July/August 2010 Minister's Message

 Last Updated on Monday, 28 June 2010 11:54

Getting the mixture right

I like eating cake….and I think there are quite a few in our church that feel the same way! But there is cake and cake. Not all cake is as tasty and delightful as it might be or as it looks. A lot seems to depend on the mixture and how the various ingredients blend together, whether they enhance each other or seem to negate each other. OK, a good cake also depends on being cooked at the right temperature and for the right length of time, but getting the mixture right is essential.

I think our lives can be a bit like cake, being a mixture of all sorts of ingredients relating to elements such as family, friends, relationships, work, leisure, money, time, church, God……the list could be very long……..and getting the right mixture or balance of these competing ingredients is essential but often quite difficult. Being part of a caring church, which Cornerstone strives to be, provides opportunity for us all to share in Christian fellowship together and to help each other through the teaching and prayer to know more clearly how we should try to get the mixture of our lives more in balance.

But I think our church is a bit like cake too! The ingredients are all the members and friends and activities and relationships that make up church life. And sometimes the various ingredients don’t blend together as well as they ought! Unfortunately individuals or groups get things wrong sometimes and people get hurt and upset. The early Church described in Acts suffered from such problems too, so we are certainly not alone when we encounter difficulties – perhaps we even should expect them. But this is when the mixture is lacking some essential ingredients, such as understanding, repentance, forgiveness and love. Just at the beginning of June our visiting preacher (Revd Chris Vivian) shared a message with us about renewing our vision, but also about sharing in peace with one another. This surely is the outcome of getting the mixture right.

But there’s one ingredient that makes all the difference between good cake and poor cake – between a hard, flat end result and one that is soft and light and a delight to eat. That, of course, is the raising agent, usually as some form of baking powder. And our own lives and the life of our Church must also have that essential raising agent – that of Jesus Christ, the one who humbly came to be one of us, suffered and died for our wrong ways, but rose again to put us back into a good relationship with God our Father – the essential raising agent for us all, given to us as the Holy Spirit.

So I hope you are able to enjoy some of the delights of this summer period….and particularly get some good cake in your own life and within the life of our church.

Richard Hall