Orphir and Stenness Church

What I believe can be summed up in five words:

God is love, people matter.

Stewart McGregor, Member of the Iona Community   

 

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.  1 Cor 10: 13; NRSV

 

Ninety and nine:

“I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.”  (Luke 15:7, NRSVA).

Anecdote:

When the first missionaries to the Innuit people attempted to translate the Bible they stumbled over the word joy.  Presumably, in that bleak, icy landscape there was not much need for such a word, until someone pointed out that the Innuit’s dogs that were always full of joy at the end of a hard day of sledge pulling.

The sentence is apparently translated, ‘there will be more tail wagging in heaven over one sinner that repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance!’

 

The Bible:

“The Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things.”

― Marcus J. Borg, in Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

The Christian Story:

“The Christian story did not drop from heaven fully written.  It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years.  That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual.  Christianity has always been an evolving story. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story.”

― John Shelby Spong: Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy: A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel.

Being a Christian:

Mahatma Gandhi once uttered the most challenging of quotes in terms of how we choose to live.

The first is: I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

And the second is really what Jesus was calling his followers to become, and is still calling us to the same today, if only we would listen and respond:

Be the change you want to see in the world. 

 

Rev. Martin W.M. Prentice,

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:6-7 NRSVA

 

Blessing:

May the Spirit of the Living God,

Made known to us most fully within life's Dark Wood:

Go before you to show you the way;

Go above you to watch over you;

Go behind you to push you into places you may not

necessarily go yourself;

Go beneath you to uphold and uplift you;

Go beside you to be your strong and constant companion;

And dwell within you to remind you that you are surely not alone,

And that you are loved – loved beyond your wildest imagination.

And may the fire of God's blessing burn brightly

Upon you, and within you,

Now and always.  Amen.

— Eric Elnes in Gifts of the Dark Wood

 

Hearers, not Doers:

For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.

Letter of James 1:23 (NRSV)

I believe that God should be the daily companion of the common way and not only the refuge in emergency.

William Barclay in Testament of Faith