With Love From The Chapel – Michaelmas Term Week 5

October is Black History Month. 

Next week, students in our Afro-Carribean Society will invite us all to celebrate their culture with the entire school community, and it is wonderful to see how much work they have put into these events.

In chapel, we start this important month with a service taken by Reverend George Ayoma, who is coming in to speak to us about the wonderful story of the Apostle Philip meeting an Ethiopian man. Now, Philip was sent by God to bump into this man – someone who was of a different nationality, ethnicity and race than any of the people who had come to faith so far – in order to help him understand the scripture he struggles to comprehend. And the Ethiopian man is listening to God’s message – brilliantly explained by Philip – with eagerness and excitement. So eager and excited in fact, that he gets Philip to baptise him there and then, and he proceeds his journey rejoicing at the new-found truth.

There is disarming beauty in the way this man accepts God into his heart – with no reservation, no cynicism and no need for further analysis. Instead, he embraces the good news and continues to speak about this encounter when he gets home – after all, some of the greatest thinkers in the Early Church have come from Ethiopia.

Neither Philip nor the Ethiopian man were held back by their differences. Neither of them worried about prejudices, stereotypes or the hurdles social conventions might put in their way. 

Our young people are the same – they leap over the boundaries that geography and history have put up and share what they are proud of. Just like the two men in the Bible. 

Have a fantastic Black History Month!

With Love From The Chapel