Because · 2015. 11. 4. · was awake. Stuff was dropping from great big flames and falling to the fields below. People were scared and crying. I was very scared and began to cry

Because ...for anyone who’s ever asked, ‘why?’www.because.uk.comNovember 2015

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It’s incredible to think that Elvis Presley, who died 38 years ago, would have been 80 years old this year. He was, of course, the first global rock star and sold 250 million albums during his singing career.

But even after he’s been dead that length of time he is to release another album; he’ll be performing with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a beyond-the-grave collaboration marking the King of Rock and Roll’s birthday.

This 14-track album, entitled If I Can Dream is to be released this month and will feature some of his vocal performances such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “In the Ghetto”. I suspect that this is something Elvis would have liked to have done, and it’s such a shame that he didn’t achieve that goal during his many years of fame, don’t you think?

By all accounts Elvis wasn’t a happy man, and some

say that he never came to terms about who he was meant to be or what his purpose in life was.

And you know, during our busy lives, many of us never screech to a halt and ask those questions – “Who am I? Why am I here and is there a purpose for my life?” This reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon – when Lucy asks Charlie Brown, “Why are we here?” He replies, “To love others,” there’s a long pause and then Lucy asks the question, “So why are the others here?” I think that is really funny but it is also a great question.

Thankfully you don’t need to be in doubt about your purpose in life. You are here because God has created you to be one of his children and as such you are very precious to him. He has a plan and a purpose for all of us and that includes a future and a hope – the hope is for now, as we look ahead, and the future is what we will receive when our King, Jesus Christ, returns!

The Return of the King!

BY CLIFF NEILL

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I was there...

The Remembrance Day Bombing

In the Fifth of our “I was there” series John Magowan, Pam Maylin and Michael Dandridge share memories of moments in British history

The year was 1987, and the day, Sunday 8th of November. Scores of people had turned out at the Enniskillen Cenotaph in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, to remember the dead of both world wars. The outdoor service was to take place commencing 11am.

The Cenotaph was located immediately in front of the gable end of a Catholic owned recreation hall, as one enters the town coming from the direction of Belfast. Totally unaware to the gathering crowd, a Provisional IRA time-bomb was about to explode inside the gable wall of the building! The bomb exploded at 10.43 wreaking the building and showering the people with bricks and mortar.

What was to be a dignified, Annual Service of Remembrance, turned out to look like a battlefield itself! When the casualties were counted, the results were 12 dead and 63 with non-fatal injuries. It was a horrible scene of carnage and devastation. Some of our readers might remember the television footage of this horrible event.

Gordon Wilson, who owned a drapery shop in the town, was among the injured. Sadly, his daughter, Marie, who was standing beside him at the time of the blast, died of her injuries. Mr Wilson later became world famous for his humble act of forgiving the perpetrators for their cowardly act.

My job at the time was driving for a pharmaceutical

wholesale company, and included delivering drugs daily to Enniskillen. When I arrived at the town the next day, the devastation was awful. The atmosphere was hard to put into words…one of deep shock, sadness and disbelief. I could only pray silently for the families and friends of the unfortunate victims of this outrage, and ask God to send His Son, the Prince of Peace, to this tired and war-weary planet of ours.

After being checked out by the local police, I was

allowed into the town to deliver the medical supplies to Erne Hospital and the surrounding pharmacies.

I continued to deliver to Enniskillen for another six years, and, although life returned to reasonable normality soon after the bomb, it left a legacy of sadness that will be difficult to erase from the minds of those who lost loved ones on that fateful day in 1987. God speed His glorious kingdom!

Article by John Magowan

In 1949 a full sized replica longboat was sailed to Ramsgate on the Kent coast. I was 6 at the time and was taken to the harbour in Ramsgate (my home town) to see it rowed into the harbour by the Danish crew who had sailed the ship, the Hugin, from Denmark to commemorate the 1,500th anniversary of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain.

Pegwell Bay (just outside Ramsgate was the traditional landing place of Hengist and Horsa. Hengist’s daughter later became bethrothed to King Vortigern of Kent. Out of 53 crewmen only the navigator, Peter Jensen, was a professional seaman. Historic conditions were faithfully observed and the only instrument carried was a sextant. The Hugin was offered as a gift to Ramsgate and Broadstairs.

Article by Pam Maylin, photo is of Pam at 6 or 7 years of age with her parents.

‘Wake up wake up quick - wrap up warm, I’ll sit you in your old pram, come outside with us’.It was daylight – was it morning already? No, it was the middle of the night! What is going on? The sky was on fire! There was a huge orange flaming ball, and it lit up all the village and the countryside around. People were shouting and running about. The whole village was awake. Stuff was dropping from great big flames and falling to the fields below. People were scared and crying. I was very scared and began to cry too.

This is my mother describing her earliest memory of a disaster that occurred nearly 100 years ago in their village of Cuffley, Hertfordshire. The First World War bombing raids were new and had made everyone afraid not only of the German bombs but of our own falling ammunition and shrapnel.

The airships usually flew so high that our Royal Flying Corps could not fly high enough to reach them.

Years later we found that it was the night of 2nd.September 1916. One of the many Zeppelins bombing London was picked up by searchlights at 2:00 am, and fired on from below by one of our biplanes and lost altitude. It then caught fire. Enveloped in flames, the

crew decided to throw themselves 300ft to the ground rather than burn to death. None survived. Our biplane pilot was awarded the VC. Pieces of the airship were gathered the next day by the Red Cross and sold as souvenirs.

What a dreadful memory!

Article by Michael Dandridge, whose mother is aged 103 and now lives with his sister in Hampshire

The Night the Sky Caught Fire

The 1,500th Anniversary of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion

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Perhaps you’ve heard of Shelley’s Ozymandias, the poem often thought to have been written to commemorate the moving of a bust of Ramesses II to the British Museum. In it, the “traveler from an antique land” discovers a lone statue in the middle of the desert with the famous line written at its base: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

The silence and emptiness of the desert provide the backdrop for this bold claim. The present troubles in Syria, especially the destruction of ancient sites such as Palmyra, bring this line to mind. Islamic State’s destruction of Palmyra seems like the desperate act of people despairing over the mighty works of long dead empires. Hide the past under an ocean of sand; it’ll be like it never happened. Sadly, IS is not alone in hiding from history.

There is another story that we in the west have long missed out on, because at times it was regarded as inconvenient, at other times, irrelevant. Did you know that some of the Syrian refugees and migrants entering into Europe are actually Christian? But this vibrant displaced Christian community may not have been one you’d heard of prior to the Syrian crisis. Who are these Christians?

To answer that question, I’m going to ask another: when did the first Christian missionaries reach China? How about another question: when were the first Christian texts translated into Chinese? In both cases the answers might surprise you. In The Lost History of Christianity, historian Philip Jenkins reminds the Christian collective memory that there were Christian missionaries working in Sri Lanka before they came to Ireland. At the beginning of the 1st millennium there are as many Christians in mainland Asia as there are in Europe. This was the Church of the East.

We often call the Church of the East Nestorians, this misnomer making us think of them as some divergent sect of Christianity. The truth is that, though there are doctrinal differences between us, the gospel is as central to their faith as it is to ours. A millennium ago these Christians were the scholars of their cultures. In the great city of Merv, which sat upon the famous silk road, these Christians engaged in lively debate with Muslims and Hindus and here they translated many early Christian texts into Chinese to aid their evangelistic efforts. They were advisors to kings and emperors, and engaged in deep conversations about faith and theology.

The decline of the Church in the East happened neither swiftly nor silently. But in the west, we were so enwrapped in our own problems that the Church in

Voices in the Desertby Fraser Henderson

the East may as well have gone “gentle into that good night”, as Dylan Thomas put it. For a time the Church in the East had a good go of challenging the rise of Islam. With the coming of the Mongol horde under Genghis Khan it initially saw a slight growth as the Mongols took for themselves Christian wives, who slowly began to convert their husbands. As the Golden Horde pushed west, however, they also began to take Muslim wives, and over time the husbands of these wives established the dominant culture where they settled.

The Church of the East began its slow decline into obscurity. Between pogroms and military conquests the church was slowly overcome. Our brothers and sisters, co-workers in Christ, whom history forgot. That is, were it not for the relatively few pockets of safety that they managed to hold onto in the Middle-Eastern world. One of those main pockets of safety until March 2011 was Damascus. As IS closes in on some of these remaining Christian enclaves many have been forced to flee. Having travelled for miles they have arrived at the doors of the countries of their Christian brothers and sisters. In some cases they have been welcomed, but in others turned back,

often for fear of ‘protecting our Christian nations.’

Regardless of your view on the migrant crisis, one fact cannot be escaped – Syria’s civil war needs to end. Let us pray for an end of this conflict in Syria, let us pray that IS doesn’t make its way to knock on Damascus’ door. Let us pray for the Church in the East – though to us in the West they have remained hidden in history, yet the sands of time have not overcome them (though not for lack of trying.) Ozymandias’ bust declared with pride the might of his hand to the empty desert, but the Church in the East walks a humbler path – they remain a voice in the desert crying, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”

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The bust of Ramesses II in the British Museum that was thought to have inspired the poem

Ozymandias.

An Isis propaganda photo of the destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, Syria.

“Behold”It’s one of those words. So archaic, so religious – like “verily” or “thee” and “thine”. We don’t talk that way anymore.

But that’s a shame. Because the meaning of “behold” will take your breath away – like each judge’s breath was taken away on Britain’s Got Talent.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Behold” often appears in the older translations of the Bible: “Behold” the apostle John wrote, “what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! (1 John 3:1 NKJV)”

Most modern bible translations have either removed the word “behold” or replaced it with words that may leave the reader in ignorance as to what the writer in-tended. That’s because “behold” is the Greek word “idou” which is difficult to translate from Greek to English as it carries intense feeling and emotion. No single English word fits but “idou” carries the idea of shock, amazement and wonder. Today, “behold” might be better translated, “Wow!”1 It’s something like the awe we experience when we view a beautiful painting, gaze into the starry heavens or... witness something extraordinary on the reality programme Britain’s Got Talent.

Perhaps you saw it a couple of years ago. A little middle-aged lady strode purposefully onto the stage and introduced herself as Susan Boyle. The judges took one look at her and rolled their eyes at each other dis-missively. Many in the audience smirked and giggled. Some shouted at Susan even before she started sing-ing. But when she burst into a stunning rendition of the famous “I Dreamed A Dream”2 the judgmental laugh-ter and scorn immediately dissipated. The judges were astonished. They gasped momentarily, lost in wonder. The audience responded to the excellence and beauty by jumping to their feet and cheering.

When judge Piers Morgen finally caught his breath he said this audition was “without a doubt the biggest surprise I have had in three years of this show. That

was stunning, an incredible performance. Amazing. I’m reeling from shock. I can’t believe it!” The rarely complimentary Simon Cowell called the performance “extraordinary”. “I am so thrilled,” said fellow judge Amanda Holden, “I got goose pimples!”

“Susan Boyle,” wrote a journalist, “let me feel, for the duration of one blazing show-stopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea un-til tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective.”

Even Cameron MacIntosh, producer of Les Misérables, pronounced himself “gob-smacked” by the perfor-mance, calling it “one of the best versions of the song I’ve ever heard.”

Gob smacked. Goose bumps. Awe. Beauty. Breathtak-ing. Inspiring. Behold.

When I saw the reaction of the judges and the audience I got a glimpse of what “behold” means. Through the awe and the beauty and the tears there was a connection – a connection that reached right into the heart. Such human feelings are gifts that God has given to us, and I believe we can see them as pointers to the reality of who God is and who we are because of what God has done.

Thank you judges. The eyes of my heart have been enlightened. No longer do I see “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!,” as I did before. I can now exclaim “Will you look at this amazing, stunning, out-of-the-world love that God is sharing with us? That we should be called the children of God, and that’s what we are. ‘Children of God’ is not simply a high-sound-ing name that we bear; it’s a reality! It’s a gift from God! Can you believe that? That’s breathtaking! Stag-gering! Behold this awesome love of God!”

Wow!

Used with kind permission of Face to Face.

1 Renner, Rick: Sparkling Gems from the Greek2 You will find Susan Boyle’s audition on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

What I learned from “Britain’s Got Talent”

by Gordon Green

The microwave is one of the greatest inventions for the kitchen. It allows us to quickly reheat or cook food, including pop-corn (my favourite).

But it might have been only the beginning of the trend to deliver instant gratification and a cause of the in-creasing lack of patience rampant today. Everyone wants what they want right now!

Impatience isn’t the only consequence of our want-it-now, get-it-now society. We’ve stopped thinking about the future. In an article in the autumn 2014 issue of The American Scholar titled ‘Instant Gratification’, Paul Roberts talked about how the growing problem of wanting and getting what we desire instantly is causing more problems than just a lot of impatience. “Under the escalating drive for quick, efficient ‘returns,’ our whole so-cio-economic system is adopting an almost childlike impulsiveness, wholly obsessed with short-term gain and narrow self-inter-est and increasingly oblivious to long-term consequences.”

We see this everywhere we look, from drivers cutting each other off in traffic be-cause they’re in a hurry, to students cheat-ing on tests rather than patiently studying to really get the material. Get-rich-quick schemes have always been with us, but more and more we see corporations focus-ing on making profits over the long term good of society.

Instant gratification is having a negative ef-fect on overall maturity, as Roberts says in the above mentioned article: “The notion of future consequences, so essential to our development as functional citizens, as adults, is relegated to the background, inviting us to remain in a state of permanent childhood.”

People as a whole used to be able to wait patiently: farmers waited for their crops; we waited for letters in the mail; travel took longer, news wasn’t instant; we didn’t have mobile banking, mobile shopping or over-night deliveries. Everything took time. I think this has affected the way we think of God’s plan and anticipate the Kingdom. With the focus on getting what we want

immediately, have we forgotten this life isn’t all there is? We want everything to be perfect now, forgetting the perfection of heaven is far off and is what we wait for with great anticipation.

Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Rea-gan, said something that struck me as a profound truth in our impatient times: “I think we have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated—that, in a way, life is overrated. ...Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short one. We are the first genera-tions of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such un-happiness. The reason: If you do not believe in another,

higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness—if that is what you believe, then you are not disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are despairing” (Forbes Magazine: September 14, 1992).

Life is not about getting everything we want right now. It’s about doing the best we can, “living a life of good-ness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17, NLT) and looking forward, with patience, to the time when God will make all things new. This life isn’t all there is: we have a future well worth waiting for.

WAIT FOR IT...BY TAMMY TKACH

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Speaking of Life:

You’re Never Too Young

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Have you heard about the boy from England who became the youngest computer specialist in the world? Ayan Qureshi was only five years old when he passed a complicated tech exam and became a Microsoft Certified Professional. He currently spends around two hours a day learning different operating systems and installing programs.

Ayan’s story reminded me of a passage in scripture about another child prodigy: a boy named Samuel. He was chosen by God to serve in Israel before he was even born. Around the age of thirteen, Samuel was living in the temple when the Lord called him by name. Originally mistaking the Lord’s voice for Eli the High Priest, he couldn’t believe that God would select someone like him – someone so young and inexperienced. But God knew better. He knew that Samuel was the very servant he needed to be a prophet and judge to Israel during a time of crisis. The Bible says the following of Samuel:

“The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground” (I Samuel 3:19).

Israel came to know Samuel as a powerful spiritual leader, and God allowed him the privilege of anointing the first two kings of Israel: Saul and David.

We know that God uses the young and old, the wise and foolish to accomplish his will. Maybe you know a few young people in your own church who have already accepted their calling as servants of the Most High. Whether you’re young or simply young at heart, it’s never

too soon or too late to do what Samuel did and say, “Yes” to the work God has prepared for you. Remember your age will never disqualify you from serving alongside God. All you have to do is be ready to answer his call as he provides a place for you to serve.

I’m Joseph Tkach, Speaking of LIFE.

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