Methodist Bishop

1 Kings 21.1-8, Galatians 2.19b-21a, Luke 7.41-43 How much would you pay for a fridge? If you were a single mum, and you borrowed £150 from a doorstep moneylender to buy a fridge, and agreed to pay it back gradually over five years in small weekly instalments, guess how much you could end up paying for the fridge? Some people have found themselves paying more than £1,500. Now that's a lot of money to pay for a fridge. And what would you do if, half way through paying for the fridge your television broke down? Imagine that you're reasonably well off, says Jesus. Your Granny suddenly rings you up and says, 'You know that fridge you bought for £150? Well I'm going to send you a cheque for that through the post!' You're very grateful, aren't you? But think how much more grateful you'd be if you were poor and you were paying for your fridge gradually, over five years, out of your benefits at the rate of £5 per week and one day the moneylender said, 'You ...

Proverbs 8.1-14, 22-31, Romans 5.1-5, John 16.12-15 Wisdom, in Hebrew, is feminine and so wisdom personified - that is the Wisdom of God standing in the street or the market place and speaking directly to human beings - is naturally described as female too. This isn't to say that God, or even God's Wisdom, is female. God is, of course, apart from human gender, except in the person of Jesus. It isn't to suggest either that women are wiser than men, although that may very often be the case. The word 'table' is feminine in French but tables are no more intrinsically connected to womankind than wisdom. In many different places, however, the Bible tell us is that God is in touch with both the feminine and the masculine sides of humanity. It talks about God loving and nurturing us just like a mother loves and nurtures the baby that she is feeding at her breast, or like the parent who gently leads a toddler along on reins to stop them wandering into the road. We looked out...