Little notes from Heather and Martin

Here's something I shared in church this morning:
Good morning.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Heather, I'm married to Martin and we live with Sarah.

I have a medical condition called chronic fatigue syndrome.  It's a somewhat controversial condition.  Some medical people think that people with this condition have become convinced that they can't do things that they really can do - so to get better they need someone to make them do things that they think they can't manage.  Other medical people think that CFS people have got something wrong in how with how their body works, and that pushing them to do things they can't do actually makes their health a lot worse.  Probably they're both right - some people with these symptoms will get better if you push them, other people will get worse.  For myself, I've had this condition for 10 years and I know that I get worse if I push myself to do more.

Anyway, last week I went to se…

Last week Martin and I listened to a lecture by N.T. Wright on 'Being Human'.  I was intrigued by his concept of Jesus as the most 'real' human there ever was - living in the world in the way we were always meant to.  I've been chewing over that ever since.

If you'd like to listen to it it's available here.  It's a bit over an hour long and we found it very engaging.  The whole blog that we found it on (from Compass) is also well worth a poke around :-)

Recently our Bible study group was looking at James 2:14-26.  It starts out with:
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? it then continues with what I've always taken as an example of 'deeds':
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? however, it's not clear from the text that that's actually what it's an example of: instead, it may simply be an example of words and actions not matching up.  After all, the text simply continues by saying:
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. This interpretation is borne out by the two explicit examples of 'deeds' the passage does give.  I found these two examples quite obscure until Martin realised that we were thinking of the wrong kinds of deeds.  I was thinking that the 'd…