Page 63 - Phonebox Magazine October 2008

From the Ecumenical Moderator
WELCOME – AND WISE WORDS FROM THE PSALMIST
Iwant to begin by extending a very warm welcome to a number of new friends, and invite you to keep them in your prayers: the
Revds Brenda and Stephen Mosedale who join us job-sharing the Methodist Superintendent’s role; the Revd Nick Adlem who comes to Watling Valley Team and Christ the Sower School; the Revd Chris Howden who comes to Stantonbury and Christchurch; and the Revd Jenny Mills, who comes to Newport Pagnell United Reformed Church.
We are absolutely delighted that for 25% of her time, Jenny will also be seconded to the Christian Foundation, liaising with local schools and engaging them in the Foundation’s social enterprise projects.
The Christian Foundation runs a number of dynamic projects across the city, and belongs to the Mission Partnership through its two directors, Stephen Norrish who is employed by the MP, and Graham Ghaleb who is seconded to us from the URC. These projects include training for young people in areas such as literacy, numeracy and parenting, the recycling and sale of office
furniture, a plant making and selling bio- diesel, and an urban farm. If you haven’t ever visited the Foundation, or would like to find out more about work such as the ‘Amazing Waste’ or ‘Think Food’ projects, do give us a ring at the office on 01908 311310 and come and see. There are all sorts of ways in which you can help.
As I write, there is more news of the economic crisis in the United States and here in Britain. Very recently, I was talking to a French friend, director of an old people’s home. The construction of a new up-to-date building, currently in progress, is threatened because the value of the old building which is to be sold has fallen far below even the most pessimistic of predictions. “The psalmist was right,” he said to me wryly. “Trust in God at all times – do not put your trust in princes... though wealth increases, do not set your heart on it.”
There is of course a certain level at which we know that actually we do need to be able to put our trust in economic systems and in the economic ‘princes’ of our world whose decisions can affect so many of our lives. The terrible irony is that for a great number of us here, it has taken a devastating credit crunch which touches us all for us to realise how much of our wellbeing and ability to
have control over our lives does depend on just, stable and reliable systems. Precarious times like these bring us up short and enable us to see that the wise words of the psalmist – ‘though wealth increases, do not set your heart on it’ – have special resonance not so much for those whose experience is of constant poverty, but for those of us who have had a taste of wealth and have become only too accustomed to it as a way of life.
Moments like these call us more than ever to turn our attention to those in our world whose lives are constantly blighted by being on the wrong side of unjust economic systems, by rising food prices and by successive natural disasters which remind us again and again of the ways in which climate change affects the very poorest people.
As Christian Aid’s latest news bulletin reminds us, ‘With the credit crunch, higher oil and food prices and lower house prices stoking up anxiety and hardship at home, there is a danger that the problems of the developing world will slip off the agenda.’ Never was it more important to live out our trust in the God of the psalmist and of Jesus, ‘who deals out justice to the oppressed, who feeds the hungry, and who sets the prisoner free’ (Ps 146). K
Mary Cotes
Phonebox Magazine 63