It's that time of year when we fill shoeboxes for various charities - we are supporting Operation Christmas Child but there are others such as Blythswood and Rotary, and in the past I've been involved in filling shoeboxes for homeless adults in the UK.

In this week's Baptist Times there is a very moving letter from a young woman now working as an au pair in the UK who as a child received a shoebox.  She speaks of her delight in finding in the box a little teddy bear, and her father telling her that someone must love her to send such a gift; all these years later she still has her teddy bear...  It costs us so little to fill a box with little gifts that bring so much joy and hope to others.

Sometimes, if we're honest, we groan at yet another appeal for yet another charity, but this letter is a reminder of the difference even a small toy can make to a child who has very little.

I always find it fun going out and choosing things to put in the shoebox and daring to imagine someone opening it and finding something in there that proves a little bit special. Be it a teddy bear, be it a toy aeroplane, be it a hat, be it toothbrush... hope and love in a box.... bit like a baby in a manger really.

In the last week I've spotted a couple of recent publications that should make for entertaining reading.

This one is described as satire and evidently includes cartoons by people such as ASBO Jesus, Naked Pastor and others.  Sounds fun - I may well buy a copy to wile away the hours on my drug-induced lethargy days!

This one is the latest collection of Dave Walker cartoons, published in August.  If you like line drawing cartoons and like laughing at the antics of church life then it's worth contemplating.

Maybe you could buy your minister one or other for Christmas to brighten and lighten her/his world?!  It might go down better than yet another calf-skin gilt-edged chain-reference red-letter Bible... ;-)

One of the more justified criticisms of Baptists is that as people who have a tendency towards biblioatry, we don't actually read much of the Bible in public worship.  Along with many of my minister friends and colleagues, I try to overcome that by ensuring that we get at least two reasonable chunks of Bible in every service.  This week we have six readings in six languages and next week, drum roll, fanfare, no less than fifteen!  Granted most are short and being used to make points about reading out of context, but it will be "loadsa Bible Sunday" that's for sure.

Yesterday's Bible study, excellently led by one of the group members, proved to be fascinating.

Here are just a few of the intriguing bits...

When we were asked to turn up the passage in Mark, two people already had their Bibles open at the Luke passage and one at the Matthew.  Each was sure theirs was the definitive version.  I don't think any of us had really noticed that this story in all three synoptics, which is intriguing given the subject matter and the style - the woman's story interrupting the Jairus story.  The differences between the three versions are very small, little redactive effort here, which is of itself intriguing, given the other differences we find between the three gospels.  So, an unlikely tale, told three times with minimal editing.

One of the things I shared with the group was about the time when I'd preached on this passage and noticed that the woman had been ill for twelve years, the whole life of Jairus' daughter, and of the significance of the girl being this age, on the brink of adulthood, physical and societal.  There was some debate about how literally we should take the figure of twelve, but I remain of the opinion that it is significant to the story - two separate life-stories meet for a moment in a Christ encounter.

The second, not dissimilar, observation was one I'd never spotted before.  The woman who silently approaches Jesus is commanded to reveal herself, whereas Jairus and Mrs Jairus are commanded to tell no-one (Mk5:43; Lk 8:56).  This is truly bizarre.  No one knew the woman was there and she could have slipped away silently (though of course had that been so we would not have her story) whereas loads of people knew Jairus' daughter was sick and dying, there was no way to hide the outcome.  There seems to be something here about bringing the hidden into the open and almost hiding the visible.

Having a very sick child was an acceptable, if unwelcome, situation; having some unspecified gynaecological condition wasn't (I did once speculate that this could have arisen postpartum, adding further poignancy to the stories). It did make me think again about which forms of disease are 'publicly accpetable' and which are not.  The study guide inevitably centred on things like HIV/AIDS but found myself wondering instead about mental health and addiction, which are very often 'hidden' illnesses.  The stereotype picture of the addict confessing his/her addiction to a support group has some echoes of the woman in the story, forced to say out loud 'it's me' as if the naming is essential to the cure.

We had some really good discussion yesterday, touching on some very tricky topics, such as the efforts made to keep alive very premature or sick babies who have no hope of independent living - i.e. they are unable to breath unaided and/or to to feed unaided - and what we mean by 'quality of life.'  We found no answers, but by naming the questions I think we achieved some good.

Today I've added a new 'fun stuff' link to Dave Walker's cartoon church blog.  It's one I have visited occasionally and it's always good fun, especially if you understand the weird machinations of the C of E.  Today's cartoon illustrates the one useful aspect of cassocks - loads of inner pockets to hide stuff.  Of course being a man-vicar dictates what the cartoon vicar keeps in said pockets - I'm sure woman-vicar would have a an insulated pocket for chocolate...