lent 27 - darkness trembles?

I was in church yesterday singing a song with the words ' Jesus, you make the darkness tremble'  when all of a sudden, almost rudely, He interrupted and said ' No I don't'.  Which made me stop singing and have a think.  And then come home and do a bit of research.

First off I looked into the word ' tremble' and of the 40 Bible verses which came up on my search none of them had anything to do with darkness.  People tremble, and the earth trembles.  People tremble in fear of judgement and in awe of the person and majesty of God.  The earth trembles in His presence ( my understanding being that this is a description of natural phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanoes and storms and also a metaphor for the might of God)

Then I looked up 'darkness' and there were hundreds of verses to trawl through.  But it became evident that God made darkness and uses it for His purposes.

Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day Darkness and light are alike to You. Psalm 139:12

God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.  So darkness is something other than God.  Physical darkness is something God made to give us night and day.   Metaphorical darkness symbolises the presence of the enemy.   And I think the songwriter intends us to understand that Jesus puts fear into the heart of the enemy.  But is that good theology?   Just thinking out loud here, because I've never considered this before, but what I felt Jesus saying to me in worship was almost a derisory snort.   Jesus doesn't make darkness tremble - He shatters and destroys darkness.  He obliterates it. He is light and where He is, darkness has to flee.  It doesn't just shake a bit and bite its fingernails with some anxiety.  The presence of Jesus is dynamite - an atomic bomb - a nuclear meltdown obliterating everything that stands in His way.   His atonement on the cross ripped the heart out of the brief blip in time which saw the dominion of Satan established on the earth.  The light and grace and mercy which poured out of the empty tomb was like a mighty ocean compared with the single drop of sin which it consumed 

 15 But God's free gift is not at all to be compared to the trespass [His grace is out of all proportion to the fall of man]. For if many died through one man's falling away (his lapse, his offence), much more profusely did God's grace and the free gift [that comes] through the undeserved favour of the one Man Jesus Christ abound and overflow to and for [the benefit of] many. Romans 5:15

lent 26 - wasting time

Clocks went forward.  Groan.  Somehow it always takes us ages to get over that one tiny little change, it seems to upset the internal body clock for days...... and the poor dogs have no idea what's going on!   Yesterday I heard the most extraordinary thing about Brexit.  Apparently at some point in the next couple of years Europe is going to dispense with daylight saving and allow each country to decide for itself whether or not it wants to put the clocks back and forward or not.  Which means that there is a possibility that in a couple of years time the Republic of Ireland and Spain could be on one time system and Northern Ireland and Gibraltar be on another.  Meaning you'd have to put your clock back if you were travelling from Newry to Dundalk  or the Gibraltar/Spain equivalent.  😃   Just when you thought Brexit couldnt get any more bonkers!

The change in the clock focus our minds ever so briefly on that lost ( or gained) hour.  We groan about an hour less in bed and cheer when we have  perceived' extra' hour in the autumn.  But of course we have the same number of hours in every day and I guess most of us feel that we should be  ' using' those hours well and being productive with them.    Yesterday afternoon I spent in bed - three hours sleeping and the rest of the time doing absolutely nothing at all.  I am utterly exhausted at the moment and just feel the need to do nothing much.  Which is not a waste of time.  It is necessary rest and recuperation. 

Part of the ever increasing pressure of life in the 21st century are the demands on our time.  We need to achieve more, be more efficient, spend less time on screens and on sofas and more time being healthy and constructive and positive.   We use gadgets to remind us to be places and sat navs to get us where we are going in the fastest time possible.  We work from home until late into the night and do more overtime in order to pay the bills.   The internal voice can sometimes shout loudly that we should be being busy if we just sit down and do nothing. 

But God says we need rest.   He commands us to rest.  He tells us that one seventh of our week  ( about 14% of our time) should be spent doing nothing.   In Jesus's day that meant no work, cooking, travel, housework, play, nothing except resting, spending time with family and God.   In our parents day it probably meant church, Sunday lunch, listening to the radio or watching television, doing a crossword and nothing else much.  These days it might still mean church, but it then might entail a Sunday shop, homework, catching up on a few emails, washing and ironing, washing the car, playing FIFA with schoolfriends online, and maybe even church again and a cheeky McFlurry on the way home.

I think it is no coincidence that as we have forgotten how to rest and do nothing our mental health has suffered.  God knows how we work and He never tells us to do something without good reason.  When He says we need to rest it is because actually we don't function properly unless we rest.  We have unfortunately coined that phrase ' a waste of time' which engenders guilt and puts us under pressure to ' do stuff'.  But time is a gift to us.  And God sometimes wants us to just enjoy a sunset, snuggle under the duvet, stroke the cat, sit by the fire, read a book, do nothing and enjoy the silence.
You have not ' lost' an hour today.  You still have 24 hours in which to experience everything God wants to show you.   I challenge you to have a rest today regardless of how much you have to do or how busy you are.  Put your feet up.  Be still. Let the Holy Spirit refresh and restore you.

lent 25 - re-discovery

Yesterday was the start of the rather daunting job of clearing out the attic.   We moved into out current house 19 years ago and vowed we would not fill the roof with junk........ however it does now appear to be filled with junk and I have decided it's about time to have a sort out.

So up I went with a ruthless determination to get rid of anything that doesnt need to be up there.  And after a couple of hours I was feeling quite pleased with myself as I'd managed to chuck out a fair bit and sort out and organise a bit more.   Of course in the process I came across all sorts of things Id forgotten were up there.   I opened one bag and found a whole heap of bits of paper, cards, notebooks that dated to my university days.  As I started to sort through them I discovered some thank you cards signed by lots of students which were given to me after Id done some talks on creativity at Edinburgh Uni Scripture Union.   I have no real recollection of the talks - but it was really interesting reading the things people had written in response to them.  I had obviously spoken about the throne room of God as described in Revelation.  The comments and feedback in the thank-you cards were really encouraging.  I dont think it was any accident that I happened to come across these odd bits of paper just now, given that at the moment Im trying to put together some workshops about creativity and hearing God, and am wondering if there is really any mileage in doing this.   Stumbling across these messages from 25 years ago helped me to realise that maybe I do have something to say and that it is probably worth stepping out in faith and seeing what happens.

The other thing I found was a box of photographs.  It's always fun to re-visit old pictures and remember days when everyone was much younger and shinier.   There was a photograph of me and my two closest school friends sitting in the sixth form common room at school, arms round each other grinning at the camera.  Funny that I was able to pinpoint the exact place the picture was taken by the orange walls behind us.  There was a photograph of my brother when he was about ten years old.  And one of my Dad and my Stepmother laughing fit to bust.   She has been dead for over twenty years - good memories.  In another box were all the paintings the boys did when they were at nursery.   So cute. I had forgotten Id kept them.

I'm glad I have kept some of these things to help me to remember people and events and places in my past.  I'm not overly sentimental, but I do have a lousy memory so 'things' can be a helpful reminder - and the 'God things' I keep remind me of truths He has spoken which are good to recall.

I wont be throwing out these items.  They have been packed away again for me to stumble across  another day sometime in the future.  Im wondering what else I might unearth in the next few days or weeks as I work my way through the rest of the stuff in the attic. I dont think there's anything of any monetary value up there, but there are probably more treasures to be found.

And if there is a moral in today's ramblings it might be this - write down and keep the precious moments....especially the God things.  Keep the bits and pieces other people give to you - the verses in birthday cards, the letters and words.  File them away somewhere and every now and again get them out and look at them.  Because it is good to remember.

lent 24 - ordered steps

A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. Prov 20:24

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, And He delights in his way. Psalm 37:23

Yesterday was the day when Keith and I both found ourselves without a job to go to.  He finished his job with the circus on Wednesday and starts a new job on Monday.  I finished my charity job last Saturday and now only work at the start of the week.  So we had a very rare day off together and equally rarely the sun was blazing so we went for a drive and took the dog.  We had thought we would do the drive to Keith's new workplace to suss out how long it would take him and which would be the best of the winding country routes to take cross country.  When we were almost at the destination I said ' we could nip down to the estuary and take the dog for a walk just now, or go into town and walk the dog later.'  The turning was coming up - Keith said' let's take the dog now'.  So we turned off.

Arrived at the parking place, let the dog off.  Tide was so far out you couldn't even see the sea and that meant that the causeway to the little island which is nearly always covered over when we are there, was dry as a bone,so we walked out to the island.  There were about four other people out with dogs.  We passed and nodded and smiled and commented on the glorious day.   

We walked past a young man, tall and slim wearing dark clothes and a beanie hat, and as we did I had the fleeting thought that perhaps that young man wasn't OK. He was walking in the opposite direction to us, round the island.  I fired a quick thought to the Lord that if the 'not OK' thought was a God thought then we would meet him again on the other side.   When we got back to the causeway to exit the island the young guy was in front of us a couple of hundred yards.  The ' not OK' thought was shouting louder so I said to Keith that I thought the Lord wanted me to speak to that young man.   We kept walking.  Young man stopped and just stood which enabled us to catch up with him.  He was looking at his phone.  We walked up to him, then slightly past him.  Molly chose this moment to belly flop into a big salty, sandy puddle and come out filthy.  Keith looked at young guy and asked him if he knew if there was anywhere close by where we might find some water to wash the dog.   Young man said there were some toilets in the car park.  I then plucked up courage and said '  Are you OK?'

Young man smiled and said ' Oh, yes, Im fine thanks, I know why you might have thought that, its because I was walking by myself, but Im actually fine'.  I said ' well actually, its because Im a Christian and I just felt that God said to me to ask you if you were OK'

Young man ( his name was Sam) suddenly opened wide up and said that he had been brought up a christian but had drifted a bit.  He had just finished school and had planned to go to uni but that hadn't worked out and now he was feeling lost and had no idea what to do next.   He said his friends all had a plan, that his parents were supportive but that he was ' a bit lost'.   I told him that God knew that, and that I wasnt in the habit of accosting complete strangers but God wanted him to know that He was on Sam's case.  We asked if we could pray for him and he was more than happy.  We prayed that he would reconnect with God and his church, would see the next steps God was putting in front of him and be patient in waiting for the next thing.  Then off we went

In the car the scriptures above came to me.   Even though Keith and I thought that we were ordering our own steps yesterday, even though we had not particularly invited Jesus on our drive, God still ordered our steps.  Our meeting with Sam was by no means a life defining or saving moment I'm sure, but it was probably an affirming and encouraging one for Sam and most definitely was for us.  It made me hyper aware that God moves His people around like pieces on a chess board, placing us strategically all the time to achieve His purposes.  I believe that our presence as light bearers changes the atmosphere wherever we are.  Who knows how many plans of the enemy are thwarted every day just because God has His people moving about on streets in towns and cities.  We are God' Ninjas  💪😇😊

I have thoughts about people I pass in the street quite often.  I rarely act on them.  Usually for fear of being wrong, looking like an idiot, being an inconvenience etc etc.  I'm still in Ninja training school 101.

lent 23 - a time of crisis

Last Sunday the churches in and around Belfast gathered on the steps of Stormont ( our parliament building which has had no sitting executive for many months because two parties cant work together to govern ) to pray this prayer.   As I cannot think of anything to say about Brexit except  ' God, HELP!' I thought I'd post it today as I think the words are well crafted and wise.

Heavenly Father, we pray for our nation at this time of such uncertainty, division, and confusion. Some of us are for Brexit, some of us are against it, and some of us aren’t sure. But we look to You to guide us, reconcile and restore us.

Our political leaders cannot agree and Stormont is no longer sitting. But you have been the hope and the heart of these islands for a thousand years, and today we return to you again, the King of this divided kingdom.

Communities are divided, social media is cynical, public discourse is polarised but you are the way, the truth and the life, the Rock of Ages, a very present help in times of trouble.

We humble ourselves and repent of our pride, our division, our selfishness. We confess that we have looked to ourselves and not to You. We are sorry. Hear our prayer and heal our land.

Lord, have mercy on us.

God of all wisdom and truth, we ask you to inspire and guide our political leaders at this difficult time. Raise up brilliant women and men of peace, integrity and startling courage to lead us in these turbulent times.

God of justice, in this moment of economic and social uncertainty we pray for the most vulnerable in our midst. Lord, we ask not for what is best for us, but for what is best for everyone, and especially the least and the lost.

God of mercy, we are deeply divided. We have been without a local government for too long, we live on divided islands and in fractious times. Would you rise with healing in your wings, bring balm to our brokenness and wholeness to our hurts.

Lord of the church, we pray for our spiritual leaders that they would speak truth to power without compromise. As our nations shake, awaken your church to proclaim the good news of your gospel with renewed conviction. Revive us, we pray, and reconcile our relationships that the world may perceive that you are alive, believe in your name, and receive your love for every person, every family, and every community in this land.

Lord, hear our prayers.

lent 22 - miracle of growth

I work doing music classes with babies and pre-school children and yesterday I spent time with small people from the ages of 6 months to 4.  I never cease to be amazed at what happens to people between the moment of conception and the age of 4 or 5.   In my classes yesterday I saw babies who couldnt sit up, bear their own weight, hold things easily, focus on things for more than a few seconds, talk or make themselves understood.  I saw children who were just learning to crawl and others who were just learning to stand.  Then there was the class who were walking but not talking, able to copy some actions but still heavily dependent on adults.  The next class up saw a massive jump in understanding and participation as kids now able to talk start to make themselves understood and interact with adults and other children.  At this age they can follow instructions and copy adults, they remember things from the previous week and want to tell you stories about what they have been doing.  They have a sense of humour and find things funny.  They have rhythm and love to dance and move about. 
The oldest children in the pre-school age group I teach are pretty much fully formed people with personality and distinct characters.  You can tell the quiet ones from the rowdy ones, the shy ones from the confident ones, the really musical ones from the averagely musical.  They are interested in other people and ask questions about things other than themselves.  They can listen to a story, anticipate what is going to happen next, remember what happened before and learn songs and rhymes.

You were like that once.   It's a miracle isnt it?  Human development.  That awesome and amazing explosion of growth which takes place in those first few years and which takes us from being utterly dependent for absolutely everything on a parent, to being relatively independent within a few years.

Over the course of a couple of years we learn to crawl, stand, walk, talk, reason, interact. Never again in our lives will we learn so much and change so spectacularly in such a short space of time.

Jesus tells us that we must be born again.  And quite often I think we look on the ' born again' thing as being the end goal for people.  They ( We)  need a clean slate, to start again free from sin, spiritually alive.  We all know that.  We have known it forever.   And then we talk about discipleship - and we look to that group of grown men Jesus gathered round him and we listen to what Jesus taught them and recognise that following Jesus involves being ' grown up'.   But what if we have missed something in between.   What if we have missed allowing and encouraging people to be spiritual babies and toddlers and children?   In the natural world babies need parents - they cant do anything at all for themselves.  In the Kingdom I think its the same.  Baby Christians need a LOT of support.  They need help, care, protection.  They need to be fed.  They need people to clear up their mess and get them into routines and constantly lovingly interact with them to facilitate their development.  We know what happens to babies who are left alone, not stimulated, not fed, not cared for.  They dont grow.  They die.  They never make it to adulthood and discipleship. 

Thing is, its hard work being a parent.  It is relentless.  It is 24/7.  It can be boring, exhausting, confusing, scary and all consuming.  But that is what it takes and we willingly do it for our babies because we love them

The challenge for us as the church is this - do we love the not-yet-christian and the newborn christian enough to parent them through to independence?  Because if we don't do it who will?  And if we dont do it they might not survive.

 

lent 21 - honesty

Ever since I started writing these blogs people have fed back to me that they appreciate my honesty .  Yesterday being a case in point.  And I always find it a bit.... surprising.  Partly because Ive always been the sort of person who tells it as it is.  I remember being introduced to a room full of people by a friend who said ' this is Caz, what you see is what you get'.   Given that we are all made of the same stuff and life tends to deal us a similar hand I don't see the point of pretending.  Having said that, honesty is in the eye of the beholder.  What we say is always edited, mediated, interpreted and is never the whole truth.  We don't know what the whole truth of any situation really is.  My version events is just that - my version.  As seen through my eyes and experienced by me.  Expressed as I want to express it, most likely to achieve an effect which I deem to be beneficial.   What I write here in my blog is a story.... yes, it is a ' true' story in that it is not a fabrication of my imagination, but its a narrative told from a point of view to achieve an effect.

What I hope is that the telling of the story allows the spirit of God to highlight and underline things which might be helpful to others.  I believe that God speaks in parables and through stories all the time. and because Jesus is THE TRUTH, He can take words which are a version of the truth, and breathe His spirit into them so that they become Truth to the person hearing them.

It is a mystery.     

I have discovered that one of the ways you can tell if you are free from something is if you can talk about it objectively and without justifying and defending yourself no matter how badly you might come out of the telling of it.  People who have been freed from addiction or criminal pasts can happily relate the worst excesses of depravity , knowing that they are now free and that Jesus has forgiven and forgotten.   Its as though they are talking about another person - and of course in reality they are, because the old has gone, a new creation has been born.  God's mercies are new every morning.

So, it is worth remembering that whenever we are hearing anyone's truth, it is only part of the story.  It is so easy to interpret things through the filter of our own experience and make judgements and form opinions on the basis of our own understanding.  Jesus looks at the heart.  He is the only one who judges righteously.  He is the only one in possession of all the facts.  And He is the one who, at the end of the day, will bring everything that has been hidden in the shadows out into the light. 

lent 20 - excuses and expectations

One of the things I love about Facebook is its daily reminders about what you were doing this time last year, five years ago etc.  So many great memories or funny happenings long forgotten which pop up to surprise you.  It's a cute and clever Facebook invention.  But of course what one is reminded about depends on what one was posting back then.  ( Beware, brutal honesty ahead)

Today's memories remind me that eight years ago I was embroiled in something which, had God not intervened fairly spectacularly, would undoubtably have turned into a full blown affair.   Given that Jesus tells us that what goes on in our hearts and minds is as good ( or bad) as the deed itself,  I guess I was having an affair.  It just never developed into a physical interaction.  But I was in love with someone who was not my husband and spent the best part of a year trying to deal with the torrent of emotions and turmoil that this entailed.    It was a very strange thing to go through.  I had no intention of leaving my marriage - when I made my promises for better or worse I meant them.  I also had no particular desire to deceive or lie to Keith so I told him from the outset that I was being faced with a huge temptation - in some attempt to try to be accountable for my feelings and actions.  Of course with the benefit of hindsight what I should have done was shut down my computer,  cut off all contact with the other person and forget about it.    I know that.  I knew it at the time.  But I couldn't do it.  All I could do was justify my actions to myself.


I told myself a million reasons why it was all OK.  After all I hadn't actually DONE anything.  All Id done was talk, message, laugh,feel good.   I told myself that the other person involved had gone through a horrible time, was very isolated and needed me to be there.......walking away would have been harmful and awful.  I told myself that I was entitled to feel appreciated and loved and the centre of attention after ten years of a very difficult and strained marriage.  At the time I was both the happiest and the most heartbroken that I had ever been.   Bizarrely throughout the whole time God continued to talk to me and use me, despite the fact that I was clearly walking a tightrope of temptation and disobedience.  I think I probably filtered what He was saying to me and interpreted some of what He was saying to fit my own agenda.

The really hard thing for me was that nobody knew.  I had nobody to tell what was really going on.  One non-christian friend knew some of it.  Keith knew some of it.  Some close friends knew I was really struggling but not the specifics.  But mostly I was on my own. Partly that was because I had no properly accountable pastoral relationship in my life and partly its because my friends are also Keith's friends.  In discussing my ailing marriage I would have had to expose and criticise him and I didn't want to do that.    Its only now, eight years down the line that its so far behind me that I think I can come out from behind the wall of respectability and christian expectation and tell it like it was.    I feel sad, not just for me but for the many many people who struggle really hard to be in their marriages.   Temptation is all around.  People fall and mess up and fail.   Marriage is definitely under attack . If couples do take the step of asking for help it is often only after things have already gone terribly wrong.  I don't have any answers

Last year something happened.  After carrying a very unhappy weight for years I suddenly felt it lift and God told me that I had been grieving for seven years.   Which was interesting because grief has seven stages, and looking back I could see that I had experienced every one of them.   The thing about grieving is that it is a process - which means that it changes as time passes and eventually comes to an end.  The stages can last different lengths of time, from weeks to years.  My depression was getting worse for a long time.  I suppose the 'affair in my head' was part of the testing period and finally, six years after that episode ended ( he met a girl and married her!!!)  I woke up one day in a place of acceptance.  Which changed everything.

So what was I grieving?  Well, I think partly I was grieving a marriage which was based on entirely unrealistic expectations.  Partly I was grieving everything and everyone I gave up to move to Ireland which I had no idea would have such an impact on me.  I was grieving the 'loss' of my forties, ten years which I think I had envisioned would be fulfilling and spiritually fruitful but which were actually a big struggle and pretty arid.  I fully acknowledge that whilst I was going through all of this I was pretty difficult to live with.  We did try counselling at one point but it just made things worse !!  :)

What got me through?   A mantra which I told myself over and over and which is definitely true
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER, ESPECIALLY NOT FEELINGS.  I had experienced heartbreak before, and I had watched both my parents go through divorce and bereavement and I knew from experience that however bad things are, they don't stay the same and that in impossible ways happiness can sometimes arrive out of nowhere.  I also know that ' the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things'  and that feelings quite often don't tell the truth.

Even in the midst of heartache and confusion and great pain I knew that if I could just hang on in there things would change.  Life would move on . God would work it out.  And He did.  He is.
I think only life experience can teach you this.  And usually the experience is tough. You have to go through the fire and come out the other side before you know that coming through is even possible.  Then the next fire you face you can go into it confident that having come through before you can come through again.  Which doesn't make the flames any less hot. But it takes some of the terror out of the process.

Im now in a different place.  I have radically adjusted my expectations.  I am no longer grieving and therefore no longer blaming, resenting, demanding.  God showed me a few things which have really helped me to understand where things in our marriage were built on weak foundations.   Last summer I sense a door closed on something which has passed and now there is a new road ahead.  Keith and I will have to work out how to do this next phase much better than we did the last phase.  It probably won't look like hearts and flowers.  But it will look like acceptance and commitment.    I cant speak for him but I know I have changed.   I also know where I am vulnerable and I hope that I can recognise temptation better in the future.  I'm wise enough to know that the enemy doesn't play fair and when you have a weak spot that's where he will target.

Why don't you ask someone you are close to how their marriage is going?  And give them space to answer you honestly.  It is hard, but could be lifesaving for someone you know.  Or for you.

Hope I haven't shattered anyone's image of the perfect Caz  😊  Thanks for letting me put this on paper and say it out loud.  It's all part of the process.

lent 19 - blessing

Well that's odd.  I spent all of yesterday at a Christian conference enjoying good worship and speakers and I found myself at the end of the day having not really heard anything in particular from God.

I heard what was said and sung, and I enjoyed it all and found the talks interesting and all the rest, I just didnt hear God saying anything to me in particular. He didnt draw my attention to anything, no nudges or prompts, no odd word associations or penny dropping moments.  Ironic eh?   I wonder if it was because in a situation where one sort of expects God to turn up and be there, it is easy to sit back and not be actively looking,seeking listening, questing and questioning?  I wonder if I just assumed God would serve me up something on a plate because I was in an overtly Christian environment?

The only note-worthy thing that happened was that I was given  presents ( it was my last day at my charity job).  One gift was a set of pastels.  From someone who knows that I want to be more creative with my life in coming days.   Another present was from a young lady with whom I have worked not terribly closely for the past year and who I dont really know very well.  She is a self confessed spiritualist who expresses wariness towards things Christian but finds herself attending a christian conference every year because she works for the charity that runs it !!  She gave me a leaving present which consisted of a card with the words of  Psalm 37:5 on the front of it and a mug with a verse on it about following your dreams and ' going for it'.   Which somehow seemed very apposite today. The thought that someone who did not believe what I believe would go out of their way to find a present which would express something of my faith back to me was very touching.  It would be like me buying something with a verse from the Quran on it for a Moslem friend - except that Id probably never do that.   So Im just sitting here trying to work out if there are parameters and 'rules' about being a blessing.  Or if, in order to be a blessing, it is sometimes ok or even necessary to go to places which make you feel uncomfortable or with which you downright disagree; as John Smith, biker preacher who died recently once said  ' It is more important to love than to be right.'                                     

lent 18 - leaving

If you live in the UK by now you will be sick and tired of hearing about leaving.   We have been talking about it for two years and for the past six months there hasnt been a single day when the news hasnt been full of it.  Leaving the European Union.

This week Ive been thinking about leaving in a different context.  Leaving my job.   I've been working for a charity for the past year and yesterday was my last day.  I cleared my desk, logged out of various web pages, left a handover list for the next person coming in and handed back my keys.

If only Brexit could be so simple!!!

Leaving is part of life, but it's often something we struggle with.  Leaving a job, a house , a relationship, a country can be emotional, exhausting, expensive, challenging.  Many, if not most, of us find security in staying put, putting down roots and forging commitments.  Even when leaving something or someone is our own choice and we are happy about it, it can still be quite hard to do.  Saying goodbye to people and places we love is sad.  But it seems to me that God is a God who is constantly on the move and calling us to follow Him in a constant leaving, changing, not looking back, pressing on toward the goal experience.   

All through scripture we see God telling people it is time to move on.  Or sometimes He doesnt tell them He makes them.  People are taken into captivity, sold into slavery, born in exile.  Others are urged to leave where they are and move somewhere else.  There are forty year long Exodus journeys and military forays into promised lands.  Jesus is taken to Egypt as a baby and then leaves Egypt to return home again.   Disciples leave their nets and follow Jesus.  And later they leave Jerusalem to take the gospels to the four corners of the world. Spreading the news that God left heaven to come to earth and die on a cross for mankind.

We seem to be destined to be mobile.  We should probably not be surprised when change happens and suddenly we find ourselves having to pack our bags and move on.   We are nomads merely passing through this world on our way to an eternal destination.   Our home is not here.