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Available for over a year

Good morning. Within walking distance of the cottage where I live there’s a lake which was created some years ago out of a previous open cast mine. It’s well established now and is a great attraction to wildfowl. It was a couple of large white swans which caught my eye earlier in the week when I was walking my dog. They were placidly floating on the lake. Then suddenly they decided to fly away and for half a minute all was honking confusion as they frantically flapped their wings and paddled their legs so as to pick up enough speed to raise their large bodies into the air. They just succeeded before running out of water and within a few more seconds they were flying serenely in the sky, confusion, noise and panic all left behind. It seems that the swan has two steady states - floating and flight, but the state in between, lift-off, is full of anxiety and confusion. The same might be said of any political party continuing in, or aspiring to, office. There’s the steady state of floating in government or opposition, and there's the vision of the soaring flight of government following the next election, but the state in between - the struggle of an election campaign - brings confusion, noise and anxiety to all parties, and this year the waters of governance are more crowded with newish political parties establishing themselves. Well we’re in the party conference season when political leaders and their colleagues strive to share their future vision with the electorate and give confidence to their supporters in the hall that the election campaign will have lift off. This year, indeed this week, there are new issues. The governance of Scotland and England, whether to join America in bombing Isis, then there are recurring issues such as how to fund an effective NHS in a time where we are all living longer. There are no easy answers. Christians, like others come to different conclusions and show up in different political parties. This isn’t surprising because Jesus and the early church were nowhere near the levers of power, and consequently the New Testament doesn’t give any consistent guidance for engaging in public life. Centuries earlier, Judah did run its own affairs, and the prophets developed the vision of the duty of all to work for the Common good, and the duty of rulers to ensure that nobody is excluded or left out of that good. Different parities today might develop different policies to enable that vision to fly, but as they argue these policies through a distinctive teaching from Jesus Christ might well be helpful – that of being generous to one another. He taught that God lavishes goodness and grace upon us, not because we deserve it, but because God is generous. I hope some of that generosity of spirit oils the wheels of debate during these weeks.