Day Twenty-Three: County Cavan
Saturday 23 May
The annual VOX magazine Finding Faith Tour looks very different this year. Instead of a 7-day road trip around the island, this year VOX editor Ruth Garvey-Williams brings you highlights from all 32 counties (one per day plus one for each of the 31 days in May). Contact Ruth if you have a story to share.
Day Twenty-Three: The Bible and the Bishop
In Cavan, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh, Rt. Rev Ferran Glenfield has launched a new weekly podcast helping people to go deeper with the Psalms. We caught up with Bishop Ferran on the virtual Finding Faith Tour to find out more.
“The Psalms are a kind of go-to book in a time of trouble. There are echos in the Psalms that resonate with us. In my home life and ministry, when I’ve been in hard and tough places, I invariably turn to the Psalms,” Bishop Ferran said.
The new podcast was not something he would have considered in normal times but during lockdown people approached Ferran and suggested a regular online Bible teaching slot. “I would normally be preparing one or two sermons every week and that stopped during lockdown. I wasn’t going anywhere. I felt like Paul, when he said to Timothy, ‘I’m in prison but the word is not bound.’ We are in a form of self-imprisonment but that should not limit the word of God!”
“When I was made a bishop, they gave me a Bible and I promised, before God and before people, to open the Bible, to teach the Bible and to live by the precepts of the Bible.”
And so the “Bible and the Bishop” podcast was born. Now every Wednesday, Ferran looks at a different Psalm. As we spoke he was preparing next week’s message on Psalm 16, digging deep into the Hebrew meaning of those ancient words to understand more of what David was saying.
“There is an odd verse here that says, ‘I will set the Lord continuously before me and therefore I shall not be shaken’. It is almost like setting an alarm clock! It is an active thing to set God before us, to want to come into His presence. The ancients spoke about practising the presence of God. How can we enter into His presence every day? Jesus has taught us it is through prayer and meditating on the Scriptures!
“Covid-19 has taught us what matters and what is really essential. You always find time for the things you really want to do (if you are in love with someone from Lithuania, you will learn the Lithuanian language!). But we will only prioritise reading the Bible when we have the desire to do that. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us that desire!”
