My mother called out from the kitchen, "John, if you want rabbit pie for dinner you'll have to come and hulk this rabbit yourself." So I went with some reluctance into the kitchen and took charge of the razor blade. My mother was full of good advice, "It's easy, John, the skin just peels off." I thought to myself - if it's as easy as all that - why don't you skin the rabbit?

It wasn't that straightforward because I didn't know where to start. I found it very unpleasant because the carcase had a sort of rabbity smell. The head kept flopping about and I found the staring eyes more than a little disconcerting. The furry body leaked juice.... I actually felt quite like throwing the rabbit at my mother. My poor old father who was hovering in the background, fearing the volatility of my temper, kept saying, "It's not worth it boy."

I felt like giving up. The first time you hulk a rabbit it is a difficult and unpleasant task. I persevered because I wanted rabbit pie for dinner. I could have made a bad stopping. So many do when they are faced with a task that is distasteful and disagreeable. The writer to the Hebrews realised this was happening to many Jewish converts. They were finding the Christian life hard and turning back to Judaism. He urged them to run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Heb12v1and2.

There is no bleaker place to be on a cold, grey, Sunday morning in April than Cleator Moor in Cumbria. I was conducting an A level Geography field trip. I had given my pupils the option of going to church or doing a survey of the old West Cumbrian coalfield. They decided to do the survey whilst I went to church! However I had been instructed to pick up a selection of Sunday papers before going to church. That is how I found myself in Cleator Moor. Disaster struck as I left the newsagents. I had an armful of newspapers with my wallet perched on top. It was a windy morning! The top newspaper took off accompanied by my wallet. The wallet hit the ground, flew open and five and ten pound notes blew out in all directions. I dropped the newspapers and grabbed the wallet whereupon one newspaper after another took off. I grabbed the remaining newspapers and made for the minibus. Then I went back and began to search for the five and ten pound notes picking up scattered pages of sundry newspapers at the same time. I looked a fool with a ball of crumpled newspapers under one arm poking about in people's gardens for no apparent reason. I found a fiver behind a dustbin, a tenner in a patch of nettles, two fivers in a gooseberry bush. Curtains twitched, old men stared, small children asked questions... I felt so embarrassed and longed to give up.. But I persevered until most of the money was retrieved.

The incident reminds me of the visit Jehoash, king of Israel, made to the sick prophet Elisha. Elisha told Jehoash to fire arrows out of the window. This seemed a silly thing to do. No doubt the king was very embarrassed firing arrows out of the old prophet's window. It was pointless. He fired three just to humour the dieing man and then stopped. It was a bad stopping. Elisha said,"You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times." 2Kings13v19.

We make bad stoppings like this when we give up attending the Sunday evening service or the prayer meeting. They may be faintly embarrassing. The organ playing is woeful. Some of the prayers are tedious. What is the point anyway? We have better things to do. A church is weakened and victories lost through lack of prayer.

When I was a boy we had a member of our gang called Grunties. We did not bully Grunties but we enjoyed from time to time putting him into an uncomfortable situation. When an old tin bath was launched on Vincent's pond Grunties was the occupant. Grunties soon found that to sit upright in the bath threatened to capsize it. After a couple of dangerous wobbles Grunties lay flat in the bath and howled. His howls increased in intensity once he discovered that the bath was leaking and he was as likely to drown inside the bath as out.

One of our favourite games was ditch jumping. We would find the widest, deepest, ditch and jump it. After showing Grunties how easy it was we would egg him on to jump the ditch. He tried long run ups and short run ups, fast run ups and slow run ups, straight run ups and curved run ups - but he never jumped. You might say, well, he never fell into the ditch. It is true that we certainly hoped he would fall into the ditch. But it was a bad stopping because neither did he ever jump a ditch.

There are a lot of people who are brought up in the church who never make that leap of faith that will bring them into God's Kingdom. They make all the right preparations. Christian friends believe that they are sure to jump. They seem to be getting ready to make the great leap from darkness to light. They never jump.

Grunties never had ANY INTENTION of jumping.