Man Hunter

I placed myself geographically in a place where God could make the dream a reality. I walked into the city centre and found a church.

I guess that it is part of human nature to make comparisons. You line up the familiar alongside the unfamiliar rather like lining two DNA profiles to see if they match!

Obviously the people were not going to be familiar, although I was recognised from the International Friends as having been on the trip to Cawdor Castle last year. I sat next to a really nice lady who pointed out various people.

The worship consisted of a string of cheerful songs. I coveted their flute player! The songs were not familiar but they were easy to pick up and played and sang with lots of enthusiasm.

There were one or two times when, had I been in my own church, I wouldn’t have hesitated to share something, but I wasn’t sure what was allowed and what wasn’t. I was waiting to see what other people would do and take my cue from them. It was all very structured, well behaved and polite. My friend, Mark, is always encouraging us to be messy and I have to admit that I missed that!

I am not quite sure what I was expecting. It would have been very amazing to have seen the man from my dream, and even more amazing to have prayed for him, but it didn’t happen.

Perhaps I was too passive in the whole thing. I might have been there in the body, in the church, and to some extent I might have been there in the spirit too – but I didn’t really push any doors to see if they would open. I took the spiritual temperature of the meeting – perhaps with my dodgy spiritual thermometer – and decided to not press it.

There have been times in the past when I have stepped out and done something unexpected and the whole meeting has shifted as a result – for the good, I hasten to add. I just didn’t do it today. I am not sure whether to kick myself for my lack of courage or congratulate myself for my restraint!

I really don’t so strangers that well! With people I know I am perhaps a bit of an exhibitionist and quite the extrovert – but in unfamiliar surroundings I lie low! Maybe this whole “find the man and pray with him” is not about finding the man at all, but finding myself in every situation and expressing “me” freely.

Dreaming Big Dreams

If I thought my dolphins and sharks dream was revelational – to me at least – last night’s dream was a real blast! I am still reeling from it!

It had the unique distinction of being a morning dream! I had woken up at seven, thought about getting up, decided not to and fell back to sleep.

The dream took place in an unfamiliar church and there wasn’t anyone I knew. I was a visitor.

Let me back track a little. As well as the talk about dreams at the mid-week meeting I had been contemplating the story of Paul’s conversion. God had firmly told Ananias to go to Paul and lay is hands on him and “release” him into the ministry that God had prepared for him. Ananias had no concerns about whether he had heard God correctly, or felt worthy enough to do the task – the kind of things that hold us back. His concern was with whether Paul was perhaps worthy of the gift about to be bestowed. Well, he did it. He went, found Paul, laid his hands on him and released him into what God had for him to do. It’s all very well God giving people dreams – Paul had a dream that he believed was God given – annihilating the early church. It took Ananias to be the instrument whereby God directed and channelled the gifts Paul had been given.

So back to the dream. Thinking about Ananias and laying hands on people to release them into what God want for them – there was a man in my dream. He had dark brown hair. I could probably identify him from a police line up. I felt a stirring to lay my hand on his shoulder and pray for him, but because I was a visitor, I didn’t have the confidence to do so.

It was the end of the meeting and he was about to leave the building and something stirred in me and I shouted to him to stop because God wanted to do something. He turned around. I was mortified to discover I had got the wrong person. I had made a mistake and stopped the wrong person.

He came over to me. I could see that he was much smaller than the person I was supposed to talk to and much younger. He stood in front of me expectantly. I was hunting around for words to tell him that he wasn’t the man and he must have misinterpreted my silence.

“I know what this about,” he said. Well, he certainly knew more than I did at that point. We walked over to the stage and sat down. He confided in me that he had been struggling lately. He was the picture of the successful Christian but deep down he saw it all as a smokescreen. He was “working hard” at being a Christian, but he knew that he didn’t really have a faith. He knew that he had never asked God to be lord of his life and he was scared to do so because he thought he would fail.

I can’t remember what I said. I know that what ever it was, God used it to speak to the man. I rested my hand on his shoulder and assured him that it was not his problem but God’s. God would make Himself responsible for the man’s faith and growth.

There were tears streaming down his face and he didn’t pray any words out loud, but he opened his heart to Jesus. He face was flooded with joy and he crumpled to the ground. I don’t know whether this church was used to seeing people slain in the Spirit, but a number of people came to look at what was happening.

I was beside him, still with my hand on his shoulder. I was about to launch into some great releasing prophecy over him when he touched my hand and said, “No more words. All that needs to be said has been spoken.”

He got up and we both went for a cup of tea. Pathetic ending I know, but that’s how it ended!

I woke up and the first words to come to my mind were “Which church, God? Which church will I meet this man?”

See, one of the things about moving in the gifts of the Spirit is that you have got to move! There is no point about having a stirring dream if all it does is stir and there is no action. It is not by accident that our own church has shifted its meetings to an evening for a while, leaving me free to roam around a few other churches – to visit. Yeah, the plan had actually been to enjoy a morning lie in, but that may be not God’s plan.

I looked through the adverts for churches in the local paper later on in the morning. I was looking for something to kind of leap of the page. Nothing! I am not even sure that the man of dreams will be there, but obedience has got to start somewhere, right? If he is there will I step out and have a go? It is all a bit out of my comfort zone and part of me is scanning the landscape for a bolt hole!

Sharks and Dolphins

In our mid-week meeting we were praying about our local church – not the church universal, or even the body of Christ in Inverness, but just our small fellowship. We were praying specifically for gifts of the Holy Spirit to emerge and be practised and someone mentioned dreams. It was the desires, aspirations, hopes and dreams thing, but also the night time dream thing – a combination of them both.

Well. I dreamed – the night time dream thing! It wasn’t very inspirational. A couple of friends of mine invited me along to swim with dolphins. There was a really sheltered bay and the water was teeming with fish and there were perhaps half a dozen dolphins, their shiny black backs undulating just above and below the surface. One of my friends had stitched together a swimming costume for me that was a little larger than I was.

I was standing beside the water about to launch myself in when there was an almighty burst of spray. A shark launched itself out of the water and landed just a few feet from me.

Now for most of you that might be totally meaningless, but not to me! Before you start to get yourself concerned that I have been swimming in shark infested waters – a few of weeks ago I watched a nature programme. I say watched in the true sense as the volume was turned down at the time. We were paying a visit to family in Glasgow at the time and my husband and his brother were talking football. TV, satellite TV, repeats stuff ad finitum so I got to see the programme again.

It was about a bunch of lifeguards who decided to swim across the bay. Half way across they were joined by half a dozen dolphins which began to do something curious. They circled around the swimmers herding them closer together. It was frightening for the swimmers because the dolphins were very, very close, flapping fins at them and bumping against them. They kept up the activity for about an hour. Every time one of the swimmers tried to leave the circle they would get chased back in. Just as mysteriously as the dolphins arrived – they left.

It turned out, what the swimmers didn’t know, was that there was a shark. Outside the circling dolphins was a shark attempting to get in and attack the swimmers.

It would appear that what the dolphins did was normal behaviour for them in the sense that is what they do when they have younger dolphins and mother dolphins to protect. They circle them to stop the shark getting in. The shark will not take them all on as they act together. It’s unusual in the sense that they extended their protection to people.

Sharks and dolphins in the same dream led me to thinking about the programme. I suppose in the past few weeks I have felt many areas of my life to be under threat. Who are my dolphins? Who are my sharks? Sharks need not necessarily be people – but in my case I can point to a couple. Sharks are perhaps easy to identify! Who are my dolphins? There is nothing worse than feeling under attack and also feeling that no one is on your side! But I have my dolphins! I have loving and caring people all around me. And I have God!

He Talks to Me

In my morning study book we have been dashing through Job at breakneck speed picking up gems every now and then. I have read through Job so many times and each time there is always a light shining on something new that I never noticed before. I think we are getting to the end. God joins in the conversation.

Job 38:1-3 says “Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”

Reading through the chapter you begin to realise that Job is not getting the answers he is looking for. Question after question is shot at him from the Almighty! There was no way that Job had an inkling of any of the answers.

But you know what really struck me? I don’t think Job cared a jot about the questions God was asking, or was the least bit anxious that he didn’t know the answers. I think that what soared through him at that moment was indescribable joy! God was speaking and it didn’t pretty much matter what He was saying. Just to hear God’s voice – possibly with a clarity he had never experienced before – joy pulsated through Job!

The silent one was no longer silent. The trial that caused the most grief wasn’t the boils on his body that he scratched with a bit of broken pottery. Loosing his children was pretty rough too, and the sheep, and camels – but loosing a sense of God’s presence far outweighed them all.

There is something that Elihu says to Job earlier on in the conversation in Job 33:14 –“For God does speak - now one way, now another - though man may not perceive it.” There is almost an arrogance that says that because I cannot hear God speaking, He is not speaking – He is silent. God speaks but we just don’t perceive it.

Does God intend that we don’t hear him? Was perceived silence part of the suffering Job went through?

There are obviously times when we distance ourselves from God through our actions. There are times when we deliberately stick our spiritual fingers in our ears because we don’t want to hear. But what about the times when we long to hear his voice and we just don’t “perceive it”?

Does God’s silence achieve a God-given purpose? Are the times that God chooses to withdraw just as important as the times when he draws close enough to hear the whispers?

I don’t have any answers – I am just musing, just posing some unanswerable questions of my own!

This Moment

One of these days I will make better use of a diary! I make prolific use of notebooks! I don’t just use one note book, write in it until it is empty, but have half a dozen scattered about the house. I will just pick up the nearest to hand and start writing in it! One of these many note books has the rota of who is speaking and who is leading worship for the next few weeks. Can I find it? Absolutely not!

However, in the browsing I came across a few lines of a poem that I had been inspired to write:-

This Moment

Sometimes we think
We have forever
But we have
Just this one moment
If we wait for what we think to be
A better moment
We miss the chance
The flame never gets ignited
It never burns
We don’t have yesterday
We may not have tomorrow
We have just now

Typing it out here I have just remembered what the context was. It was in a mid-week meeting. A friend was sharing with us the sad news of the death of one of her relatives. As she talked, she smiled, as she shared stories of some of his activities. He had been a Christian, a very vibrant Christian. He was sold out for Jesus and talked about Him to anyone he met. It wasn’t in a heavy “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” type of sharing, but something natural and easy.

He had been ill. An operation perhaps. I am not sure of the details, but his death was unexpected. It impressed on me that sometimes we lack a sense of “now”. I know that God has often pressed me with the knowledge that I live should be living in the present tense. I shouldn’t be living on past glories, or hindered by past defeats. Neither should I be simply looking to a “better time” – like the summer holidays, or the weekend, or a future time when I can really put God at the centre of my life, in a way that I don’t think I can do right now. There is always going to be something that could distract and divert my attention.

Now is the time – not some indefinable day in the future.

Bystander Apathy

This phrase, “bystander apathy”, has really caught my attention. It cropped up in a newspaper article in one of the Sunday heavies.

The article was based on a book called “The Lucifer Effect” and asks the question as to whether we are all capable of evil. That kind of goes without saying! I suppose it is more about the level of evil we are all capable of doing.

The author of the book had been looking at the articles of the horrific treatment of prisoners in war time situations and it brought back to mind an experiment he had done some forty or fifty years ago. He had taken a bunch of volunteers. Some were assigned to be prison guards and some were assigned to be the prisoners and then he watched how they behaved.

It didn’t take long for people to become immersed in their roles, with the guards clamping down quite formidably on any prisoners they did not think were towing the line. It didn’t take long either for the prisoners to either rebel and be on the receiving end of ever increasingly harsh measures, or passively accept it as their lot.

Bystander apathy was demonstrated by those who were not directly involved. They might have been another “guard” watching what was happening, or a fellow “prisoner” who witnessed the harsh measure inflicted on others. What was evident is that they did nothing to stop what was happening. The pressure to “go along with it” is apparently powerful enough for people not to act. It is all too easy to think “if that was me, I wouldn’t keep silent”, but according to the author, in the same situation we would do the same thing!

The volunteers were, under normal circumstances, nice boys from nice homes – but the situation they faced brought out the bad in them. The volunteers weren’t bad people, but the environment they found themselves in almost encouraged them to be bad.

In some of the early chapters of the book of Job, he voices his desire to have his life end not because it is a bad life right at that moment, which it was, but because he doesn’t want to let God down. Paul said something similar in one of his epistles. He was stuck in jail and voiced his concerns that he might find the whole thing too much and end up betraying god through unrighteous words or behaviour.

There is no doubt that a difficult situation doesn’t help! We can make the difficult situation an excuse for harsh words, a snappish attitude or a lack of grace.

The hope for the prisoners and the guards came in the form of the “heroes”! The Hope of humankind! They are “ordinary people who do extraordinary things when other people are doing bad or doing nothing.” In this experiment there were individuals that “blew the whistle” and told people they had gone too far. They brought a swift end to the experiment by speaking out. They were not on the receiving end of nay abuse, but saw that others were, and didn’t like it. They had the ability to empathise.

Is that not what intercession and prayer is all about? We may not be on the receiving end of a difficult time, but we notice that other people are. Sometimes we are in a position to act practically. All the time we are in a position to pray.

It seems to me that we have a choice. We can sit in bystander apathy, seeing things and not rousing ourselves thinking perhaps that we can make no difference to the situation, or we can be a hero.

I would like to think that I have it in me to be a hero!

Pencil Fetish

I went to a prayer and worship meeting on Friday night. It was an inter-denominational thing to pray for the city, particularly the street pastors that were out that night. There was an ice-breaker to help everyone feel more comfortable and get to know one another. It involved sharing a little bit about yourself – where you came from, a mini-testimony, not of how you came to Christ, but something about the week and how you had seen God at work. You were also supposed to share “something whacky” about yourself to demonstrate that you were “just a normal person like anyone else”. Why do you have to be whacky to be normal?

One man shared about going to the dentist – I can’t remember what the whacky bit was, but we laughed. A lady shared about her recent travels to Kenya and having to pluck a chicken. She didn’t have to actually kill it or gut it, but plucking was a first for her. Another woman just simply refused to reveal anything whacky – and we had spent quite a bit of time talking and we itching to pray, so no one minded.

My whacky revelation? I discovered recently that I have pencil fetish. Working where I do, discarded pencils litter the ground, not quite like confetti, but a short walk generally reveals one or two. I lend out so many pencils, and they frequently don’t make it back to my desk. I get through my quota quite quickly and end up having to buy more, so picking up the ones that others drop is good stewardship in my book.

There is book loitering on my desk about preserving the environment. It contains a million hints about the kinds of things we could do to be green. One of the suggestions is about using a biro till it runs out. It doesn’t mention pencils, but I would imagine that it ought to be the same.

Every time I pick up a pencil I have this thought that I am rescuing it! A pencil is designed for a specific purpose. Imagine if it had feelings. Lying on the grass by the edge of the path, abandoned and unable to fulfil its purpose has got to be frustrating – so I pick it up, clean it up a bit, sharpen it and stick it among all the other rescued pencils so it will get used.

It seems to me that church is a bit like that that! Haven’t we all been rescued? None of us before we came to Christ were fulfilling the purpose that we were designed for. Cleaned up a bit? Sharpened? Perhaps that’s stretching the metaphor too much.

Someone "Going Viral"

My paraphrase of the opening verses of the book of Job might go something like this:-

In the city of Inverness there lived a teacher whose name was Mel. She was blameless and upright; she feared God and shunned evil. (NB Some early manuscripts omit this verse!)

She didn’t have any sons or daughters but taught many children at the local high school. She owned no sheep, or camels, no oxen and no donkeys, but had a gerbil once upon a time. Life might have been easier if she had a large number of servants.

All in all she was a pretty great woman. (NB – some early manuscripts omit this verse too!)

Her classes at school used to enjoy their lessons and they would learn a lot and pass their assessments first time around. Mel would mark their books and write encouraging comments to stir their hearts and provoke them to great achievements. (NB – most commentators agree this is complete fabrication!)

Early in the morning she would pray for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my pupils have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This was Mel’s regular custom. (NB – commentators dispute the accuracy of this verse too.)

The Test

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"

Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."

Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Mel? There is no one on earth like her; she is blameless and upright, a woman who fears God and shuns evil."

"Does Mel fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around her and her household and everything she has? You have blessed the work of her hands, so that her classes work hard and achieve good exam results. But stretch out your hand and strike everything she has, and she will surely curse you to your face."

The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything she has is in your hands, but on the Mel herself do not lay a finger."

Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

We all know what happened next. In the original story Job was besieged by one disaster after another and through it all he did not sin “by charging God with wrongdoing.”

I have had a Job kind of week. I have to admit that it hasn’t been one disaster after another – just the one disaster that is fast spiraling way beyond anything I had anticipated.

No Sabeans have attacked and carried off my donkeys. No fire from heaven has fallen and consumed my sheep. The Chaldeans haven’t swept by to take my camels and there has been no mighty wind blasting the houses of anyone I know.

Someone has “gone viral” on me by setting up an internet web page on one of the social networking sites and apparently filling it with unpleasant stuff. I say apparently because I have not been able to access the information – not that I really want to.

I spent the first afternoon in tears. I felt that everyone was laughing at me behind my back and smirking that they knew something about me that I didn’t! Then I got organized! I rounded up a posse and took on the cyber slime-ball! I can’t think that I have ever written memo and emails so strongly worded like that before. If I had been on the receiving end I would have been very scared! I didn’t mince my words or pussy foot around the edges. It has been a week of rallying the troops and stuff.

The result was that the site has been erased, the culprit caught – and one would like to think it is all over, but there are ripples in the water. A friend came by to tell me that he thought I had handled the whole thing really well!

Job was just minding his own business when God underlined and highlighted his life to Satan. He put Job under a spot light and challenged Satan to test him and try to prove his theory that Job’s faith was based on something other that God himself.

I am not Job and I wouldn’t presume to suggest that my week compares with Job’s tragedies. Job's response had implications that went far beyond the physical world. God could turn and rebuke Satan for his foul accusations because in the end “Job didn’t sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” Job proved that possessions given and taken away were not the source of his security, but that his faith was in God alone.

How we handle trials and tribulations isn’t really just about the physical world either. There is a powerful testimony in the heavenlies and to powers and principalities when we come through. We don't always come through unscathed and we might limp for a while, but there is a greater glory being achieved through it.

Who am I?

I was doing a "My Documents" clearout on the computer. I came across this post that I had written but never posted onto the blog.

Who am I?

I bought myself yet another book the other day! This is despite the fact that I have a bookshelf of books that I have not thoroughly read! It seems that I have discovered lately that not only do I enjoy writing poetry, but I also enjoy reading it. The book, “Who am I?” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is based on a poem of the same name that he wrote while in prison.

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

March 4,1946

The first three verses are about how other people see him. They remind me of a scene in “The Shawshank Redemption” in which one of the prisoners, Red, is trying to describe the main character, Andy. He talks of the way he walks around the prison exercise yard, not as a prisoner, but as someone taking an afternoon stroll in the park. Andy does not take on the spirit of the prison but remains untouched by the cynicism and defeat that clouds all the other inmates. It is the kind of thing that the prison guards say about Bonhoeffer – yes, he is in prison, but he has not taken on the spirit of the prisoner.

The rest of the poem is about how Bonhoeffer sees himself – and it is so different. To others he is calm and composed, smiling and cheerful. Peeling back the surface, he admits to feeling caged and unquiet, worrying about his friends, weary and unable to pray.

As much as I would like to write a poem like his, I am not sure that I could be that honest with myself, or be prepared for others to see that kind of rawness. I think I spend a lot of time protecting people from the pain that I often feel. They have enough on their plate, and they need to be encouraged, so I present them with someone who triumphs over adversity, someone who determines to see a glass half full – someone who always has a the unmoving rock of Christ beneath her feet.

But the truth is, like Bonhoeffer, peeling back the surface reveals a very different kind of person. There is an unmoving rock beneath my feet – I see it in faith, not always in reality. There is someone who triumphs over adversity - but the adversity hurts big time and sometimes the fight is a lonely one. The glass isn’t just half full – but overflowing – but sometimes I am too tired and too bruised to drink.

Just as I am not always who I am, sometimes I don’t think I really allow God to be who he is. He longs to peel back the surface too and be Himself – someone much more impressive, more vibrant, more involved that I allow. He is not the silent partner in the business, but the initiator of all that happens.

If I had a resolution for the year it would be for me to be who I am, consciously living in the company of the God who is who He is!

Lingering

It was a stressful day yesterday. I could feel myself coming apart at the seams. God just said, as I fumbled for the front door key at the end of day, “Come and sit with me.” I dug out a few candles with a nice vanilla fragrance, found a music CD that I hadn’t listened to for a while, and then climbed into bed and chilled. I suppose technically I was soaking. I spent the next hour or so listening to the lyrics of the songs, pouring out concerns before God and praying too about the needs of other people on the prayer list.

I got to a stage where I felt settled and at peace. All the things that had been stressing me out were no longer rocking my boat. I was about to launch off the bed and do a spot or ironing or something when God’s next word was, “Linger.”

When I buy petrol for my car I usually buy just enough to cover the needs of the week. The tank is only ever half full. Very rarely, apart from journey’s down to see my folks in Rugby, do I fill it to the top. It gets filled on a Thursday and by the following Thursday we are into the “red warning light” dashboard thing. There is always just enough and no more.

God was telling me that I am a bit like that at times. I collect what I think will be enough resources for the day in my quiet times. But I don’t have “extra”. I am not necessarily overflowing. His suggestion that I “linger” was about reaching the overflowing stage! I lingered, listened some more to the music, prayed some more.

I was reminded of Joshua in the book of Exodus.

Exodus 33:11 “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.”

While Moses returned to the camp, Joshua stayed behind in the tabernacle with God. He lingered! I wonder what he and God spoke about, or whether they just shared companionable silences. Joshua developed his own relationship with God and when the time came took over the leadership of Israel.

But before he led, he lingered!

Chosen

Because
God chooses
The foolish things of the world
To shame the wise

Because
God chooses
The weak things of the world
To shame the strong

Because
God chooses
The lowly things
The despised things
The things that are not
To nullify
The things that are

God chose me
Foolish
Weak
Lowly
Despised

I am content
To be chosen
By God

"Go visit someone"

I was settling down this afternoon, after a morning of doing stuff, to open my Bible, dive in and soak. I had my Bible study notes, a notebook and a pen and prayed for revelation – something I hadn’t seen before, or a clearer picture of something that was familiar. I was just about to step on my spade ready to dig when God said, “Go visit someone!”

I am a homebody. I like my own company for the most part. I like me and the empty room. My husband is not a homebody. He likes to be with people, enjoying company and chat. Often during the holidays, he will ask me who I saw that day. He knows how much I indulge the hermit in me!

I decided to go and visit a friend I had not seen for a while and although Joe and I intended to visit over Christmas we never quite made it. The Christmas presents for her and the children were still beside the front door, as they had been for the last few months! I thought that I might as well deliver them! I thought maybe I could induce her to come for a walk. (Weight Watcher’s weigh in night – I put on a pound!)

We talked for a while. We talked about church. I told her all about our involvement with Healing on the Streets and Street Pastors. She was very encouraged by it all and thought that “once upon a time” she could see herself doing something like that, but not anymore. She remembered the days when she was on fire for God, but how with her illness things had become difficult to manage.

We piled into the car and visited another friend neither of us had seen in a while. This other friend is someone who you just can’t help confiding in and sure enough, over a cup of tea, my friend admitted just how lonely she had been feeling. Sometimes making and keeping friends was a difficult business. I know that for many people I am hard work, but my friend is even harder. Part of it is down to her medication and the side effects. She just unloaded all her concerns and frustrations and as we watched we could almost see the weight on her shoulders being lifted! She worked her way through a box of tissues and between sniffs and apologies told us just how things really were.

After an hour or so, there was silence. It was a comfortable silence. I don’t think anyone offered advice. Sometimes advice is not what people are looking for – they just want someone to listen. I could see that things were being mentally taken note of and I knew that once we had left the house lots of the things talked about would be prayed about!

The afternoon that I had planned for myself turned out to be very different. I did exactly what God had planned for me – I visited. A lot of what God wants to teach is on the job. There is a time for reading and learning and there is a time for doing and learning.

Planning for Failure

I have just spent the last half hour or so working out the mechanics of how to do all the things I need to do today and for the early part of the week without the use of the car.

I have never been very prompt about things like MOTs and after lots of nagging from my husband (who doesn’t drive, I have to add), I finally got around to arranging for the car’s MOT this morning. I was faintly alarmed to find out that the garage just did MOTs. There were no racks of tyres just in case of too little tread, no interesting shaped boxes anywhere to cover exhausts and brakes and stuff.

My first thought after surrendering the keys was, “When it fails….where can I take it and how long will they take to fix all the bits that need fixing?” The mechanic assured me that he knew a few people. In all my car owning and driving years I have never had a car pass the MOT first time around.

The next hour was spent kicking around the town, drinking tea, checking my watch and checking that my mobile phone was switched on. It’s a Monday, a Weight Watchers weigh day, so cakes and tea were not on the menu!

I went to the library and got myself a pin number to play on the library computers for a while. There was a notice about switching off mobile phones. I knew that my phone was not switched off and felt very ill at ease and didn’t use up my allotted minutes.

I am not good at waiting! Eventually I decided to head back to the garage.

I was just a street away when the mobile broke into song. The mechanic told me the car was ready to collect. It has passed. Not with flying colours I hasten to add. There was something about the nearside front suspension that right now was fine, but probably would need some attention in the not too distant future.

So, with my mind all busy on covering the bases “when she fails”, I hadn’t given much thought about passing. In my minds eye I had already spent a huge amount on replacing bald tyres and brake pads!

Anyone who cared to flick their front room nets and look out that morning would have seen me doing a short but very heart felt happiness dance on the pavement!

Part of my problem is that I don’t know enough about my car. I find it challenging enough to find the right hole to pour the oil into. I don’t know where all the bits fit together and what things should look like under the bonnet.

When I think about God, and His reaction to my reaction to the trials that test my faith – I can know that He is not planning for failure. He is not thinking about how to “fix” the myriad things that could go wrong. God knows what goes on in the deepest parts of me – those parts that are too deep for me to have an inkling about.

When I get tested, it is not to see which parts of me will break. It is to see which parts of me remain in tact – so that I can know just how strong my faith is, and do my little happiness dance on the pavement.

HYOC stories and poems

The Highland Year of Culture has just recently come to an end. I purchased a book of short stories and poems written by school pupils. Some of them wrote poetry about aspects of nature – salmon leaping at Shin Falls, the tranquillity of Loch Ness. Other pupils used Highland myths and legends to create their own stories. Still other pupils were asked to create Highland characters and base a story around them.

One boy had written his story about a church minister who moved from the Highlands down to Glasgow in the 19th or early 20th century. He ends up in a wealthy parish with a church full of old people. The writer describes wonderfully the way in which the minister sinks beneath the covers of complacency and looses his passion.

It is quite a sad tale about regret and about the feeling that he let go of his dreams and settled for something less that what he was meant for.

He does one act of compassion towards the end of his life to resurrect his faith, heading down to the sleazy part of the city to “rescue” a prostitute and her child. It doesn’t turn out as he expects. She is convinced she has slipped too far down the path to hell to be worth saving and he cannot persuade her otherwise. She doesn’t turn her life around and thinks he has failed and sinks into despondency. It is not until the end of his life that he comes to realise just how much his kindness touched the life of her child.

It wasn’t the most cheerful of stories, but throughout the story the gospel message was really clearly told. The love of God and His compassion for people was so beautifully explained.

It is so overtly “gospel” and I just love that it is in the book for people to read.

I'm giving up!

It’s Pancake Day today. Not having all the ingredients to fill the pancakes with, we popped into a shop to pick up some cream. I am well aware that in the good old days lemon and sugar was all that was required, I happen to like mine filled with sliced bananas and a squirt or two of cream.

I asked the shop assistant where to find some toffee sauce or chocolate sauce, which I didn’t actually buy in the end. Once she realised that I was making pancakes, her face took on a very nostalgic appearance. There may be quite a few people who make pancakes, but I wonder whether they know why!

Incidentally, I can remember many years ago, going on a youth weekend thing. It took in Pancake Day so we made sure that we had all the necessary ingredients. It was before bananas and cream filled pancakes! It must have been some log cabin affair as I remember a large beam and a competition to see who could toss a pancake over the beam and land it back in the pan! I didn’t win. My pancake didn’t quite make it over the beam and required someone to climb up and pull it down!

Pancake Day is followed by Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, the period of time leading up to Easter. You are supposed to give something up.

I suppose I could give up chocolate – but that is a kind of given since I am back to attending Weight Watchers meetings.

I have been thinking that rather than give up something edible I would like to try to be a bit more creative. I am going to give up my negative and pessimistic responses to challenges.

That should make for a very interesting few weeks!

Offensive prayers

Psalm 46 begins with “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear.”

We met together for the second time at work this lunchtime for prayer. It was so encouraging seeing most of the same faces from the last meeting, plus a few new faces!

It is certainly good to be reminded that God is a refuge and gives us strength and helps us in our troubles, but to some extent there is a danger of what I call “defensive praying”. There is no doubt that sometimes the workplace gets to be a bit of a battlefield and there are times when we need God to be a refuge and a help in our troubles. We end up praying for courage and boldness – which is not a bad thing. However, the focus seems to shift onto us somehow and how we need to feel a little more secure to step out and witness.

I am reminded of the church in the book of Acts. I would have to say that their praying was “offensive”! They were taking the battle to the enemy and not merely seeking to be fixed so they could play their part.

Because God is our refuge, because God is our strength, because God is always ready to help and not just in times of trouble, we should be released from fear and take the battle to the enemy.

What we do is not as important as what we call on God to do on our behalf!

Spot-on prayers

Praying together during the Sunday morning meeting, a friend of mine prayed that as I read scripture and spend time in personal worship during this week, I might be have a better revelation of God, rather than a better revelation of “what I must do” in response to what I have read.

This is so spot on!

I read the word and I seek to find out how it must be applied – which is not bad thing! The problem comes when that is all I look for and I forget to see something great about God!

Take James for instance. I was reading the opening few verses where it says that “God..gives generously to all without finding fault.” I wouldn’t say that I totally glossed over that, but what I spent more time thinking about the part that says “he (the man asking for wisdom) must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”

How much more built up will I be if I focus on the God who gives generously to all and who doesn’t find fault rather than trying to fix my doubts and wave-tossed faith?

Hairy Tale

I would have to admit that I am probably what is known in the hairdressing trade as a nightmare customer! Two things particularly single me out.

Firstly I am a drifter. I rarely see the same hairdresser twice in a row. I notice people’s hair in a way in which perhaps I am blind to other things. Months, if not years ago, I was standing in the queue at the bank. When it came to my turn, the woman behind the counter had a really nice hair cut. I asked her where she went and she told me the name of the place and the stylist – Emma. I managed to visit Emma twice before Emma moved on to other heads in other salons.

If I particularly broke and in need of a cut and colour and I really can’t make it till pay day, there is a place in town. The average age of the clients is sixty and I tend to have more hair on my head than them and the stylist usually has to pop to the hairdressing shop to get my colour because purple and pink rinses are not what I am looking for!

If I am feeling flush and in need of a cut and colour I will head out of town. There are one or two places that I have been where they cost the earth but they do a good job.

If I simply just in need I head for the nearest salon, the only one in town that has a card written out for me with all the details of previous encounters. The lady that manages that one also runs hairdressing courses at the college, so she allows the newly qualified to build up a bit practice. The question about how long they have been working here is usually met with the answer “This is my second week.” It used to freak me out, but I am consoled that hair grows and paper bags come in all shapes and sizes!

Secondly, the other reason why I probably scare hairdressers comes when I take out the picture and place it on the counter. Despite being something of a wordsmith, describing what I want is difficult, so I have a picture. I don’t demand, “Make me like this!”, but it comes close. I don’t think I have ever been unreasonable. I have the required amount of hair for most pictures I have shown them. I have to say that I can only think of one time when have looked anything like the person in the picture!

So having said all that, I headed to the nearest salon. The girl was just in her second week of the job but…here is the but, the manager was in the shop. The sense of peace that descended was amazing. Knowing that the novice was being watched over every step of the way by the experienced manager made a huge difference to how I felt.

I am sure that is how the man with epileptic boy felt in Mark 9:14-29. The “novices” who had been in the job for not a very long time were unable to cast out the demon. After Jesus comes down from the mountain after the transfiguration, you can almost feel the sigh of relief wash through the father of the boy and the disciples! What they were unable to do, Jesus does.

When Jesus is present with us, there is a confidence in what we and what we say.

I surrender all

A document was thrown at us at work this week briefly looking at some of the changes we had been making over the last year or so. It made the point that although everyone had adopted the changes on the outside by doing what was required, there were some people who hadn’t changed their thinking on the inside. They were just obeying the “letter of the law”. They were doing it because they had been told to, and probably if left alone long enough and not nagged, they would revert to their old ways of doing things! For other people, the change had happened on the inside and they could see why the changes happened and they could understand all the benefits and they were exploring what else they thought needed to change that hadn’t been suggested as yet!

Let’s guess where along the line I stand, shall we? In terms of my job, I am somewhere along the “seeing why it’s necessary” bit and standing on the brink of “exploring what else needs to change”.

Based on what I said at a recent mid-week church meeting it would seem that I am not even willing to consider just “doing it”.

The change is about the times of morning meetings. The suggestion was to begin meeting in the afternoons or evenings as opposed to mornings. There are a number of issues that have highlighted the need to at least consider the change of time. The conditions under which we rent the venue are perhaps changing, the people that we are meeting through the various ministries we are involved in would be better served with an afternoon meeting. There aren’t any other churches like ours that meet at any other time than in the morning.

There are very few things that I say that I would label as purely immature but my comment, “I will just change churches,” was one of my truly selfish moments! Every church in my thirty something Christian life has always met in the morning, apart from the occasional few months where they trialed an evening meeting. There is just something for me about mornings.

I don’t think there are any theological reasons that I can come up with to support my morning meeting insistence! I know that it was early on a Sunday morning that Mary went to the tomb and witnessed the resurrected Jesus. I would be in a poor state if it was only on a Sunday morning that I witnessed a resurrected Jesus. He is there every day at any time for me to meet and fellowship with.

Even as I was making my stand the words of a song I had been listening to earlier that evening ran through my head. “I surrender all I am. To the Saviour who surrendered all for me.”

I think there are so many ways that our church has changed over the last couple of years. We are just not like many other churches. Not in our size, not in our outlook, not in our vision. I mean al of this is a good way. Being small we are close to one another, we cannot hide in the background or get lost in the crowd. In our outlook we are not inward looking. We don’t need to be repaired and put back together. In our vision we are stepping out of the church walls to heal people on the streets, to get involved in street pastors helping people in a variety of ways. We are a very unique set of people! God uses us – not that he doesn’t use any other church.

To get to where we are has required a lot of disassembling of my long held ideas of what church is about. That word “surrender” keeps cropping up in my life. God keeps on asking me, as he does every other child, to surrender – surrender and hand over what I think matters and allow him to show me what really does matter. It is not an easy thing sometimes to surrender! I don't often go down without a fight - even with God.

Church isn’t there soley for my comfort and my edification. It is there to reach out to the world. It is there for the people who need to be shown the love of God in a rainbow of ways.

Something Less Glorious

I wrote a phrase this morning in my note book during my quiet time. It has lodged itself in my spirit and refuses to be silent!

The story in 1 Kings 14 is about Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. He is not turning out to be a good king. The King of Egypt swoops down, attacks Jerusalem and carries off the treasures of the Temple. He takes everything including the gold shields that Solomon made.

What does Rehoboam do? Well, he doesn’t chase after the King of Egypt and claim them back. He doesn’t amass another pile of gold and made some more. He replaces the gold sheilds with bronze ones. They only get taken out on special occasions and the rest of the time they are locked away in the guardroom!

The phrase that I wrote? “Rehoboam makes do with something less than glorious.”

I am challenged by that! How many of us make do with something less than glorious?

Perhaps bronze was stronger than gold and much more practical for shields. It looks like they are only there for show anyway. It is not as if they appear to be spear-stopping shields. You get the impression that he makes the replacements bronze so that they are not worth stealing.

I am reminded how often the devil swoops in to try to steal the treasure that God imparts. Sometimes we don’t put up much of a fight! We don’t always chase after him and claim it back!

Sometimes what we replace that treasure with is something less glorious! We perhaps allow our picture of God to get smaller or we allow our vision to be less clear. We count ourselves unworthy of involvement in his Kingdom building. We start to perhaps generate a quality of life that doesn’t draw the attention of the enemy the way it used.

We settle for a Christian life less glorious that the one God mapped out for us!

I had a good think today about the treasure I feel that have been stolen from me by the enemy. I have a choice to stand by and let it happen, and fashion out a poor replacement for what has been taken. Or I could chase after the enemy and claim it back!

The Spirit is urging me to claim my treasure back!

So what do you need to know?

I was talking a few weeks ago with a friend of mine who had recently got engaged. Falling in love changes people. I have just been watching one of my all time favourite programmes – Joan of Arcadia. In a previous episode Joan had kissed Adam and this one was about working out whether the kiss meant anything significant. A visiting speaker to the school gives them a lecture about love and relationships and likens romance to a virus – it messes up with the normal function of the brain!

My friend was sharing with me that she and her fiancée plan to see a pre-marital counsellor! My initial reaction was to subdue an outbreak of hysterical laughter. I cannot imagine in a millions years that the suggestion of Joe and myself seeing a pre-anti-or-post marital counsellor as a thing to do! He doesn’t have a high opinion about counsellors. There is no problem that he can’t get sorted out by talking things over with a friend over a couple of pints while watching a football game.

Apparently the idea of these pre-martial counselling sessions is to provide an opportunity to raise issues that might not crop up in ordinary conversations. If you go into a relationship knowing the answers to the big questions I suppose they think that the relationship is that much more secure.

Had I perhaps been to a pre-martial counselling suggestion would I have discovered just loudly my husband snores at night? Would I have discovered that any set of twenty two players and a ball, from any obscure football league in the world would hold his attention like nothing else? Would I have discovered the depth of passion that he has for politics, staying up all night to watch the results of the general election? Would I have found out that anything dipped in batter and deep fried is infinitely more appetising than mange tout chopped into a salad?

I have enjoyed the discoveries I have made being married to Joe. Perhaps if I knew it all beforehand I would not have thought I was up to voyage and abandoned ship. As it is, Joe completes me in a way that I would never have imagined. I am not the same person I was before I met him. I am fulfilled.

Being Fearless

I made a small step yesterday to be fearless. I have a lot of concerns about things but I don’t always say anything. I play the ostrich – stick my head in the sand and hope it all goes away. Part of the trouble is that I fool myself into thinking that certain people are more spiritual than I am. I think they have a better handle on something, or a clearer vision than I have. So I keep quiet.

I am sure there are times when it is a good idea to keep quiet – but I have learned from experience that sometimes my thoughts just simmer and boil and I get spiritual indigestion. It gets to a point when it spills out and not always in the healthiest manner!

Sometimes the worship group begins with the opening phrase “What do you want to do…?” There are times when I have something I want to do. I have spent time preparing myself and have got something burning on my heart. I don’t always have the courage to speak out and we end up doing something that although it might be good to do, it wasn’t what God had planned, because the person God shared the plan with kept quiet! I have often gone back to my car kicking myself for not speaking up!

Yesterday I had my answer to “What do you want to do…? I wanted to talk about things that I thought were going well, or not going so well. I wanted to talk about how some of the changes we had put in place had affected me. I admitted to some of the things I struggled with. It wasn’t a list of complaints. I also had a few answers up my sleeve to some of the problems I was experiencing.

Suddenly we were all talking. We were suggesting ways that we could make more effective use of the time we have available.

What I loved about the meeting was the absence of finger pointing. Worship isn’t about playing the notes of a song in the right order, with the right rhythm, so singing pitch perfect. It is about serving God and serving one another.

I felt very encouraged that we not only listened, but we sought out solutions. There was an attitude of surrender. Sometimes we hold very strong opinions about things and we want to insist on our way of doing something. We fight tooth and nail to hold the ground we stand on. I have been in meetings like that, and been thoroughly mauled! Last night was not one of those nights.

I left feeling very built up and encouraged!

Thanks Mark, Sue and Kyle!

Storming a Stronghold!

I had a very encouraging time at work today. I am not sure if I mentioned in a previous post but someone had approached me some time last year, very tentatively I might add, to see if I was interested in attending a prayer meeting.

I suppose that just because you are known to be a church goer, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you have a living and breathing relationship with God. A prayer meting at work had been something that I had thought about years ago, but never had the courage to pursue it.

My young friend had the passion and pursued it! He talked to the senior management conscious that we live in a secular society and sometimes it is not “cool” to express Christian values. He got the go-ahead and we had our first meeting at lunchtime today.

For me, at least, there was an unquestionable excitement. We might be planning to meet only once a month – but we are meeting! God has got a foothold in what often seems to be the enemy’s stronghold! I was excited that there were people gathered who wanted to bring God into the work environment and seek His perspective and involvement in daily affairs. There was a feeling of knowing that someone, God, was big and powerful, and on our side.

The other noticeable thing was the attention paid to who walked through the door! I felt like I wished I could hand out badges that said “Proud to be a Christian!” There were a few surprises – people I didn’t expect to be there.

If you could imagine the French Resistance during the war – they know there are allies and supporters, but you don’t ever meet them face to face. People tend to keep pretty much under the radar. Suddenly we are all sticking our heads above the battlements and making a declaration. We get to see who is on our side!

Many of the prayers focussed on the desire to witness. Many of us actually wanted to share our faith but lacked courage. We were worried that we would mess it up and say the wrong thing. I am not sure that it was people’s ridicule that we feared – but more about the damage we might to someone seeking faith if we said the wrong thing.

My young friend who organised the meeting was so encouraged – he just about floated out the door!

Less Than a Conqueror

I missed the word at church yesterday because I was doing Sunday School. While the children and I acted out the Parable of the Sower, and pretended to be seeds, and birds and weeds, the rest of the church were being told that it was OK to fail – I think! We live in a success orientated world where failure is frowned upon, and sometimes rather than try something and fail to do it, we just don’t try in the first place. Once you have failed, people define you by your failure and you don’t often get a second chance!

God had been speaking to me days earlier, when I was thinking about planning for the coming year. I won’t say that I made a New Year’s resolution, because I didn’t resolve anything – but the single word that God gave me was “fearless”. It wasn’t just one word at all, but two – “Be fearless.” Not doing things because I think I might fail is a perfect description of how I often act, and that is not the way I am designed to be by God.

If you count up all the times in scripture that God says to people “Do not be afraid,” and think about all the people God said it to – it wouldn’t surprise me if it came out as the number one thing that God said! It didn’t matter if it was a seasoned warrior like Joshua, or a frightened man threshing wheat in a wine press like Gideon - they all needed to hear the message.

Someone last night gave me permission to feel less than a conqueror! I have a fairly stressful job and like most people doing my job, I get stressed out. I am well aware that I have access to a whole pile of resources that other people don’t have. I have God on my side. I have access into His throne room. I have His perspective on the situation I have to deal with. I have a wonderful Christian family that give me tremendous support.

With all that in place I still feel stressed out at times! I get drained – physically, emotionally and spiritually. And people don’t say it, but I feel it, that I should not be stressed out – not with all the resources I have been given. The Bible says that I am more than a conqueror, but I don’t feel it! I don’t particularly want someone to pray over me. I don’t particularly want wonderful sounding encouragement either. I just want hugged. I want time and space to bounce back in my own time and not feel pressured into being always victorious! I have no intention in revelling in my misery - but I just need time to right my boat and adjust my sails.

When Job went through his time of testing, his friends at the start just sat with him and didn’t say anything. It was only when they began to talk, and offer their perspective on his suffering, that they added to his suffering, rather than relieved it.

Last night someone was sensitive enough to say that sometimes we don’t need the powerful prayers, or the stirring words – but just someone to be there and supply a cup of tea. Sometimes we just need someone to be there, and say nothing.

The Sceptre's in His Hand

I don’t know whether there is something in the Bible that says that you get to become like the people that you hang around with – but it is certainly true of my friend Mark. I went to a meeting last night. I thought it was something about putting 2008 before God and basically handing the year over for His purposes – which it was! It was more specific in the sense that it was directed towards the prayer cover for Street Pastors which has its official launch at the end of January.

It was a very lively meeting, with people drawn from a number of different churches from Inverness. They were very much involved in Healing on the Streets and Street Pastors and were looking for direction about how to organize prayer cover. They spoke about God appointing (as opposed to anointing) people to do various tasks over the next year. I had this kind of picture of God and a clipboard and a room full of people, and issuing people with colour-coded folders with specific tasks to do. If you watch any of the police programs- a major investigation is about to be undertaken, all the detectives have had a general briefing and then the specifics jobs are assigned – “Hey, Jones and Carruthers – see what you can find about the telephone calls Mr X made over the last six months!” “We’re on it, sir.” That was the kind of thing I envisioned!

The worship time during the meeting was excellent. I can’t remember the song we were singing, but the refrain in my head was “The sceptre’s in His hand” picturing God reigning on His throne and administering his rule.

I then thought about Queen Esther approaching the throne of the King:-

”On the third day Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace, in front of the king's hall. The king was sitting on his royal throne in the hall, facing the entrance. When he saw Queen Esther standing in the court, he was pleased with her and held out to her the gold scepter that was in his hand. So Esther approached and touched the tip of the scepter.

Then the king asked, "What is it, Queen Esther? What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be given you." Esther 5:1-3

We have been clothed in royal robes and have been invited into the throne room of God Almighty. When God sees us approach, He is pleased and holds out the golden scepter to us and invites us to touch its tip. He asks us to bring our requests and share with Him what is on our hearts.

WOW!

A woman sitting nearby had also been thinking about Queen Esther. It was encouraging to have someone confirm what God was saying. It was encouraging for me to feel that in a bunch of very enthusiastic worshippers, I could hear God’s voice too!

I am invisible

I guess that bargain hunting in the sales probably bring out the worst in us all but I almost came to blows with a shop assistant yesterday. I had picked up a box of bath goodies from the shelf. There was a price tag and there was a 10% discount sticker and it was exactly what I was looking for. I took it along to the woman at the till.

Apparently it was the last box like that and because it was the last box like that they were unwilling to sell it! It was a display item and not for sale – despite being on the shelf, with the price tag and the 10% discount sticker. However, I was assured that I could have the box free if I spent £15 on other items in the shop.

I politely assured them that if there was anything else I wanted to buy from the shop, that would be ideal, but it was just that particular box that I wanted. She wouldn’t sell it to me.

I went home and complained to Joe. He told me that if the shop, the box and I were in England, there would be no dispute. The box on the shelf with the price tag and the 10% discount sticker constitutes an invitation for the customer to buy and they would have to sell it to me. In Scotland the same box with the same the price tag and the same sticker is an invitation for the shop to sell it, but they don’t have to sell it if they don’t want to!

For the past two weeks I have been ferrying a similar box of bath goodies in the back of the car. I finally gave to away to someone who I hadn’t anticipated seeing before Christmas!

For the last few months I had been buying my “Big Issue” from a lady outside Tesco’s. The box of bath goodies had been intended as a Christmas present. I appreciate that as much as I would like to invite her into the café for a cup of tea or coffee, she has a quota of magazines to sell and time and opportunities are precious.

Just a few weeks before Christmas as I was handing over my money and rolling up the magazine to fit into a pocket, she thanked me and then went on to say, “I am invisible.” She was hurt by the rejection of so many shoppers scurrying into the supermarket, wheeling out their overflowing trollies an hour or so later.

I have walked past enough Big Issue sellers to know that there are times when I deliberately don’t look in their direction. I choose not to see the person. Sometimes it is about not having the money on me, sometimes it is about not having the time or willingness to stop and dig out the purse, sometimes it is about a vague resentment that I feel I am being manipulated to feel sorry, sometimes it is the voice inside that wants to ask why they can’t get a proper job instead.

I don’t know what circumstances lead to people being on the street, but those words “I am invisible” have lodged somewhere inside my heart. Those words refuse to become invisible and challenge me to “see” the people that think they are invisible and do something that tells them they are not!

Walking by...or not

My friend, Mark’s blog contains a wonderful account of what happened in church (or should that be “to church”?) on Sunday morning. It contains this paragraph:-

“A friend had walked past a guy begging on the streets on her way to Mojo's and it had bugged her that she felt helpless about it. As she sat reading our church calendar for the next week, she was inspired by the wording of the Sunday morning meeting, got up out of her chair and went and found this young man, let's call him J, on the streets and invited him in for a hot drink and what food we had - some biscuits (ahem, cookies) for the kids and some bread that we were planning on using for communion.”

I wish I could have been that friend – but I wasn’t. I walked past the same man on the street not more than half an hour before. I didn’t read the church calendar for the following week and did not get inspired by the wording! I noticed the man, and I thought vaguely about coffee or something – but I didn’t do anything about it.

I was leading worship that morning and thinking about the songs I had planned for us to sing, the time available for practising the songs and how best to lead the church into a time of worship.

There is a huge part of me that is ashamed that I had missed the very essence of worship which really isn’t about singing songs at all, but about a whole lifestyle that centres on God.

However, I am also very encouraged. Mark’s friend and I meet for a Bible study later on in the day. She was almost floating off the the floor with happiness that she had heard God so clearly AND responded! She admits that her relationship with God fluctuates between extremes. God sometimes appears silent to her and remote. Times like Sunday are times of tremendous blessing for her – to know God speaking, to feel that tug on her heart that she can’t ignore and to expereince a joy from obeidience that just floods through.

Blame it on the DJ

It’s been a long time since I was 21, but I seem to remember it being a time of great energy. When Joe and I were invited to someone’s 21st birthday party, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go. It was in Dingwall for a start and driving at night is something that has never appealed. It was on a Friday night and at the end of fairly challenging week I would rather that climbed into my TV watching clothes instead of pouring myself into the sparkly jumper. I had also become quite obsessed about my roots needing touched up and although I had a “root-touching up kit” in the bathroom , I didn’t really have the time (before “Strictly – It takes Two”) to wait the required amount of minutes.

I have this thing about arriving on time. Maybe, just lately, at some of the mid-week church meetings, I arrive not so much on time, but in time. Our new boss at work gave everyone a severe telling off a few weeks ago about the value of punctuality. It doesn’t seem to apply to parties though. We were well early. The only other people who were that early were the immediate family of the birthday girl. Incidentally the birthday girl looks very much like Julia Stiles, and I liked her hair cut.

This party did not really ignite. The venue was huge. There was a huge dance floor. Just about everyone occupied the space between the bar and the last row of tables.

Had I been the DJ I might have just left a very long playing record of the turntable and gone home! Actually, now I think about it…. During my short time in South Africa, I became acquainted with “boom boom buses”. The Indian population travelled about the city in minibuses blaring with music. The bass would be turned up so loud that the bus throbbed with the constant beat. The DJ began with that kind of music. The transition from one song to another was entirely spot on – one booming bass line to another booming base line. I rather thought it was probably what people who are 21 dance to or listen to these days. The 21 year olds present might have been listening, but they weren’t dancing. I snuck a glimpse at the watch to see if I had stayed long enough to not be rude if I left.

It seems to me that, if you are going to have that volume of music you aught to dance because the option of yelling into the ear of the person sitting next to you just doesn’t work! But converse we did!

It would appear that the TV watching world is split between The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. We found a tenuous connection between the two when Joe mentioned having watched the American version of Stictly and Marie Osmond being on it. From there was moved on to talk about Donny (Isn’t he gorgeous?). It was at this point that, had the music not been throbbing so loudly, we would have had more time to follow up on a throw-away comment. It was suggested that Donny’s clean living Mormon lifestyle was something to do with him wearing well, and not looking his age. (I seem to remember mentioning my 50th birthday coming up next March and there was no chorus from the audience “No? Surely not? You don’t look it!”) Anyway, that led the conversation to whether following a religious faith made you “too good”. There was this idea that there was something almost unhealthy about being too good! In their experience, church, or some level of belief in God did not have the same effect on them. They seemed to think that faith should act as a kind of vaccine protecting you from hard times and various disasters. The “Mormon” vaccine appeared to be working for Donny, but for everyone else it didn’t work…and should it work anyway? Aren’t we all better off for the struggles and trials?

What a wonderful opportunity to talk about the realities of faith! I saw it! I recognised the chance given! But I also recognised that I couldn’t compete with the boom boom background. And the DJ announced the buffet was open. Perhaps if there had been no boom boom and no buffet, I would still have kept quiet. They were Joe’s work mates. Maybe it was the wrong venue. They were there to party. And maybe those are just really feeble excuses!

From my experience faith is not a vaccine. It opens you up to a whole load of hard times and disasters that the people of no faith don’t encounter. They don’t worry about God’s silences. They don’t expect prayers to be answered, or people to be healed. God in the equation sometimes generates more questions than it answers!

But “too good”? I wonder if people look at my life and think – “She’s just too good for it to be good for her!” Ask the people I meet at work everyday. They will give you a very clear answer!

Communion

Here am I
Naked before You
Without the make up
To conceal the defects
Without the mask
To cover the flaws
Nothing
To hide

Here am I
Silent before You
No feeble excuses
To explain my failures
No vain boasting
To embellish my achievements
Nothing
To say

Here am I
Laying before You
My dented armour
My battle worn shield
My songs of triumph
My golden crowns
Nothing
To prove

Here am I
Reminded before You
That Your sacrifice
Once for all time
Was always sufficient
To secure my redemption
Nothing
To add

Here I stand
Receiving from You
Transformation
From glory to glory
Expressing Your likeness
Revealing Your image
Everything
Being made new




(c) 2007 Melanie Kerr

Dear Mr L

Last week I received a series of letters from the tax office. The letters were a summary of my tax contributions made over the last five years. It took a while to work out from the columns of numbers that someone was owed money, though I wasn't sure quite who. It turned that I had been paying more tax than I should have done. After all the complicated sums had been done I was due to receive a substantial cheque to cover the overpayment.

The last time this happened was just before Joe and I were married. I had been working part time, but had been taxed as if I were working full time. The cheque for a few hundred pounds came in handy for paying for wedding expenses.

However, it would seem that the tax office didn't know I got married! All the letters I have received from them about the overpayment have been addressed to Miss M Wilkinson. It is painful to have a cheque on my possession that I cannot cash!

I phoned the tax office to explain the problem. They have updated all my details, but I have to send the cheque back to get another one made out to Mrs M Kerr. I wrote a covering letter this afternoon. My creative juices churned and the following poem was enclosed.

Dear Mr L, it breaks my heart
To hand this back to you
I’m sure you’ve done the proper sums
The money’s what I’m due

The details that you have on me
Are somewhat out of date
Since 1992 I’ve found
That married life is great

My family were convinced I was
To be a spinster aunt
On meeting Joseph Kerr, I said
“Apologies, I can’t.”

We married in October on
A cold but sunny day
My maiden name “Miss Wilkinson”
Was carefully put away

I’m Mrs Kerr, to all I know
I have been for a while
And every time I think of that
You know – it makes me smile!

Dear Mr L, please will you send
Another cheque to me
Just change the name to Mrs Kerr
Ecstatic I will be

The day the bank accepts the cheque
And lets me have the cash
You can be sure that to the shops
I do not plan to dash

A brand new boiler’s on the cards
Before the winter chill
The money you are sending me
Would nicely pay the bill!

Unsure of how to prove to you
That what I’ve said is true
A copy of a household bill
Is on its way to you.

Time to remember

We were on our way to church this morning when, out of the blue, my husband announced that he was heading off to the Roman Catholic Church across the river. He had realised that not only was it Remembrance Sunday, it was also 11th November. Our church tends not to mark dates with particular ceremonies. If it hadn’t been 11th specifically, I suppose my husband might have been content to disappear for a few minutes to observe the two minute silence. So we parted company at the corner of the street – him to head down to the river, me to head down the alley to our usual fellowship.

I can remember one year, Joe and I were on our way to Aberdeen. We were following a programme of fertility treatment with tests and stuff. Aberdeen was the nearest fertility treatment centre and it was a case of dropping everything we were doing and heading off if we got a blue line on a testing kit. One of these trips happened on the 11th November we pulled into a lay-by along the route to observe the two minute silence.

Another year, I think it was a fifth year class, asked if they might observe the two minute silence. They had never been known to remain silent for that long, but seeing as they asked, I agreed, drumming it into their heads that they were not to giggle. They were wonderful, but surprisingly enough, there were a number of pupils who had no idea why they were doing it.

One of the best two minute silences, that wasn’t connected to Remembrance Sunday, but the death of Celtic hero Jimmy Johnston, wasn’t a silence at all. It was a two minute cheer and clap! I really thought that was such a wonderful way of remembering someone’s life. I think part of the reasoning was that the opposition fans might not want to observe a silence.

I was thinking about the two minute silence. It is about remembering the sacrifices made by men and women to make the world a safer place. They fought the battles so that I wouldn’t have to.

People argue about the morality of war. Last week, in a discussion about capital punishment, a friend was asked about whether he agreed with the taking of a life. He said that sometimes you have to like in a war time situation. It is not ideal. It is not what anyone wants to do, but sometimes it is unavoidable.

I was thinking about the biggest battle – the one Jesus fought on the cross. He fought the battle against sin and death, and won the victory, so that I would not need to fight that battle myself. I live in the good of his victory. His death and resurrection have secured a relationship with God that I could not otherwise have. He had released into my life the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is nothing wrong with a noisy, praise filled response – the cheering and the clapping – but silence is not to be ignored either!

Sharing our faith

I found this verse in a much longer poem.

"For me 'twas not the truth you taught
To you so clear, to me so dim
But when you came to me you brought
A sense of Him"

(Author unknown)

Pick me!

I was one of those kids at school that never got picked for teams. PE classes would be abject humility when all the players people want on their team have been picked and all that remains are the left-overs. You know that you are not wanted, that you are seen not as an asset but a liability, but the teacher insists that you are chosen! Wearing glasses certainly didn’t help, but being a good six inches smaller than the rest of the class didn’t help either!

That is not to say that I didn’t end up on school teams. We had a house system. I was on the green team – it was named after a forest but the name escapes me. It was competitive – houses had netball teams and hockey teams – both of which I ended up on, not because I was any good at either sport, but because they couldn’t find anyone else to make up the numbers.

I knew they didn’t want me on the team. I very rarely got passed the ball in netball, and if I accidentally ended up with it, I knew I wasn’t allowed to hold it for long! In hockey I was tucked away at the edges of the team – a right wing, or a left wing – somewhere that I could do least damage!

I even remember ending up in a cookery competition, despite having a reputation for not being able to cook. Maybe the person they really wanted on the team was absent that day – but, yet again, they needed someone to make up the numbers. Unfortunately they couldn’t tuck me away in a small space between the fridge and the cooker this time out of harms way. I was required to bake a Victoria sandwich. No amount of butter icing on the top took away from the fact that the sponge had not risen. We lost the competition – but without me, we wouldn’t even have been entered.

No amount of enthusiasm on my part – and despite all my failures – I remained enthusiastic – made up for my obvious lack of ability and skill. But, it was soul destroying – the sound of the groan from the rest of the team when I joined their ranks!

I wonder if there were not a few groans when Jesus introduced Levi, the tax collector to the rest of the disciples. I don’t think anyone of them thought of themselves as great “disciple” material, none of them had any theological training, or “religious” potential – but then, none of them were basically crooks either.

When Peter and Andrew were called to follow Jesus they were promised that they would become fishers of men. When Levi was called it was just “Follow me.” He wasn’t promised anything. When Peter and Andrew were called they left their boats, they didn’t burn them, unlike Elisha who burned his plough and oxen to follow Elijah. If things didn’t pan out, they always had the boat to go back to, and for a short while after the death of Jesus, they did go back. Levi had nothing to go back to. There were plenty of people ready and willing to take up his tax booth. He left, with no promise to claim, and no Plan B if things didn’t work out.

Jesus had strolled along his part of the beach, parked himself within spitting distance of Levi’s tax booth and started teaching the crowds. One wonders what it was Levi overheard that made him not hesitate to follow the call.

There is a part of me that thinks it wasn’t what he heard at all – it was just that Jesus asked him. Jesus wanted him on his team and Levi had never been wanted before - well, not in that sense at least! Jesus is not picking the last team members out of the left-overs. Jesus had his choice of a hundred other men that day – all of them more socially acceptable with nice connections – but he chose Levi. He chose him, not to be another “fisher of men”, or even to be the banker of the group, but simply to be with Him. I think he chose him to show that if Levi, a tax collector and a cheat, can make the grade, there is hope for me too. If Jesus could want someone like Levi simply to be with Him, then maybe he would want me too.

What God has planned

There are some things that God simply intends to do and He does them. God intended to have a temple built in the heart of Israel where His name would be honoured. David had a heart to do it but it was ear-marked as a task for Solomon to fulfil. The temple was built. God fulfilled His plan for a place of worship.

A few months ago, people in our church talked seriously about the need for a Christian café. It was to be the best of cafes, with a good selection of coffees and teas, rivalling big brand names like Costa Coffee and Starbucks. It would be a venue for people to talk about God. We had the heart to do it, but again someone else was ear-marked by God to for the task. Java opened its doors a couple of weeks ago. The music – low key – is Christian. There are tiny slips of paper on the tables with an encouraging Bible verse. The quality of the tea, coffee and cakes is as good as the big brand names. The coffee shop is there. God has fulfilled His plan.

Some time last year, “staff well-being” was a term that was being bandied about and a number of activities were spawned. We had keep-fit classes in the lunchtime, and Indian head massages available on appointment. I thought then, and wrote a suggestion to one of the members of the social committee, that prayer might be another avenue to pursue. It was all very well pursuing the physical well being of the staff, but we should not ignore the rest of our being – the emotional or the spiritual. It was hauled up the flagpole and no one saluted! Years ago, when I was more involved in Scripture Union, I used to meet with others each week to pray. I had forgotten how encouraging I found it!

At break time today I was approached by someone wishing to set up monthly prayer meetings. He was aware that the “family of God” in the workplace needed to encourage each other and in praying together we would accomplish so much that couldn’t be done through ordinary channels and by other means. He wanted to know it I would get involved. I had to restrain myself from hugging him!

There is a sense in which I wish I had stuck with my guns and pushed for a prayer meeting ages ago – but, yet again, I think God has given the task to the right person. The young man was talking to me about going to university to do Theology and voiced some of his concerns about dealing with a very liberal curriculum that might have the potential to destroy his faith.

What God has planned, He makes happen!

Copper Kettles Have Great Potential

Have I finally flipped my lid? Have I been reduced to burbling gibberish at long last? The jury is still out on that one! But, no, this isn’t gibberish. It is mnemonics – memory aids like Richard of York and rainbows, and cats sitting on mats and having hysterics – mathematical formulae!

This morning while spending time with God, I wasn’t exactly bemoaning the end of my holidays and the commencement of a new term. Last night I had read the opening chapter on a book about forgiveness and the writer was talking about how expressing so many negative thoughts was equal to cursing yourself – words have the power of life and death and negative words dont produce positive faith. So I wasn’t grizzling. I was looking for equipping for the day ahead.

What sprang to mind, not out of the blue, but a Spirit led progression of thoughts, was Colossians 3. I am not sure of the verses but it is about clothing yourself – Copper Kettles Have Great Potential – putting on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Often when I think about equipping myself for day ahead, I think in terms of battles and conflict and I am armed to the teeth with every bit of spiritual armour going. And sometimes there are battles to be fought and I am glad of the equipping. This morning, it was the Spirit’s suggestion that I try a different set of clothing – compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. I was dealing with people – not demons – and where strength and dominion and power simply hit a brick wall of hormones, acne and attitude – perhaps there is a better way.

As the Spirit knows, I am full of good intentions, but in the heat of the moment, I react rather than act. I forget the bible verse that I have been meditating on during the day. The first step was to come up with a reminder of what clothing I was wearing – copper kettles have great potential. I am well capable of memorising Bible verses but I am amazed at how often throughout the day one of those words came to mind.

Too often I allow myself to be at the mercy of prevailing winds. I know I have an anchor but it is only when the storm is over that I wonder why I didn’t use it. Today was a step in the right direction to listen to the directing of the Spirit and to adjust the set of the sail throughout the day.

Appealing to the senses

I think I had a vaguely “golden calf” moment this morning in church.

While we were away for a week’s holiday in Paris, we went to see Chartres Cathedral and, later on in the week, the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. Perhaps we overdosed on stained glass windows, frescos, candles and statues. There was so much to appeal to the senses and, for me, for the time I was there, it was not a distraction, but actively heralded me into the presence of God.

Sitting in our Sunday meeting, I was struck by the poverty of the appeal to the senses. There was nothing to look at. There was on overhead projector with the words to the songs – but they were just words on a plain blue screen.

There were no pictures, not statues, no stained glass windows – nothing to appeal to the visual senses. There was nothing really appealing in the music – not a symphony of sound from a variety of instruments – just one man and his guitar (not that he played badly!) I just had an “I-would-like-something-stirring-to-look-at” moment. I remembered the stunning fresco of Jesus holding out his arms on the wall of the Sacre Coeur, and thought why can’t I have something like that to look at?

In my student days I used to attend a small Methodist chapel in a tiny village called Middleton-one-row. They had a fresco painted on the front wall. I was just thinking whether it was a stained glass window – but, no, it was a painting. It was contemporary. I am not even sure that I can remember exactly what it was, it was a long time ago. There was a rainbow, a dove, a cross, green fields, blue skies – no Jesus, no angels. It was uplifting and it was constantly in front of you. It did not distract from worship.

A number of years ago I read a book that went through each of the Ten Commandments. The one about graven images was not so much about distraction, but more about how much they limit what God would like us to see. As with the words on an overhead projector screen sometimes binding our hearts, rather that loosing them, when it comes to singing praises, statues and frescos can do much the same. For some people, they never see beyond the marble or the bronze. They focus on the physical, visible things and they never connect with the invisible.

There was almost a gentle reprimand from the Spirit saying “Is that really what you want to see? You want to settle for a picture to gaze upon when you should experience an encounter with the creator of the universe?” I don’t doubt that the one can’t lead to the other – I have experienced it. The one doesn’t always lead to the other – I have experienced that too! The other – the encounter, doesn’t need the picture to make it happen – only the right heart attitude.

God told me to look around at the other worshippers. Hands raised high, heads bowed down – whatever their posture, these people were meeting with God – and so was I!

Throwing caution to the wind

I am a “Strictly Come Dancing” fan. Every so often my husband and I talk about joining a dance class but it has happened yet!

To get in the mood for the new series I watched the American version last week. It is called “Dancing With the Stars”. The format is pretty much the same, but the Americans seem to be more concerned with entertainment value that getting it right stepwise. Facial expressions seem to go a long way with the crowd, rather than the “hold” and the synchronised footwork.

Once upon a time I used to be a Donny Osmond fan. What do I mean “once upon a time”? I still am a Donny Osmond fan. I would have loved to have gone on the TV programme “Identity” not because I am good at guessing anyone’s identity, but just so I can feel his arm across my shoulder!

Donny’s sister Marie is on “Dancing With the Stars”. I used to follow their show way back in the seventies or the eighties, and I even bought her album “Paper Roses”. I just wanted to see what she was like.

I was impressed. Not with the dancing so much as the spirit with which she got involved. She threw herself whole heartedly into the dances. I think it was the mamba or the rumba they were dancing this week. Whatever the name of the dance – she was required to be sexy and flirtacious. I have seen older ladies in Strictly just not be able to pull it off with these kind of dances. One cringes somewhat as they try to look luscious and curvy. It is painful. Marie was simply saucy! She just threw caution to the wind and she was sensational.

She did not play it safe or cautious. OK she has been in the entertainment business for a while, but she was just fearless.

She has joined the ranks of the women that I admire. I would like to take on board a less cautious approach to life! I like every base covered, every tee crossed and eye dotted, in triplicate, weeks in advance, with Plan B in place just in case. I don’t go into things without some assurance that I will come out at the other end in tact and more mature in some way. I don’t like unpredictable and messy, but delight in order and routine!

I am not as courageous as I used to be. Is that because I am getting older? Is it because I value personal comfort far too highly? I don’t know… I just feel that I need to cast off the cobwebs!

Life in the Spirit

I have to admit that I have found this week to be quite a struggle. Part of the problem has been the absence of my husband who had been away to a training week in Glasgow. Partly I just did not always act in a wise manner and reaped the consequences!

I just dug in real deep with Jesus and spent much more time in His presence. One morning, while reading Romans 8, I was stirred to not just read it is out loud, but to make it personal too. I wrote down each line as a personal declaration.

I am not under condemnation.
I am set free by the law of the Spirit of life.
I can fulfil the righteous requirements of the law because I live according to the Spirit, not according to my sinful nature.
I am controlled by the Spirit.
The Spirit lives in me.
My body is dead because of sin yet alive because of righteousness.
The Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in me.
I receive life in my mortal body through the Spirit who lives in me.
I am not obligated to live according to my sinful nature.
By the Spirit I put to death the misdeeds of the body.
As I am led by the Spirit I demonstrate that I am a child of God.
The Spirit I have received does not make me a slave to fear.
I can confidently call God, “Daddy.”
As a child of God, I am also and heir of God.
I share in his sufferings that I might also share in his glory.

Did I feel better afterwards? That was what I was looking for after all – to feel cheered up! Well, actually no. I was almost treating it like a spell or a magical formula! I could almost see the Spirit shaking His head. This was not about me being cheered up, but about being built up, being reminded of wonderful truths that the situation that I faced couldn’t dismantle.

I would like to say that I did as the Spirit asked – combined the reading of them with faith to make them active in my heart – but I rushed out to work for another bruising day!

I got it right eventually!

Insomnia

The last time Joe and I went down south to visit my family, I spent a few minutes in the local health shop, holding a bottle of sleeping tablets in my hand. I was torn between buying them, taking them and having a wonderful night’s sleep and then never being able to have a decent night’s sleep without taking them, or buying them, taking them and not having a wonderful night’s sleep and feeling half asleep the next day. As the car driver in the family, I feel the need to be alert and refreshed!

It all mostly menopausal and in ten years time I shall be fine no doubt! I don’t know how I turned out to be such a fussy sleeper. I spent my formative years sharing either a bed with my sisters or at least a room packed with two sets of bunks.

I need the room to be entirely dark. Any gaps in the curtain that allow splashes of light on the walls drive me nuts!

I need the room to be insect free! I can cope with a spider on the wall, but not on the ceiling. I read somewhere – yes, the dangers of teaching someone like me to read – that spiders walk across your face while you are asleep! I freak out when there is a daddy long legs, that’s crane fly to you, in the room. It is the wispy nature of the legs that frighten me. I am sure that they are waiting until the light goes off to flop on my face! It happened once!

I need to be quite cool. I can’t sleep when I am hot. Strangely enough it is just the one leg that gets overheated. I had a DVT some years ago and it had left the ankle and calf looking bruised and discoloured. It is that bit of that leg that heats up and itches!

Finally I need quiet! I don’t have ears that accept earplugs readily. When I was younger I used to find comfort in the rumble of the immersion heater in the cupboard of our bedroom. I was convinced that there was a lion in the cupboard and as long as the lion was roaring, I was safe. Once the immersion heater switched itself off, the lion was sleeping and all manner of crocodiles swam under the bed! What an imagination! I wish the rumble of my husband’s snoring as a comfort! Bless him, he gets nudged and pushed and prodded, told to turn over and face the other way. I don’t know who is more relieved when I go and find somewhere else to sleep – him or me? In a hotel there is nowhere else to go!

I am glad that research seems to show that as we get older we need a lot less sleep. I find that encouraging as I am getting a lot less sleep than I would like!