• I nominate these guys

    baptismal candidates

    Can you change the world by pouring water over someone?

    Well, we had a go yesterday in St Mary’s with two lovely baptisms in a great service yesterday morning.

    In the course of the service, we were reminded of Moses being scooped from the water of the River Nile and going on to set a whole people free from slavery. Then we heard a bit of St Paul which reminded us that transformation of the heart was connected with accepting that we all have gifts that differ. (What a fabulous reading for a baptism). Then we had a reading from the gospels which told us that in trying to work out who Jesus was, Peter the apostle actually found himself named and commissioned for service.

    What will these children do in their lives?

    There is so much trouble in the world at the moment that it is important to be reminded of the hope and the joy that isn’t just part of what happens when new life comes into a family with the birth of a child but also the new life  and hope which is intrinsic to our faith.

    Yesterday morning was a little Easter for us at St Mary’s. And a packed church was buzzing with the ideas that new life, hope and love are real and for sharing.

    I don’t know who is going to sort the world out and allow the kingdom of love to be seen for real. But I nominate these guys, freshly baptized, and all like them who are entering the world anew. May they be a generation that brings faith, hope and love to bear on a world that needs to be baptised with every drop of goodness it can get.

4 responses to “St Augustine”

  1. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    I like the painting very much, but, forgive me for my ignorance , what is this “explains much” of which you speak? Ohh, and the literal minded in me says – even as a baby – as the child of Monica of Hippo – he was still Augustine of Hippo.

    1. Kelvin Avatar

      Surely at this point he was Augustine of Tagaste if he was of anywhere.

  2. Alan McManus Avatar

    So beehive hairdos are that old? The things you learn from art. If that Tardis that sells coffee outside the Botanic Gardens actually worked, I would go back and kidnap that straitjacketed infant, materialise at Woodstock and hand him over to the nearest couple of flowerchildren. Just imagine a Church with no Jansenists and their ilk! Okay we’d have to do without Pascal but just think what Glasgow would be like without You-Know-Who glowering over it. From Clyde Street.

  3. Alan McManus Avatar

    I’ve just lost ‘What Theologian Are You?’ which I’d reached through a suggestion above, however I did the quiz and though I often thought ‘yes, but I wouldn’t put it that way’ and came up with a tie between Charles Finney (of whom I’m entirely ignorant) and AUGUSTINE! With Calvin a close third. I’m doomed. It’s predestined.

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