Gratitude

It was interesting over Christmas listening to the debate about whether a forced thank-you letter is better or worse than an impromptu thank-you text. Much as I love to receive and send cards and letters, there is something powerful about genuine gratitude. 

In Luke 6.45, Jesus is in the middle of saying some pretty amazing things when he says: "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks". Sometimes it's hard to be thankful, other times it's easy, but I know if I keep noticing the little things I'm grateful for then they get stored up and it's words of gratitude that I hear myself speak. 

I've so much to be thankful for I don't ever want to take that for granted.

Perspective

One thing I like about living in Cheltenham is that it doesn't take long to get up high on the hills surrounding the town. It was such a glorious day today that I took a short walk up the hill from my house, and this was my view 15 minutes later. A much needed change of view from all my studying!


Changing our perspective is a healthy thing to do especially if we are feeling stuck in a rut, or if life is not going the way we hoped. The landscape looks different as you get higher. The houses that seemed so big shrink down, the sky gets bigger, and landmarks begin to stand out. You get a better sense of how things fit together and where each should be.


When God calls us to come up higher, we shift out of our point-of-view into God's perspective. This is a place where self-righteousness fades away and we can see our own actions for what they really are. The great news is that with God there is always mercy. The call to come up higher shows us where we fit into God's big picture, chosen and important but not Lord over all we survey!


Dwelling

I thought that during Lent I would try and write a short blog with a photo from that day each day, so here goes...

At the moment I am looking to buy a new house. It is strange the emotions that it stirs up as you think about leaving an old way of life behind and try and imagine what your new life will look like in different houses.

Dwelling is a funny word, it is where you live, where you have your home, where you are settled; but it is also something you do, you mull over, think about, linger on.


I read Psalm 27 this morning. Verse 4 says:

One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to meditate in his temple.

A new house means a new dwelling place with God, to make my home with Him afresh, to dwell on what it means to be in His presence. Somehow that makes the process seem a little less daunting.

One day God planted a stake in the ground

God spoke
        Darkness came
                        God was there

God spoke
        Light came
                        God was there

God spoke
        Creation overflowed
                        God was there

One day God planted a stake in the ground

"Everything I have is yours
    - share it with me or use it for yourselves"

They ate
         A different light came
         They were hidden from each other
                          But God was there

"Everything I have is mine"
    - but still a voice within whispers of a different way

One day God planted a stake in the ground

"This is my body given for you"
    - a gate or a stumbling block

Take, eat
          Their eyes were opened
                           And God was there

"Lord, it's hard to give my body to serve you"
    - but the Spirit comes and brings strength within

Still....

Sometimes when we speak
           Darkness comes
                           God be there

Sometimes when we speak
            Light comes
                            God is there

Lord help us speak
            "Your kingdom come"
                             God is here

Barrier breaking power

At the moment I am in Israel. It is a tense time with hundreds of rockets being fired by Hamas into Israel and by Israel into Gaza. I am fortunate to be some way away, but I am right on the border between Israel and the West Bank, just north of Bethlehem. When I arrived here and looked out of the window, the first thing I saw was a wall. A huge barrier more than twice my height, stretching as far as my eye could see, crowding up against the houses of Bethlehem. And it shocked me. Even now 12 days later when I see it my stomach kind of churns.

 

I have learnt a lot in the short time I have been here, talking to Palestinian Christians and Muslims, Israeli Jews and non-Jews. And have certainly learnt enough to know that there are no easy answers to an issue that has thousands of years of layers to burrow down through. What I am more and more convinced about though as I listen and pray is that the barrier breaking power seen in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is the most relevant thing that I can cry out for.

In Ephesians 2.13-17, we read what Paul has to say to the Gentile Christians: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, and in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.”

There is a visible dividing wall running through this land whose physicality is an in-your-face symbol of deeper emotional, psychological and spiritual realities. The gospel shows us that there is only one way to break down such a division and that is to relinquish our hold on all our human structures of power, security and defence, in a way that allows us not to retaliate when we are threatened. It seems impossible, but Jesus showed us it is not. This is the radical call of the gospel that is confronting me every day here. This is how divine reconciliation happens.

And I wonder, if a wall cut through my personal freedom and I lived with it week in, week out; if I never knew whether the next rocket would injury or kill me or someone I loved, would I be able to lay down my anger and frustration and urge to get even? I can’t answer from my privileged perspective, but I can pray for the courage for people here to seek peace, and hold out the hope that it is possible.

God of this City

 

You are God of this City

I wonder – do you weep over Bristol and want to gather her people under your wings?

The smart and the driven…

                Those with stuttering steps and vacant eyes?

In the roar of life and the tides of movement through these streets
                is your prayer still that we would know the things that make for peace?
We mark out space as our own
                Our needs are met
                We conform – or not
The city spewed you out
                Your death is too big for the structures of this space
Yet walls are no barrier to you

Lord, you are in this City

                Your body scattered through our bodies
                The pulse of your blood bringing life
You are God of this City.

Learning to pray

In a couple of weeks time I will have been a Christian for 13 years. I guess I was pretty arrogant, and just expected that I would become a great Christian quickly and having done that would go onto the next thing! Growing in humility in the time since then has been one of the best and one of the hardest parts of the journey that God has me on. The last few months I have been thinking a lot more about prayer, and how we participate in God's kingdom through praying: "YOUR kingdom come, YOUR will be done", this is not something that you can say with integrity from a heart of pride. Ideally my motivation will always be seeing God's kingdom rule and reign becoming a reality around me, but the process of creating in me clean hands and a pure heart (Ps 24:4) is not complete yet! So one thing I have been learning that helps with right motivation is that Jesus wants to be engaged with us as we pray. This has been an odd revelation since it isn't like I have only just started to pray! But pausing and waiting to see what He wants to say to me or to those I am praying with has introduced a new dimension to prayer for me.

 

In my homegroup over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at the teaching of Jesus on prayer, and we did a great exercise that I would recommend to anyone. Taking the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 as a framework, we read out each line and then each of us privately wrote our own version. It made me realise what a powerfully concise set of words it is, and helped me see this very familiar prayer in a new light. This is what I wrote:

 

Daddy of all of us, you are holy and you are in heaven watching over us...

We want things to be like they are heaven all around us

which means everyone loving you as our king and doing things the way you know is best.

Give us all we need to live well today.

As we release people from the things we think they owe us,

please take the burden of things we don't need to carry away from us.

Help us to turn away from all that distracts us from you and your plans for the world.

Your kingdom rules when we love, show mercy, act justly and walk humbly,

it is only your Holy Spirit that gives us the power to do this

and it is for your glory when people see you in us.

Thank you that you are present in every moment of time.

Amen