Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang

A YOUNG friend joined us today. Lucien is a very mature six year old who can run very fast, read well, keep up with fast moving action in films and loves our daughter Rachel, who's twice his age. In honour of him visiting us we went to see Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, a film set in wartime England with four children (two rich in material goods but lacking parental love and supervision and two poor in material goods but rich in family bonds) who receive the services of Nanny McPhee. Nanny works on the basis that when you need her but don't want her, she must stay but when you want her but don't need her she must leave.

The children rich in family love live on a farm with their mother while their father is away fighting in the war. They have to make sacrifices to ensure they keep the farm. Nanny teaches the children not to fight, to share, the co-operate, to show bravery, to be persistent and to make the leaps of faith necessary in life so that hope is not lost.

It's done very well complete with piglets who can fly, climb trees and are good at synchronised swimming. It was a delightful film and the children and I enjoyed it. Laughing, crying, being startled and sitting on the edge of our seats (literally in Lucien's case) as the action continued and the story progressed.

Similarly, the stories in 1 Samuel 8-10 are big picture stories with fast moving action, war and pestilence, goodies and baddies and God who demands that the right way be followed. If you do things God's way then you get the rewards, but woe betide you if you don't. I mean no disrespect in drawing parallels with Nanny McPhee but it does seem to be My Way or the highway with the Old Testament God and Nanny McPhee.

The message for me in 2 Corinthians 10 is twofold
"For we are not bold to number or compare ourselves with certain of them that commend themselves: but they themselves, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves, are without understanding" and "he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. 18 For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth."

The SOAP (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer) readings for today from Northside Community Church are James 2 14-26
The telling message in this is that deeds without faith is useless as is faith without deeds. "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." Faith is the part of the transaction with which I struggle - "I believe Lord, help Thou my unbelief".