The Parish Record March 2010 - download PDF file

From the Manse

This month's message from Revd Morris Coull, B.D.

Just these words…to say how much I love this time of year when we start to move out of the short days of winter into the light and life of spring. I love the way it lifts the spirits as all that new life starts breaking out around us. Creativity! It never stops. God didn’t just create – past tense – he goes on creating all the time.
I don’t know about you but for me it’s all part of the glory of God. I guess we see what we want to see. In
the light of that let me share with you a true story.

It is a story about a young boy, Brendan, who was in hospital along with my niece. Both had been diagnosed with leukaemia. Unable to live with his son’s diagnosis, Brendan’s father took his own life.

We pick up the story some five years on from that tragic event. Brendan by this time was very ill at home…in the terminal stages of leukaemia. One evening he awoke from sleep and said to his mum; ‘Mum – you should feel the heat’. ‘But Brendan’s mum replied, ‘you don’t like the heat’. ‘Oh Mum’ said Brendan ‘it’s not that kind of heat – it’s Jesus’ love!’

A week later the consultant visited Brendan at home in the morning. She administered a large dose of morphine to ease his death. On leaving she informed the family that Brendan would not regain consciousness, but would just slip away.

A few hours later, Brendan sat bolt upright in bed with a full smile, his face and eyes shining, and died.
His mum was in no doubt that he was looking at Jesus and has told of this amazing event many times at public meetings. She knows that all is well with her child.

It was Jesus who said ‘Did I not tell you, that if you believed you would see the glory of God’.
Belief brings forth God’s glory – his creativity – at work in life and in what we call death. And so to Easter …

Hold us in your prayers, as we hold you in ours.

I am, your friend and Minister

Morris Coull