Failure!

How often do you feel you have failed?  How do you know what failure is?  Failure is human, universal and inevitable.  The question is what we do with it?  And, even more importantly, what God does with it in partnership with us.

“Failure” is a new Lenten study, about which Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury says:  author “Emma Ineson has written a superb book on failure.  She is humorous, realistic and absolutely not judgemental.  She faces the issues of failure, perceived, deceived and real.  She brings us face to face with God who knows what a failure is and is not, and whose Gracious love overwhelms the greatest failures. 

This book of Failure is dedicated to all those who sit in the seats and pews of churches, week by week, listening to sermons, singing songs and hymns, kneeling (or sitting) to pray, breaking bread, listening to the notices, drinking cups of tea or coffee; and then go out into the world to try to live for Jesus.  Sometimes you feel you get it right, and it is glorious.  Sometimes you fail and mess is up.  But the point is that God loves you, whichever it is this week.

We live in difficult times and it is easy to feel like a failure.  But you never are in the eyes of God.  The Anglican Church of Canada is wrestling with what it is here for, and also what it means to fail and what to do about it.

God set a different scale for measuring success and failure, and the Bible is above all a story of failure redeemed, failure forgiven, failure overcome in resurrection and merciful judgement. 

This is a very good book, rooted in Scripture; it will disturb the comfortable, and comfort those who are disturbed by failure.

Join me, Howard Thornton, at St Michaels Church Canmore,  Wednesday afternoons at 2:30 or Thursday evenings at 7:00 for an hour of discussion about FAILURE.  I would ask you to register soon as I have ordered a limited number of books. To register for this Lenten Bible Study please phone (403) 678-5191 or email info@stmichaelscanmore.com