Linda in Uganda

Distribution over!  Wednesday was quite a day - 92 clients - absolutely non stop for all of us. (Eileen thinks it's  a Wheels record). We had one chair left, and a few other mobility aids. We've seen 282 clients all together. So many people arrived crawling on hands and knees and left with a wheelchair and with their dignity restored.  

Earlier in the week we had the press visit with the Mayor. He said "The legacy you leave behind will live on for a thousand years". I hope and pray that not many more years pass before Africa has the same access to health provision that we in the west enjoy.

Sightseeing today - off to visit the source of the Nile!

#lindainuganda - day 3

"Exhausting day. 3 hours' church then lunch at Irene's home.

Have eaten jack fruit and sugar cane. Roads much worse than Kenya - real rattle and roll. Back at 'Rest Gardens'. Somewhat misnamed. There is noise here all the time. Want a sleep but some kind of church celebration going on. Last night there was choir practice in the grounds for about two hours. Additionally we are next door to barking dogs, crying babies and cocks that start crowing at 4.15 am. Due out again at 6.00 pm for 'cultural entertainment'. Expecting about 60 clients tomorrow!!!

You wouldn't believe racket coming from next door right now. Stamina failing - please pray."

Linda Update : Saturday 13 April

Hello! 45 clients today but pleased to say I am on top of my administration. All data logged and Nigel sent my report from yesterday to Through the Roof*. Lots of polio and cerebral palsy - heart rending - mostly kids. Only one child's chair left now for one lucky recipient on Monday. Church tomorrow - think of me sitting there (somewhere!?) for four hours.

*

http://www.throughtheroof.org/news-and-blogs

http://www.throughtheroof.org/ourprogramme/wheels-for-the-world/wheels-news

Wheels for the World have arrived in Uganda

Text from Linda Head.  Friday 12 April 2013.

"Wow. Just got 3 msgs at once. For some reason lost signal. Just came back but diff provider! Just crawled under mozzie net. Been doing late night admin. Fab day - 30 clients only so time for quick swim before din. Hotel poor - I have own room but no hot water, power cuts galore, food dire, internet - whats that?! Our work day, on the other hand is just so awesome and humbling and amazing. Wish u cd all be part of it. Night night"

A verdict on Margaret Thatcher

On hearing of Margaret Thatcher's death yesterday the news in the UK and around the world has been filled with analysis of her life and work. She was clearly one of the most influential figures of the second half of the twentieth century; the first female prime minister, a very long serving prime minister, a leader who made great changes to the nation which have lasted long beyond her premiership. But what is your verdict?

It seems probable that you will have a verdict. According to an ICM poll in the Guardian, 25% of the British public see her record as very good, 25% as good, 20% as very bad and 14% as merely bad. 11% see her as neither good nor bad (having a mixed legacy) but only 5% didn't know. Maggie was someone on whom an overwhelming majority of people felt forced to make a decision.

She started with humble origins. Her father was a grocer and Methodist lay preacher. He proved to be a great influence in her life. On one occasion she said "Well, of course, I just owe almost everything to my own father. I really do. He brought me up to believe all the things that I do believe." So just what did she believe?

Mrs Thatcher undoubtedly had a great belief in her own ability. She excelled academically, reading Natural Sciences at Oxford University, and also politically, becoming only the third ever female president of the University Conservative Association. She continued to combine science and politics beyond university, but struggled to get herself elected. She must have wondered whether it was going to happen but her self-belief seemed to keep her going. This was a self-belief, perhaps bordering on arrogance that was expressed in her statement:

Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.
And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.
What we think, we become.
My father always said that... and I think I am fine.

Once elected as MP for Finchley in 1959 she rose quickly through the ranks as junior minister, then as spokesperson on housing and land once the Conservatives returned to opposition. At the next leadership election she supported Ted Heath and was rewarded with a role as Education Secretary when Heath became Prime Minister. During that time, her lasting action was the withdrawl of free school milk and her acquiring the nickname, Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher.

In 1976 her critique of Soviet policies repressing their own people earned her the more famous nickname of 'The Iron Lady'. This was a name that she fully embraced and perhaps took as determining her rigid stance on a number of topics.

When Ted Heath faced a leadership challenge she felt that he had acted incorrectly in the past and that she should stand against him. On hearing this Heath informed her that she would lose, but to everyone's surprise she was victorious and despite her interview as Education Secretary in which she said that she didn't think there would be a woman Prime Minister in her lifetime, went on to break that glass ceiling.

On arrival in Downing Street she quoted the prayer of St Francis of Assisi:

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Mrs Thatcher was a conviction politician, but inevitably that did not bring the harmony that she spoke of. She remains, as has been seen in the press coverage following her death, a divisive figure. Loved and hated in almost equal measure. My first political memory is of her arrival as the new Prime Minister in 1979 and so I was one of those who, up to 1990, couldn't quite imagine a male Prime Minister - as she was parodied in a Werther's Original advert in the late 1980's.

During her time in office she acted to curb the power and influence of the unions, to institute austerity measures and to battle escalating unemployment. None of these issues has gone away, though the role of the unions seems forever changed by her time in office. There was great dissatisfaction at her government. Indeed in 1981 her approval rating, at 25% was the lowest ever for a serving Prime Minister.

This all changed in the Falklands Conflict, when despite much popular opposition, she engaged British forces to retake the Islands after an Argentinean invasion. Her unwavering determination led to success within a couple of months and then to a landslide victory in the 1983 election.

Her next term of office was marked by the Miner's Strike with a year of difficulties, often violent confrontations between strikers and police and the eventual decline of the British coal industry as she pursued strategies to stimulate the British economy. One of her driving beliefs was that increasing personal wealth would have a positive effect on the whole of Britain. She said that, “No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well.” In her interview with Women's Own, in which she stated that there was no such thing as society, the thrust of her argument was that there is no institution that we can look to to fix all our problems. Instead we must look to sort our own problems out and then use what we have to help others. Perhaps the current ideas of Big Society owe something to her ideology.

On Northern Ireland, she was equally uncompromising. She resisted the terrorist threat, even when it came close to home with the Brighton bombing during the Tory Party Conference. It is always easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight and seeing the advances since made in Northern Ireland, and to argue that a more conciliatory tone may not have driven so many young Catholics into the IRA, or to argue that only by taking a stand against terrorism can it be driven out.

Perhaps one of her greatest legacies came through foreign policy with the strong relationship with Ronald Reagan and her ability to work with Mikhail Gorbachev. Her work here brought the break up of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe some steps nearer, though there were clearly many who had influence in these developments.

The introduction of the Poll Tax, proved to be part of her undoing as Conservatives, fearing for their seats, pressured her to change that policy. She was shortly afterwards forced into a leadership contest in 1989, which she won, and then another in 1990, from which she withdrew after winning the first round as she was persuaded that she couldn't go on to win the second round. Her influence in politics, from the House of Lords and in meetings with both Labour and Conservative Prime Ministers, continued into the new millennium before her deteriorating health forced her to withdraw from public life due to a series of mini strokes and dementure as was seen most poignantly in the recent film, The Iron Lady.

So what is your verdict on her? David Cameron spoke yesterday about her having saved our country. Others have spoken more of the change that she brought, some good and some, perhaps less good. The culture which she helped to instil has led to some of the greed which has brought about our current economic difficulties and banking crisis. I know you will have a verdict, a judgment on her.

But in a couple of ways, our verdict on her is irrelevant. Firstly, she didn't seem to pay too much heed to other people's opinions during her time as Prime Minister, instead pursuing what she believed to be correct regardless of what others thought.

Secondly the only judgment that will now matter is God's verdict. She will face God, but he will judge her by a different set of criteria. It will not be the success of her economic or foreign policies, it will not be the way in which she dominated her government, it will not even be the quality of the relationship that she had with her husband, Dennis. God's assessment of her will depend upon how she responded to Jesus Christ. She could quote him, allude to him, attend church and many other religious things, but the ultimate verdict on her will not be to balance out the good against the bad. Instead God will know that Margaret Thatcher fell short of his standards, because we all do (Romans 3:23). He will know whether she came to him seeking forgiveness for her shortcomings and going on to live in relationship with him through Jesus Christ or not. That will be the sole criteria by which she will face judgment. As we consider her record and make our own verdict on her today and in the coming weeks, we will be influenced by our own politics, our own moral code and our own prioritites. As we consider God verdict on Mrs Thatcher, we must also consider that we too fall short of God's ideal and have the same need to repent and live in relationship with Jesus Christ. As we face her mortality, let us consider our own and see how we need to respond to God.

A Life of Worship

At the end of the Easter weekend, looking back over the worship and witness of the last few days I am left amazed again by the grace of God. The grace he showed in sening his son, Jesus, to live among us and show us who God is in a fuller way than had ever been known. The grace he showed in taking onto himself, in Christ, the sin of the world as Jesus died on that cross. The grace he showed in raising Jesus from the dead to resurrection life as the firstborn from the dead showing the way that all who are in Christ will follow. The grace of God staggers me every time.

But what is our response to this grace? It is easy to miss it when dealing with Christians or in reports about the church. In most of my childhood reports about the church suggested that Christians were obsessed about just one thing - money. It might be televangelists guaranteeing healing for a donation of X amount of money. It could be the minister or treasurer running off the the church bank account. It could even be the seemingly eternal of christianity, the thermometer outside the building showing how far there was to go in the current appeal to fix the roof. However the impression came, money seemed to be the centre of what Church and Christianity were about.

That is no longer the case. We now seem obsessed by questions about sex, sexuality and gender. There is so much to say on this issue that it calls for another blog posting, but questions about sexual abuse by priests, gay marriage, ordination of women and the integrity of Christians in their own marriages continue to dominate press coverage about the church, even in recent reports of the appointment of Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby.

I do believe that the Bible has much to say on the issues of money, sex and power and that it speaks with a voice that transcends culture, stereotypes and prejudice. What I don't believe is that me telling someone that a God they don't believe in doesn't approve of what they do is likely to make the slightest jot of difference. If anything it seems to make it more likely that they will continue to ignore anything else the church says. Instead, to quote John Maxwell, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." As others have put it, people can't hear what we say because what we do is shouting too loudly.

Our response to God's grace cannot be to impose a legalism onto other people when we have been freed from it ourselves. Instead our response must be to show the same grace to others. That could be argued to be the heart of Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35. As we show that grace to anyone coming to us and, indeed, anyone we go to they might see in Jesus a way of life to follow and then as the Holy Spirit works in their lives, he can address the things in them in the order in which he wants to deal with them. He might prefer to deal with their pride before he deals with their sexuality. He may wish to address their workaholism before he tackles their swearing. Of course there is a place for church discipline on those who have brought themselves into that relationship with us, but for many who are not there yet perhaps we can support them as God works in their lives rather than look to condemn the moment they step over the line on our own particular pet issue.

So part of our response to the grace of God is to show the same grace ourselves. Another part is to worship. To fall down in wonder at the God who sees all our mess, our weakness, our sin and sets his love on us anyway. He does this, not out of duty, but out of choice. His free choice is to offer us eternal life in relationship with him rather than eternal death outside of that relationship. So we worship, but what is worship. It is so much more than singing songs or saying prayers, though that is part of it. It is about giving over every part of our lives to his honour, his glory, his praise, whether that is our work, our family, our church, our personal time or anything else.

Over this coming term we are going to look at some aspects of what a life of worship looks like as we immerse ourselves in the Psalms and see all that it shows of the Old Testament worshipping community dealing with anger, frustration, joy, poverty, plenty, personal faith and a community expression of it. I invite you to take this journey with us. You may like to join us on Sundays at 11:00am but, if you're not able to do that, feel free to listen to the Bible teaching from those services on our church website, http://dynamic.church123.com/podcast/1ee777fd-3d61-4723-afe9-a020cb1827a7. Journey with us as we try to live out a life of worship in everything we do, even in coping with our own failure to get it right every time and seeking the Holy Spirit to continue to make us more and more like Jesus.