Stirring the Gunpowder

“May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” Amen. Hebrews 13:20-21

I suppose that I am looking for a verse, a word of God to be my focus for the coming year. I am looking for a word to ingite my spirit. It seems the spiritual thing to do and lots of people I know swear by it, pat themselves on the back when they come to the end of the year because they lived by that word sucessfully.

In our ladies Bible study earlier in the week we came across this one. It sounds like a church minister’s favourite way to end a service.

I used to live about three miles away from a little village called Ashby St Ledgers. I am not quite sure that it qualifies as a village – there isn’t even a shop. There is a church, and there is a very old building next to the church. It might be wattle and daub and wonky wooden beams – it looks old. On the wall next to the big iron gate there used to be a plaque that informed the reader that Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotees met together in the house there to draw up their plans.

On my Christmas list was a book. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Ashby St Ledgers, Guy Fawkes or his gunpowder plot. It seems these days that many books rarely stand alone. They come in parts. I had picked up a book months back and it was the first in a trilogy. Written by Bernard Cornwell, the Grail Quest series, the books are set in the 1300s when France and Britain were at war. Sieges use big wooden contraptions to hurl stones at fortress walls and guns and gunpowder are making an entrance.

Our hero, Thomas, is stuck in a tower with the local French aristocracy bombarding him. The guns can only fire three or four times a day, but they are nibbling away at the tower. Stick with me, there is a point to all of this.

The author writes in detail about the guns and the gunpowder – I tend to skim the technical bits. He mentioned the need to stir the gunpowder before it could be used. In those days, and maybe in these days too, gunpowder was made up of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal. Left in the barrels the the saltpetre sank to the bottom the barrel, much like currants and sultanas sink to the bottom of a cake mixture if it’s too wet. So, they stir it all up.

Immediately the concept of stirring up the gunpowder ingited (clever play on words there) my spirit. It reminded me of Paul’s encouragment to Timothy to stir the gifts within him. God have erquipped each of us with gifts to use in the building of His Kingdom, to demonstrate his glory to all of creation.

Without the stirring the gunpowder will still blow up, but the reaction will not be so dynamic. All the different elements have a part to play in creating a big bang, but they have to be evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

If I knew more about Chemistry and what was reacting with what I could probably come up with a better analogy – but it seems to me that the word of God, mixed with faith, mixed with the direction of the Spirit, mixed with obedience – all of these things stirred together have go to be explosive! The trouble is that perhaps we don’t do enough mixing and stirring and things sink to the bottom of our life barrels that shouldn’t. The more likely scenrio is that we choose not to stir the mixture because once ingited we think we have too little control over what happens next. We don’t need to be in control – we just need to be obedient.

Let’s get the mixture right and do a bit of stirring this year – aim the gun, touch the fuse, see the explosion and cheer loudly when the strongholds come tumbling down!

She Dreamed a Dream

I caught the tale end of a documentary on Susan Boyle the other day. I was just in time to see her (and hear her) singing with the West End cast of Les Miserables. For her it was a dream come true – she dreamed a dream and it happened. Later on in the evening I took a look at her Britain’s Got Talent audition on Youtube. As the camera spanned the audience and the judges, there were so many cynical shakes of the head, and whispers that conveyed minds already made up. Elaine Paige? In your dreams, woman! And then she sang, and eyebrows arched upwards, people were on their feet clapping and the judges were wiping away tears. Susan has her CD, her interviews with Oprah, her fans pushing autograph books under her nose and her website! She dreamed a dream.

We were talking dreams yesterday as we sat drinking tea and coffee and eating homemade shortbread biscuits. They were not so much the Susan Boyle dream of what we could become, or do, although later on the conversation did turn towards “projects” or dreams of what we could achieve in 2010.

The conversation was about the sleeping version of dreams and how much God used them as vehicles for sharing His plans. I have to admit that I have had more than my share of dreams whose content could not have been other than God inspired. They have been so down the line, obvious, not veiled in dream symbolism, technicolour messages that only a fool would put them down to too much cheese. There have been a lot of them. There have also been a lot of plain ordinary dreams that make sense at the time of dreaming, but are gobble-de-gook on waking. Then there are those “could be a message” dreams.

I don’t keep a dream diary. If I remember, I remember. If I forget, I forget. I am not sure that God needs to use dreams to get through to me. I love His word and more than often, His words comes up with all that I need – the challenges, the promises, the rebukes and the warnings that seem to feature in dreams. I suppose that I am suspicious of my dreams because I am suspicious of my imagination. Sometimes the line between what is real and what is imagined becomes a bit too fuzzy. Does that mean I am on the brink of insanity? Possibly! If it’s in black and white and written on the pages of the Bible, it’s something that I can trust – if it’s in pictures in my head, it’s not necessarily something that I can trust.

That doesn’t mean that it is something that I can just cast aside either. Take the other night. There was a short scene, in amongst a lot of other stuff, of myself and my church leader. He didn’t say the actual words “You are a waste of space, Mel,” although he might have done. (On reporting this to the rest of the company there was distinct agreement that he wouldn’t say that – not, I have to say, that he would have no cause to say that!) On waking, I remembered the words “You are a waste of space, Mel,” and I (a) didn’t wonder if he really would have said it or not, (b) didn’t really wonder if this was a God-inspired dream or not but (c) agree that although a waste of space was a bit harsh, it wasn’t entirely unfounded!

I can think of a myriad ways in which I serve God, or have served Him in the past. I don’t warm a pew. BUT..I may not be making the most of the gifts that God has given me. Like the first and the second servants in the parable of the Talents, I am working, but like the third servant, it’s possible that I have buried stuff too – worried that I might fritter it away and have nothing to show for it.

The chapbook that I produced for the November Poem a Day challenge, which I haven’t submitted yet, because I am not sure if it is a chapbook – whatever it is that I have made, this little book of a dozen or so poems really has thrilled me. These are my poems, written, printed, folded over, with a cover, in a little book – I no longer doubt that I have talent. I no longer doubt that the talent comes from God. I am beginning to believe that the talent is not for playing with.

So, when it came to talking about ”projects” for 2010 – mine is poetry and publishing inspired. I am not setting dates and deadlines…I am making no covenants or vows…although yesterday’s reading from Psalm 76 did mention that at the end. I have just moved the pan off the back burner, and turned up the heat a little!

On being a Sloth

I am not sure if this is an endearing quality or not, probably not after sixteen or seventeen years, but my husband has a tendency to repeat a story, telling it as if he hasn’t already told me. I used to interrupt and provide the ending, but now I listen as he tells me (for the umpteenth time). He gets so much delight in the telling, and I don’t want to spoil that!

Perhaps I am slowly turning into my husband, but I am also repeating stories! This morning I was reading an e-zine, an on line magazine written by Christian ladies. One of the articles that caught my interest was one in a series about the seven deadly sins, not in this case Celtic football clubs back line of defenders!) Today was the turn of sloth.

The emphasis of the article wasn’t about pure laziness or anything, but how it related to our walk of faith. Wikipedia defines sloth as “spiritual or emotional apathy, neglecting what God has spoken, and being physically and emotionally inactive”. The lady who wrote the article defined it as “the failure to utilize ones talents and gifts”. I am not even going to pretend that I can make the excuse that I don’t know what my talents and gifts are. I don’t always put myself in an environment where I can put them to use. Our church is involved in a coffee shop/chat/fellowship event called “Catalyst”, so I headed down to see if there was something I could contribute.

I am not at my most comfortable talking to people I don’t know, but that wasn’t required of me. I fell into conversation with a lady I met there before. After half an hour or so, we stopped talking and my friend looked at me and said, “We’ve had this conversation before!”

How many months ago? Two, possibly three months the conversation had turned to gift and talents, and the things that we could be doing to utilize them. Neither of us are “utilizers”. We know what the gifts are, and can see areas where we can put those gifts into action. But, sadly, that’s where it all stops…at the planning stage. Part of it is that we are not entirely convinced that we can do what we think we can do. What if it all goes belly-up and we are left with egg on our faces?

I was reading about faith this morning – Hebrews 11 faith – that marvellous line up of faith heroes (and heroines!). “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” We may heave learned the verse off by heart, but I living it is a little more challenging. There are no foolproof guarantees that the things we could be doing to utilize our gifts and talents will not go belly-up. But there again, we won’t know until we try it.

I think we both tried to take another step forward – to make ourselves accountable to each other to take that next step. We didn’t really succeed. Neither of us would just say to the other “Let’s go for it and see what happens!” I guess that makes the two of us sloths.

Catalysts cause changes to happen. I rather think this conversation has caused a tiny change in me to happen. I don’t want to be a sloth. I desperately want to utilize the gifts and talents I have. I want to do that much more that I want to avoid egg on my face! We are stepping forward…just a millimetre!

Resonation

I have to confess that I haven’t really hooked myself into the various God channels on Sky TV. Usually when I am home from school I will tune into one of the Radio channels – the UCB UK channel is one of my favourites. I like the music they play and I try to expand my repertoire of praise and worship songs through listening.

Some friends we met on Sunday were enthusing about the live programmes from Florida with Todd Bently. “Normal” TV doesn’t happen in their house any longer and they talk about “feeling the love” and being “blown away” by the healing that is happening as they watch.

Last night I tuned in. These friends are not the only people I known that are enthusiastic about the programmes, and I supposed I wanted to know what it was that was appealing to them. I watched for less than fifteen minutes. I am not sure why it didn’t appeal, but it just didn’t.

Anyway, seeing as I was in amongst the God channels, I flicked around to see what else was on offer. Lots of the channels featured preachers, usually black, standing behind pulpits. There were a couple of cosy sofa discussion programmes too.

The programme that held my attention though was a worship meeting. It was recorded live at the Victory Church in Oklahoma in the form of a music and dance presentation called “Resonation” – the idea of worship resonating in people’s hearts.

I danced once! At college, our Christian Union, took responsibility for an evening meeting in the local Salvation Army hall. We sang a number of upbeat worship songs, and worked out a couple of dances – twirling things in floaty dresses and artistic poses.

The dance choreography was perhaps a little more adventurous with almost snatches of quite crisp street dance routines. In some ways it could have been any kind of concert – spectacular shifts in the lights, big screens. Then when you started to listen tot the lyrics – you knew this wasn’t just any kind of concert at all, and when the camera spanned the congregation and saw the faces of the people lifted in worship – you knew that they were connecting with God.

It was powerful stuff. It was so professional. The music the lights, the dancing – if you had paid to be there you would not have been disappointed.

That is where I wanted to be – not in Florida with Todd Bently. However, I came to the realisation that I am a poor worship leader in the sense that I don’t have enough musical talent, no matter how much my heart is in tune. I can’t hold notes for that long. I can’t switch into harmonies. I can’t really do the spontaneous stuff. It is not just a case of if I keep practising it will come. I just don’t have the basic talent! I am better than I used to be, and maybe five or ten years down the line I will be better than that – but the bottom line is that I am not gifted musically. Music is not my passion. Worship is my passion, not necessarily worship leading.

Psalm 33:3 has these words “Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.” There are people that really dismiss the bit that says “play skillfully” and major on singing a new song and shouting with joy, but I saw last night what a huge difference it makes to have someone play skillfully – whether that be the musical instruments or the vocal chords. You can’t dismiss skilful and draw people into a powerful place of worship.

There is almost something kind of liberating in realising just what it is you can’t do! It allows you to move on I suppose. I will never be a great musician and I am happy with that! I will not pack away my worship leading hat, I may not be great, but I am not that bad either. I hope I don’t hinder people on their way to the throne room. I am however going to stop piling the pressure on to try to be gifted in that area when I am not.

I love being drawn into the presence of God by a good worship meeting – a gifted leader, skilful musicians and a well chosen selection of songs. Watching something like that, and then thinking about the kind of worship many churches offer, we need to aim for something more glorious.

The Pen in Your Hand

I caught the tale end of the news on Thursday evening after I had come home from a meeting.

It was an update of the situation in China. Days after the earthquake, rescue personnel had made it to the epicentre of the quake. There was lots of footage of the rescue operation. Planes flying overhead were discharging parachutes – some with men strapped into the harnesses, other with boxes of food and water. On the ground, men were shifting piles of rubble trying to reach those that had been buried. Watching as one school was being excavated, were parents looking for their children. I had forgotten the Chinese government had restricted each family to one child – and that one child was now buried under a pile of concrete! It doesn’t matter, I suppose, whether there is one child or a dozen in a family, the loss is still there and the parents are just as inconsolable.

There is one image that has caught my eye and stayed with me, and I have searched the net to find it, without success. It is of a school, or the remains of one. All you see is a single hand, uncovered in the rubbish. A child’s hand clutches a pen. I wasn’t listening to the narrator, just looking at the hand clutching a pen. I am sorry that I wasn’t listening properly. Something else came to mind, that at the time seemed to matter more.

As I said, I had been at a meeting. Some friends in another church had been over to Florida to be a part of whatever it is that Tod Bently has become involved in. I have perhaps muddies the waters of my mind by reading a selection of reports of what is happening over there – some enthusiastically rubber stamping it, and others calling it a false revival. I don’t know.

The couple reporting back were very enthusiastic and many people in the meeting caught their enthusiasm. We went into a time of worship and waiting on the Lord – as you do at some of these kinds of meetings.

The worship was excellent. The worship leader was really gifted and his song selection was just what I wanted to sing. I was in the zone. My heart was absorbed, but my mind was also at work. I have been to many meetings where the emotions run high, and people are whipped up into a response that isn’t always helpful. I wanted to be built up and not hyped up.

People shared pictures of what they thought God was saying or doing. I experience these things too, but I am never sure that it is not just my imagination! The picture that I had I didn’t feel was a shared picture.

I had the sense of being in a room with a whole load of presents. They were all shapes and sizes, colourful wrappings and ribbons, and very clearly labelled. I was walking around picking them up and not finding one that had my name on it.

To some extent I think the impression or picture was in response to how I was feeling. I didn’t feel qualified to be there. Many of the people there were involved in lots of “missional” things like healing on the streets and street pastors. They were buzzing with enthusiasm. I was feeling out of place – hence the idea of no present for me. You can see where I am coming from, perhaps.

I was getting rather dispirited about not finding my present when I had the impression of God speaking.

“There isn’t one.” My heart took a deep dive – It was like confirming that I really was in the wrong place. Then He went on to say, “I have already given you yours.”

I looked down at my hand and I was holding a pen.

“The pen in your hand is my gift to you. There is nothing better than that!”

I am not sure if can I convey the sense of profound privilege I felt. I am never more at home than when I am writing! To my mind there is something incredibly powerful about the written word and the written word read out loud.

I suppose that I might have dismissed the whole thing as just my imagination except for that one image of the child with the pen in their hand.

I can be Jonathan in this one thing! This I can do!

Digging up and dusting off my talent

I made a decision on Monday.

On Monday night, the teachers/preachers in the church met together to work out the programme for the next month or so. We are hoping to base the next series of “sermons” (I hate that word but can’t think of another one) on the church described in Acts 2. It wasn’t about encouraging the congregation to drag their friends to a church meeting, but equipping the church so that they could take Jesus with them into their friendships. The phrase that I came up with – or rather, the Holy Spirit suggested – was “Take it home.” We have to work out how to take our faith outside the church setting and into our everyday lives.

Somewhere in all the chat of the evening, a friend told us a testimony of a woman. I can’t remember the details, but it was about doing what God asked you to do, not what you thought He might like you to do. It was something to do with a missionary, who had been on the mission field and seen lots of people come to a saving faith. However, God was not impressed because what He really asked her to do was to bring up her children. To be the missionary, she had put them into a boarding school and it was really left to someone else to do the bringing up.

I was convicted! It is not a case of “What if I am not doing what God asked me to do?” The week before, during the Bible study I have with a friend, the same thing came up. The study was about the value of work, and knowing that you were doing what God had set aside for you to do, and being fulfilled in that.

How many clues does a person really need before they catch on? Evidently, if you are me, then it’s quite a few! It was Tony Howson’s book that started it. My friend pointed out something at the end of the book about the publishers of the book being on the lookout for good Christian material to publish. Knowing that I have a passion for writing, my friend suggested that I might want to take them up on the offer. If they were looking for material to publish, and I had material just sitting around waiting to become a book – hey presto!

I also have the phone number of a publisher of Christian poetry that was passed on to me at a recent writer’s workshop. I am planning to attend another of the workshops later on next month. To have someone pass on a phone number, and for the person you passed it onto not to make use of it, you have to question the seriousness, or the hunger of the writer to want to see their stuff in print.

I am convicted that I am like the man with the talent that digs a hole and buries it. I could agonise about whether my writing is good enough – so many people have said that it is (and my friend has said she will buy a copy of the book when it is published!). I could also agonise about whether there is a market for Christian poetry books – apparently not if you were to go into a Christian bookshop and ask for poetry books! It is not about agonising but about obedience. If I have been given a talent then I it is not for just playing around with. There is an intention to use it and for the gifting to bear fruit. The fruit is not about me getting lost in my own private heaven for an hour or two – but about using whatever talent I have to reach out and touch people.

I read my stuff and I get touched.

So my intention is to dig out my poems, phone up the publisher and see where it all takes me. That is my weekend plan.

“And about time too…” I hear some of you say. I am making myself accountable. Feel free to nag me if you think I am playing chicken! I seriously cannot bear for God to say to me, “I asked for a poetry book, Mel. Where is it?”

Unused gifts

There is nothing worse than unused presents – Christmas or birthday or any other occasion. I cringe when I think about the things I have asked Joe to buy me. There are some things that have been well used and other things that have not been so well used.

I asked for an MP3 player this year and last night I spent a bit of time learning how to use it. I uploaded the only CD I had to hand at the time – David Cassidy! I spent the rest of the evening bobbing up and down and singing out my favourite lines as I plugged myself in! This morning I added a worship CD to the list of stuff on the player. I feel “cool” and “with it”, although I have to admit that finding a comfortable place in my ear for the ear plugs takes me a while!

I was thinking earlier on in the week about the gifts that the wise men brought to Jesus. I am not aware that Jesus ever used any of them. When I think about a time when he needed money to pay taxes – he didn’t use the gold to do so, but sent a friend to catch a fish and the money needed was in the fish’s mouth. He didn’t use the frankincense – the gift of the priest - as he didn’t go into that part of the temple to burn it before the altar. He prayed on hilltops early in the morning and ministered to the lepers and tax collectors that the other priests had no time for. He didn’t get to use the myrrh either. A woman anointed his feet with perfume before his death, and before the women got to the tomb with their anointing oils, Jesus had risen from the dead and there was no body to anoint.

There are traditions about what happened to the gifts. Some traditions have Mary and Joseph selling the gifts to make ends meet and pay the bills. Another tradition had Judas lusting after the gold and stealing it. Another tradition had the boxes the gifts held being revered in a very old church in Russia somewhere.

There is also another story that talks about the baby Jesus giving gifts to the wise men. According to one tradition, Jesus gave them stones. They didn’t see the usefulness of the gifts and threw them down a well. The well exploded in a ball of fire and they realised that what was given should not be treated so shabbily. I did read on to the end of the story – but the bit about being given a gift and how I treat that gift matters really touched me. To treat a gift in a casual and careless manner says something about how you regard the gift giver.

Any way, back to Jesus’ unused gifts – what could you give to Jesus that he would make use of?

The Spirit’s answer? Yourself!

In Jesus’ hands, the gift of “myself” would not go unused. It is when I take myself out of Jesus’ hand that I become unused.