New MRI Scanner for King’s Mill Hospital

image courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Over £440,000 has been raised through the local newspaper appeal to raise money for a new MRI scanner for King’s Mill Hospital. Even a generous estimate of the population of the area would indicate that this is more than £2 per person, including children. In those terms it is an enormous amount of money. CHAD, the local newspaper concerned, said, ‘The new scanner features a range of hi-tech software allowing doctors to carry out more in-depth scans as well as facilities to care for cardiac and breast scans’. What a tremendous achievement! What a significant development this will be for local medical provision.

I suppose this is an indication of what technology enables us to do in medicine in 2013. The facilities that we have, and the expertise that we have, contribute to an improved quality of life for all of us. But this story made my mind turn to a verse in the Bible. God says, ‘I the Lord search the heart’. Another Bible verse describes God as ‘a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart’. However good an MRI scanner may be, it cannot discern our thoughts and intents. Even the greatest technological minds could not devise and build a device to accomplish that level of scan! I am not seeking to detract from the tremendous achievement of fund-raising but to put the devices of men’s creation into perspective.

The more demanding question would be, ‘when God scans our thoughts and intents, what does He see?’ The real benefit of the high-power scanners is that they might enable a doctor to see something that would be otherwise hidden – they reveal what the human eye can’t detect, what remains a mystery to standard forms of medical diagnosis. What might God see when He scans our minds and motives? The Bible tells us that He sees us as sinners – those who have, and will continue to, fail to live up to His standards. No one likes to see a dark mass that could be a cancer on the results of an X-ray or scan. It could be something life threatening. In a spiritual sense, sin is every bit as life threatening. It can deprive us of spiritual life – a hope of heaven and fellowship with God. It could consign us to a lost eternity. There is no medical solution to sin. There is no ‘quick fix’. Our only hope as sinners is Jesus Christ. He died to save us from the consequences of sin, to offer us new life in Him. What will you do with Jesus Christ? Now you have the results of God’s scan, how will you respond? Will you believe?

Not another scandal!



Pictures taken from the BBC News web site

It has been an interesting few weeks. The news seems to have been full of one sort of revelation or another. There were the horrific revelations about the late Jimmy Savile’s activities. There was the “confession” of Lance Armstrong that he was a cheat who had won so many cycling awards by using performance enhancing drugs. There was the confession of Chris Huhne, a senior Liberal Democrat politician, that he had “perverted the course of justice”, and, then, as we’ve noted before, the horsemeat scandal. It has been a period of one scandal after another.

One thing that struck me in this seemingly never-ending saga of corruption was the scope of it all. I picked up the local paper recently to see the headline detailing the suspension of a local head teacher whilst investigations took place into his interests in pornography. Scandals seemed to have affected nearly every branch of life. Whether it is education, politics, business, sport, or entertainment, no area seemed exempt from the defilement. I wonder what our thoughts are upon such matters. Do we merely shrug our shoulders and say, “well, that’s life”? Whilst we may be shocked and saddened, do we merely think that this is all about somebody else and something else that has no bearing upon us?

 

God says through the Bible, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”. Recent events, as detailed above, have proved just how right God is. But wait a minute. Do we really understand that this verse is speaking to me? It is always easy to point at certain situations, and the people caught up in criminal activities, and single them out as sinners. It is far more challenging to realize that the Bible is speaking to me! My heart is not really different from theirs. While I haven’t committed some of the crimes that others have, my heart is every bit as capable! It is for this reason that King David wrote, “Create in me a clean heart, O God”. Only God can do that. We can’t transform ourselves. Only God can remove the sin and guilt from our heart and life. He can do that and will do that if we are prepared to confess our sin before God and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour. What about you?

Horsemeat anyone?

Image taken by Trapper49 on www.kozzi.com

The following extract is from the BBC News website: ‘Tesco have used full-page adverts in national newspapers to apologise for selling burgers in the UK that were found to contain 29% horsemeat. Traces of horse DNA were also detected by the Food Standards Agency of Ireland in products sold by Iceland, Lidl, Aldi and Dunnes. But a beefburger rarely contains 100% beef. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has two classifications for burger products - standard and economy. A standard beefburger can only be classified as such if it comprises a minimum of 62% beef. The percentages take a tumble when it comes to economy or "value" burger products’.

What does this mean? One thing would seem to be the need to find cheap food. Cash-strapped families, and individuals, are always trying to find the elusive ‘bargain’ to try and make their limited resources go that little bit further. So, why the furore? Why has the government insisted on food testing and regular reports in the news about their latest finding? I suspect one of the main reasons is that feeling that we have all been deceived. We have been told something when the reality is radically different. What we thought we were buying and eating is not all beef but contains some horse!

Being deceived is not just a matter of horsemeat. Many people will speak with emotion about the partner that deceived them. Others will tell you of ‘scams’ perpetrated by unscrupulous criminals who prey upon the vulnerable. It seems true to say that ‘you can fool some of the people all the time’. Humanists would say, ‘There is probably no god so enjoy life’. Christians would indicate that this is a deception, one that could have disastrous consequences for the life beyond this one.

What about you? The story is told of the atheist heckler who shouted at a preacher on Hyde Park Corner. The preacher simply said, ‘If you are right and there is no God and no life beyond this one, what have I lost? However, if I am right and there is a God, whom you have rejected and despised in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, what have you lost?’ This is an important question. Jesus Christ died upon a Roman cross, was buried, and rose again the third day to provide a full and free salvation for sinners like me (and you!). Are you one of the deceived who follow the common theory that there is no God, no one to whom we must answer? Have you been deceived?

An Estimate

It was in the relatively early hours of the morning quite recently that I was awoken by an accident right outside our house. In fact, the driver had lost control of his vehicle, knocked down part of our wall and then ploughed into the drive posts and knocked them down. It was quite a mess and the car looked a wreck. Fortunately, the driver wasn't badly hurt but was taken by ambulance to hospital just to make sure. Now we have the task of getting someone to rebuild the damaged wall and replace the posts at the ends of the wall. 'Get an estimate from a builder, and submit it to the insurers', we have been told.

This got me thinking. What is an estimate? It's not exact but it is intended to give us a rough idea of what it will cost to get things repaired and restored. An expert eye will be able to give us a figure from which we can get the go-ahead for things to be fixed.

If we were asked to put an estimate on human life, what might we say? What is a life worth? Reading in the news of a bungled murder by two people who had been paid to kill someone, I wondered what value they had put upon the life of their potential victim. What is our life worth? The value will change, depending on who you ask. I would expect my family to put a higher price on my life than my employers! However, the gospel (the message of the Bible) tells us that the highest price placed upon a human life is that which God has placed. God's love for each one of us caused Him to give His only Son to die upon a Roman cross outside Jerusalem. The reason? It was because God loved us, valued us so highly, that He was prepared to punish His Son for our sin and guilt that we might go free.

We cannot measure the value of that tremendous gift of God's love. We cannot measure the price that the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, had to pay to remove the penalty that we would have to pay on account of our sin. But the question that has to be asked is this, 'Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour?' Are you prepared to acknowledge and accept the estimate of value God has put upon your life? Sadly, for some, life is cheap. Many live life for the present and ignore the price that God was willing to pay to secure your future with Him. What about you?

Snow!

Don’t know whether you like snow but we’re in the midst of a cold period and the snow has been falling heavily. For the children, snow has a degree of “fun” about it – making snow figures, having snow ball fights, or sledging down the nearest slope. It also means that school might be closed, and there’s the opportunity of an extra day off. For some adults it is a reminder of a far off childhood. For others it contributes to a dreadful journey, and the added dangers of ice and slippery surfaces.

The worst snow showers we might experience do not really compare with what some people experience every year. Snow falls in large quantities, to the extent that the fall of snow causes what is called a “white out”. Such an event is quite rare in this country.

This made me think of a verse from the Bible. God was speaking to the His people through the prophet Isaiah. He said, ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’. That was quite an invitation. God was willing to forgive the sins of His people. God was willing to cleanse – to change what was scarlet into something as white as snow.

God is still inviting people to come to Him today. We have to come to see things as God sees them – to see that we are sinners in his sight. We can try and paint a picture of respectability about our life. We can try and excuse or explain why the things we have done wrong are not quite as bad as people ought to think. We can even live in denial, saying that we are not sinners and have never done anything wrong. Are we prepared to see things in our life as the scarlet stain of sin?

If we accept God’s invitation, and confess that we are sinners, then our sin can be washed away – our life made white like snow. We don’t have to do anything. All we have to do is accept the work of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He died upon the cross outside of Jerusalem that He might bear the guilt and punishment of God upon our sin. If we accept His sacrifice, and believe in Him as our Saviour, then perhaps we can look at snow in a completely different way. Snow, and the sheer whiteness of snow, if how our life will look before God. What a transformation is possible!

Happy New Year

http://www.wordcalendar.org/happy-new-year-2013-wallpaper-around-the-world.html

By the time you read this we may be in the year 2013. 2012 with all its spectacular events will have passed. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics, and the Paralympics will be fading into history as we start the New Year. Are you looking forward to 2013? Are you optimistic of what this year may bring? Some may be starting a new job, with prospects of a whole new career. Some may be looking forward to their wedding, planning, and preparing for the “big day”. Others may still be looking for a job, any job, while others are starting afresh after the failure of their relationship. However, one thing affects us all and that is summarized in a well-worn phrase, “time flies”. Sorry for mentioning it but there are just 360 days to Christmas 2013!

Once the holiday period is over and we start back to work the daily/weekly routine carries us ever onward and we don’t notice the passage of time. The things that we planned to do, and to which we set a deadline for completion, are suddenly upon us – incomplete and pressing! The promises we made we realize we haven’t kept. Where has the time gone?

This is a difficulty that relates not just to our home life and our work life, but also to our spiritual life. Have we thought about what lies beyond time? As we pass through death into eternity, have we made any preparation or plan for “what next”? It is one thing to add such things to our resolutions for the year, but are we really serious about getting right with God and preparing to meet Him. The Bible bids us all to “prepare to meet thy God”. Sadly, many people get so caught up in the routines of life that they give it no thought at all. Perhaps they hope that they will have time later. At the end of life, perhaps, they’ll have time then to sort things out. Yet in the Christmas message there is news that God loves us all, that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die as a sacrifice for sin, and that the Lord Jesus Christ can be our Saviour today.

Why put off a decision about eternity? Get right with God through a confession of your sin and faith in His Son. Enjoy His peace in your heart, whatever 2013 may bring!

“This was never meant to happen”



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20657114

‘It was a prank . . . we couldn’t foresee what would happen’. These are the words of the Australian DJs interviewed after their call to a London Hospital resulted in the suicide of a nurse. Shortly after the announcement of the fact that the Duchess of Cambridge was expecting a child, she was taken into hospital in London suffering from acute sickness brought on by the pregnancy. Whilst the Duchess was in the care of the hospital the two DJs were involved in making a telephone call to that hospital, posing as members of the Royal family. For whatever reason, the call was not identified as ‘a prank’ and was directed through to the suite where the Duchess was staying. The nurse who then answered and provided information to the callers did not realize that the call was a hoax. Later, she was so upset by the discovery of the hoax that she committed suicide.

Something that was conceived and carried out as ‘a laugh’ went horribly wrong. Something that should never have got as far as it did would seem to have contributed to the death of an experienced and dedicated nurse. Like our readers, we would offer sympathy to those who have been badly affected by this tragic turn of events.

I suppose we can all look back to events in our lives when ‘if only’ we had known how things would turn out we would never had set out on the pathway that we did. ‘If only’ can be the most tragic words it is possible to utter. We didn’t realize. We hadn’t anticipated. We didn’t think.

However, the Bible has left important facts on record. We might not have read those facts. We might be ignorant of what it states, but the warning is there. God says, ‘the soul that sinneth it shall die’. We cannot say ‘if only I had known’. God has told us of the consequences of our mistakes, our sins. If we continue on that chosen pathway of life we will be separated from God forever – spiritual death! But the remarkable thing about God is that He is willing to forgive, and to deal with the problem of our sin. ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’. Through faith in Christ and His death on the cross we can be forgiven and brought into peace with God. What about you? Don’t be one who will forever regret, ‘if only . . .’