At Witney Congregational Church, on the first Tuesday of the month, we hold “LiteBite of the Word” – a soup, bread, fruit lunch with about 45 minutes of ... Bible Study, a discussion on a topic, whatever the leader wants to talk about.
A seemingly simple task but this month I really lacked inspiration. Bryan Doyle, our minister, has been preaching on 1 Corinthians and I decided we could explore the most used verse from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth: 13:13 “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love”.
Love is the possibly the easiest of the three to investigate, so we focussed on faith and hope. I distributed some slips with acronyms on. In case you don’t know what an acronym is, my husband offered this acronym based on my name: Educated Linguist Always In Need of Enlightenment. (It was disturbing how quickly those words came to him!)
Some of the acronyms will be familiar to you. We discussed whether the acronyms were useful or not. Forsaking All I Trust Him and For Answers I Trust Him both gained approval among the twelve gathered. Some really liked Fantastic Adventures In Trusting Him, while Foolish And Ignorant Theological Hogwash was, of course, roundly dismissed!
We moved on to HOPE. Hold Onto Prayer Everyday and He Offers Peace Eternally were deemed to encapsulate the word HOPE. Helping Ourselves Prepare for Eternity provoked some discussion: should we, as Christians, be preparing Others for Eternity? The one acronym we all agreed was excellent: Hold On, Peace Exists.
When I came back home, it was to have a homework session with my twelve-year-old granddaughter. (Boy, does she loathe homework!) I picked up a notebook to write down an algebraic equation and noticed that, many moons ago, I asked CF people and various friends to create HOPE acronyms for Life-Light, the advent reflection series. None were as good as those written above, in my opinion. I turned over the page and found three people had offered me PEACE acronyms: Patient Engagement Achieves Calm Enlightenment; Positive Effects Achieve Christlike Equalities and Prayer Eventually Answered – Calm Ensues.
Saviour Jesus, no matter how we puzzle to learn about you, you came as the Prince of Peace, and we worship you.
Father God, as Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, our faith is a gift from you, and we thank you for it.
Holy Spirit, who lives within us and gives us hope, the resurrection hope of Easter, we praise and worship you.
God in three persons, you are LOVE. You draw us to you and ask nothing from us that you have not already equipped us to give. Accept our thanks and praise that we can learn from each other when we meet to study your Word. Amen.
Elaine Kinchin
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