I absolutely love watching Springwatch or Winterwatch as it is at the moment. I really don’t watch much else on the TV, but Tuesday night I turned the telly on before Winterwatch started and caught some of the National TV Awards.
I didn’t know many of the actors or the programmes and I haven’t watched the soaps since my son was small, he’s 22 now. For me personally the soaps portray a very different life to the kind I wanted my son to see and think was normal.
I don’t know what its like now, but there was so much violence, lack of respect and shouting it was just something I didn’t feel he needed to see. I think it is very hard for Christians to be in the world and yet not of the world.
Having spent the majority of my working life in the secular domain rather than in ministry it is hard to shine God’s light wherever we are.
Trying not to get caught up in gossip or laughing at inappropriate jokes is really tough sometimes as we want to fit in and be part of the group. I don’t have any answers as such as God has given me a sense of humour that gets me into trouble sometimes and I often see the funny side of something that perhaps I shouldn’t. Neither do I think being a Christian means we have to be dull and boring and put a dampener on everything, but we have to be Christ-like and Christ-centred in all we do.
By our actions, motivation, the words we speak and the respect we show to those around us, we can to show Christ’s love in this world, where so much of what we see is the very opposite.
The Bible says: Romans 12:2 (The Message): “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
Captain Jan Howlin from Wokingham Salvation Army, writing on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
