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Holding on (11 August)

Our Thought for the Week today comes from Andrew Openshaw who is both the minister of Homelands Free Church and a member of EBA Council.

A couple of years ago, when we moved to Frinton, I decided to take up golf as a new hobby.

I’d never played properly before, or joined a club, so I had (and have!) much to learn.

The other week, after an especially poor round, I found myself at the driving range, hoping that by hitting 100 balls I might find what was going wrong and if not my frustration might be scattered, as most of my shots seemed to be.

I ended up changing my grip, the way you hold on to the club, and although it was just a small change it made a huge difference. It didn’t solve everything but since then it has allowed me to work on other things, knowing that one element (at least) appears sorted.

Now, acknowledging that there’s a danger as a minister that reflecting on any episode or event in my life becomes a sermon illustration, it did get me thinking about what we as Christians hold on to and how we do it.

Anyone who has been around church long enough knows that any time a question is asked from the front the answer is usually “Jesus”, so it won’t be a surprise if I say that the most important thing we as Christians need to grip, to hold on to, is Jesus; but we do also seem to hold onto many other things as well.

We hold onto the way we do things around here (culture), we hold on to memories (good and bad), we hold on to things that we were taught by key people in our lives, we hold on to so much stuff…

The lesson from the driving range that I found, was not that we need necessarily to completely let go of things (no-one wants a stray golf club flying towards them!), but that we need to hold on less tightly. By allowing the grip to be less strong, everything else in the swing can move more freely improving direction and power.

Perhaps if we held on less strongly to stuff in our lives as individuals and gathered communities, we would allow the Spirit to act with greater power and to keep us moving in the direction of Jesus.

Finally – not all my golfing problems have been solved by the way I hold the club and no matter how well we release our grip where we should and hold on where we can, there will still be all the challenges and difficulties that life throws at us, but let’s use our strength to hold to God – let go and let God!!