During the call for prayer requests last Sunday in a small country Church there was a sharp intake of breath when a request was made to pray for the family of a man whose cousin’s son had died by his own hand some 3 days previously. The boy was in his mid-teens and although he was of a quiet disposition there were no abnormal features to his lifestyle which might have alerted his family and friends.

Monday 10^th September is World Suicide Prevention Day. It has been established in response to the rising levels of suicide with the idea that prevention is the cure.

Here lies the difficulty as reasons for suicide are hard to find. Each individual case presents a personal tragedy where the reasons are seldom immediately obvious, even to those within the closest circles of family and friends. Moreover, the problems are never one-dimensional or easily fixed. They accumulate till the darkness seems impenetrable and death the only solution.

Those who are left behind have the impossible task of trying to make sense of where it all went wrong. The spectres of guilt and blame appear out of impregnable mess of suicide as the search goes on for the reason why.
We cannot untangle it. We want clarity when life bleeds, and we think that answers will close the gaping wound of confusion. Like Job, this understanding can be the very thing that we demand in vain from God. 

In one of the Biblical scenes where we see Satan at work he tempts Jesus to kill himself by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple. This suggestion to suicide was answered from scripture and the evil plan thwarted (St Matthew Chapter 4 verses 6/7).

The Apostle Paul wrote of his own struggles with unanswered prayer when he asked for his ailment to be cured. The Lord did not take away the pain but promised to provide the grace to endure it (2Corinthians chapter 12 verse 9). It is the promise of this supply of grace which sustains those who grieve over the loss of a loved one. Answers are beyond our comprehension but promises can uphold us as we mourn with those who mourn.

Following the success of the spectacular opening night of the London Olympics a month ago it was hard to imagine that the opening night of the Paralympics this week would surpass it – but it did.

The 4 hour epic took the theme of “Enlightenment” and was built around the narration of the metallic voice of Stephen Hawkings, perhaps the most famous disabled scientist in the world. From his high performance wheelchair he opened the proceedings with “Ever since the dawn of civilisation people have craved for an understanding about the underlying order of the world”. He then took us through “big bangs”, “black holes” and even the Biggs Boson Collider was thrown in for good measure.

Against this background of scientific endeavour it was good to see due deference made to our rainy weather. The recurring symbol of the umbrella was used to great affect enabling the disabled to fly or float as they triumphed over their handicaps.

The Queen had only a bit part amongst the 150 performers and was perhaps the only one not carrying a disability!

Possibly the most moving part of the evening came when the disabled dancer Birdy Bird Gerhl sang her beautiful haunting song “I am a bird girl now”. Although written 7 years ago it was a wonderfully appropriate to the athletes finding their form by surmounting their physical limitations. Some of the lyrics are: –

I’ve been searching
For my wings some time
I’m gonna be born
Into soon the sky
‘Cause I’m a bird girl
And the bird girls go to heaven

The ultimate goal is not to remain earthbound but to aim higher – to heaven itself.

The Bible would agree that we are made to be re-made for heaven.

It puts it this way, that because of Christ’s love for us he died as our substitute; his perfect life for us sinners. It is faith in this fact that enables us to no longer live to please ourselves but to please him. We now see people differently because believers are new creations embodying Christ’s way of seeing things and have been given the task of reconciling people to God (2 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 14 to 18).

To Stephen Hawkins, the Bible would say that we are creations not creators. As John Lennox reminds us “It is for the universe to shape our ideas about how it works, rather than for us to decide in our heads how it ought to work and then force the universe to comply”. Even the earth is not ours, but God’s … we are not our own – we are bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ (1Peter chapter 1 verses 18/21).

There was never any doubt about Anders Breivik’s guilt in the murder of 69 people and the wounding of 242 others following his bomb attack in Oslo and his rampage on the island of Utoya. The only doubts centred on his sanity and what verdict the court would impose this week.

Unlike American courts where many States have retained the death penalty as the ultimate sentence of retribution European courts have no such sanction. Instead they have gone for the rehabilitation of the guilty on the basis that none are beyond redemption.

Anders presented the court with two problems. First was his wish to be declared sane in order that his hyper-nationalistic views could not be written off as the ravings of a madman. The second was his tirade after the verdict was announced bemoaning that he had let down his Nationalistic friends by not having killed more people. The judge cut off his microphone terminating the rant to which Anders responded with a defiant clenched right fist in a fascist salute.

His sentence of 21 years imprisonment will be carried out in a high security prison where he will have his own 3 roomed suite. He will not be allowed access to other prisoners. He will be given the use of a computer but no internet access. The only people he will have contact with are his prison wardens who are presumably immune to his anti-Muslim anti-multiculturalism views.

Part of the country’s response to the attacks was the desire that Anders hateful beliefs should not be allowed to fill Norway with hate. In April, while the trial was taking place, tens of thousands of people around the country gathered for a mass sing-along of “Children of the Rainbow,” (a song Anders denounced in court) to show that he had not shattered their commitment to love, tolerance and inclusiveness.

The song itself is one of hopeful nation-building embracing thoughts of creation, the fall, sins of all, God’s law and a vague reference to Christ.

When it comes to justice for us our hope needs to be in Christ. He alone can judge justly because he knows each one of us intimately. His judgements will be perfect. (2Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10). Better for us to look for mercy replacing the clenched fist with the bended knee echoing the prayer of the Tax-collector “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner”.

That person is justified in God’s sight (St Luke Chapter 18 verses 13/14).

Matters of faith seldom get much of an airing in the newspapers but the handful of utterances Katie Taylor made with reference to Jesus have produced nearly as many column inches as her gold medal! Her heartfelt gratitude for His presence with her and her thanks to all who prayed for her has made some think.

Of course the good news that Jesus is a present reality to those who have placed their faith in Him is divisive – just as Jesus said it would be.

On the one hand there is the Journalist, who has conducted a lonely campaign for Christ in the media, taking pleasure at the embarrassment of his fellow reporters at Katie’s clear testimony.

This was countered by another who disingenuously argued that it was the time factor in having to rush his script to meet editor’s deadlines that made enquiry into what Katie meant impossible. Yet another article from a self proclaimed agnostic who in commending tolerance of individual beliefs added somewhat darkly that we need to set limits on religious fundamentalism.

Perhaps the confusion Katie’s unassuming love for Jesus has created was best summed up by one in the changing rooms of a public swimming pool. After weighing the arguments for and against knowing Jesus personally he announced that he now understood himself to be a “Catholic atheist”!

What has the Bible to say to all this?

Perhaps the most obvious thing was the almost total absence of any reference to it by any of the writers. One did admit to reading the Sermon on the Mount but used it to find inadequacies in the “Religious” and thus facilitate his rejection of faith.

The Biblical requirement for believers in Jesus to be witnesses is mandatory.

In the Old Testament, before Jesus arrived on the earth, The Psalmist could sing the words “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” out of heartfelt thankfulness for His enduring love which rescued them out of exile in the other nations to be His people (Psalm 107 verses 1/2).

In the New Testament following the crucifixion and resurrection the risen Jesus commissioned His disciples to be witnesses of His enduring love which had rescued them from their addiction to sin and unbelief to be His people “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1 verse 8).

Katie stands in a long line of those who have trusted Jesus and out of gratitude for his love to them set out on a path of witness to His presence and His enabling grace to keep them in His care on this life and the next.

What Katie did was to trust in what Jesus has done and is doing. Will you?

Katie Taylor winning Olympic Gold in the Women’s Lightweight Boxing Final dominated the news this week. The fact that it coincided with the late arrival of our Irish Summer made it all the more appreciated!

Katie boxes from a platform created by her faith in Jesus. It is not so much that she boxes for Him – as in pay-back time. Nor is it the she does her best by trying to live for Him. Instead her faith is in what Jesus has done for her on the cross, liberating her from the power and guilt of sin. It is out of this relationship with Jesus, her Saviour that the freedom comes to speak of Him in her life.

Other athletes witness to their faith by using symbols such as crossing themselves before and sometimes after the event. Still others draw attention to their country by pointing to the logo on their clothing. Again we have witnessed competitors taking a moment to publicly pray on their knees giving thanks to God for their performance.

Harder to interpret are the index fingers pointing upwards. These could be pointing to a higher power but, in the absence of any collaborating evidence may simply be saying that they are number one!

Katie Taylor removes any ambiguity. Her words are often direct quotations from scripture. They centre on her thankfulness to Jesus. She attributes her success to Him.

The Bible contains many references to people who have had a life changing encounter with Jesus. They have gone on to tell others. Sometimes this has been impulsive, such as the Samaritan woman at the well who spoke to her neighbours (St John chapter 4). At other times it was on Jesus instruction that a transformed man returned to his family with the news of his changed life (St Mark chapter 5 verses 19/20).

In every case the focus is on Jesus not the church, not the person who was changed but on the Saviour who had changed them.

So it is with our “Golden Girl”. She does not soak up the applause but re-directs it to Jesus whom she testifies to as her Lord and Saviour who has made it all possible.

She presents us with the challenge to encounter Jesus for ourselves and then to live and speak for Him giving God the glory for the great things he has done.

Queen Maeve not the legendary Queen of Connaught but Maeve Binchy, Queen of Irish story writing died this week. The name Maeve is steeped in mythology and probably means “she who intoxicates” which our Maeve certainly did with her many novels.

These books reflected her lifelong interest in people, their problems and their ability to overcome them. She was a student of human nature who delighted to eavesdrop on others conversations. She had a lively imagination and, whilst her ability to lip-read was limited, her imagination made up for it producing fascinating dialogue which became the essence of her writings.

Seldom can the eulogies of fellow writers have been so uniformly flattering.

The warmth of her personality, her wit, her intellect and her prodigious appetite for hard work have occupied many column inches of newsprint his week. She will be sadly missed by all who knew her and by all those who enjoyed her writings.

The one facet of her life which she did not shrink from herself, although understandably the tributes do, was her inability to believe in God. In the homily the preacher said she was a searcher in the tradition of the Magi, a seeker of the Divine, but it eluded her.

She herself had wanted to be a Saint – but not the kind that got martyred! Her school friends said she made it up but she never looked up into trees in case she saw “Our Lady beckoning to me”!

What has the Bible to say to all this?

Perhaps the greatest irony is to have someone whose lifelong joy was the written word to come to the end after 72 years during which the Written Word remained a closed book. In the Bible St John wrote his Gospel expressly, “so that you may believe” (Chapter 20 verse 31). The consequences of unbelief are dire.

At Irish funerals, religion always finds a way to land the deceased in heaven but such texts as Psalm 23, which was read, ring hollow in the face of unbelief.

Maeve specially requested the theme from “The Brendan Voyage” to be played after the homily. The music depicts Brendan setting sail into the unknown in his home-made boat.

St Paul also prepared for his departure in a way which has modelled the response of faith in the face of death for generations of believers. “The time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day —and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2Timothy Chapter 4 verses 6/8).

Who are you sailing with? Get on board with Christ and trust Him for your journey through this life and into the next.

The big question – would the opening ceremony be able to hold a candle to the mighty spectacle that was Beijing 2008 – was answered with a resounding affirmative.

It was a triumph of history, sentiment and subtlety over the wonders of technology. This was creativity on a grand scale which combined well with British eccentricity to overcome the essentially boring mandatory parade of athletes as 204 countries take their turn at waving their flag.

It was also a geography lesson par excellence with unheard of places getting their moment in the sun along with the multitudes from the big nations.

Here was unity on a grand scale. Here was the world displaying harmony through sport. No more the boycotts of past games. Terrorism, a thing of the past. Not even a whiff of the doping and bribery that so often marred previous Olympics. This was a night to savour the ideals of the 5 rings representing the five inhabited continents linked in sport. Their colours replicated in the national flags with no nation omitted. The motto – Faster, Higher, Stronger, melding into the tangible trophies of Bronze, Silver and Gold in our imagination.

The flame or, in this case, the flames went up from each country to finally join into one symbolic blaze and just when we wondered how it would end we got Paul McCarthy singing his poignant masterpiece “Hey Jude” – a triumph of love over broken relationships.

Can the games match the opening?

What does the Bible have to say to all this?

The Olympics were around in Bible times. St Paul, who knew a thing or two about discipline and self control, used the races to illustrate both the endurance required in the Christian life and the relative merits of the victor’s crown.

This is what he had to say to the church at Corinth; “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever” (Chapter 9 verses 24/25).

I expect our own Irish medal hope, Katie Taylor, is familiar with these verses as she does not fail to commend Jesus Christ her saviour to others. I expect the next verse; “I do not fight like a boxer beating the air” is a truth which her opponents will have cause to remember for a long time! 

McCarthy’s song caught the essence of it. Trust in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice reconciles broken relationships for time and eternity. Put your faith in Him.

In the good old days bank robbers were easily identifiable. They wore a mask and carried a gun. The nature of their business was evident. They wanted the money – as much of it as they could lay their hands on.

Modern bank robbers have one thing in common with their forerunners, they too want the money – lots of it, but there the comparison ends.

Our much loved Quinn family had the “Midas” touch for years. Growing out of humble quarry work and specialising in buying businesses which were inefficient, his empire grew across Europe.

Reckoning he knew a thing or two about banking he decided to buy the bank that had been so good at financing his schemes. Borrowing heavily from the Bank to buy its own shares seemed a good ploy until the global downturn came and the Bank itself was discovered to be toxic.

Damage limitation is now the order of the day for the Quinn family as they try to hold onto some assets by putting them beyond the reach of the receiver. Unfortunately this did not please those wanting their money back and prison has become a reality for at least one member of the family.

Across the water in the UK bank robbing is more sophisticated. Known as “Casino Banking” the robbers are running the bank! The Financial Times correspondent wrote, “The trading in the complex financial instruments central to the crash is now seen for what it is, a socially useless and financially dangerous way for small groups of people to make themselves absurdly rich”. Barclays Chief’s declared income was in the region of £100 million over the past five years indicating that he had found a way to beat the recession! Brought before Members of Parliament on the Treasury Select Committee, he was asked if he knew the three founding principles of the Quakers who set up Barclays. ‘I can’t, sir’, spluttered the embarrassed Bob Diamond. ‘Honesty, integrity and plain dealing’, the MP retorted.

The Bible would agree with these principles which were taken from a book written in 1678 by the Scottish Quaker Robert Barclay. The full title was An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, and it had a formative influence on the development of business ethics in the global economy.

Barclay got his inspiration from the 10 Commandments for the first two virtues. “You shall not steal” requires honesty and “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour” prohibits telling lies. Jesus dealt with “plain dealing” when speaking about the perceived need to put people under a greater constraint by oaths. His followers were not to engage in oath-taking but to “Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No” anything more comes from the evil one”.

What Jesus is emphasising is that we are not in neutral territory. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” writes St John in his 1^st letter chapter 5 verse 19. We need to know the Word of God and we need to know the God of the Word. Only then can we get equipped to resist the temptations of modern day living.

In Ephesians Chapter 6 verses 10/17 St Paul spells it out. Take his advice.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less…..
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. 

So wrote John Donne in the 16^th Century. If the illustration is shifted to Ireland and Michaela McAreavey’s death the symbol becomes a piece of Ireland being washed away and the Island becoming diminished.

Because we are related to every other member of the human race every death diminishes us. Donne’s poem says it in general terms. In this case we can be particular and apply it to a Bride strangled on her honeymoon in an idyllic island in the Indian Ocean.

Whatever secrets were hidden in hotel room 1025 most of them were washed away by the bath water by the time forensic examinations were carried out.

There was CCTV in the hotel but this only created confusion when another couple were mistakenly identified as the McAreaveys’.

There was no CCTV in the police interrogation room and the truth of the confession which the police obtained did not stand up to examination in court.

The case for the prosecution collapsed this week with a not guilty verdict by the jury. This has caused ripples across the land with the Taoiseach adding his profound sympathy.

It would appear that the murderer will go free.

What does the Bible have to say to the matter?

One place where “Man IS an Island” is Judgement Day. All are guilty and there will be no miscarriage of justice. There will be 100% attendance in court!

As the Hebrew writer puts it, “Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him (Chapter 9 verses 27/8).

Make Christ your advocate. He has never lost a case. Trust Him – he is God’s love gift to humanity. Then instead of the funeral bell watch out for the trumpet blast!

Scientists at Europe’s CERN research centre believe they have found one of the basic building blocks of the universe — a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. The Director General of CERN told an audience of scientists that the discovery is a milestone in mankind’s understanding of nature and has opened up exciting prospects for further revelations in the field.

This statement from Reuters news reminded me of my favorite childhood book – “The Wonders of Nature”. In it I read how tadpoles turned into frogs and this led to the creation of a pond in our back yard where the theory was tested and found to work!

This has been a great week for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. Instead of a pond in the garden the scientists used the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest physics machine, which cost €4 billion to build and began operating only two years ago – it is still running at only half-power.

The experiment involved sending protons along its 17 kilometre tunnel from both ends creating millions of super-fast proton collisions in the middle. These were observed for statistical aberrations only explainable by the Higgs boson particle. Since it is invisible scientists could only look at its effects, as it holds matter together. Without it, there would simply be a void. With it, matter holds together therefore the name “God particle”, coined by publishers with an eye to selling a book, is not inappropriate!

What does the Bible have to say about all this?

St John in his Gospel introduces us to Jesus “the Word”, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made Chapter 1 verses 1/3.

This same Word we are told in Genesis Chapter 1 spoke creation into being. The intriguing thing about this information is that it is not physical.

Creation was ex nihilo (out of nothing).

The non-materiality of information contained in sub-atomic particles points to a nonmaterial source – a mind, the mind of God.

The Word comes first. The information to create is in the Word. And the Word created the universes – Colossians Chapter 1 attributes it all to Jesus. “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

We praise God for every advance in our knowledge and by His grace look forward to that day when all will be made plain.

Till then, as the letter to the Church at Colosse says, “we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully as I am fully known”.

Prepare for that day by turning and completely trusting in Jesus for life in this world and the next.