Lost

I pride myself on my sense of direction and can usually figure out which way I need to go when I am in a new place.  Consequently, I find being "lost" and not knowing where I am, or in which direction I ought to be heading, very disturbing.  Perhaps even more disturbing for me than for those who have no sense of direction and, therefore, spend most of their time "lost".

To be lost, you have to have a point or destination in mind.  You have to know where you're going, in order to know whether or not you are "on track".

As the very wise Lorelai Gilmore says,

"You can't be lost unless you know where you're headed."

Often, I  know exactly where I am headed: I have a plan or a design or a map for my life and I panic when I feel "lost".  When things seem to fall apart around me.  When I miss milestones or goals I have set up for myself.  When I seem to take "wrong turns". 

I panic, because I know where I am headed and I don't seem to be able to get there.

But maybe I don't really know where I am headed.  Maybe my map is wrong.  Maybe my directions are faulty. 

I might think I know where I am going.  I might have mapped and planned my route out in the finest detail.  I might have clear goals in mind.  But I am not really living by my map. 

God has mapped out my life.  He knows where I am going.  He knows the turns I ought to take and the roads I ought to travel down.  He has plotted out my journey and knows whether or not I am "on track".

"I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for."

[Jeremiah 29:11, MSG]

Sometimes I might panic because I feel lost.  I might feel as though nothing is going according to plan.  I might feel completely disorientated and as though I have lost my way.

But I'm not lost.  I'm not the one with the map.

"You can't be lost unless you know where you're headed."

If

If...

If only ...

If only I ...

If only I had/said/knew/owned/could ...

If only I had/said/knew/owned/could ____________ then I would be happy/content/complete.

If.

Whilst "Hope" is potentially the most powerful word in our language, "If" is the most enticing.

"If" suggests that all is not as it should be.  It suggests that there is something missing, something lacking, something incomplete.  And what's more, it suggests that this dissatisfaction could be resolved easily with something or someone. 

Rob Bell says,

"'If' means we have become attached to the idea that we are missing something and that we can be satisfied by whatever it is we have in our sights.  There's a hole, a space, a gap, and we're on the search."

"If" challenges us and questions us and unsettles us.  It makes us feel that there is something more that we ought to have, something that we need, something that is just out of our reach.  And without it, we couldn't possibly hope to be happy.

And we search in all sorts of places and in all sorts of ways, desperate to find something to fill the spaces and gaps that "If" has conjured up.

"If" promises more than it can deliver.

"If" appears to be powerful, leading us to a better and more fulfilling life, but really it is devoid of any kind of power. It is a mirage, which at once draws us to itself with its promise of satisfaction and disappoints us with the realisation it is false.

"If" lives in the conditional, changeable, not-yet-realised future.  It seems tantalisingly close, almost tangible.  And yet it doesn't really exist.  The challenge, then, is not to engage with the question "What if?" and to try to find an answer.  Instead, it is to learn to accept and embody the reality, the present, the here-and-now.  To feel complete and at peace with where we are, with who we are and with what we have.  To be grateful instead of greedy, satisfied instead of searching.

The Lord is my shepherd;

I have all that I need."

[Psalm 23:1, NLT, emphasis mine]

If only we could be satisfied with what we already have ...

The Most Powerful Word

What is the most powerful word in our language?

A quick Google (that's got to be one pretty powerful word, right?) comes up with a whole host of suggestions: Yes.  Conversely, No.  Stop.  Love.  Sex.  Money.  I.  You.  Safety.  Why?  (The power of which can be easily understood after a tiring and tedious conversation with a young child).  These are just a few, along with a range of expletives it would be inappropriate to reproduce here.

All of these are powerful words and often elicit powerful responses.  However, I think there is one word which trumps them all.

Hope.

Hope has got a pretty bad press in recent years.  Especially where British weather is concerned: we are planning a picnic/barbeque/trip to the beach and we "hope" it won't rain.  Wimbledon/The Jubilee/The Olympics is on and, as a nation, we "hope" it will stay dry.

We don't even have high aspirations for our hope anymore.  We don't dare to hope for a hot, sunny scorcher of a day.  Oh no.  We "hope" instead that it might just be dry (at least for most of the day/week), and that it's not too cold.  We add in restrictions and clauses and sub-clauses, so that it's (quite literally), not too much to hope for.

It is used as a pathetic, powerless reflection of itself: we cross our fingers and "hope for the best."  We have watered down Hope and have stripped it of its power.  

But Hope used to be Hopeful. 

It used to mean expectation and desire for good things in the future.  It used to mean trust and security and faith in a person or outcome. 

It used to be powerful.

Abraham embodied Hope in the Old Testament.  He and his wife Sarai were "well advanced in years", but they still trusted God's promise and dared to hope that He would fulfil it.

"When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do."

[Romans 4:18, MSG]

Hope is risky.  It is scary.  It is bold.  It refuses to be defined or confined by the immediate circumstances, but dares to imagine something better.  In the middle of probably the most depressing, hopeless book of the Bible, we find this ode to Hope.  This commitment to trust, to dare, to have faith, even when faced with the impossible:

"I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends!"

[Lamentations 3:2021, NIV, emphasis mine]

There is always Hope.  Powerful, death-defying, life-changing Hope.  Because of Him.

All The Broken Pieces

I know very little about computers. 

I wouldn't say I'm quite at the "turn-it-off-and-then-on-again" end of the scale (you know, the sort who resorts to a good old reboot whenever there's any kind of problem), but I am not far off.

I have, however, over my time noticed one or two things that I wish were applicable to life.  For example, how many times have you had "Ctrl+z" moments?  Moments where you wish with everything in you that it was physically possible to "undo" whatever you have just said or done. 

I experience them rather frequently.

Another thing I have picked up on my technological travels is "Defragmenting" ("Defragging" to those in the know).  I find this process of sifting and sorting, colour-coding and categorising rather satisfying to watch.  What starts off as a muddled mess of different files and scrappy bits of data is soon collected and regrouped. 

Order is restored.

I sometimes wish that I could "Defrag" my head and my heart too - pick out all of my thoughts and feelings and experiences and sift through them and group them together to make some sort of sense of it all.  Then I could see what I really have inside of me and what I want to keep and what I want to send to the "Recycling Bin."

Sometimes I feel as though I have begun this process, but have got stuck half-way through: I have got all of the pieces out to start sorting through them, but haven't completed the task.  I have felt overwhelmed, or have run out of time, or have felt like I will never finish.

But I am learning that I probably never will finish the process.  Not because I have accumulated so many "files" and there is too much to sort through, but because, as I sort and sift through the different pieces of "data", new ideas and experiences and feelings are being added all the time.  And they will continue to be added every day for the rest of my life.

Life is an ongoing process of sifting and sorting and saving and filtering and filing and formatting and recycling and reusing and developing and discarding and starting the process all over again ...

But I don't have to do it by myself.

"God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him."

[Psalm 18:20, MSG]

"And that's the beauty of this grace

It can put the pieces back in place

And shine reflections of forgiveness

In a million different ways."

[Matthew West: All the Broken Pieces]

False Advertising

How many advertising slogans can you recall without having to call upon the help of Google?

Nearly 20 years later, I can still sing (word for word and in perfect tune), the radio jingle for "Corsham Building Plastics".  I'm not sure if the company still exists, but the jingle will forever be imprinted on my mind.

Adverts bombard us: from the television, from the radio, from bilboards, from magazines and newspapers, from emails, from internet searches.  So much so that I would venture to say it is nearly impossible to avoid some form of advertising over the course of a day.

And adverts no longer just sell a product, they sell a lifestyle.  And if we are dissatisfied with the lifestyle being offered, we can easily shop around for a better, cheaper deal.  We live in a world where consumerism is God and the market place is our Temple. We worship in the supermarkets and shops and (more recently), on internet shopping sites. 
As Mike Erre says in 'Death by Church',

"Advertising now promises to give us what religion used to deliver: meaning, purpose, significance, and identity."

But whilst advertising appears to promise a better lifestyle, in reality, it simply creates a hunger in us that it is incapable of satisfying.  It shows us a perfect and ideal lifestyle which seems to be attainable.  If I change supermarkets and change my clothes and change my hair and get a better car and a better phone and a better computer I will be satisfied.  Content.  Happy.  Successful.

False advertising.

But there is someone who promised a bigger, better, fuller life.  And He delivers on His promise:

"I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of."

[John 10:10, NIV, emphasis mine]

And all we have to do is ask.



All together now ...

811 663
Corsham Building Plastics
Conservatories, doors and windows too
We'll get your place fixed up like new.
Just one call
We do it all
And the prices are fantastic!
Just call 811 663
Corsham Building Plastics.

Good Enough for Grace

Everyone knows that the one question any good Santa should ask a child is whether they have been "good" over the past year.  And if the answer is yes, the result is presents.  Lots of presents.  The unspoken understanding is that the child deserves presents for their good behaviour.  The silent equation is goodness = gifts.

But how often do we apply the same mentality to God and His grace as well?

I realised recently that my understanding of grace was limited: I have always known and believed that grace is a gift, and by definition, not something that I could 'purchase'/acquire myself.  However, a line in a song by Tenth Avenue North stopped me in my tracks the other day and got me thinking.

"Why are you striving these days?
Why are you trying to earn grace?"

I noticed the Father Christmas mentality I sometimes adopt when it comes to grace: grace is a gift given to those who are trying to be good.  We would be fooling ourselves to think that any of us were really "good", but God is more interested in our efforts and honours those who try to do good.

Now, don't get me wrong, God does delight in our efforts to please Him and to follow His word by loving Him and loving others.  But this has nothing to do with grace.  Grace has nothing to do with me or with anything that I do or don't do.  My efforts at 'religion' or 'Christianity', my church attendance, my enjoyment of church, my Bible-reading habits, my prayer life, my thought life etc. have no effect on grace.

 "For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything."

 [Galatians 5:4, MSG]

Grace is God's undeserved and unearned forgiveness and love, which He has given to us freely through Jesus.

But this seems too good to be true and doubt creeps in.  Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden we ask: "Did God really say..."   Did God really say His grace was enough?  Did He really say His grace would cover anything?  Even that?

So we doubt, and we set to work establishing a back-up plan, just in case God changes His mind.  We work at being good, just in case we find ourselves faced with the question "Have you been good this year?"

We put limits on grace and restrictions on God's power. We believe that we aren't good enough for grace. And that is precisely the point: we are not, and never will be, 'good enough' for grace. To be good enough at once cancels out the need for grace.  And our efforts to add anything to it eliminate the possibility of grace. It is either grace or it is works. It cannot be both.

"If by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace."

[Romans 11:6, NIV]

There are no limits or restrictions or standards or prerequisites for grace.  There is nothing too "bad" or "sinful" that it cannot be covered by God's grace.

 "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more."

[Romans 5:20, NIV]

You can't outdo grace.

Grace finds me when I'm in the pig-sty, filthy and covered in mud.  Grace finds me when I'm far from home and I've forgotten where I belong.  Grace finds me and beckons me when I have nothing to offer.  And when I return, grace flings its arms around me and welcomes me home.


Because in the end, it's all about grace.

Too Much Salt

If you have ever been a student, you are probably familiar with "Student Housing".  And if you are familiar with "Student Housing", you are probably familiar with one of life's slimier problems: the slug.  And if you are familiar with the slug problem, you are probably also familiar with the slug solution: Salt.  And lots of it.

I recently saw a picture of a complex salt maze someone had made from their back door, which any brave slug would have to overcome in order to 'enter' the house.  The maze had many tight corners and dead ends - virtually impossible to master if you are a slug ...  I wish I had thought of that as a student.

And it's not just slugs who can't stand too much salt.  When I was little I thought salt and pepper were opposites.  I once had an unfortunate accident with a loose-lidded salt shaker and covered what would have been a lovely plate of chips in white stuff.  Thinking the pepper would cancel out the salt, I applied that liberally to the plate too.  You can imagine the result.

The point is that too much salt is unpleasant, sometimes harmful and potentially lethal, if you are a slug. We all know the dangers of a diet high in salt and the potential problems this can lead to.   So whilst yesterday I said we need to be salt in the world and let people 'taste' our saltiness, to pique their interest in God, we also need to make sure we don't overdo the salt.

Sometimes I think as Christians we can become so focused on being 'salty' that we forget that salt isn't ever meant to be eaten by itself.  It is meant to be added to food to enhance it and draw out the different flavours that are already there.  Similarly, we are meant to be salt in the world, salt mingling and mixing with the other flavours of the world, not overpowering them and overwhelming them.  We are meant to meet people where they are and engage with them and draw them to God, not offer up an unappetising plate of salt.

Which leads us to ask: what does it look like to be salt?  Salt with my friends, salt with my family, salt with my neighbours, salt with my colleagues, salt at work, salt at the pub, salt at the party?  Do people taste a difference?  

Salt isn't a meal in itself. 

"You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other."

[Mark 9:50, NLT. Emphasis added]

If you need help with a salt maze for your own slug, try this: http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2012/06/13/1226393/924840-snail-maze.jpg

Sugar and Salt

I have a clear glass jar filled with white granules on the bench in my kitchen, next to my oils and pestle and mortar.  Several people have helped themselves to its contents whilst making themselves a cup of tea or coffee.  They sprinkle it liberally into their drink and stir it vigorously thinking it is sugar.

It is not sugar.

But they don't know it's not sugar until they take that first mouthful and the saltiness stings their mouth and catches in their throats and makes their eyes water.

Sugar and salt.

They look the same.  So much so that they are easily mistaken for each other.  But they are not the same.  And it's only when you taste them that you can tell the difference.  And by then it's too late.

Jesus didn't call us to be sugar.  He didn't call us to a sweet and easy life, with a pallatable message to share.  His Gospel isn't the 'icing [sugar] on the cake' - an easy and tasty addition to our lives.  He called us to be salt.  To stand out, to share a message that is hard to swallow, because it calls for the complete transformation of our lives.  It calls for us to stop living for ourselves and to start living for Him.  And sometimes that sticks in the throat.

But it is the only way to live.  It is what we were made for - to find freedom when we hand our lives over to God and stop trying to be our own saviours.  And we are called to share this messgae of freedom with others.

You can only tell if it's salt or sugar when you taste it. 

What use is salt if it stays in the jar?  Some of us spend so long becoming the saltiest salt we can: going to church and reading our Bible and reading "Christian books", that we forget that there is a purpose to our saltiness.  Jesus didn't call us to be salt as an end in itself, to enhance the 'flavours' of the church.  He called us to be salt in the world, to stand out, to 'taste' different, to do life differently.  He called us to pique people's interest and to draw them close to Him.  Like the cleverly placed, overly-salted nuts you find at a bar, Jesus calls us to be salt to create a thirst in people.  A thirst for Him.

"Let me tell you why you are here.  You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavours of this earth."

[Matthew 5:13, MSG]

[And if you make a drink at my flat and you're looking for the sugar, it's the top cupboard, left of the oven.]

The "Christian" Post

Yesterday, I read a post about worship music and why we call it "Christian music", which has got me thinking a lot today...

In his post, "Erasing the Line Between the Secular and the Sacred" 
(http://benjamindunn.tumblr.com/post/25517102516/erasing-the-line-between-the-secular-the-sacred), Benjamin Dunn says,

Christian Music? What an extremely weird concept. To think that a song, band or genre of music can be dubbed “Christian” is an anomaly to me. Can other things in this world be “Christian” as well? (i.e. My, dogs, my socks, my dirty tour sweater)?

His article procedes to discuss the meaning of "worship music" and the sacred nature of music, which isn't my intention here (although it makes for interesting reading).  However, it got me thinking about our attitude to separating and segragating the different aspects of our lives.

How often do we prefix areas of our life with the word "Christian"?   "Christian radio", "Christian TV", "Christian film", "Christian book", "Christian song", "Christian art", "Christian conversation", "Christian place", "Christian job", "Christian blog"...

And what do we mean by it?  Does shoving the word "Christian" before another noun somehow alter it and sanctify it?  Is my "Christian job" more important than your (presumably) "non Christian job"?  Is a "Christian film" somehow better for me?

And how do we define it?  Do we have to prove it has been written or painted or designed by someone who professes to believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour?  And how do we go about proving that?  And if I am a Christian musician, am I capable of writing an "ordinary" song?  Or are all of my songs "Christian" because I am?  And does it really matter?

Isn't labelling things as "Christian" more about confining God and putting restrictions on Him?  And isn't that more about us being in control and making us 'God'?  If we put God in a box and only expect to experience or hear from Him when we are listening to "Christian radio" or watching a "Christian film" then we probably will. 

But if we open up our eyes and our ears and our minds and if we erase the lines and break down the walls, perhaps we will see God in the ordinary as well.

After all, Jesus wasn't born in a Temple, He was born in a stable.  He didn't just work for a religious organisation, He trained as a carpenter.  He didn't just teach in the synagogues, He taught on the hills and in boats.  He didn't just have Jewish friends, He befriended the lonely and broken and poor and outcast and sinful.

Jesus came to earth to show us that God isn't distant and unreachable and only interested in the "Christian" aspects of our lives.  He is personal and intimate and bigger than any human fences we erect, and He longs to speak into every area of our lives:

"Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life.  We didn't fence you in.  The smallness you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way.  I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection.  Open up your lives.  Live openly and expansively!"

[2 Corinthians 6:11, MSG]

Fully Human

I have just read this (rather long) footnote in Rob Bell’s fantastic book ‘Sex God’ and I thought it tied in really nicely with what I was considering yesterday...

Being fully human is our job.  Thinking and laughing and arranging and creating and relating and designing and nurturing and responding and reacting and pondering when googling became a verb and wondering and exploring and meditating and acting and making long lists of verbs and calling and talking and feeling and sharing and doubting if this paragraph is ever going to end and teaching and learning and jumping on a trampoline and sighing and celebrating and dancing and turning to the person next to you and saying: "This is living."

You can make your own list because you know what it is that makes you feel alive, what it is that feeds your soul, what it is that reminds you that the goal is to be fully human.  What's on your list?

I've heard people say, "I'm only human," as if it's a bad thing.  But being human isn't a bad thing; it's a good thing.  It's what God intended.  How could we ever be anything else?

The issue, then, isn't trying to escape our humanity in order to morph into something, or somebody else.  The problem is all of the things that get in the way of being fully human.  When a person says "I'm only human," perhaps what they mean is, "I have this habit of making choices that inhibit my being fully human."  This is a primal struggle in all of us, and it goes all the way back to the garden of Eden.  The temptation was, and is, to trade our full humanity for something else.

'Godliness' and 'Humanness'

Where do we get the idea that ‘godliness’ and ‘humanness’are at opposite ends of a spectrum?  We seem to have a common misconception that to be a 'Christian', or to be 'godly', we must strip away anything 'worldly' about us.  And so we go to church and leave our sense of humour at home; we leave our anger and our resentment and our bitterness behind (for an hour or two).  We talk to each other and we are all "Fine, thanks!"  We put on masks of joy and peace and love and hope no one peaks beneath the surface.  When we are 'godly' we don't swear, we don't drink and we certainly don't talk about s-e-x.

 And so we divide our lives into sections: the 'godly' and the 'human'.  The golden and the grey.

But Jesus went to parties and drank wine.  He hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors.  In fact, the only people that he criticised were those who thought themselves to be too 'godly' to mix with 'regular' humans.

It is in Jesus that we see the fullness of who we were made to be:

“He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.”

[Romans 8:29-30, The Message]

In these verses, we see Jesus as the forerunner of who we were made to be: a full human, who didn't hide or disguise Himself, but embraced and integrated His 'godliness' and 'humanness'. 

Rather than seeing our 'godliness' and our 'humanness' as opposite points on a spectrum, we need to see these two aspects of our lives as overlapping circles on a Venn Diagram: they are unavoidably and intrinsically linked. 

And our aim as we grow in faith and become more like Jesus will be for the two circles to grow closer together.  Our aim will be to live in the overlap, to be like Him.