Scripture & Reflection: First Sunday after Trinity Sunday, 22nd June, and for the week ahead:Scripture:To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8.6)Reflection:We can’t avoid thinking about ‘the flesh’ – all the aspects of our physical life – but is that all that our minds are set on? If so, says Paul, we are doomed to be thinking about what is time-limited.‘The Spirit’ however is the breath that keeps renewing life, the animating spirit of love, hope,and all the graces. If we ‘set the mind on the Spirit’, he says, we will find refreshment.David Harmsworth
Scripture & Reflection: Trinity Sunday, 15th June, and for the week ahead:Scripture:Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?- - - 22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.…when he marked out the foundations of the earth,30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. Proverbs 8:1, 8:22-23, 8:30-31Reflection:This Sunday the Church celebrates Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is a way of understanding who God is, which is unique for Christians. We believe in one God, yet we know and experience God in three different ways – God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit.The “person” calling out in this reading from the Old Testament is named as Wisdom, and she is female. This Wisdom has often been associated with The Holy Spirit. This is perhaps the part of the Trinity that even seasoned Christians can struggle to comprehend, but hearing how Wisdom describes herself, a ‘master worker’ working alongside God at the very start of creation, gives us an inkling of how the Holy Spirit operates as co-creator with God, rejoicing together with him in the world that comes alive, and in the human race. The Holy Spirit is called the ‘giver of life’ – no wonder some Christians, me included, think of her as female.Revd Ylva
