Week Two

The straw that broke the camel’s back: Peace

Straw has a rich history in human civilisation: in caring for livestock, as insulation, in manufacturing, construction, even in making ice cream! * Look at the seed to sow below. Any strand of straw can seem frail — but just a little bunch and suddenly something is starting to happen. Because straw creates pockets of air, trapping heat inside. So are we as Christians, creating little pockets of warmth, when gathered together we can help store heat and energy. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is often a negative expression, the idea of the last thing that finally tipped somebody over. But what if the camel isn’t a camel… What if the ‘camel' is an obstacle or a barrier? What if the camel is poverty? Or climate change? Or inequality? Or injustice? How can we be straw together, knitting ourselves into something more than the sum of our parts, tiny on our own, but powerful together in other to break the back of hunger, or global warming, or loneliness?

SEEDS TO SOW:  * Before refrigeration straw used to be used to insulate icehouses! What unexpected sweetness could we bring into our communities today, insulated by straws of peace?

Read Psalm 85

Looking at verse 10, let’s reflect on the relationships between love and faithfulness; righteous and peace. Can you have love without faithfulness, or faithfulness without love? And similarly can you have peace without righteousness, or righteousness without peace?

Read Mark 1: 1-8

As we explored in the introduction, straw when gathered together becomes more than the sum of its parts. The gathering together is important.

We are all called, like John, each in our own way to play a part in gathering together the straw. In creating community and space for people to discover and rediscover God’s transforming love. We cannot bring people to faith ourselves, we can only point the way we have gone, the roads we have travelled.

As we are thinking about peace this week, in what ways do you think John is promoting the cause of peace? And can we learn anything from him?

Read James 1: 26-27

Pure religion by the way! What is pure religion? Getting your hands dirty amongst the straw of real need in real lives — to avoid the worse stains of hypocrisy and cruelty.

How do we tell the difference between the honest dirt of rolling our sleeves up as we get to work for the Kingdom and what is described as the stains of the world?