Advent 2014

It's Advent now, which means I have to at least attempt to be serious and positive on this lame excuse for a "blog." But I'm not sure this is possible without help; so I enlist Austin Farrer, who described the season like this:

"Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return ; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity."

Judgement runs out into mercy.

So Money

Maybe there'll be some for Bishop "Dick" Harries who thinks England should have a Muslim coronation ceremony. "Dick" once wrote a book called Is there a Gospel for the Rich? which featured him grinning on the front cover.

Go figure,

LSP