Description
Don’t Be Ashamed!
2Timothy 1.8-14
My grandfather was a clergyman, and like many of us who have to stand up and do things in front of other people he had a recurring nightmare. In his dream, he would find himself standing in the pulpit getting ready to preach a sermon, and look down to discover that instead of clerical robes he was wearing pyjamas. Or perhaps underwear. (I don’t have that dream; instead, I often dream that I’m arriving at the church after the service has already started, and that my robes and sermon are locked in the boot of the car and I can’t get them out.) What the dream is telling us is of course that, deep down, we are afraid of being ashamed in public. There are many different levels of shame, but even at an informal social level most of us feel a stab of shame if we turn up at a party dressed differently to everyone else. We have our hidden codes and assumptions. You wouldn’t go to the beach as though dressed for a grand concert, or vice versa...