we slap preservation orders on them - and sometimes on churches - that's why society wants them to be museums instead of living, worshipping communities. We're on stronger ground when we look for them in relationships with others. But even those relationships cannot last forever.
My dear and rediscovered friends have all been marked by the experiences that have altered us, and we are all reaching an age where we cannot help being aware of our mortality. The sad thing is that we have no lasting roots while we are on this planet.

I think our desire for roots ultimately points us towards our need to be rooted in the love of God, the only place where they can really last. A beautiful verse from the Bible says, "God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men - yet they cannot fathom what He has done." Here are both the reality of the roots and the longing to find them, the temporaneity and the eternity. As another passage says, we are aliens and strangers on the earth, nomads longing for a better country, our heavenly home in God's love.

Meanwhile, what of The Five? We're all still writing so we are starting to work up another little anthology. It probably won't be the publishing sensation of 2008, but that's not the point. Here's one of my contributions - interestingly enough it's about being rooted, pictured in a forest, but gradually withdrawing from outward roots to focus more and more on inward roots in the love of God. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any thoughts about it, please post them on the blog.

Ashburnham Woods

Nothing hurts the eye's peace
But a leaf's small trembling:
Only the tree-dew dropping
Plops in the ear's stillness:
Here in this small pause
Life's million wars upon the heart
Let lapse away, release
The grip kept tight about the soul,
That she too may enter on peace.

Now is the pure moment
Of my unquiet residence
In this two yards of clay,
You and I as all:
I in my swamp of hope,
Memory and desire, You
In the pure circle of eternity
And Your circle touches me
And the word of Your touch is love.