Look up in Lockdown

The word of the Lord came to Joel (Joel 1:1)  We end where we began, with a promise: delve deep into the Scriptures and they will point the way to life. You will not find it in the words of the book themselves but in the person to whom the book points, in the person of Jesus Christ. So we have followed and pondered and explored and discovered. I hope that you have enjoyed the process as well as the result, but, whether you have or not, I am grateful. I am grateful for the company, I am grateful for the comments and I am grateful for the consequences. For lives touched by my simple words, for people encouraged by a regular read and, of course, for another best-selling book. Well maybe not the last but it is available to buy now on Amazon. Just search for Look up in Lockdown by George Moody. Pay your money and keep for ever. Or better still buy two, one for you and one for a friend. And, lastly, thanks to my long suffering wife, Alison, who didn’t moan when I yet again escaped the chores

I will pardon (Joel 3:21)  In Matthew's account of the sending out of the apostles, Jesus gives some good advice on mission. Don't get too tied up with resources, you have all you need. The ravenous monster (of building and budget) will never be satisfied, but real mission requires nothing but love. Expect opposition from both inside the church and outside it. People are wolves who will seek to consume you if they can, because the message you carry threatens their carefully constructed egos. I'll give you the words you need to break through and set free. And be normal. Mission isn't about grand gestures or fake faith. It's about normal people who trust Jesus with their lives offering real friendship that lasts to others who do not know the love that goes the extra mile to the cross. But if you just look for advice you are missing the point of the passage. Like Joel's promise of pardon, you need the build up. For Joel it is 'not pardoned'. There is a divi

Judah will be inhabited for ever (Joel 1:20)  Around us it feels like the housing market is booming. Rumour has it that all those empty properties will soon be filled. It is hard not to wonder if we shall be overrun with Londoners finding a bolthole from the pandemic, but personally I don't mind. Please just give us some new neighbours. We really like the current ones but our street is looking very empty at night. There is a downside, of course. If our lovely villages become popular with wealthy urbanites then the prices will skyrocket. Frankly they're out of reach of anyone under 55 anyway, but who on earth will be able to buy them now. Well rich Londoners of course, and that's lovely as long as they join in village life. Certainly not poor vicar's children (or vicar's poor children), or farmer's sons, or care worker's daughters, or even care workers, or teachers, or... Yes I could go on. That's the problem with property. As soon as it becomes a desirab

Egypt will be desolate (Joel 3:19)  Well, some people's desolation has gone away. Our government seem to have come to the obviously sensible conclusion (a) that subjecting people to solitary confinement for months at a time is a bad idea (surprise, surprise) and (b) if you stick to a 'bubble' of one isolated adult to one household the risks are not greatly increased. Hooray. It goes on my shelf, next to Test and Trace, as our government's second genuinely good idea. It's a thin selection but credit where credit is due.  I hope I will not be looked down on though for pointing out that the restriction to stay at home if anyone in your household has symptoms remains in place. I think we need to rename this Cummings Law as a reminder of his singular failure to keep it. We could of course have named the travel ban after him, but that was always going to be temporary while the Stay at Home rule is likely to be pretty permanent. I'd like to note also that both these ru

A fountain will water the valley of acacias (Joel 3:18)  The blessing of God foretold in Joel is so great it waters even the driest and washes even the dirtiest of places. One such place is the Valley of Shittim or valley of acacias, where Israel fell to the moral temptations of the Moab people, and whence Israel escaped to invade the promised land. The name of the valley is a happy accident, but rather usefully encapsulates the greatness of the flood needed to wash it clean. So, as I ponder the mess we have got ourselves into, I wonder what kind of flood will be needed to get us clean.  The latest ONS statistics estimate that, so far, during the crisis, in England and Wales, 57,961 more  people have died than is usual for this time of year. There are clever ways to make these statistics smaller but the likelihood is that these are all related to COVID-19 in some way or another. And they don't even include Scotland and Northern Ireland.  The latest news of our future trading partne

In that day the mountains will drip with new wine (Joel 3:18)  Come with me for a moment and study these words of Joel for something tells me they are worth it.  The word for 'mountains' is common in the Bible and appears to have a single meaning. It refers to heights, to mountains, but not ones of Alpine splendour. These high hills are not barren and snow capped but are cooler in summer and attract the rain absent elsewhere. They are ideal for growing wine. The word for 'drip' is less common and its Hebrew root has many meanings. Elsewhere, it is used for pouring rain or drunken speach so the image is of an overflowing flood so great it gets everywhere, not a controlled plop, plop, plop into a bucket. The word for 'new wine' or 'sweet wine' refers to the first wine of the season, almost grape juice, where less of the sugar has fermented to alcohol thus making it sweet. To have enough grapes to make 'sweet wine' implies that there is a huge bumpe

I, the Lord your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill (Joel 3:17)  There was a wooden circle, now called Woodhenge, not far from Stonehenge. It is all gone now bar some marks in the soil visible only from the air but, in it's time, it was the place people came to meet. While Stonehenge is surrounded by evidence of human death, by barrows and burials, Woodhenge is surrounded by evidence of human life, by cooking fires and houses. It is hard to tell of course, but it seems probable that both were used for worship. Stonehenge for rites connected to death and eternity, Woodhenge for rites connected to life and prosperity. The dead dwell near one, the living near the other. The promise of Joel is the removal of such a distinction. God dwells at the centre of both life and worship, death and eternity. There is no place of life and place of death, for our dwelling is with God both now and for ever. As the Book of Revelation has it 'I will be their God and they will be my children'. Th

Then you will know (Joel 3:17)  Am I a racist? Well, I think the question needs asking because I'm not sure many of us ever really face up to it. Let me give you an easy example. I am sure that President Trump would answer No but look at the evidence. When white people in combats were protesting about the closure of their businesses and the difficulty of getting a haircut, he defended their rights. When people of colour were protesting about the murder of an innocent man by the police and their lack of access to education and opportunity, he called in the army. It doesn't make him a racist but the evidence is not in his favour. Am I a racist? Well, none of my closest friends are people of colour. That's not a deliberate choice. I went to an all white school and an almost all white university. I spent most of my working life with the sons of the wealthy from all around the world but my colleagues were almost universally white too. None of this makes me a racist but I think i

Swing the sickle (Joel 3:13)  In Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man,  Death finds work as a farm hand, with a surprising gift for cutting corn with a scythe. In one scene he competes with a new harvesting machine. Death cuts every stalk separately, which puts him at somewhat of a disadvantage, though his anger at the machine's carelessness of the corn drives him on. It is Pratchett's way of saying that every individual life matters, that we should never see or treat people as groups but always separately. In the USA and across the world, people are marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter. A call to recognise every individual as of equal worth. It's a bit of an upward struggle in many parts of our world. In the USA, the founding fathers valued slaves at only three-fifths of a person in the Constitution and one in thirteen African Americans are denied the vote due to criminal convictions, four times the rate of non-African Americans. In countries all around the world mi

The Lord will be a refuge (Joel 3:16)  Where do you feel safe? As I sit at my desk and write, I see a pair of robins hopping past the study window. They have that alert yet confident look that birds acquire who feel at home in your garden. Since the neighbouring cat has left, I have noticed it increasingly with our garden birds. There's a black bird that has become almost tame and mistakenly ventured into the utility room in search of food. The pair of nesting greenfinches have become a little more visible, occasionally flying straight into the nest, rather than sidling in 2 feet below as if to say, Me, no I don't live here, just testing this branch for perching properties. The pigeons waddle across the lawn, like supertankers in a shipping lane, moving slowly whatever the provocation to fly. Our bird-friendly efforts are working, we just need to pray the next neighbour doesn't have a cat. This morning I found myself idly reading the blog of an African-American woman. She f

The stars no longer shine (Joel 3:15)  I wish to suspend my blog for a day to ask you to wait with me in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. It will seem like an eternity I can assure you. As you wait imagine that you have someone kneeling on your neck and you are struggling to breathe. Now use the time to pray for fair treatment for oppressed minorities around the world. Sure, start with African Americans in the States. But then move on: to the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Uyghur in China, the Han in Indonesia, Kurds in Turkey, Jews in Iran, Christians in Pakistan, Palestinians in Israel, albinos in sub-saharan Africa, disabled the world over. The list goes on and on. Get out a map and everywhere you look there will be similar misery for the vulnerable where the strong fail to do what is right. In each place authority kneels on the neck of the weak and many stand by and watch. At least for those 8 minutes and 46 seconds we can remember them in silence. In the death of George Floyd a sta

The sun and moon will be darkened (Joel 3:15) It's official. This spring was the sunniest on record, and by some margin. The Met Office records show three sunniest springs as 1990 with 591.8 hours, 1948 with 594.3 hours and well out in first place 2020 with 695.5 hours. I have no idea how they measure these things. I mean, how can you claim to measure sunshine accurately to 6 minutes over the whole country over a whole month. Whoops a cloud just passed, let's knock 30 seconds off the total. But I do believe them. It's been quite extraordinary. So one has to ask oneself what it has been like for the more than 2.2 million who have been confined to barracks for virtually the whole season. For many of us the sun has been shining and then some, but for them the sun has been darkened so no wonder the government has let them out. Ironically just in time for it to start raining, but that's English weather for you - normally. Joel's concern with sunshine is rather different.

The Lord will roar from Zion (Joel 3:16)  'You have to dominate' or you're going to 'look like a bunch of jerks', said the President to his state governors, 'you have to do retribution'. They were not amused. Even apparently supportive republicans spoke out against this call to aggressive tactics. 'It's the antithesis of how we live' said the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as he immediately demobilised the National Guard, in what appears to be a deliberate snub to the president. Intriguingly, though Minnesota is the epicentre of the protests, it has seen relatively little recently in the way of rioting or looting, which rather proves the governor's point. Unfortunately Trump's words will mobilise his electoral support. He may even have meant it that way. A large swathe of American voters support a hardline approach to law enforcement. They want to see their police being tough because they really believe, in spite of much evidence to the co

Multitudes in the valley of decision (Joel 3:14)  Today I did an experiment with Caleb. We got two different lengths of string and attached weights to the end. Then I twirled them around my head. We both noticed that the one with the longer string had to go further than the one with the shorter, and so was moving faster. It's just like in the Solar System, I said, the planets further from the Sun are moving faster because they have to travel further.  Now many of you will be nodding your heads. Good point George. Neat experiment. Well done. What you don't know is that the rest are holding their heads in their hands and screaming at the page. You just taught Caleb a falsehood. You see what actually happens is the planets  nearest  the Sun travel faster. It's called Kepler's Law and is due to the increased gravity. In my example the pull in the two weights was the same, while in the Solar System gravity decreases with the square of the distance. This got me thinking. How

Their wickedness is great (Joel 3:13)  In my blog on 27th May, I wrote about a universal principle of injustice, one rule for the rich and another for the poor. What you don't know is that I had initially included the difference in American justice between black and white men. I cut it out because I thought it might be too insensitive and didn't have time to fact check it.  So consider my horror when I heard about George Floyd. 'Lynched', as one commentator put it, in full daylight in front of a crowd by four police officers. George collapsed to the ground at which point an officer knelt on George's neck for early 9 minutes including for 2 minutes after another officer had failed to find a pulse. And George's crime? Well, no, he had done nothing wrong. He was suspected by the officers of cashing a fake bill for the princely sum of 20 dollars. In reality he was a leading figure in local care for the vulnerable and addicted,  honest, upright and loved by all. His