Refugees - how can we help?

 We hear & see so many reports of persecution, torment and terror from the Middle East and  North Africa. People of many nationalities & beliefs, including many persecuted Christians, are fleeing for their lives, not only because of war - the civil war in Syria being so much in the forefront of our minds and the scourge of IS too - but also because of repeated crop failure.Not since the Second World War has Europe seen such huge numbers of refugees and migrants fleeing terrible conditions arriving in its cities. With campaigns building on social media I ask what can we do to help?
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 First you can petition our government to show more compassion and offer sanctuary to refugees And you can still do that here:

petition parliament

Then the suggestion is to offer places in our homes for refugees - but that could only happen if they are allowed in the country. 

BMS world mission encourages Baptist Churches to take part

 BMS responding to the refugees

tells us that if every church took only 5 refugees 11,000 could be accommodated and people have begun to respond to this challenge through the FB page

take refuge GB

Locally Perth & Kinross Council are planning support: Perth & Kinross Refugee Crisis and I understand they are compiling a list of people who'd like to help either by offering room or volunteering. You can message via Pitlochry Baptist Church FB (www.facebook.com/pitlochry-baptist-church)  to find out more.

 - and finally we can do something practical and donate clothes, food, blankets & money to help. 

Many well known international agencies have put out new appeals for help click  green words to follow links such as:
 Save the Children   Oxfam 
Medecins sans Frontieres  
And Christian agencies are in the forefront too
Christian Aid is working with refugees in Europe & the middle East 
 Tear Fund are assisting  those in Calais,Eastern Europe and Syria and have set up a Refugee Crisis Appeal and 

 BMS  is helping in Syria 

And locally:
 Blysthwood  collect from Pitlochry through the Baptist Church every month (just bring your donations here to the Atholl Centre) and are helping Syrian refugees in Eastern Europe. 
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Refugee Crisis - Pitlochry Cares has set up a FB page and already taken a carload of clothes to Calais.

So we've no excuse - let's do what we can to help.

#Nobody’sgoingtoreadthisanyway

 Why is today called “Good Friday”? Today is the day when Christians remember the death of Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour of the World, so how could you call that good?

Is it a piece of reverse psychology? Like telling you NOT to think of a yellow bus, so it ends up being the only thing you CAN think about?  So don’t think about how horrific this form of capital punishment was, or how unjust that an innocent man is being executed in this way. Call it good.

Death on a cross is so grotesque, so incomprehensibly horrifying it was intended as the ultimate deterrent. It was a crushing death: Physically, the body weight pulls on the arms and compresses the chest, crushing the lungs so it becomes impossible to breathe – that’s why the thieves on either side of Jesus had their legs broken so they could no longer push themselves up to support their weight & breathe, so they would die quicker.  Emotionally crushing because of the shame, culturally worse because it is the hallmark of the invaders, and religiously absolutely anathema because “ cursed is he who hangs on a tree”, and a humiliating death as they hung naked in full view of any gloaters, with the clothes they have been stripped of being divided as spoils among the soldiers crucifying them. Glorying in a cross, especially one with a figure on it, is like holding up an severed head would be today. A revolting concept – so how can that get  somehow sanitised?

But Christianity is an upside down religion. The human race could place their lives all along the scale of good and bad, from those who deliberately go out of their way to cause pain & harm to others, through the OK lives where people have neither a positive or negative affect on those around them, to those who go out of their way to help others and change others’ lives for good, but what most folk don’t realise is that the Bible says it is physically impossible to be good enough for God, no matter how hard you try. Nobody could avoid some small slip. “All men have sinned.” That’s why God had to provide the solution to sin Himself. So for Christians this day is good because this is the day the Son of God took the punishment for all their sins, in fact for the sins of everyone in the world, and died in their place so they could be forgiven by God, so they could return to sharing their lives with God as He intended humans to do in the first place. Jesus’ death was the turning point in history, it is the focal point of eternity. It changes everything.  Some philosophers would say it’s too cosmically huge an event to comprehend, so how could it be that simple? But then, aren’t many breath-taking concepts beautiful in their simplicity?  As simple as 1-1=0? Jesus is the second Adam: By the first sin came into the world, by the second sin is forgiven. Is it a struggle to comprehend that?

The difference for those who have become Christians is that Good Friday is neither a piece of psychological manipulation nor a philosophical quandary, for them it’s simply REAL. When someone comes face to face with the cross and admits they have sinned and hands that sin over to Jesus, the Son of God, the absolute peace and complete relief they experience as they are forgiven is beyond refute. Good Friday. The proof of the pudding is in the eating - & this pudding is an upside down cake, a bit of a weird concept, but the taste is out of this world.