Last night a few of us met at Hamstead Hall School’s Aspiration Centre to look at Leviticus Chapter 2. An Old Testament account from the time of Moses instructing the priests from the family of Levi on their sacrificial offerings.

Leviticus 2 looks at the Grain offering which was an offering of fine flour -  easy that’s just a trip to Tesco right? – obviously…noo. Back then you’d have had to grind it down yourself with a mill stone or a pestle and mortar and it would have taken ages to get out all the lumps – in fact if you were just making it for regular use it would have sufficed to be a bit lumpy. This however was for a sacrifice to God and here we have our first spiritual lesson:

The flour: In our lives we need to shake things up a bit remove the stodgy  lumps and kernels. Submitting to God grinds us down so that the next ingredient can take effect.

The oil was added to the mix next, it would permeate through the fine flour soaking through all of it. Lumpy flour would not soak up the oil quite as well. Oil in scripture  was used to anoint those who were to carry out Gods will – Priests, Kings Prophets and Jesus himself. Gods will is carried out by His “Spirit” a word which in Hebrew means Breath or life it alludes to the way God thinks and acts… so now for Spiritual lesson number two:

The Oil: We should fill our lives with the will of God – get in tune with His Spirit and how he would like us to do things. To understand Gods will we must communicate with Him through reading his word and being constant in prayer which leads to the next ingredient

The frankincense a valuable perfume made from the sap of Boswellia trees which was burnt as an incense. Spiritual Lesson Three: 

Incense: Often representing prayer in scripture rising up as a sweet smelling savour as Ephesians tells us the sacrifice of Christ was to God “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” So in our life of service to God we must be pure as fine flour that is crushed and broken.  Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” In this way we can let the Spirit of God permeate through our lives and produce prayers to God that are sweet like perfume.

Finally Salt was added to the sacrifice. A preservative and a distinct flavour. Time for…Spiritual Lesson Four:

Salt: In the law Salt represented an everlasting covenant because Salt can never lose its Saltiness. Jesus tells us to be the Salt of the Earth and not to lose our saltiness,because if Salt loses is saltiness then it can’t be Salt. As Christians we have to act as Christians if a Christian loses their Christian-ness they simply aren’t Christian. The Salts saltiness defines it just as a Christians Christian-ness should define them.

Of course the perfect example of the crushed servant of God, full of Gods spirit that was a sweet smelling sacrifice and defined by his actions was Jesus Christ our Lord. How perfect Gods word is that His son fulfilled the law completely.

Love in Jesus – Handsworth Christadelphians.

Need that spiritual boost to get your mind in the right place again? Desperate to find something fun for the kids to do on a Sunday? Want something more than stale biscuits with the vicar and old Mrs Gubbins?

Its Handsworth Christadelphians Special Sundays!

Once a month you are invited to bring friends and family to a Special Sunday! There will be:

• Bible studies and workshops.
• Singing.
• Copious amounts of food,
• Good company.
• Spiritual understanding.
• and if thats not enough: its totally suitable to bring the kids along to as there is a Sunday school (thats every week) to keep the little rotters amused and who knows they might learn some pretty important life lessons.
• And finally- Copious amounts of food!

Its all totally free (so fill up a spare Tupperware box if i were you)

Come along on the 13th of December (2nd sunday of the month) for the next which is actually a Special Christmas Special Sunday Special! how much more specialness do you want. Wowee!

From then on its the first sunday of every month. Hope to see you there. God Bless!

The Aspiration Centre, Hamstead Hall School, Craythorne Avenue, B20 1HL

The trip was organised by The Christadelphian Bible Mission who plan preaching trips all across the world to aid the learning and living of those interested in reading the Bible for themselves you can learn more about the CBM here.

We arrived monday expecting the weather to be cold and harsh as we had been warned before hand to wrap up warm. Yet soon after we had landed were we shedding the layers and in t-shirts. On the first evening we enjoyed a chance meeting with two friends we had made on our last trip out in Easter. We all went to our Hotel to read Phillipians. Heres a pic of Shkodran, Luke and Fabian:

The three talks we held were on The Miracle of The Bible, The Miracle of Prophesy and The Miracle of Jesus all were well attended. Kosovo is a very young country with the majority of the population being under 30 it is also mainly a Muslim country and we had the opportunity to hold many discussions and debates with Christians and Muslims alike to both our benefits, I certainly learnt a lot anyway.

The trip was mainly taken up by fly billing to advertise the talks and also meeting friends we had made on previous trips, all apart from the last day. Here is the entry for the Friday from our CBM report:

Friday
We woke at 4:30 am and were at the bus station just after 5 to go to Skopje for a few hours before our flight home!
We arrived at Skopje at 8 am after some delays at the border.
We all took to Marko very quickly as he helped us exchange money, book our return tickets and then led us to a traditional breakfast of doruchek.
We then wandered through the town over the Stone Bridge into ‘Beat Bizarre’ chatting away to Marko, eventually ending up on the fort overlooking the city
This is where we sat in the sunshine to read the Chronicles and Daniel reading before making a rush to catch the 11 o’clock bus home.
It was then rush, rush, rush all the way to the airport where we again met the Hyseni family on the plane and enjoyed chatting together.

We had gotten up ridiculously early to meet Marco (above). Marco was the only Christadelphian in the whole of Macedonia and possibly the nicest person in the country too. “Rush rush rush” doesn’t quite give you the real idea of the panic that was the mad dash to the bus staion via a very relaxed Taxi driver (with whom i was proud to use my school German to the best of it ability by shouting ”Shnell Shnell!” (most folks speak German as a second language)) and also a school load of Macedonian children walking through the bus station. yet we still managed to get on the bus just as it was leaving the gates. Phew…

So that was our trip, please check out the CBM website. Were all hoping to go out again very soon and hope that God blesses us with some Baptisms into the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus.

Tom

A beautiful video that shares the beliefs of Christadelphian faith.There are lots more videos made by Christadelphians all over the world, posted on YouTube.

Handsworth? Well, we’ve been in Handsworth since about 1970 – that’s 37 years ago! We used to meet in Whitehall Road, then moved to Devonshire Road in Handsworth Wood. Now we’re meeting in The Aspiration Centre in Hamstead Hall School.

So what’s a Christadelphian? That’s made up of two words: Christ- , because we believe in Him, because He is the Son of God, our Saviour, and the “-adelphian” bit means “brothers of”. So the big word simply means “brothers and sisters in Christ”.

We can’t do better in telling you what we believe, why we exist at all, and why we aren’t part of some larger church group, than by giving you this statement, which is based on a very famous and ancient one called the Apostles Creed:

We believe in:

• God the Father Almighty
• Maker of heaven and earth
• And in Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son our Lord
• Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary
• Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.
• The third day Jesus rose again from the dead
• He ascended into heaven
• Where He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty
• From which He will come again, to judge the living and the dead
• To reward His saints
• To take the throne of David his father
• To rule on earth from Jerusalem the capital
• Until death be destroyed
• And God be all and in all
• We believe each of those statements extremely simply, extremely literally, and extremely seriously.

There are always lots of things going on within the church, so please come along and visit us!

In the Arctic, heat is at a premium. And so, the Arctic Rose uses the freebie of heat to attract the insects which pollinate it!

The flower of the little Arctic Rose is shaped like a radio telescope monitoring outer space: but for a far more useful purpose.

The shape of its petals gathers and reflects heat from the sun’s rays, and focuses warmth on the stamens and the stigma.

Insects come to these flowers not only for the food (nectar and pollen) but also for warmth. They come to these private sun traps, which are about 10 degrees than warmer anywhere else. The insects themselves become warmer and better able to fly in a very short time, and move on to the next solar heated flower, carrying the precious pollen to it.

Now these insects have to work hard, because the Greenland summer is only about 7 weeks long, although there are nearly 24 hours of daylight. Therefore the plant has to keep warm all day.

So how does it do it? Well, its stem rotates because of its extraordinary design, and it tracks the sun 24 hours per day, being never more than 2 degrees off course!

Isn’t that amazing? If no insects came, the flower would not be pollinated. If the flower wasn’t pollinated, the plant would die out, because there would be no seeds, and no new plants to carry on when the parent died.

So, in one of the many, many flashes of genius we see in the natural world, the Almighty God of heaven and earth, made provision for His little plant, and gave it this ingenious device to help it survive in the cold, cold north.

He cares about the plants. And He cares no less for us. His Son said so, in some of the most comforting words ever spoken anywhere (read the Bible verses to the right).

Like the little Arctic Rose, we too must track the Sun of Righteousness – that lovely name for the Lord Jesus is in the book of Malachi. Because from Him we gather and reflect the warmth of God’s love, which warms ourselves, and the others who come to Him.