HANDY HINTS
When you scatter grit on icy paths, scoop into a plastic plant pot with large
holes in the bottom. Then tap firmly on the side of the port to distribute the
grit evenly.
When frying meat put a metal colander upside down over the pan. It will
allow steam to escape but stops any splattering.
To stop gardening scissors becoming blunt, use them to cut up clean
aluminium pie cases before throwing them away. The scissors are soon
sharp again.
Watch out for more handy hints in next month’s magazine.
Shirley Barnwell.
THE BREAD OF EMMAUS
The German language has a word for a sudden insight: ‘Aha-Erlebnis-Aha
experience’. It is when suddenly something happens, which makes another
clear: Newton seeing an apple falling and thinking of the theory of gravity,
great realizations seem to occur suddenly, it must have been like this with
many thinkers like Galilei or Descartes. The Bible, the greatest book of
miracles, does not lack of such happenings, Moses receives the tablets on
mount Horeb amidst thunder and lightning, suddenly there were the crowd of
angels appearing for the shepherds in the fields. And something like this
happened at Emmaus, maybe that is the most amazing of all sudden
insights.
On the day after the catastrophe of Golgotha everything changed. The story
does not begin like a miracle, starting with the historic event, the great
disaster of the execution of Jesus. For those two men, fleeing from
Jerusalem, like for all those who had set their hope on Jesus, this was the
lowest point in their life. How He had dealt with Holy Scripture, how He had
written with his finger in the dust of the temple floor, instead of having the
adulteress stoned, in His parables of the vineyard and the workers there, He
had made a new kind of justice visible, changing the law of violence and
counter-violence by saying you should turn the other cheek, and to the sick
who only had to touch Him to be healed, He said ‘your faith has helped you’.
Was His mercy God’s mercy? Did the Spirit of God speak out of Him, was it
possible that God appeared as a man? They had seen in Him an example of
this, but the High Priests called it blasphemy that he called himself the Son
of God, and that he addressed the great JHWH, the Most Holy one of Israel,
as ‘Father’
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