Wednesday evening and Lent Bible study at Zion, I walked in to a busy church, full of people meeting up for their activities, some ending up in the wrong room until they were put right! Some church events and also Brownies and Short-mat Bowls, how great to see our resources shared with the community alongside worship.

Then when we had read the passage for the evening study, our first question reminded me of my childhood, we were challenged to think of a favourite memory verse; for me it was Mark 12 v 17 ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s’. These were the words of greeting whenever I met up with the school caretaker at my primary school (and for all the years after until he died). I never thought about it until last night, that he must have been praying each time he said it, that I would one day belong to God in a very real sense, and I know he watched my Christian journey with a glad heart and was a great encouragement to me for the next 20 years.

Jesus was answering a question about taxes when he said those words in Mark, but there is always deeper meaning in His words when we look for it, and I believe that in those words we can reflect on the world today.

All over the world there are so many Christians who are denied their place of worship, even their access to the Word of God, because of the political demands of their nation. The result is, however, very positive; they value their faith and hold on to it even if they are tortured or killed because of it.

Do you remember those times as a child when you were given a new toy for Christmas or a birthday, the old one being, if not discarded, at least relegated to the toy box? We are so wealthy nowadays, we can have almost anything we want, and we crave newer and better and the old is pushed aside to make way for the latest gadget. When we lived in Zimbabwe, it was great to see old machinery and cars carefully nurtured and lovingly repaired to keep their useful life going as long as possible, well beyond the time when they would have been on the scrap heap here in the UK. Why? Because you simply couldn’t buy new ones without huge amounts of foreign exchange, but there was also a sense that if it can still work then keep it going! Yes, it was like that in the UK before credit cards!

Here in this country we can have anything we want, even if we can’t afford it, the result is that we really don’t value what we have. We live in a throw away society that is careless about the resources we have. How special it is to see the church used so well – a gift of God used for the people of God, which includes the people of our community, sharing our/God’s resources.

But do we value our spiritual resources in the same way? How precious is our faith? Do we really put God at the centre of our lives? We feed our physical bodies 2 or 3 times every day, but do we feed our spiritual bodies even once a day? What if we no longer had access to the Word of God? Would it make a difference to you? It will if you don’t hold on to those memory verses, because that is all you might have; it may not if you haven’t given it the rightful place in your life that it should have.

The Word of God is easily accessible to us, we can so easily take it for granted, left on the shelf unread!