Important coronavirus update - the Isles of Scilly
are currently in partial lockdown and we will hold limited
services in our churches. Click on the links for the
churches news to find the plans for each church.
This page will be updated as things improve.
If you are a facebook member you can view useful items
on the scillymethodists
facebook page 
.
The Revd Michael Pullan gives us this August 1st
message:
Readings
John 5 v24-35, Exodus 16 v2-4, 9-15,
Psalm
78 v23-29
Bread
for Life/Bread of Life.
We
all need physical food to live. The pandemic has reminded
us and maybe brought it closer to home that many people
in our own country have needed support to enable them
to have enough food (bread) to eat - whether school
meals, food bank deliveries or supplies from other charities
or individuals.
Such
is this need for all of us, that even though we might
fast and survive for many days, we
cannot manage much more than 2 days without water.
Jesus
fed a large crowd and healed the sick, they followed
him and wanted more. Jesus knew they wanted to be fed,
healed or to see others healed, so he challenged them
"Do not work for the food that perishes, but for
the food that endures for eternal life which the son
of Man will give you.......believe in Him whom God has
sent......I am the bread of life." (John 6 v27,29
and 35). A challenge to follow and be committed to Him.
For
life is more than food to keep us alive, we are body,
mind and spirit if we neglect any of that trinity we
are not whole. If we deny any spiritual dimension or
become obsessed with physical needs, we might neglect
music, beauty, nature, prayer or other things that feed
the soul and, in
the next life, a world entirely of the spirit, be completely
out of our element.
Jesus,
in urging the crowd to work for food that lasts was
preparing them to understand the truth, that by his
death and resurrection they would find life.
The
spiritual equivalent of earning our bread is simply
trusting (every day) this same Jesus. For as we are
reminded, life is more than food and the body more than
clothing, and we are to seek God's kingdom first for
everything to fall into place.
After
all Jesus came and comes that we might have life in
all its fullness, which may well mean that we enable
others to be fed physically and spiritually. As William
Booth said in the language of his day "You have
to get man out of the slum, before you can get the slum
out of man".
