Trinity 2.   Ravensthorpe Group Service :  Sunday 10[th] June 2012.

Governmental U turns I notice are much in the news these days.  Eye catching announcements are made that raise a tax or attempt stop a perceived  abuse.  But if opponents make enough noise they will, with any luck, get a U turn.  Our leaders dread being accused of being "out of touch".   In recent weeks we've had the great pasty U turn.   The Cornish pasty industry was up in arms about VAT on food designed to cool down after cooking:  politicians, showing how much in touch they were,  posed for  photographs "enjoying" one and that was the end of that.    The proposed destruction of buzzards nests, a move designed to protect pheasants mobilised the environmentalists.   Then there was the great row about a cap on charitable donations at Pound50K to prevent tax avoidance.  Next proposed tax increase on static caravans practically brought the Caravan Club to the door of No. 11  Downing Street.   And as for selling off forests - no one seemed to support that. So out it went  
The list of U turns gets longer and rendering unto Caesar the things that as Caesar's is ever more difficult.    One side claims that U turns are a sign of incompetence, lack of savvy and omnishambles whilst the other side regards a reversal of as a sensible reaction to public opinion  a sign of resolve, grit and determination. 
So much for Caesar.  What about God ?   Making a U turn in our own lives and bringing ourselves closer to God is certainly not easy.  But it's not open to differing interpretations.   For some it comes slowly, the result of a spiritual awakening perhaps stimulated by others.   Or again it. might be the result of big bang, a sudden change    
Among the more fascinating of the latter is the Bible's story of Jonah hoping to  avoid God's instruction that he should preach to the people of Nineveh that their wickedness was leading to destruction.  He runs away, takes a ship in the opposite direction and ends up being thrown overboard and spending 3 days inside a whale.   .    " I called to the lord out of my distress", Jonah tells us,  and he was vomited up onto the land,  goes to Nineveh, saving the city by preaching and bring the people to repentance. I suppose that might be regarded as a compulsory U turn.
So also Saul, persecutor of the Christians,  struck blind on the road to Damascus and hearing the question that changed his life and subsequently the history of the world  " Saul,  Saul why persecutes me?  "  
Not many of us undergo such dramatic, and traumatic, changes as St. Paul and Jonah.  But there is a third U turn story in the Bible that is perhaps more relevant to each of us : the parable of the Prodigal son.  In the case of Jonah and Paul they were shocked into changing their lives by an instruction from God that they should go out to preach His word.  The U turn of the Prodigal son was brought about by the realisation  -  his own realisation -  that his life of partying and debauchery had brought him nothing but poverty, shame and loneliness.   His is looking for forgiveness from his father and with it, one assumes,  the promise of a new life.  

   


