We all like to make a profit don’t we…
Written by Don Martin,
As some of you, who know my wife and myself ,will be aware before
we settled in Sheffield we spent 17 or so years living full time on a
narrow boat cruising the Inland Waterways of England.
Not many people appreciate the scale of these waterways but put you
boat in the water at Victoria Quays and you have almost 2,500 Miles
of inter connecting navigable canals and rivers before you.
We managed about 95% of that system.
Here is a story from those times;
We were on our boat, moored in the city of Chester.
It was summer and the sun was shinning. It was a Sunday and in the
morning we went to a church not far from where the boat was moored.
After lunch we decided we would walk up to take a look cathedral.
Inside the cathedral there were some other tourists, just like us,
admiring the architecture and reading the stone panels fixed to the
walls in remembrance of the great and good of a bygone age.
In the front of the cathedral the choir were singing a psalm, I am not
well versed in the details of the Church of England daily program of
services but as it was late afternoon so I guess this may have been
evensong. However I stand to be corrected!
None of the visitors where taking much notice of the music but then
the choir stopped singing and a man began to read from the Bible.
He did not read from the Gospels or the Epistles or any of the great
Bible stories like David and Goliath or Daniel in the Lions Den. No,
he read an obscure passage from the Book of Proverbs!
He was not long into the reading before virtually everybody stopped
walking around and started listening, some just stood, some sat, a few
just started crying!
We remember this particular Sunday afternoon because we found it all
quite extraordinary, we could sense the power of the Word of God
touching our lives and it was clearly touching the lives of the other
people who were there! There was no preaching, no teaching, just the
verses of the Scripture!
The book, the man was reading, the Bible, is a powerful book, it
touches peoples lives, Paul described it as “the Sword of the Spirit
which is the Word of God” Ephesians 6.17.
We must read it, study it, learn it, meditate on it and use it!
The old Authorised Version renders the text of 2 Timothy 3. 16. thus
“All Scripture is given by God and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”
Paul is not talking about a financial profit but a spiritual profit which
is much more important, much more valuable, much more lasting.
I like that, and, after all, we all like to make a profit don’t we?
