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| Georges Rouault, Christ and the Apostles, 1937-8 |
Hello and
welcome to this week’s Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, my name
is Phillip Dawson.
Decisions, decisions! Before the lockdown, one newspaper reported that we each
make up to 35,000 decisions every day. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me – but
whatever the figure, I imagine it’s considerably lower at the moment. It may be
no exaggeration to say that at the present time, life and death decisions are being
made by those with responsibility for our health and wellbeing. Decisions
which, for the most part, are outside of our control. Decisions which are
certainly having an impact on people living in the poorest countries in the
world; supporting whom is the focus of this year’s Christian Aid Week appeal,
which continues until Saturday.
On
Thursday, the church celebrates the life of St Matthias. Virtually all we know
about him is from a few short passages in Acts of the Apostles, which I’m about
to read. This tells us that he’d been a loyal follower of Jesus right from the
start, as had another man, Justus. Faced with the task of selecting a
replacement after the death of Judas, the eleven remaining apostles found they could
not decide between Matthias and Justus, so they prayed to the Lord, before
casting lots. The rest, as they say, is history - or perhaps 'unknown' history
in the case of Matthias.
