Dives and Lazarus (and “Rover”….?!)

Luke 16:19-31.  New King James Version (NKJV)

 

Lazarus at the rich man’s gate by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1886.

 

19 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

 

 

Jesus told the parable of a poor man named Lazarus who was lying at the gate of a rich man who doesn’t even feed him scraps from his table “and moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores.”

A child, listening to the story mishears: “and more, Rover the dog came and licked his sores!”

And so we have the only dog with a name and with compassion appearing in Scripture as far as the child is concerned – a compassion which the rich neighbour never showed.

It well may be a fascinating and informative venture to hear the Gospel interpreted by a child; “for out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…….”

via Canon Colin Samson, Trinidad

Would You Tell Your Child This?

He’s not the Messiah…….

FOR GOD’S SAKE, WHERE IS GOD? (from Frank Schaeffer’s Blog)

                  

“Night” is a book by Elie Wiesel about his experience in the German concentration camps. “One day,” writes Wiesel, “as we returned from work, we saw three gallows… The SS [guards] seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows… ‘Where is merciful God, where is He?’ someone behind me was asking. At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over… Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive… The child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death… Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer; ‘Where is He? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…’”

Where is God when a child is shot in Newtown or hung in Auschwitz or killed in an American drone air strike or for that matter dies of cancer? I don’t know. There is no answer.

Talk of God giving humans free will and thus allowing us to face the consequences of our choices solves nothing. If the creator could intervene personally when it came to the magic tricks in the Bible like making the sun stand still for a day in a battle, he could have done something about that child gasping out his young life. He didn’t. Theology that tries to paper this horrible fact over with explanations about why there is evil is nothing but nervous blather.

But I take comfort in the fact that sometimes a person of immense courage follows Christ to a cross. Such acts point to a God that had the empathy to share our fate. Sometimes one person’s example gives me hope that following Christ might be the path that leads us out of the hell we’ve made, even if I’ll never know why we’re here in the first place, let alone why God didn’t just make things simpler, better, faster rather than taking the slow path of gradual ethical evolution.

Do not be afraid

 

Jock Tamson’s Bairns

The Real North Korea

A child of around 10 sits dying of starvation by the side of the road while just yards away soldiers load enough rice on to trucks to feed families for weeks.

As the young boy slumps on the grimy kerb in his filthy, oversized army jacket, locals stroll past zombie-style without even glancing in his direction or displaying an ounce of pity for his wretched plight.

Nearby his friends scavenge in disease-ridden rubbish tips for scraps of what might pass for food in a land where people are so poor they are forced to eat tree bark or even corpses, according to those on the inside.

And not far away, prisoners are herded from their harsh labour camps to ­frantically dig out crops from frozen ground while trigger-happy troops hover over them waiting for the one wrong move that could end with death.

And how true that is of so many – far too many  – other people.  From childhood, they are told that they’re useless, hopeless, stupid, whatever.

In teenage years, they’re branded “wasters” or worse.

In their mature years, they’re “feckless” or a “waste of space”

People need to be valued, cherished, and felt that they do have a contribution to make, even if they cannot recognise it.

We are all of worth in the eyes of God.  None of us is worthless.

There was a 17-century French scholar, a Protestant exile from Toulouse, by the name of Muretus.   Muretus became seriously ill in Lombardy and was taken to the paupers’ hospital.

As he lay on his sick bed, the physicians (thinking that he would not be able to understand the language of the learned) said, in Latin:

“Let us try an experiment with this worthless creature”

Muretus, from his bed, in barely a whisper, interrupted them, by replying (also in Latin):

“Call not ‘worthless’, one for whom Christ did not disdain to die”

You’re a good man.  You’re a good woman.  Or if you don’t feel it, then consider the potential you have to become that.

You’re a good person – why after all, the best of all men, was prepared to die for you.

 

Muretus  Latinized name of Marc Antoine Muret (12 April 1526 – 4 June 1585), a French Humanist who was among the revivers of a Ciceronian Latin style and is among the usual candidates for the best Latin prose stylist of the Renaissance  

–ooOOoo–

“We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s Bairns” is Lowland Scots and Northumbrian English for we’re all John Thomson’s children. Nowadays, the phrase is often used to mean “we’re all the same under the skin”.

It has been suggested as a euphemism for God, so the saying could mean “we are all God’s children”. The expression “We’re a’ the bairns o’ Adam”, conveys exactly the same meaning. 

One explanation of this phrase (as recorded in the History of Duddingston Kirk) is that the Reverend John Thomson (Jock Tamson, Thamson), minister of Duddingston Kirk, Edinburgh, from 1805 to 1840, called the members of his congregation “ma bairns” (my children) and this resulted in folk saying “we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns” which gave a sense of belonging to a select group.

One version attributing the origin of the adage to Thomson is that his first wife died after they had five children, he then married a widow who already had five children, and this second marriage produced another four children. When his wife then made introductions to visitors and tried to explain which family the various children belonged to, Thomson would interrupt her with the statement that “They’re a’ Jock Thomson’s bairns”

English: Portrait of The Reverend John Thomson (1778-1840) of Duddingston, pastor and painter, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Jock Tamson” (John Thomson) would have also been a very common Scottish name, and would have been equivalent to such phrases as “John Doe”, “John Smith”, “Joe Bloggs” etc.

Fife’s Fishing History suggests the small fishing town of Buckhaven may have been one source for this saying. Of 160 families living in the village in 1833, over 70 were Thomsons

The Child In All Of Us

A Child