{"id":1608,"date":"2020-11-26T09:27:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T09:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/?p=1608"},"modified":"2020-11-26T09:27:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T09:27:22","slug":"message-from-the-minister-letter-21-sunday-29th-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/?p=1608","title":{"rendered":"Message from the Minister Letter 21 &#8211; Sunday 29th November"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Dear\nall,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nhope and pray that this letter finds you well.&nbsp;\nThis week we begin our journey into Advent.&nbsp; One of the things I do not miss about my old\nlife before I became a minister is commuting.&nbsp;\nI used to have to drive 23 miles to the office each day and after a\nwhile you go onto autopilot.&nbsp; Get up,\nshower, drive to work, work, drive home from work, food, relax briefly, bed and\nthen repeat.&nbsp; And repeat.&nbsp; And repeat again, this can be especially true\nif you have a job which does not interest you one bit.&nbsp; Often, it\u2019s very easy to get stuck in a rut,\nespecially in these times of lockdown when what we can do and who we can meet\nis severely restricted.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our reading today, from Mark 13: 24-37, talks of the time when things\nwill happen in our world that will give an indication that the end of the world\nis near.&nbsp; It says that the sun will be\ndarkened, so there will be solar eclipses.&nbsp;\nThe moon will not give its light, so that could be a lunar eclipse.&nbsp; Stars will fall from the sky, so possibly a\nmeteor shower and the heavenly bodies will be shaken, so earthquakes could\noccur which the earth suffers from them all the time.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark goes onto tell us about the lesson of the fig tree, and how it\nchanges from season to season thus giving an indication of what season it\nis.&nbsp; Some have likened the fig tree to\nthe state of Israel and when it flourishes Jesus will come back.&nbsp; I am not sure about this interpretation it is\nvery Zionist, I rather like the one which says different things occur differently\nin the seasons, for example, at the moment the last of the leaves are falling\nfrom the trees thus showing us its Autumn.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are told that at that time we will see the Son of Man, another term\nfor Jesus, coming in the clouds with great power and glory.&nbsp; As I said in my letter last week, Jesus will\nreturn as a conquering King rather than a small, defenceless baby.&nbsp; I asked you to see if you could find any\npassages in the scripture that related to the kingship of Jesus.&nbsp; Now whilst there are hundreds which refer to\nJesus as King and many more which talk about the Kingdom of God, there are only\naround 20 which explicitly talk of the kingship of Jesus, did you find them all?&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nweek let us not get bogged down in the monotonies of life but remain ready to\nreceive our returning King.&nbsp; Let us look\nto the future with hope knowing that better and brighter days are ahead.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May\nour Lord Jesus Christ, the returning King, bless us now and always, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear all, I hope and pray that this letter finds you well.&nbsp; This week we begin our journey into Advent.&nbsp; One of the things I do not miss about my old life before I became a minister is commuting.&nbsp; I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}