MAC KIRK

John 13:31-35    5 th Sunday of Easter       Richard Baxter said this about patience, “   Another necessary (part) of our (lives) is patience.    We must bear with many abuses and injustices from those we are doing good for.   When we have studied for them, and prayed for them, and beseeched and exhorted them with all condescension , and spent ourselves for them, and given them what we are able, and cared for them as if they had been our children, we must look that many should requite us with scorn, and hatred, and contempt, and cast our kindness in our faces with disdain, and take us for their enemies because we tell them the truth ; and that the more we love, the less we shall be beloved.       All this must be patiently undergone, and still we must unweariedly hold on in doing good….If they unthankfully scorn and reject our teaching, and bid us look to ourselves and care not for them, yet we must hold on:   we have to deal with distracted men, that will fly in the f

Chiseled on the doorway to the parish Church of Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, England are these remarkable words: "  In the year 1653    When all things sacred were throughout the Nation     either demolished or profaned,     Sir Robert Shirley Barronet     founded this Church,     Whose singular praise it is      to have done the best things in the worst times and      to have hoped them in the most calamitous." To hope " in the most calamitous"---that is our calling. Hope in what, where or who?  Some hope in their standing in life...financial success means hope to them.  Some hope in their families.  If your family is successful, then you have hope.  Or we hope in the church---if it is growing and "successful" and " full", then we can say we have hope.  Can hope be disappointed?  Obviously , if we hope only in these things we can be very disappointed. And yet we are to be hopeful.  On this Good Shepherd Sunday, I invite you t