MWI President's Address
Address by the newly installed President of Methodist Women in Ireland, Mrs Maureen Weir, in Movilla Abbey Church, Newtownards on Saturday 10th September 2011.
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Newly installed All-Ireland MWI President, Mrs Maureen Weir receives her Chain of Office from outgoing President, Mrs Joy Graham. |
Before I go any further, there are a few people I want to thank. First of all I want to thank the General Officers, who have been so encouraging and are such a lovely team of ladies to work with and on behalf of all M.W.I. ladies I want to thank Joy for her leadership over the last two years. Joy, you have given tirelessly of your time and talents and have been gracious in all you did for M.W.I. - thank you. You can now enjoy a rest, although I think you have lots of other commitments to keep you busy. And I also want to thank Helena, who has put a lot of work into preparing for this service. Thank you Helena.
I want to thank all the ladies from the Down District, who are hosting this event. To Lyn for organizing ladies for different jobs and Barbara for heading up the catering - yes, there is tea and buns for everyone after the service!
I also want to thank all those who have sent me cards, letters, emails, phoned, spoken to me of their love and support - it all means a lot.
It is lovely to see so many ladies and gentlemen here to-day and I want to thank YOU all for coming. Some of you have travelled quite a distance to be here - from the north, from the west and the south of this island and some have even crossed the Irish Sea to be present and I appreciate the effort you have all made to show your support. (The Lord has been very generous in giving us such a lovely day to make our journeys more pleasant.)
As you see from your order of service, my theme is 'Journey with Jesus. Walk in HIS way.' An ancient Chinese proverb says that 'the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step' and to-day I have taken that first step on my journey as your President - whether I travel a thousand miles or not is yet to be seen and I don't know where this step on the journey will lead -- God is in control, He is leading the way.
We read of many journeys in the Bible - the journey of the children of Israel out of Egypt, their long journey to the Promised Land, Ruth and Naomi's journey back to Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Jesus' journey to the cross, Paul's journey to Damascus and many, many more and this afternoon I want us to look at a few journeys found in the Bible.
The first journey I want us to think about is a journey made by Moses. Moses journeyed with the Israelites most famously, perhaps, through the Red Sea because of God's miraculous intervention but have you ever stopped to consider his tiny, yet arguably more significant small step towards the burning bush, when God first appeared to him in the desert, whilst he was just an ordinary, inarticulate lowly shepherd?
Imagine walking home and seeing a bush on fire. Upon walking closer to it, you hear someone yelling your name from the bush. What would you do? I imagine I would call an ambulance and the fire brigade. "Come quickly, someone is burning to death in the shrubbery!" scratch my head and think, "What is happening here?" and maybe try to put the fire out myself. And yet Moses simply replies, "Here I am." Yet it was in his coming towards the burning bush - that journey of curiosity - that God began to speak to him.
When Moses hears God's call, he is immediately fearful, hiding his face so as not to look at God. And when God charges him with the rescue of the Israelites from the land of Egypt, and with leading them into a promised land, I can almost hear the discomfort in Moses' voice: "Who am I, a simple shepherd, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? Lord, who am I, that you should put me in charge of this? It's not going to work out."
"Who am I?" is a question I've also asked God. When I was asked to take on this role in M.W.I. I didn't feel I would be capable or in any way qualified to do it. "Lord, who am I? There must be other folk more able to do this job than me." But He had other ideas and challenged me to be open to what I was asked to do and He would be with me each step of this journey.
Thankfully, Moses and each one of us is never alone. God quite explicitly makes clear to Moses that, no matter what will happen, God will always be with him. This was God's promise to Moses and it is God's promise to each of us to-day. He will be with us each step of our journey through life if we put our trust in Him and with that assurance I know that over the next two years, God will be my constant companion on this journey for M.W.I.
Our next Bible journey is the journey taken by Daniel to the lion's den. You are all familiar with the story of Daniel. Daniel disobeyed King Darius' order that anyone who prayed to any god or man, except the King, during the next 30 days was to be thrown into the lion's den. The death decree suspended all religious liberty for one month but Daniel's first obligation was to God. In the Bible we read "Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before." As a result of his disobedience to the King's decree, he goes on a journey, a journey to the pit where the hungry lions are kept. It must have been a long hard night for Daniel but of course God was watching over him and closed the lions' mouths so they didn't harm him. In the presence of God there is safety.
Recently I read of how many years ago, during the trouble between the Turks and the Armenians, some Turkish rebels demanded of some Armenians their life because they were Christians and would not go back on their belief in Jesus Christ. They were brutally murdered. Finally all the men and women were killed. Then the evil men came to the Armenians' little girl. They asked: "Will you give up Jesus or shall we throw you to the hungry dogs?" The little girl said "I love Jesus." Ruthlessly her tormentors threw her into a pen of hungry savage wild dogs and shut the door and left her there.
The next morning when they returned they couldn't believe their eyes. At one end of the pen the little girl was on her knees praying to Jesus. In front of her was a large savage dog, standing guard over her. When one of the other starving dogs came too near to molest her, the big dog snarled and kept all the other dogs away.
God had protected the little girl from the wild dogs, just as He had protected Daniel from the lions.
Serving God is not always easy. For Daniel it meant that he would be in danger of the worst kind of torture and for the little girl it meant torment and to-day many of our brothers and sisters in Christ in various parts of the world are facing suffering and persecution because of their faith.
A few years ago, at an M.W.I. Fellowship week-end, I attended a seminar about the Persecuted Church and I was shocked to hear of so many countries where Christians to-day cannot worship freely, cannot meet for prayer or Bible study, except in secret and with the fear of being imprisoned or worse. This really challenged me and so for my President's Project, which is entitled "Mary and Elizabeth" I am hoping to help and support the women of the persecuted church in Egypt. This will be done in conjunction with the charity Open Doors, who serve persecuted Christians worldwide.
In Egypt there has been a reappearance of attacks on churches. 12 were killed and 200 injured when 2 churches were attacked in Cairo a few months ago. A mob set fire to one church. All escaped from the burning building except for the church attendant, who leaves a wife and family and it's women and children like this, women whose husbands have been imprisoned or taken away that I hope my project will help.
The flyer that you have all been given about this project, explains about the Mary and Elizabeth movement. Persecution often means that families lose their breadwinner to imprisonment or death; violence forces them to flee or lose their livelihoods; discrimination makes employment difficult. The money raised by this project will go towards funding the work of giving vital aid to Christian families and practical support to widows and orphans.
I pray that over the next two years many throughout Ireland will be challenged by this and support the project financially and in prayer so, as our M.W.I. mission statement says, we can make Christ known through our love and actions to our sisters in Christ.
And our final Bible journey is the journey of the two disciples on the Emmaus Road. At the start of the journey they are two men defeated - they thought they had something precious and all of a sudden it was gone. All they had with Jesus, all the warmth and wonder they'd shared with him and the others, had been taken away by the brutal forces of government and military, who had killed him as an agitator, an enemy of the state.
By the end of the story they were two men exploding with warmth and wonder again, realizing that the stranger they had been sharing their troubles with, the guest at their table, had been Jesus Himself. They recognized Him in the breaking of the bread and they were filled with joy.
We don't know what joyful surprises Jesus has in store for each of us but we can expect joyful surprises if we walk in His way. The first followers of Jesus were not called Christians. That came later. They were called People of the Way. Jesus had said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." If you are on the way then you are on a journey. Christ will meet you and accompany you on the journey, wherever it takes you. The road will wind in various ways, but the one thing that you can always trust is that you will never be alone. Christ will accompany you and surprise you time and time again on the journey you take. As these two men started out on their journey to Emmaus they were deeply unhappy, for they had just been bereaved in the most terrible circumstances but they kept journeying, embraced a stranger, opened themselves up to new ways of thinking, generously offered up their food and their home. They did this because they were People of the Way. So let us keep journeying on the Way of Jesus, a Way many of us have been on for years, a Way perhaps we stray from every now and again. Let the journeys we have heard about to-day, encourage us to live as People of the Way; and let us be thrilled by the expectation that as we journey we'll almost certainly find Jesus somewhere en-route.
God has called me to take this journey in M.W.I. and it's in His power and His strength that I set out on this journey.
Proverbs 16 v 9 says ‘A person plans his course but the Lord directs his steps.' It is reassuring to know that although we can make our plans, ultimately God is in control and will keep and direct us in His way.
