Sunday, July 02, 2006
By Faith And Not By Sight
From the Revd Tim Ling, Vicar of St Swithun’s, Bathford
By the time you read this England may be out of the World Cup or they may be approaching a semi-final or even the final! As I write this I just don’t know. The evidence of the first few matches does not augur well for England’s continued progress but who knows? The answer of course is that no one knows; although there have been some fantastic attempts to find out. It’s 40 years since England won the World Cup. Then, Geoff Hurst was not the first choice striker; now, Peter Crouch is not the first choice striker. Peter Crouch was born (you guessed it) 40 years after Geoff Hurst! And so it goes on. If you look hard enough there are so many ‘omens’ like these that it must be a cast iron certainty we will win. But of course, it isn’t. We just don’t know. No one can tell what the future holds; certainly not me as I write this a few weeks before you read it!
The Bible teaches us that God does know what the future holds. It also encourages us to look back at the evidence of previous ‘results’ to see if we can find any clues for the future. What we find are not ‘omens’ but a God who is faithful. It is on the basis of his constant faithfulness that he invites us to continue to walk into the future ‘by faith and not by sight.’
With best wishes,
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