This, as ever, comes with much love and prayers from the Community here at Scargill. 

The Community continues to grow slowly and steadily. Hope is rising with Community numbers but we would still very much appreciate your prayers with this. Community is like a kaleidoscope – dynamic, changing shape as new community members bring themselves and their gifts, and others sadly move on. Community life is never static – it can be exciting, exhausting, life giving and challenging!

We are glad to say that after Easter we are hoping to start Phase 7 of our building project the main focus being the major refurbishment of the Marsh Lounge. Please read the article from +Chris and John Fell in the last Momentum (link here) which outlines our financial challenge.

The next online Quiet Day is on Saturday 25th February. It would be great to see you!  (book here)

Here is Di’s latest reflection – enjoy!

In 2019, The EY Exhibition ‘Van Gough and Britain’ took place at Tate Britain. A Pair of Shoes 1886 by Vincent Van Gough was among the paintings. Will Gompertz, for the BBC, reviewing the exhibition wrote ‘Two battered black boots, laces asunder and soles heavy with mud, are left forlornly in the middle of the canvas with no evidence of their exhausted owner. They remind me of late Rembrandt, Vincent’s fellow countryman and guiding star, who had the same knack for showing the effects of hard labour with unsentimental honesty.’

This morning’s reading was Deuteronomy 15:1-11. Verses 7-11 from ‘The Message’ say this:

‘When you happen on someone who’s in trouble or needs help among your people with whom you live in this land that GOD, your God, is giving you, don’t look the other way pretending you don’t see him. Don’t keep a tight grip on your purse. No. Look at him, open your purse, lend whatever and as much as he needs. Don’t count the cost. Don’t listen to that selfish voice saying, “It’s almost the seventh year, the year of All-Debts-Are-Cancelled,” and turn aside and leave your needy neighbour in the lurch, refusing to help him. He’ll call GOD’s attention to you and your blatant sin. 

Give freely and spontaneously. Don’t have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers GOD, your God’s, blessing in everything you do, all your work and ventures. There are always going to be poor and needy people among you. So I command you: Always be generous, open purse and hands, give to your neighbours in trouble, your poor and hurting neighbours.’

Well, this really spoke to me – I am so thankful that I married Phil. He is many things! But his generosity of spirit, in all its forms is top of the list. As you all know (well I hope you do!) we have a heart for the poor, for community, for welcome, for enjoying the company of others. Phil has also encouraged me to more generous with money than my cautious spirit would naturally allow.

And it is a mixed generosity to which we are called, commanded even. Jesus echoes Moses, and in the Gospels, we read about being generous to neighbours and moving toward a society in which there is “no one in need”. Perhaps stating the impossible, perhaps not, but surely this should be our overarching goal. And along the way, ‘there are milestones when special acts of generosity, moments of extravagance-in-love, are beautiful and fitting’. (SALT blog March 2022)

Generosity reminded me that our Wednesday Midday Prayers uses these words ‘God has generously entrusted us with a very beautiful part of creation, so we have promised to be involved in carefully looking after this gift’. Well, we may not feel we have been ‘generously entrusted with a very beautiful part of creation’!  But ,where ever we are, God’s beauty will be present. We just need to look a harder, to look beyond the immediate, to look to relationships. Within our communities there are the poor in: spirit, friendship, housing, freedom, opportunities….  And we are called to honour them in love and grace, to open our hands to each personally, and at the same time to be active in supporting those who are fighting against poverty in all its forms. We are called to bring the light of Christ to shine in the darkness, and reveal God’s beauty.

‘Give freely and spontaneously. Don’t have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers GOD, your God’s, blessing in everything you do, all your work and ventures.  There are always going to be poor and needy people among you. So I command you: Always be generous, open purse and hands, give to your neighbours in trouble, your poor and hurting neighbours.’ Deuteronomy 15:7-11

What a beautiful world that would be.
Diane

With love and prayers from

Phil, Di and the Scargill Community

The life of Jesus was always abundant and extravagant, a generosity that never stopped at what was strictly necessary. For instance, a meal time with Jesus was wonderfully over-the-top such as the wedding at Cana with the miracle of turning water into wine, these six stone jars full of water would have been equivalent to 900 bottles transformed into the best red wine ever. How mischievous and wonderfully outrageous is that! Jesus picnics with 5,000 and there are 12 baskets left over. The resurrected Jesus, who not only cooked breakfast on the beach for his friends, preceded this by a miraculous catch of fish that was so big that they were unable to haul in the nets. Just 3 examples!

In Luke 15, we read the parable of the ‘Lost Son’ which could be better described as the parable of the ‘generous Father’, who is extravagant and lavishes his love upon the homecoming of his son. Jesus shows us an aspect of the Kingdom of God, which is one big heart of generosity – nothing stingy here!

And it is this that we are caught up in at Scargill, that in all our fragility and weakness, and at times getting it wrong, our desire is to reflect this generous heart of God to those who come through our doors. So what does generosity look like at Scargill? Chocolate on the pillow, beautiful flowers round the House, well kept grounds and gardens, a variety of cake on arrival, willingness to have a conversation as to how we can make a guest’s visit the best it can be, care taken over special diets, food made with love, willingness to carry suitcases on arrival and departure and an invitation to our guests to make our home theirs while they are with us.

Walter Brueggemann, in his inspiring book ‘Journey to the common good’, writes that the Church has been given a different narrative to that of the culture and society around us, which often speaks of scarcity. He says, “ that journey from anxious scarcity through miraculous abundance to a neighbourly common good has been peculiarly entrusted to the church.”

Living as Kingdom people, people of faith, creates a mindset of generosity. Let us remember what Jesus said, “freely you have received, freely give.” Matthew 10:8

And, of course, being generous is not about what we can get back, as Piero Ferrucci says, “Generosity is, by definition, disinterested.” Think about it.

I am glad to say that church communities are waking up to the truth that good coffee is not just peripheral to their life together, a sort of tagged on extra, but says something important about valuing people.

I wonder if it is too bold to say that good coffee is as important as an inspiring and thought-provoking sermon. The smell of percolating coffee is inviting and the aroma is as enjoyable as the drinking.

As I said, decent coffee at the beginning or end of the service, is saying an important truth about how we value people. When you go to places and you are offered a weak, instant coffee in a plastic cup, which is almost impossible to hold, with rich tea biscuits (and then with a little bowl asking for a donation) – what are we saying?

When we moved to Scargill to begin this adventure one of the first things I decided is that we were going to have decent coffee. This was not just for my own benefit, but was hopefully saying something important to our guests: they matter. Being generous with the quality of our refreshments reflects God’s generosity to us. God is not stingy! He wishes the best for his people and of course good refreshments also show our heart of hospitality.

Jesus shows us what our gracious God is like. In fact, Jesus could only do what he saw his Father doing (John 5 v17) and we see a God who gives abundantly in turning water into wine (900 bottles of the stuff, and the best). We see how Jesus treats people with respect. Jesus treats as first class citizens those who are particularly broken or forgotten by society, and we as his followers, who share his generosity and love of people, are called to do the same. And so, even the coffee matters!

This, of course, can be Fair Trade or Rain Forest Alliance certified which will make the experience of coffee drinking even better.

This week Scargill’s Director Phil Stone is thinking about the generous love of God.

Those of you who follow the Anglican lectionary will know that today’s gospel reading was The Wedding at Cana. I love this story. It must have been wonderful to taste the wine that Jesus made. Think of the best red wine you have ever drunk and imagine something even better than that! This miracle of water into wine speaks of the God who wants to transform, and the God who does so generously. At Scargill we are all about ‘Lives shared – lives transformed’ with Jesus right at the heart, it is central to our walk with God this acknowledgement that our lives need to be changed. This is a life-long process.

This miracle is about generosity. Those 6 stone jars that are mentioned, we are told, hold 20 to 30 gallons of water. That is a lot of water to be turned into wine. In fact I worked it out that it was approximately 900 bottles – how crazy and how intoxicating! One could sensibly argue that Jesus was being very irresponsible and way over the top. And yet we read that this miracle was the arch sign that revealed his glory. What is thrilling and exciting is that it is this generous love that we get caught up in and are called to give away. A generous God prompts and calls us to be a generous people, generous with our love, forgiveness and our lives. So what might this look like? Well – it might be giving someone some quality time, sharing a meal, an act of kindness or a phone call to a forgotten friend. It could be treating your work colleagues (those you like and those you don’t) to a bag of jam doughnuts and some quality coffee (that would make my day!).

As the wine is poured out at that wedding, enriching the lives of the people, so we too are poured out to be a generous offering to the communities where we live to be a sign of God’s Kingdom.

And talking of glory, just last week we had some glory at Scargill. As the sun was setting I managed to take this picture of the chapel reflecting the sun off its windows – I love this photo, it reminded me as I have been writing this how we are called to reflect God’s generous love to all those around us. I reckon this could be very transforming…

For more details of events and holidays taking place at Scargill check out the programme here which now goes up to December 2013.