lent 39 - Queen Kateryn

Ive just finished reading a book about Henry VIII 's 6th wife Kateryn Parr.   It was a historical novel by Phillipa Gregory so a fair bit of it was fiction, but the bits for which there is historical evidence were as factual as they could be.  And I knew nothing much about this period of history so found it all very interesting.   What was most compelling about the story was the role Henry's last wife had in the Reformation.  She was the first woman in Britain to write and publish a book - and it was a book of prayers.  She later wrote another which was basically her testimony.  She had a huge input into the translation of the Bible from Latin into English and spent the four years she was Queen of England walking the tightrope of Henry's madness trying not to get beheaded whilst advocating for making the Bible and the Liturgy available to the man in the street in a language he could understand.  She was a student of the scriptures and her reading led her to understand that God wanted a relationship with everyone and that Jesus was the only mediator between God and man. She saw the superstition and profiteering of the Catholic church at that time as  keeping the common people away from God.   Henry VIII vacillated wildly between wanting a complete break from Rome and reforming the church, to burning reformers at the stake and reinstating the Mass and the priesthood.   The horrors of the persecution and torture of people who were merely trying to be true to their faith in those days is appalling.    We tend to forget so easily that only a few hundred years ago people were being burned at the stake, hanged drawn and quartered, put on the rack and tortured in this country because they believed in the Trinity.  Or didnt believe in transubstantiation.  Or prayed to the saints.  Or didnt pray to the saints.   Kateryn Parr was at the heart of the turmoil and danger of these times and her contribution to the translation of the scriptures was an act of bravery in the face of her husband's insanely dangerous political game playing.  For more about Queen Kateryn theres a good summary here.    https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/katherine-parr-marriage-henry-viii-husbands-death-writing/

I owe the fact that I have a Bible beside my bed, written in English, to many brave and sacrificial individuals who believed so fervently in my right to have access to the Word of God that they were prepared to die for it.   And of course I owe the salvation it offers to a Saviour who was prepared to carry a tonne weight of wood on his flayed bloody back and be nailed up in front of His mother as a mockery - for me.

This faith by which we live has cost, and today is still costing, lives and pain and bloodshed.  It is a deadly serious matter.  We have a responsibility to the God who hung on a tree, and all of those who gave up their lives rather than deny Him, to treasure the truth, love the Word and live fully in the freedom we enjoy.

   

Lent 38...beautiful people

I'm at the airport. People watching. There are hundreds of people here and from what I've seen so far none of them are beautiful. The folk in Newcastle airport today are pretty average. Short and tall, skinny and fat, blonde and brunette, beards,glasses,suits,jeans. All colours. Hardly any stand out. One guy has just walked past in a tracksuit so tight fitting that he looks a bit ridiculous. A middle aged couple....he just kissed her hand. Awww. But mostly these hundreds are entirely unremarkable.

Of course they are not unremarkable to their family, friends loved ones. To them they are special. And what makes them special is not how they look or what they wear. It's who they are.

So why do we as a culture put such a stupidly high value on appearance??  Why do we seek out the one beautiful person in a million and put them on billboards to sell us stuff?  Why do we spend billions on cosmetics and fashion and shoes when they really make us look absolutely no different from the next guy??  Why can't we be happy being average??

Jesus was the most attractive man who ever walked the earth.  But the Bible tells us that He was nothing much to look at.    He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Is 53:2    He didn't stand out from the crowd.  He wasnt a poster pin up.  He was entirely average on the outside.  What made Him the most beautiful person who ever lived was His heart. 

I genuinely believe that God is so sad when we compare and are dissatisfied and spend and have surgery trying to make ourselves somehow more beautiful.  He loves us. Our insides and our outsides.  But our insides are so much more important to God .  Maybe they should be for us too.

Lent 37 - tweaks

I was in the airport yesterday on the way to visit my dad. I love airports. Youget to see so much of life there...every sort of person milling about with nothing to do. God usually talks to me in the space between security and departure.  Yesterday it was about wheels

It's almost impossible to imagine that when I was a child suitcases didn't have wheels. We lugged our luggage ( maybe that's why it's called luggage!!) around with us in hernia-inducing acts of heroism.  We dreaded the hotel room being at the end of a long corridoor . Why on earth didn't anyone come up with the idea of wheels on cases ten seconds after the invention of the wheel??!!

At some point a clever someone had the genius idea of adding wheels  to cases and overnight our travels were transformed.  But yesterday I noticed that all modern cases now have four wheels. Two wheels revolutionised, four improve. With four you can walk beside your case and manoeuvre it more easily. It's a tweak. But it's a good one

Are you lugging your suitcase through life ,giving yourself back ache and limiting the places you can go?   Or perhaps you have 2 wheels which are perfectly fine and get you from a to b relatively easily.  With a small adjustment you might be able to improve your ease of travel.....but perhaps you have never looked up to see the new thing.  There are people all around you going to the same place you are going. Some of them are finding it easier than you just now.   Instead of being discouraged, why not see what they are doing which works.  What habits, lifestyle choices, attitudes etc are giving them 4 wheels instead of 2?  How can you tweak your walk to optimise it??

Has anyone ever compared the Christian life to a suitcase before? 😁. Probably. There is nothing new under the sun.

lent 36 - the God who runs

Yesterday I was in town at a major junction which had multiple sets of traffic lights waiting to cross the road.   As the green man flashed up and I started to move I saw a mother and her small daughter running towards the crossing.  The girl was probably about three.  She was holding onto her Mum's hand for all she was worth.  Mother's face was set in a look of grim determination that she was going to make the crossover before the lights changed.  She was running at quite a speed.  Her daughter was charging along beside her with a look of utter glee on her face.   In a split second I understood that children absolutely love to run - and more that that, they love to run with their parents.  But parents so rarely run.  Only when there's a good, pressing, urgent reason do most adults break into a trot.  Or unless they are exercising with purpose and a mission.   The little girl I saw yesterday was clearly rejoicing in the fact that she was getting to sprint down the road with her Mummy.  It was cute. 

As I was watching my mind was suddenly taken to the story of the prodigal son and the father who picks up his skirts and charges down the road to meet his wayward homecoming offspring.   To the Jewish listener this would have been unspeakably offensive and terrible.  Men never ran.  Fathers were supposed to be solemn, decorous, and most certainly not given to outward displays of emotion.  But in the story the father throws off all convention and cultural restrictions in order to express the passionate explosion of love and forgiveness he experiences as he sees his son coming home.   And of course in the parable the father represents God Himself.  The God who runs.

In Song of Songs the lover is described thus :

Listen! My beloved!
    Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
    bounding over the hills.

Whilst this is a love poem depicting the relationship between a woman and her lover, it is also understood to be a picture of the relationship Jesus has with His church.  And He is clearly painted as a vigorous, healthy young stag bounding and leaping over the hills.  The God who runs

Our God doesn't sit on a throne dispensing justice with his orb and sceptre in His hand.  Rather He is the shepherd who goes out looking for the lost sheep.  He is the father who sits at the window waiting and when he catches the first glimpse of a son turning around to come home, goes sprinting down the path to meet him.  He is the lover of our souls who is leaping mountain heights in order to reach us, the object of His affection.

The little girl who was so delighted to be running down the street with her Mum yesterday is a picture of you and me and the unbridled joy which is possible when we put our hands in the hand of the Father and run with Him.  Our Dad who runs.

lent 35 - restoration

Yesterday I went to visit my great friends Bryan and Ami who are preparing to go away on long term mission and are packing up their house and giving away all their stuff.  I went to polish their silver  !!

Not that they have much silver.  A few bits and pieces, mostly things which Bryans Dad had been given or awarded for long service in the army many decades ago.  A tiny trophy Brian had won aged ten for horseriding.  A silver photo frame.   I had asked if there was anything I could do to help them as they try to put their entire lives into cardboard boxes, and cleaning the silver was what they asked me to do.    I find it very satisfying taking something that is black with tarnish and transforming it into something shiny and gleaming within a few minutes.  I ended up filthy, but the silver looked great.

In return for my polishing they gave me a very very precious gift.  Gladys's Bible.  Newcomers to the blog might not know that Gladys was Bryans mother, my soul mate and best buddy who died last year at the age of 93.  We loved each other with a passion and to have her Bible is a truly touching and special thing. 



I came home to put the finishing touches to the piano stool I have been upcycling.  I've painted the dark brown wood grey, covered the seat in a grey and white fabric and re-vamped the inside with a grey and white pattern.  It looks great and Im really pleased with it.   

Later I went to empty the dishwasher and was delighted to discover that everything was super gleaming and sparkly.  This is because the other day I worked out how to dismantle the sprinkler arm thingys and cleaned them.  They didnt seem particularly dirty at the time but oh my goodness what a difference to the wash!!  Not a streak or a smear on any of the glasses.  Not a trace of baked bean juices on the tupperware containers.

As I was delighting in my dishwasher triumph I realised that pretty much my whole day had been taken up with refurbishing.  Taking things which were not as good as they once had been and bringing them back to life.   Can you see where Im going with this?  😀

Three different ways of bringing to life - the first was removing the tarnish.  The dirt of the world and the passage of time.  The shine was always there underneath but the sparkle had been dulled and some elbow grease and a bit of time ( and silver polish) was all that was necessary to restore the shine and sparkle again.    The second - refurbishing and modernising something dull, old fashioned and tired.   A coat of paint to cover up the old and make new.  New fabric to cover up the dated seat cover.  This time rather than a removal of the dirt to reveal hidden beauty, it was a covering of the old with something fresh and new
Then finally the dishwasher required a bit of dismantling and washing and putting back together so that it would work fully as it should.   As it did when it was brand new.

Which one are you?   Have you become tarnished and need a polish?  Are you no longer quite relevant and cutting edge and perhaps you need an upgrade or re-vamp?   Or do you need a service - for God to dismantle you and oil all your working parts, then put you back together so that you work optimally again?

Or maybe this is about the people you are going to meet today.  Try to see past the dull tarnished surface to the shine underneath.  Past the traditions or conventions or attitudes which might not be quite up to date.  Past the fact that perhaps someone isnt working quite optimally at the moment.  See what God sees in people.  The potential to be renewed, restored, re-purposed, made shiny and new and clean and useful again.  Perhaps God wants you to get your hands dirty today so that someone else can shine.


                                        

lent 34 - the aftermath

What happens when you talk about forgiveness for a couple of days??   Guess what?  You get a chance to practice what you preach!

Yesterdays sermon was about 'relational health'.  Basically about how to do relationships well in church and of course a part of the conversation was about forgiveness.  We were challenged to talk to each other if we had things we needed to sort out before we took communion.  And I felt that I needed to apologise to one of the boys about stuff I have said and done which I know has not been helpful for him.  So I moved next to him and started to talk.  I said that I was sorry for my negativity and criticism.   He listened and talked back.  We talked through the communion part, the worship song, the closing up of the service and the stacking of the chairs.  It wasn't an easy conversation.  He let me know in no uncertain terms that just saying sorry didn't really cut it.  '  Mum you have said sorry before but things haven't changed.'   He is right.   He wasn't going to forgive and forget.  Which is fair enough.  In the process we uncovered some school things I was not aware of and I think I was able to convince him that his perceptions of my expectations of him were a tad awry.   But we definitely didn't resolve our issues, take communion together, kiss, make up and walk off into a blissful happy family sunset.    He basically told me to go away and change my behaviour before coming and asking for him to forgive me. 

Now I know what you are thinking - you are thinking that Im being hard on myself, that teenage boys are difficult to handle, that Im a great parent, that the very fact that I was having that conversation with my son is wonderful.    But the truth of the matter is that I have been a depressed parent for a very large chunk of my kids childhoods.  I have had a very difficult relationship with one of my kids in particular - because he is so very very different from me and because he knows how to press my buttons.  But its more than that.  God is talking to me about whats at the root of this negativity and I know I need to get rid of something in me which makes me so discouraging to my family when my calling is to be an encourager.   It has something to do with poverty.   And it also probably has something to do with me not exercising my spirit much over the past 20 years.   I definitely need to speak in tongues and worship more. 

After yesterdays blog two points were made - what happens when someone has hurt you but is not repentant?  ( or if they are no longer alive and therefore cant repent)  If they wont/cant accept the forgiveness we offer them how can we get rid of the burden of hurt we are carrying?     -  Well I suppose the answer must be to take it all to Jesus.  He knows we are willing to forgive even if the person concerned wont be forgiven.   I believe that Jesus sees our hearts and will release us from our ties to the other person as though they had repented and accepted forgiveness from us.  At the end of the day we cant be responsible for anyone elses relationship with God.  Our job is to listen to his Spirit and do what He says.  And pray for those who persecute us. 


The second point was about forgiving as we have been forgiven - don't we just have to forgive everyone for everything because God has forgiven us?    Well yes, if that were possible.  But we are not God and we don't have His heart, understanding, grace, wisdom, forbearance or indeed anything which would enable us to be as forgiving as He is.  What we do have though is His Spirit.   So once again we find that the only way we can do it is to ask to be filled with the fullness of God so that we can be more like Jesus.    We judge people on our very limited understanding of their motives and circumstances.  We receive wounds because of our own histories and circumstances and vulnerabilities.  Only Jesus knows the whole picture.   The more wisdom and discernment and spiritual understanding we have, I think the easier we might find it to forgive.  And the less vulnerable we might be to being hurt by others.

So I've got some work to do on my relationship with my son.  If I take my own advice then most of that work will be done between me and Jesus.  There is nothing which cant be solved or sorted by spending more time with Jesus, learning His unforced rhythms of grace and being changed from glory to glory.  Pray for me and for my boys.  We need all the help we can get - but I know that we will get there in the end.  Because God is good and He loves us.

lent 33 - forgiveness 2

Following on from yesterday's ponderings.....

If we are going to learn anything about forgiveness then its going to be from Jesus.  After all, His entire mission and life's work was all about forgiveness.  About paying the price for our sins, cancelling the debt, bringing us back into relationship with God and being the means whereby God can forgive us.   So Ive been thinking about what Jesus had to say about forgiving.  And two things struck me which I havent really seen before ( despite having been a Christian for 30+ years.   Amazing isnt it that we can keep on seeing new things over and over and that there is no end to the revelation of God)

Firstly Jesus hanging on the cross says ' Father forgive them, they dont know what they are doing'

He could have said '  I forgive you'  to the people standing at the foot of the cross.  But He didnt.  He chose instead to ask the Father to forgive them.  Interesting.   Not long after this Stephen, as he is being stoned to death, also prays and asks God to forgive his persecutors. 

                                                  

Then the other thing that struck me as I was thinking about it yesterday was that when Jesus was dealing with the people as he moved around the country He usually told people that their sins had been forgiven.  He was of course able to say this because He was the one who was about to take their sins into His own body on the cross.  But when talking to his disciples about forgiveness He says

“If your brother or sister[a] sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”  Luke 17 3-4

I'm not sure I've ever really seen that ' rebuke' word before.  Commentaries say it means this 

Rebuke - Reprove. Go and tell him his fault, and seek an explanation. Acquaint him with what has been the effect of his conduct, and the state of your feelings, that he may acknowledge his error and repent.

This is interesting because what Jesus is saying is that you can't forgive a fellow Christian unless they repent and they cant repent if they don't know they have offended you or hurt you.   Which I suppose makes sense but I havent really appreciated it before.   The ' shrug it off, bury it, dont make a big deal of it' approach is not what Jesus recommends.  Or requires.    God's aim is for His people to be holy as He is holy.  Not holding grudges, not pretending all is well when it isnt, not causing offence to each other, not hiding or telling lies.   He wants open, honest, good, clean righteous communication and love between us all.

So this is what I have learned over the past couple of days of chewing over the issue of forgiving.
If you are offended or hurt or damaged by a Christian you need to take responsibility for addressing the issue with the person concerned.  You need to let them know what they have done and how you feel about it so that they have the opportunity to repent.  This is the kindness of God to them, because they might not know they have been in the wrong and God really wants both of you to be whole and sorted.  So go with as much grace in your heart as you can muster, realising that you too are a sinner and full of mistakes and poor choices.   If they refuse to repent then Matthew 18 gives you the next steps. If they acknowledge their error, apologise for the hurt caused and have a change of heart resulting in a change in behaviour, then you need to forgive them.  And let it go.  When God forgives He also forgets.  Completely and utterly. As far as the east is from the west. And if we can't forgive and forget then I guess we have to ask God to fill us with the forgiveness He has both shown us and bought for us until we can.

If you are offended or crucified or stoned ( metaphorically) by a non Christian then I think perhaps the first step is to pray and ask God to forgive that person.  I dont think it is possible to really pray for someone to receive God's forgiveness if you dont genuinely want that person's good.   And I think this is hard.   If someone has wreaked havoc in your life the natural response is to want God to obliterate them.  So the very act of asking God to forgive them could be a huge step.   But I think that once you can do that then God can start to work healing into your own situation and grow the possibility of forgiveness and freedom in your own heart.

Love this.  It removes the issue of how we feel and makes it about how we act.