Welcome to St Mary's the Virgin 

A Message from Fr. Neil

 

For the last couple of months, as avid readers of this column will know, our Old Testament readings on Sunday have been following the books of Samuel: we have just entered the first book of Kings. One of the encouraging things about these books is that they never shy away from presenting the characters as the complicated, contradictory people they were. Samuel the “see-er” often can’t see what is directly in front of his eyes; Saul is tall, but inconstant; David is “handsome, with beautiful eyes,” and while undoubtedly gifted is also deeply flawed. We are about to find out about Solomon.

           

Yet, these are still the heroes of the stories. Samuel is a great prophet; Saul unites the nation; David secures their land and borders – and wrote songs we still sing in church. In fact, when we delve into the biographies of any of the saints, what we discover are not one-dimensional cardboard cut-out characters from central casting, but whole people, with joyous glories and frequent failings. As we learn from the epic tales in Samuel and very personally from the Psalms, David was profoundly aware of his shortcomings, (and the tragedies of his life were not by any means all of his own making – the Bible has no place for the modernly popular concept of ‘karma’ [to quote another modernly popular phrase – ‘just saying’]). David though, like the proverbial tide, always returned - to the solid ground of God’s love.

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