Yesterday I read the first book in a new series, the Reverend Joy books by Dave Freer. Now, I am not an Anglican (though I have sympathy with their evangelical arm) and disagree about women priests, but Dave Freer (who I have enjoyed as a SF author for years) is Anglican, and has written a realistic book that includes the tribulations as well as the decencies of rural life.

Mud included.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Although I am reformed, I follow the BCP readings — using the English Standard Version. And since the cycle has changed, it is worthwhile mentioning this. For I do not think our Lord counts our denominations as virtue, but instead what glory there is in the church.

Greeting Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

(1 Thessalonians 1 ESV)

Most of the time the work of elders is akin to fish swimming in a rice field [1]/ No one sees what happens. No one knows what is said over countless coffees and cups of tea. Much of it is dealing with broken people. In my field, the back channel of communication with the hospital chaplain is invaluable. We are, all too often, seeing the same person, and dealing with the same difficulties.

For the vast majority of those within the church are imperfect and broken. The saintly exist, and their lives are worthy examples, in part because they are rare [2].

But they remind us of the heights from which we have fallen.

What we need to do is withstand and remain. In our personal lives, we need to continue to reform and repent: this involves those of us who are single as much as those who are married. We all need to be chaste: we all need to be humble, we all need to gentle.

But that does not make us asexual, indeed the married are commanded to make the bed their sacrament, that does nto make us unable to do great things, or works with power, and that does not make us weak. The Church spread with power: as it was in Thessalonica so it was when the Church of England Missionaries arrived in New Zealand. People turned to Christ.

For Christ cares not about our justifications. He sees through them. He discounts our anger: it comes across as weakness, The louder we get, the more ridiculous we become.

It is not what is publicly said in the press, for they repeat all too often what they are given. It is not what is being shouted in Parliament, nor protested in the street that matters. They are akin to the spume on the wave. It is the wave that matters.

And the wave, the spirit of this age, is evil: particularly when it comes to defining morality. In this post modern time we have rejected nature, and any appeal to natural laws, embracing the perverse and artificial. We forget that this time has been before. This used to be called by its correct name: decadence.

And it never survives times of testing. The effete of the Edwardian era saw their young men, their children, die, stacked like cord-wood, in the charnel house of the first world war, and the death rate for the children of the Weimar republic was similarly high.

So we have a choice. We can listen to the angry little men. Discussing their infinite need not to be offended: accusing others of doing what they themselves feel free to do with impunity. (And yes, that includes the current Labour party in NZ. as well as the SJW being 0wnz0rd by the gaming community). Or we can return to the church. We can do good, quietly.

And permission from those little men who rule ask not.