War Cry 17 July 2021

Counsellor is all ears for World Listening Day

WAR CRY

17 July 2021 50p

Crime scene’s swot analysis University professor joins detective team in TV drama

BBQ Week serves up a taste for the outdoors

The Salvation Army is a Christian church and registered charity providing services in the community, particularly to those who are vulnerable and marginalised. Motivated by our Christian faith, we offer practical support and services in more than 700 centres throughout the UK to all who need them, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation. To find your nearest centre visit salvationarmy.org.uk/find-a-church

What is the War Cry? The Salvation Army first published a newspaper called the War Cry in London in December 1879, and we have continued to appear every week since then. Our name refers to our battle for people’s hearts and souls as we promote the positive impact of the Christian faith and The Salvation Army’s fight for greater social justice.

WAR CRY Issue No 7534

Email: warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk The Salvation Army UK Territory with the Republic of Ireland 101 Newington Causeway London SE1 6BN Tel: 0845 634 0101 Helpline: 020 7367 4888 Subscriptions: 01933 445445 (option 1, option 1) or email: subscriptions@satcol.org

WHILE England’s fans will be keen to put the disappointment of last Sunday’s European Championship final defeat behind them, much of the tournament will be remembered for years to come. They will recall where they were and who they were with after the semi-final victory or the win over Germany earlier in the competition. Those stories will be told long into the future – probably being added to as the years pass with even the teller eventually uncertain where the truth ends and the embellishments begin.

Such apocryphal stories – tales of doubtful authenticity but believed to be true – are nothing new. Through the centuries, people have been telling stories to support their personal standing or particular point of view. In this week’s War Cry we discover the history behind some of the apocryphal stories of Jesus.

Cambridge scholar Simon Gathercole has recently edited a book of what are known as the apocryphal gospels – ancient texts written about Jesus that are not included in the Bible. They can be a source for conspiracy theories and popular modern fiction, but Simon believes that they have sometimes been given more significance than they deserve.

Drawing on his expert knowledge, he explains why some of these gospels may have been written and why they are not as dependable as the writings of the Bible’s New Testament. And it is the biblical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that Simon turns to in order to discover the truth about Jesus. He says that it is these Gospels that give a reliable report of ‘the historical Jesus who lived and breathed’.

Through the ages, Christians have looked to the Bible to provide them with truth and inspiration. The result has been that they have encountered the living God, who the War read has transformed their lives in a way they will Cr y ’ve u never forget.

CONTENTS

Founder: William Booth General: Brian Peddle Territorial Commander: Commissioner Anthony Cotterill Editor-in-Chief: Major Mal Davies Published weekly by The Salvation Army © The Salvation Army United Kingdom Territory with the Republic of Ireland ISSN 0043-0226 The Salvation Army Trust is a registered charity. The charity number in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 214779, in Scotland SC009359 and in the Republic of Ireland CHY6399.

Printed by Walstead Roche Ltd, St Austell, on sustainably sourced paper

INFO Your local Salvation Army centre

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Editor: Andrew Stone, Major Deputy Editor: Philip Halcrow Production Editor: Ivan Radford Assistant Editor: Sarah Olowofoyeku Staff Writer: Emily Bright Staff Writer: Claire Brine Editorial Assistant: Linda McTurk Graphic Designer: Rodney Kingston Graphic Designer: Mark Knight

From the editor’s desk

When yo

What is The Salvation Army?

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FEATURES

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Professor studies the evidence

New crime series begins on ITV

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All fired up

People warm to National BBQ Week

6 A word in your ear

Hear about World Listening Day

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Not really the gospel truth

The story behind ancient writings on

Jesus

REGULARS

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War Cry World

12 Team Talk 13 Puppy Tales

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14 Puzzles 15 War Cry Kitchen Front-page picture: ITV

Professor Tempest assists DI Lisa Donckers (below) as she searches for a criminal

ITV

Case study University professor helps police to uncover the mysteries of the human mind TV preview by Claire Brine

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YOUNG woman is brutally attacked by a masked stranger at Cambridge University. There’s no forensic evidence to go on, and the victim can’t remember anything. So the police turn to criminologist Jasper Tempest to help solve the mystery in Professor T, which starts on ITV tomorrow (Sunday 18 July).

When Detective Inspector Lisa Donckers (Emma Naomi) learns that student Diana Tyson (Elizabeth Kate Back) has been attacked, it doesn’t take long for the case to get under her skin. First, the crime took place at the university where Lisa was once a student.

Secondly, the events remind her of a similar, unsolved case five years before when her friend was raped.

Desperate to find Diana’s attacker, Lisa approaches the best criminologist she knows for help – her former university lecturer, Professor Jasper Tempest (Ben Miller).

She wants him to guide Diana as she tries to access her memories of that fateful night.

But despite working at the university, just 100 yards from the crime scene, Jasper is reluctant to get involved.

‘My interest in crime is purely academic,’ he tells Lisa. ‘I do not like to get my hands dirty.’

Not to be defeated, Lisa and her colleagues persist in their official enquiries. They draw connections between Diana’s case and the case five years before. They question suspects.

When progress is slow, Chief Inspector Christina Brand (Juliet Aubrey) asks

Jasper – an old friend – if he will reconsider helping the police.

When he finally agrees, his insights prove invaluable. Jasper works out that inscriptions found at both the historical and present crime scene relate to verses in the Bible.

He deduces that the attacker is losing control in his life, prompting him to offend. Jasper predicts that it won’t be long before there is another attack.

Getting into the criminal mindset proves intriguing for Professor Tempest, and the subject matter also captures the imagination of the actor who plays him. Ben Miller describes humans as ‘a dangerous species’.

‘All of us are fascinated by criminal behaviour because we wonder to what extent we are a criminal ourselves,’ he says. ‘Sometimes people who murder don’t seem to be very different from us.’

In scenes of real life, there’s no telling what we are capable of when

All of us act badly sometimes

pushed to extremes. All of us act badly sometimes, behaving in ways we never thought we would. All of us have hurt other people, more than we would care to admit. No one is perfect.

That’s why we need Jesus, who was sent into the world by God to show humankind the best way to live. He taught people to love their enemies rather than hate them.

He showed that it was possible to choose forgiveness rather than revenge. He treated the people he met with compassion, and challenged them to show such compassion to others.

One Bible writer who took Jesus’ teachings to heart urged his readers: ‘Don’t be like the people of this world, but let God change the way you think.

Then you will know how to do everything that is good’ (Romans 12:2 Contemporary English Version).

Whatever we have done wrong in the past, life doesn’t have to stay that way. Jesus showed us how to live a full life – and God’s transforming love can help us achieve it. In every case, a relationship with him is worth investigating.

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Partnership brings home comforts to people needing accommodation

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Thousands of followers for TikTok vicar A VICAR whose videos reach up to four million people on TikTok told Premier Christianity magazine that the social media video platform is ‘a great way’ to tell a non-Christian audience that God loves them.

According to the magazine, the Rev Anne Beverley of Wesham Christ Church in Lancashire opened the @ChristChurchWesham TikTok account in 2019 as a way of connecting with teenagers.

‘Towards the middle of 2020, as TikTok began to take off, we posted a video,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t anything very serious … but over the next three or four days, the video went viral, eventually ending up with 1.7 million views.’

Since then, the vicar’s TikTok account has attracted more than 857,000 followers.

‘TikTok is not the place for a deep theological debate,’ says Anne. ‘Some of our videos are just very silly things. Other videos have been praying for a particular world event, or for a particular group of people.’

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MARK PAIN/ALAMY

AS England continued their run to the final of the European Championships, Sky News spoke to a youth worker and football coach who guided forward Raheem Sterling through his early playing days.

Clive Ellington of Alpha and Omega FC – a club associated with a Christian fellowship in north London – told Sky how he had been assigned as a mentor to the young Raheem. When he went to pick him up from school and saw him running round the playground, he recognised his talent and invited him to a training session with Alpha and Omega FC. Describing Sterling’s subsequent training, Clive said: ‘As coaches we stood there arms folded, just thinking “what on earth have we unearthed here?”, because he was a gem.’

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THE Salvation Army has launched a partnership with developer Hill Group and community organisation Citizens UK to help single people who are experiencing homelessness find accommodation.

The new collaboration, known as the SHC Partnership, will focus on community-led supported accommodation projects.

Hill Group had previously announced a £12 million plan to give 200 specially designed homes over the next five years to those experiencing homelessness, half of which will be distributed through the partnership.

The energy-efficient home, known as Solohaus, will cost less than £5 a week to run. The SHC Partnership marked its launch by unveiling the design in the grounds of Westminster Abbey (below).

Citizens UK and The Salvation Army have already worked together on another supported accommodation development.

The project in Ilford, east London, has housed 56 people since it opened in March 2020.

A COUPLE have become the first people to celebrate their wedding with a reception on a canal boat that is partly owned by a Church of Scotland congregation.

Dawn and Len Purves invited wedding guests on to the All Aboard (pictured), which is moored outside Polwarth Parish Church in Edinburgh.

Having postponed their marriage twice last year because of Covid-19 restrictions, n FOOTBALLER the couple were delighted to discover that they could hold their reception on the Felix Nmecha gave ‘glory to 60ft-long canal boat.

God’ for his time at Manchester The marriage ceremony was conducted inside the church, which City after being released by the club. the couple attend.

Nmecha joined City as a child in 2009, The church has earmarked the boat for educational, faith-based reported the Manchester Evening News. He and community activities. played only three times for the senior team but was in the elite development squad that won Premier League 2 last season.

In an Instagram post after his release, Nmecha wrote: ‘After 13 years of supporting and playing at this amazing club it’s time for the next step in my career. I’m leaving with so many memories and friends made.

I want to say thank you to God first because without him none of this would have been possible.’

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xcxztW Do you have a story to share? a warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk @TheWarCryUK TheWarCryUK

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CHILDREN’S charity Spurgeons, which supports vulnerable and disadvantaged children and their families across England, has acquired school counselling and parental support charity Fegans. Spurgeons aims to build upon the existing work of both Christian charities, increasing the number of children and families reached and supplementing its prison-based family support services with school-based interventions.

Ross Hendry, chief executive of Spurgeons, said the charities had a shared ambition ‘to model and reflect our Christian faith through the work we do with children and families, and to support vulnerable children to have a home life where they find the love, peace and safety that enables them to flourish’.

He added: ‘The children we seek to help often face difficulties because of their families’ circumstances that are beyond their control and too difficult to manage alone.

The counselling and support that Spurgeons and Fegans bring can help children better deal with mental health challenges that might arise.’

Spurgeons employee Angie Benton at a group session in Birmingham

Right on ’cue Brits are encouraged to enjoy a barbecue Report by Sarah Olowofoyeku

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IRE up the grill! It’s National BBQ Week. The annual celebration, which is now in its 25th year, offers tips and recipes for people who want to get out and enjoy a good barbecue.

The event is traditionally held in May, but this year was moved because of Covid-19 restrictions, and is running until 18 July. The week may be coming to an end, but there is still time to grab the coal, get the grill going and invite friends or family to get together for some hot dogs, beef burgers or veggie skewers.

According to National BBQ Week’s website, the UK was the leading European nation for barbecues in 2020, hosting about 150 million – that’s up from just 9 million in 1997, when National BBQ Week was first held.

While they may not have been referred to as barbecues, the concept of friends gathered round grilled food goes back further than 1997.

In the days after Jesus was raised from the dead, he grilled fish on a fire for his followers on a beach. Some of his disciples had been out all night fishing and caught nothing, when Jesus showed up on the shore and called out to them, telling them where to throw their net to catch some fish. They did, and their net was so full that they could not haul it in.

When they pulled up to the shore, Jesus was already grilling fish and invited them to bring more of the fish they had just caught. Then he said to them, ‘Come and eat’ (John 21:12 Good News Bible). They had more than enough to feast on.

Just as he did to his followers, Jesus invites us all to let him become part of our everyday lives, not only sharing our ordinary bread-and-butter concerns but also satisfying our hunger for purpose and direction.

If we respond to Jesus’ invitation to spend time with him, we will experience his friendship, his care and his provision for us – whatever the occasion.

They had more than enough to feast on

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LIBRARY PICTURE POSED BY MODEL

! p u n e t s Li Hearing people matters

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Ahead of World Listening Day tomorrow (Sunday 18 July) – which encourages people to listen to the world and people around them – RICHARD GAUDION reflects on what he has learnt in his role as a counsellor Interview by Claire Brine

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S a therapist working in The Salvation Army’s counselling service, Major Richard Gaudion is used to listening. Sometimes people go to talk to him about their relationships and family problems. At other times they want to work through grief or improve their self-worth after going through a divorce or difficulties at work. No topic is off limits.

‘Counselling is all about journeying with people,’ says Richard, a Salvation Army minister who has been working as a counsellor since 2013. ‘It’s about giving someone a safe space to talk, so that they can be their true, unmasked self.

Sometimes people come to me and it’s the first time that anyone has ever listened to them or taken them seriously. For them to be suddenly in the driving seat can feel quite challenging. They know that they have the steering wheel, and I will go with them wherever they want to take us.’

As Richard invites people to offload what is on their mind, he listens to what they tell him. Their words may prompt him to ask further questions. Sometimes, however, speaking isn’t necessary.

‘There may be moments when we are both sitting in silence,’ says Richard.

‘But that is listening in itself, because I’m spotting the pupils dilating or the foot tapping or the body shifting in the chair.

I try to listen with my eyes as well as my ears to what people tell me.’

Though listening makes up a big part of any therapist’s role, Richard admits that it’s a skill that takes constant practice. He tells me what key factors make a good listener.

‘It’s important not to judge. When people tell me something as a therapist, I have to be nonjudgmental because that person is trusting me – and perhaps they have been judged their whole life. Perhaps they are judging themselves.

‘It can be challenging for us all at times, because a person’s words may be at odds

Richard Gaudion

with our own world view. But if we want to be a good listener, we need to learn to park our own stuff.’

Another helpful quality is patience. Often, Richard says, when people hear each other talking, they want to chip in.

‘I think we are trained to talk more than we are trained to listen,’ he says. ‘We live in a competitive world where we believe we have to get our view across.

‘Sometimes, when we are speaking to one another, we stop listening because we are already formulating our response. You can hear it in conversations: someone says something and the response that comes bears no relation to what’s just been said. It raises the question: are we listening or are we just wanting to get our own point across?’

While many people may find listening difficult, Richard believes that it’s necessary for human connection.

‘We are social beings, and part of being human is the desire to be in relationship,’ he says. ‘When we listen to others, we learn.

We respond. We energise one another. It’s through interactions with others that we learn about ourselves. If we don’t listen, how can we know anything? A person

What’s wrong with being uncomfortable?

misses out on 50 per cent of life if they’re constantly talking and not able to listen.’

Richard acknowledges that when people are listening to someone as they offload, it can be difficult to know how to respond appropriately. Not knowing when to speak or what to say can prompt some people to say nothing, for fear of getting it wrong.

‘We might not like what we are hearing or it makes us uncomfortable – but what’s wrong with being uncomfortable?’ asks Richard. ‘Listening may not fix a person’s problems, but having the courage to go into the pit and sit with them as they face their difficulties is valuable. It gives us an insight into how they are feeling. And it might help them to feel less alone.’

After years of counselling people, Richard has found working as a therapist an enriching experience. He considers it a privilege to share in such deep conversations. The role has also helped him develop his relationship with God. ‘I have faith that God listens to me – because in the Bible he says that he does,’ says Richard. ‘And does God lie? No, he has never lied to me once. So even if there are times when I think God can’t hear me, I know that he listens to me – by the very fact that I can talk to him.’

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The gospel unt For centuries, gospels that were not included in the Bible have been a cause of controversy, generating fascination as well as fictional works and forgery. Now many have been gathered together in a book, translated by scholar SIMON GATHERCOLE. So what can be learnt from these apocryphal gospels?

Interview by Philip Halcrow

T

do talks about The Da Vinci Code,’ says Simon, who is professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the university, ‘but I also became interested partly because it’s an area of scholarship that is burgeoning. Masses has been written on the canonical Gospels – there have been commentaries on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John since the second century AD – whereas the apocryphal gospels are relatively untouched and often misunderstood. I thought it would be a useful area to get into because – not just in the popular realm, but also

Simon Gathercole

COLUMBIA PICTURES/ALAMY

HEY fuel sensationalist news stories, lie behind conspiracy theories and were evoked in The Da Vinci Code – but you can’t take everything you read about them as gospel.

Cambridge University scholar Simon Gathercole, whose collection The Apocryphal Gospels has just been published in Penguin Classics, tells me that his interest in these ancient texts that were not included in the Bible began partly as a result of Dan Brown’s bestseller.

‘About 15 years ago, I was asked to

Audrey Tautou and Tom Hanks in the film of Dan Brown’s novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’, which contains references to apocryphal gospels

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in scholarship – there’s a tendency to sensationalise these gospels. Lots of scholars slightly pander to public opinion in making them out to be more significant than they actually are.’

There is little doubt that in the popular realm, the apocryphal gospels – referenced in history, tracked down by scholars and discovered in fragments and codices by archaeologists and amateurs – are sensationalised. Simon notes how one tabloid newspaper reported on the first publication of the Gospel of Judas in 2006 with the claim that it was ‘the greatest archaeological discovery of all time’ and was a ‘threat to 2,000 years of Christian teaching’.

He suggests: ‘There is still a residual fascination with Christianity and its origins that is surprising in a supposedly secular country. These gospels are often associated with conspiracy theories that the Church has told its side of the story but that there are other darker forces involved and the truth is something different.’

In modern everyday usage, the word ‘apocryphal’ has come to mean a story that is widely circulated but of doubtful authenticity.

Originally, it meant ‘hidden’, explains Simon, but then ‘quite early on in Church history it became a kind of technical term for a text that wasn’t part of the Bible and that was unhelpful and should be excluded because its content was either malicious or untrue. The Greek term apokruphos, which went into Latin, is used in some early Church documents where they list all the books that are in the Bible and then have a kind of appendix where they list books such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth and after each write “apocryphal”.’

Such gospels may all come with the same label, but, Simon points out, there is a lot of variety among them, ‘partly because the term “apocryphal” is a catch-all for everything that is not in the Bible. It’s not as if the apocryphal gospels make up an alternative Bible produced by a particular group.’

He explains that in the early years

WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY

truth

A fragment of the gnostic Gospel of Judas of Christianity there were a number of heretical movements whose ideas appear in the apocryphal gospels. Among them were gnostic groups, who claimed to have special understanding about the nature of the universe and Jesus and whose beliefs were very different from those represented by the Gospels of the Bible. However, not all apocryphal gospels were written to contradict conventional Christianity.

‘There are also some that are actually quite orthodox and are more like pious legends than attempts to subvert the

They were attempts to create an alternative picture of Jesus

conventional story of Jesus,’ says Simon.

‘A couple of the infancy gospels were written to bolster the image of Jesus as divine or of Mary in an early Church context where there was a lot of interest in her.

‘The more sectarian gospels emerged primarily because there were dissident Christian groups who became dissatisfied with the canonical picture of Jesus. It is why the gnostic gospels arose. The Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of the Egyptians were attempts to create an alternative picture of Jesus.

‘Some gospels, though, were more of

Turn to page 10 f 17 July 2021 • WAR CRY • 9

From page 9 an attempt to supplement the picture. The group known as the Valentinians used the canonical Gospels but produced further gospels to add what they regarded as extra depth to the picture of Jesus.’

Some of the groups had ideas about Jesus that diverged widely from those of Christians who took their lead from the four Gospels. Simon gives the example of a dissident school of thought which did not accept that Jesus was a real ‘incarnate’ man.

‘Gnostics thought that the world was created not by the supreme God but by a lower deity who himself was evil,’ he says. ‘The Gospel of Judas reflects that in the way it understood Jesus as not really incarnate – if Jesus is a pure spirit being, then he could not be in contact with anything evil. When the crucifixion happens in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus says that nothing is really being done to him because he is just a spiritual being.’

Many aspects of the apocryphal gospels remain hidden. It is not easy to assign them to particular times and places. Dating them is difficult, in part because carbon dating of papyrus is an expensive, disruptive and far from foolproof process and, in any case, reveals only the date of the papyrus on which the text appears rather than the text’s composition. It alone could not expose that a fragment unveiled by a Harvard academic in 2012 and given the name The Bible’s Gospel of John was ‘copied furiously and dispersed across the Roman Empire quickly’

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the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife was a forgery – a revelation uncovered by scholars and an investigative journalist. They noted that its dialect did not match the date of the papyrus, spotted that the text contained an error from a Gospel of Thomas on the internet and eventually tracked down the forger.

Scholars, then, mainly date the apocryphal gospels through clues within them and references to them.

‘For example,’ says Simon, ‘the Gospel of Thomas probably contains a reference to the taking of Jerusalem from the Jews in AD135, when the Emperor Hadrian excluded them. Then there are external references to the Gospel of Thomas about AD200. So that’s a window of about 70 years. But it’s often difficult to put exact dates on these texts.’

It is also difficult to pin them down geographically.

‘A lot of the manuscripts – especially of the fairly recently discovered texts – come from Egypt, but really that’s just an accident of the weather in Egypt being favourable to preserving papyrus,’ he says.

Manuscripts of them can also be elusive.

‘Some of the apocryphal gospels did have lots of copies made, especially the more conventional infancy gospels. But

for some of the texts we have just one tiny fragment.

‘I think the reason why the more sectarian apocryphal gospels – such as the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Philip – don’t survive so much is that they were just not copied as much as the canonical Gospels, which even back in the second century were more popular.

That is what we’d expect. It is true of classical literature as well. The works that we have hundreds of copies of are Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad – the two most influential works of classical antiquity – along with key works by Plato and Sophocles.

‘I hear conspiracy theories that we don’t have many copies of the apocryphal gospels because the early Church burnt them.

But there are hardly any references to orthodox authorities destroying copies of apocryphal gospels. The truth is that, for example, the gnostics were quite a small, elite intellectual group. So not many copies of their texts were made.

Those gospels were not made for mass distribution in the way that happened with the canonical Gospels, especially Matthew and John, which were copied furiously and dispersed across the Roman Empire quickly.’

Simon says that the apocryphal gospels are ‘a window on to what discussions were going on about Jesus in the second century and beyond, rather than a window on to Jesus himself’. In big and small ways – directly or indirectly – the ideas of those gospels did have an effect on Christianity and its traditions.

‘In churches still today there are images of Mary spinning a curtain for the Temple when the angel Gabriel comes to tell her that she is going to give birth to Jesus, and that comes straight out of the Protevangelium of James. There are also church windows that depict the boy Jesus making live birds out of clay, which happens in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

‘But I also think that some of the more heretical ideas in the apocryphal gospels contributed indirectly to the sharpening up of early Christian theology.

When you have someone come along telling you that Jesus wasn’t really incarnate, it makes you more careful in the way you talk about Jesus’ incarnation.’

As well as translating the apocryphal gospels into English for the new volume, Simon is a member of the team that continually revises the New International Version of the Bible – and he says that, while apocryphal gospels shed light on the first few centuries of the Christian Church, anyone who wants to learn about ‘the historical Jesus who lived and breathed’ should turn to the pages of the Gospels of

For some, we have just one tiny fragment

MAURICIO ABREU/ALAMY

Mosaics in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome showing Mary (top) weaving a curtain for the Temple – a story derived from the apocryphal gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

‘What the canonical Gospels have is a culturally authentic portrayal of the world in which Jesus lived. For instance, we know how Jews were named in first-century Palestine and – containing names such as Simon, James, Jesus and Judas – the Gospels fit that picture. The Gospels have very detailed geographical knowledge of Galilee and Judaea. Places such as Nain and Nazareth are otherwise only mentioned late on in quite obscure

Jewish literature.

‘The four Gospels also come from the first century and give the strong impression of being based on eye-witness testimony rather than being written much later.

‘They agree with the essentials of the non-Christian evidence we have about Jesus from Jewish and Roman authors, including Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus, and with the information in the letters of Paul, who is our earliest source on Jesus.

‘The canonical Gospels have access to sources that fit what we know of the place and time of Jesus.’

l The Apocryphal Gospels is published

by Penguin

17 July 2021 • WAR CRY • 11

Prayerlink THE War Cry invites readers to send in requests for prayer, including the first names of individuals and details of their ­circumstances, for publication. Send your Prayerlink requests to warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk or to War Cry, 101 Newington Causeway, Lon­don SE1 6BN. Mark your correspondence ‘Confidential’.

j

Becoming a Christian

There is no set formula to becoming a Christian, but many people have found saying this prayer to be a helpful first step to a relationship with God

Lord Jesus Christ, I am truly sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong.

Thank you that you died on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven and set free.

Thank you that you offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Holy Spirit.

Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me for ever.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Amen

talk ‘ ’ Team talk TEAM TALK I rest my case

Claire Brine gives her take on a story catching the attention of War Cry reporters

WHEN Guardian columnist Emma Beddington was trying to write an article on the ‘menace’ of multitasking, she found herself ‘answering an email about union membership in Chile, updating a spreadsheet and paying some bills’.

On the one hand, Emma says, ‘multitasking can feel good. There is often a moment of manic, adrenal exultation, a glorying in your ability to keep all the balls in the air.’ But on the other hand, constantly trying to do everything at once has caused our brains to become ‘cognitively fried’.

‘The pandemic has definitely compounded our multitasking problem,’ Emma suggests. ‘Worse, it has normalised – glorified, even – a kind of steroidal, heroic multitasking.’ She points out that over the past 16 months, as thousands of people have worked from home, ‘we have made a sort of virtue of our fractured, stressful attempts to serve competing demands’ – and such an attitude isn’t helpful.

‘Life is and always has been a set of conflicting, often simultaneous, demands,’ Emma concludes. ‘But We don’t can we at least stop fetishising this kind of juggling always have now? Multitasking should come with a health warning, not a glow of heroism.’ to achieve I think Emma is right – but it doesn’t take much scrolling on social media to find that there are plenty of people competing with one another over who is spinning the most plates or feeling the most stressed. Has the pursuit of ‘doing it all’ really become a life goal, something deserving of our congratulations?

I hope not. When we strive to do more and more, we tend to forget that doing less also has value. Stopping is important – for us and the people around us. We don’t always have to achieve. Whatever the world says, life isn’t about working to the point of exhaustion. We need to make room for rest.

While choosing rest over activity is always going to be difficult for a selfconfessed multitasker like me, there’s no denying that my faith recommends it. I also know from experience that when I’m overstretched, doing nothing but spending time in prayer with Jesus is good for me.

Perhaps it’s time I made it a permanent fixture on my to-do list.

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Looking for help?

Contact details of a Salvation Army minister Name Address Extract from Why Jesus? by Nicky Gumbel published by Alpha International, 2011. Used by kind permission of Alpha International

Or email your details and request to warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk 12 • WAR CRY • 17 July 2021

puppy tales Life with a young dog leads Barbara Lang to look at the world from a new perspective

Let there be light O

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QUICK QUIZ 1

What are the three colours of the national flag of Italy, in order from left to right?

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3

Desperate Dan was a cowboy in which British children’s comic?

A

4

5

6

Running from Catthorpe to the Scottish border, what is the longest motorway in the UK?

Kate Winslet starred as a detective investigating a murder in a small town near Philadelphia in which recent TV series?

Which social media application, known for its photo filters, was launched by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010?

The Proclaimers had a Top Ten hit in 1987 with which song?

UR puppy Jak is so clever that he learns, and remembers, every trick we teach him. That is, so long as there is a tasty treat involved. When there are no treats on offer, Jak simply sits with his head on one side as if he does not know what we are asking him to do.

But there are some tricks that Jak has taught himself. One of them is to chase any reflections of light. He knows exactly where the sun will be reflected when the fridge door is opened. He knows which doors the morning sunshine will sneak under and which will show the sunlight in the afternoon. He gets extremely excited when a dot of light plays on the ceiling, reflected from someone’s watch. There is nothing more exciting to Jak than a sunny day.

Most of us humans love the sunshine too. It makes us feel better about everything. Life can feel so much easier on a sunny day. Even when we are just looking through a window, a sunny sky is so much more uplifting than a grey one.

We are attracted to light – and that has always been the case. In the Bible, Jesus is recorded as saying that he was a light for the world and would not leave anyone in the dark if they followed him.

What a wonderful promise! By following Jesus and by learning from him through our Bibles, we can live in his light, whatever our circumstance – or the weather.

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

John 8:12 (New International Version )

PODCAST REVIEW The Shield Books Summer Book Club HOSTED by The Salvation Army’s book editor, Rebecca Goldsmith, the first episode of The Shield Books Summer Book Club – which will be available from 3 August – features author Lieut-Colonel Jonathan Roberts.

Jonathan delves deep into the spiritual content of his book On the Altar, which focuses on how Christians can offer their lives to God through their loving actions. Further into the episode, we also learn more about Jonathan himself – about his love of running and which book he would choose to take to a desert island.

As well as introducing new books for summer reading lists, the podcast provides a way for listeners to meet some of the people within The Salvation Army and to discover more about their Christian faith – and why it inspires them to help others.

ANSWERS

Linda McTurk

17 July 2021 • WAR CRY • 13

1. Green, white and red. 2. The Dandy.

3. The M6. 4. Mare of Easttown. 5. Instagram.

6. ‘Letter from America’.

PUZZLES Quick CROSSWORD ACROSS 1. Hint (4) 3. By way of (3) 5. Suspend (4) 7. Find fault with (9) 9. Midday (4) 10. Way out (4) 11. Fury (5) 14. Money bag (5) 15. Concur (5) 17. Bury (5) 18. Searing ray (5) 19. Interior design scheme (5) 20. Rot (5) 23. Comprehend (4) 25. Particle (4) 27. Story (9) 28. Posture (4) 29. Motoring organisation (3) 30. Twilight (4) DOWN 1. Tribe (4) 2. Merit (4) 3. Elector (5) 4. Fashionable race meeting (5) 5. Spray with water (4) 6. Surfeit (4) 7. Rust (9) 8. Free (9) 11. Eerie (5)

SUDOKU

Fill the grid so that every column, every row and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 to 9

1 4 6 3

8 7 7

3

1 4

6 7 2 4 1 8 9 1 6 7 6 4 2 9 8 5 3 3 9 7 12. Caper (5) 13. Robust (5) 14. Chum (3) 16. Hearing organ (3) 21. Mistake (5) 22. Loft (5) 23. Retain (4) 24. Pay (4) 25. Eager (4) 26. Member of religious order (4)

2

WORDSEARCH

5 6 8 7 9 4 3 2 1 2 7 6 5 3 9 8 Look up, down, forwards, backwards and diagonally on the grid to find 4 these 9 3musical 1 2instruments 8 6 7 6 3 1 4 8 7 2 5 X D Q W E B G Y A H V N U Y P O N H D H A Z N S W M T H L R P A O Z T L 2 5 4 9 1 6 8 3 F A Z W T Z Y C Z L W S C N I J Q Z 7 8F P U 9 5I G Q V B T P 3 2 4 1 Z R D D X S Y F E P E M O X P Q K Q N F B K I A N A 8 7 6 3 4 5 1 9 N Q X N U W C Z E R Z A B Y O G L V 9 4 2 8 7 L O C T 1 5 6 O U D Y C L E O R C S F Q T H K G K W H B Q L S J Z T O I 3 1 5 2 6 9 Z 7T Z4

M O HONEYC B

Each solution starts on the coloured cell and reads clockwise round the number

P V B E N O H P O L Y X C V N R H L O H H V I C Q O T N E K T N U R Y R X B M Q N N N Q R Q E C Z M M D C F A B V A A C Q W Z N L H P L X Z N J S F C C P Z N S S A B E L B U O D U B D L Q M Q E P R P T Y R K Z F N A L S C U I Z I I V Z G M J N X I R B R R P Q T E N O B M O R T U D L X U S B N W L E Q Z U Q R Z Y U N Q Y T L Q F H T Q U Q E A B M I R A M U R

1. Public procession 2. Disappear suddenly 3. Light rainfall 4. More than one in number 5. Person using the services of an organisation 6. Countries of the East

ANSWERS 5 1 4 6 2 7 8 9 3

6 2 9 3 5 8 7 4 1

8 7 3 1 4 9 6 2 5

9 3

7 6 1 4 9 5 3 8 2

9 5 2 8 1 3 4 7 6

3 9 6 2 8 4 1 5 7

5 9 7

8 7 6

4 3 8 7 6 2 5 1 9

4

2 8 7 5 3 1 9 6 4

1 4 5 9 7 6 2 3 8

HONEYCOMB 1. Parade. 2. Vanish. 3. Shower. 4. Plural. 5. Client. 6. Orient.

QUICK CROSSWORD ACROSS: 1. Clue. 3. Via. 5. Hang. 7. Criticise. 9. Noon. 10. Exit.

11. Wrath. 14. Purse. 15. Agree. 17. Inter. 18. Laser. 19. Decor. 20.

Decay. 23. Know. 25. Atom. 27. Narrative. 28. Pose. 29. RAC. 30. Dusk.

DOWN: 1. Clan. 2. Earn. 3. Voter. 4. Ascot. 5. Hose. 6. Glut.

7. Corrosion. 8. Extricate. 11. Weird. 12. Antic. 13. Hardy. 14. Pal. 16. Ear. 21. Error. 22. Attic. 23. Keep. 24. Wage. 25. Avid. 26. Monk.

14 • WAR CRY • 17 July 2021

BASSOON CELLO CLARINET DOUBLE BASS FLUTE FRENCH HORN GLOCKENSPIEL HARP MARIMBA

OBOE SAXOPHONE TIMPANI TROMBONE TRUMPET TUBA VIOLA VIOLIN XYLOPHONE

1 4 5 9 7 6 2 3 8

2 3

Battered tofu Ingredients 200g firm tofu 500ml water 1tsp salt 1 lemon, juice 1 sheet seaweed 75g plain flour 1tbsp cornflour 1tsp baking powder ¼ tsp black pepper 150ml fizzy water 500ml vegetable oil, for frying

Method Add the tofu to a pan containing the water, salt and lemon juice. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the tofu and place on a paper towel. Slice into 4 triangles, about 30g per piece.

Cut triangles out of the seaweed sheet, large enough to cover a side of each tofu piece.

To make the batter, mix together all the remaining ingredients except the oil in a small bowl.

In a large pan, gently heat the oil until sizzling hot. Carefully dip each tofu piece with its seaweed skin into the batter, ensuring the entire surface is covered.

Gently lower the pieces one at a time into the oil. Fry for about 5 minutes, until the batter is golden brown and crispy.

Lift the fried tofu out of the oil with a slotted spoon and place on a piece of absorbent paper to drain.

Serve with chips, mushy peas, sauces and sliced lemon.

SERVES

4

Berry burst breakfast bars Ingredients 50g butter 3tbsp sunflower seeds, roughly chopped 3tbsp pumpkin seeds, roughly chopped 3tbsp sesame seeds, roughly chopped 1 ripe banana, mashed 100g rolled oats

Method Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/ Gas Mark 6.

Melt the butter in a small pan, then add the remaining ingredients. Mix well. Pack into an 18cm x 10cm loaf tin lined with foil and bake for 25 minutes, until crispy on top.

Leave to cool for at least 10 minutes before removing from the tin.

Allow to cool for a further 20 minutes before cutting into 8 small bars.

50g ground flaxseed 50g dried cranberries 3tbsp golden syrup MAKES

8

Recipes reprinted, with permission, from the Vegetarian Society website vegsoc.org

17 July 2021 • WAR CRY • 15

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power Ephesians 6:10 (New International Version)

WAR CRY