Spring Cleaning

I am thinking about spring cleaning – not about the act of spring cleaning, so all the dust bunnies can stop hopping about in anxiety. I am thinking more in the abstract, the concept of spring cleaning if you will. Actually to be more accurate I am thinking not so much about spring cleaning as about Lent, that period of time that leads up to Easter, that begins with pancakes and ends with chocolate Easter eggs, although technically I think Lent ends on Maunday Thursday.

I am not quite sure just what it is about Lent that has caught my imagination. I am a member of a church that seems to bypass the traditional Christian year. Celebrating Lent is one of those bypassed events, and I suppose if it is done in the sense of being religious and legal and ticky-boxy, it is well left. Lent is about springtime, and about the days lengthening, and there is a spring cleaning aspect to it. It is not so much the physical house with three bedrooms and a fitted kitchen, but the body being a temple of the Holy Spirit, and giving that a clean out.

I remember a great clean out. It might have been in 1987. It was my final year of living and working in Cyprus. A friend from the church I attended there was waiting for the delivery of a new car. I don’t think it was brand new, straight off the factory conveyor belt, but just new to her house. I seem to remember that cars over in Cyprus lasted forever – the blessings of being rain free for almost all the year.

We tend to treat new things much better than we treat our old things. The new car was destined for the garage, rather than just being left on the drive, or on the road. The garage, was full of stuff. It wasn’t junk stuff, just stuff. Junk stuff was kept in the shed, not the garage. The shed was a very sturdy building made of corrugated iron sheets bolted together. It was not dilapidated in any way but it did house junk stuff, as opposed to not junk stuff. The plan was to empty the shed of the junk stuff and move the garage stuff into the shed.

There was nothing in the shed that was anything other than junk, so it was all taken away to the tip, leaving the shed empty – apparently. It certainly looked empty to the casual viewer. Before we moved the garage stuff into the shed, my friend decided to clean it up a bit. It wasn’t a case of digging out a brush and dustpan, but switching on a water hose. In the hot weather it took only a little time to dry things.

She played the water along the top of one of the inside walls. It was very dusty and cobwebs hung artistically everywhere. Within minutes, it looked as if the very walls were undulating gently, moving, alive. Down the walls, and out of the door trailed a steady stream of very small, very wet mice. There were dozens of them. It was like wave, after wave, after wave of mice making for somewhere dry.

I had been standing in the doorway when the exodus occurred. I didn’t have time to step out of the way. Truth be told, I was rather gob-smacked. I felt the tickle of the wet little bodies and they streamed over my feet encased in strappy sandals. The idea of moving was considered, but rejected. I was not happy for them to be running over my feet, but less happy with the idea of stepping on them. After a few minutes the stream died down to just the odd mouse here and there, maybe the less sprightly mice or the mice that has stayed a little bit longer to pack a few essentials before being evicted.

What looked to be empty – that shed without all the junk – was anything but empty, but it took a jet of water to shift the inhabitants.

I am a hoarder by nature. My junk is just junk with one or two vaguely valuable items thrown in. I live with my junk. Every so often a purge happens. Some call it spring cleaning – but as it rarely happens in the springtime in my house I just call it cleaning.

I wonder about the other junk – the stuff inside my spirit. Lent seems to be the perfect opportunity not just to give up chocolate, or some other delicious vice, but also a chance to get rid of some of the junk. What comes to mind are old hurts and upsets, fragments of conversations that are not worth remembering, silly and superstitious ideas, the brownie point mentality.

Skeleton Stories

Week 5 of my on line writing course has moved on to skeleton stories – bare bones stories. No subtleties, straight forward motives, a linear narrative and morality seen in black and white. A beginning, middle and an end and not too much fleshed out, I guess. I wrote my story and posted it.

As a writer you invent people all the time, or places or objects. What is especially great is when the things you invent are convincingly real. I can remember in a Faithwriter’s challenge describing a sculpture in a gallery. So convinced were the readers that they wanted me to either post a photo of the sculpture or tell me which gallery it was in so they could visit. It didn’t exist in real life and, yet again, I wished that I had a more tactile talent so that I could actually create it.

Here’s my skeleton story – If you think you have read it before, I did borrow the story idea from a past Faithwriter’s challenge. Don’t you think my ibby worms are gorgeous?

The Laughter Thief

Zandrick woke up one morning to discover his deep throated belly laugh, the one that made his side ache and his eyes water, had gone missong. He looked under the chairs and around the table. He checked the books on the shelf, all sixty two of them. He even looked behind the tapestry above the fire place.

From noon till dusk he visited some of his favourite places to see if he had left his laugh somewhere. He checked beside the bench beneath the chestnut tree in the village green. He had been watching children stamping in puddles and joined in their laughter. He searched carefully but his laugh wasn’t there. He walked beside the river, watching the sun wink at him on the water. He’d laughed at butterflies and the summer sunshine warm on his back. His laugh wasn’t in the grass by the bank. He looked under the bridge where the men in the barges walked their feet along the low curve of the tunnel roof but his laugh wasn’t there either. Finally, he went the hat shop on Briant Street. All the ridiculous hats he had tried on were still on their stands. The mirror on the counter was still there. He opened a few of the drawers, stuffed full with ribbons, just in case his laugh had somehow fallen inside, but it wasn’t there.

Head hanging heavily like a millstone, Zandrcik walked wearily home. He stopped off at the shop to buy a small pork pie.

“Not another one that can’t raise a smile!” said Picclalet from behind the counter. “I do declare we must have a laughter thief in our midst!” Counting on his fat sausage fingers, Piccalet listed all the people he had seen that day who had lost their laughs.

Now, Little Couton, just beyond the bend in the river, had been plagued by a laughter thief last spring. Someone had snuck into people’s houses and stole their laughter while they slept. A good thief could make a great deal of money selling laughter to people who had nothing to laugh about.

Zandrick quaked at the thought of his own deep throated belly laugh booming out of someone else’s mouth, making someone else’s sides ache and someone else’s eyes water. What he needed was a plan to catch the thief. He stared at a tiny spot just above Piccalet’s left eyebrow. Then, he had it!

“A large can of ibby worms, please!” Zandrick tipped a pile of coins onto the counter.

Ibby worms, hailed as the fishermen’s friends, giggled hysterically when tossed into water. The fish swam close to see what was so funny, and all that was needed was a net to scoop them out of the water. Everyone knew that fish caught smiling tasted so much better than one’s caught with a line and hook.

Zandrick threw his worms into a large bucket of water, and ran behind a stack of wood beside his back door. The worms began to giggle. Raucous laughter spilled from the bucket filling the air.

Suddenly a dark shadow slipped in through the open gate drawn by the laughter, just like the fish in the river. Zandrick was upon him, engulfing him in the folds of the tapestry taken down from above the fireplace.

The scuffle was short. Zandrick struck the thief solidly on the head with a piece of wood and began to peel back the folds of the tapestry. A wiry little fellow with thick bushy eyebrows was clutching a big black bag. The thick material of the bag muffled the sounds inside. Zandrick opened it, careful not to spill any of its contents. There were a dozen light titters, a loud ho ho, a playful ha or two, a sprinkling of mirthful hee hees and a couple of snorting honks. There in the bottom of the sack Zandrick could hear his own deep throated belly laugh, the one that made his sides ache and his eyes water.

Tinnitus

One day
He will lean close
And whisper in my ear
Shh

And all the rumbles
And buzzes
And bells
And howls
And hoots
And hums will
Shh

It has been a particularly bad day today. Perhaps it is my cold that had raised the volume of the ringing and buzzing. The background noise that I can usually live with took centre stage. All other sounds were mere whispers in comparison. People can’t hear the sounds that I hear. They don’t realise that they have competition for my attention.

Heaven

“In the vast expanse of a timeless place, Where silence ruled the outer space…” are the opening lines to Carman’s “The Champion”.

When I first moved up to Inverness, I came as part of a gospel outreach team. Someone in the church was into mime, so he choreographed a mime to “The Champion”. It sets the battle of good and evil, Jesus and Satan, in a boxing ring. There’s music in the background and a Charlton Heston-like voice over commentary. I got to be a demon stalking around the stage threateningly, when I would have preferred to be a saint looking pious and holy.

Last night I had a dream in the genre of Carman. It featured the same kind of music in the background, and the voice commentary – given by the actors involved rather than Charlton Heston. It was a church group performing it, in a very small room. It was just early days of a rehearsal. No one really knew their lines – well, the one person that didn’t know their lines was me. I had a whole scene to myself – I was playing God. I was being prompted by the director, who had to virtually recite my lines for me, and have me repeat them after her. She seemed a little bit annoyed that I didn’t know my lines like the rest of the cast. I told her that I was older than the rest of the cast, and that as God I had a lot of lines to learn.

I decided the night of the next rehearsal to ad-lib rather than go with the lines I was supposed to learn. I knew vaguely the main points and the order in which they came. It was a memorable performance. I used all those big words – omniscient, and omnipotent, and I had a Charlton Heston boom. But there was something more than just the words. I was speaking truth to the audience. As I was walking the stage, my spirit was searching for just the right words to say.

It wasn’t a performance, but there were people sitting in the seats. There weren’t many seats, but they were all full. I turned to one person, and as if I were speaking personally as God, I told them that I had been their watching as they were formed in their mother’s womb. Nothing about them was hidden from me. To someone else I told them that there was no one else qualified to sit on the throne of heaven but me. They thought that Satan was an equal adversary, like matched fighters in a boxing ring, that he was qualified to rule – but he wasn’t and would never be. I really wish I could quote line for line, rather than the sense of it. It was spine tingly awesome.

I woke up, most miffed to not be there anymore. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back into my dream. It didn’t happen.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Heaven,” came the reply. “Everyday you need to parade heaven before a watching world, through your words and actions. There is no stage – just your neighbourhood, your workplace, your home. There is no audience – just the people you meet every day. They need to encounter a God that is omnipotent, a God that watched them being formed in their mother’s womb, a God that will not share power and glory with another. They need to see the amazing greatness of God – through you.”

Gladness

This is part two of one of my assignments for a creative writing class. Part one was to write down ten things that made me angry this week – not in a short few words, but a little more descriptive. Part two are the things that made me glad. Here we go:-

• Someone wrote to ask my permission to use one of my poems in a sermon they were going to preach. They have just got back to me that the congregation appreciated the simplicity and depth of the poem.

• The sound of Joe’s voice on the telephone brings a smile to my face.

• My sister in law has a small cottage industry – although she lives not in a cottage at all, but a flat in Glasgow. She compiles hampers – lots of little gifts and nick-nacks in a pretty box, cellophane wrapper and a big bow. She gave me a pamper hamper. From the top of my head (shampoo) to the sole of my foot (a pumice stone) I am ready for pampering.

• I sat down this morning, and asked God to talk to me through His word and He did! The passage was so familiar, and as with all familiar things, I wondered if I would see something new and challenging – and I did.

• Dunfermline 2-4 Celtic means that my husband is glad, which in turn makes me glad. Watching Celtic play is never easy on the heart. My fears for Tony Mowbray’s job security were unfounded.

• I saw my friend Kathryn today. I had been praying for her regularly, and from what she shared with me, some of my prayers for her were spot on. The temptation to isolate ourselves when things are not going well, is something that we all have to deal with.

• Playing footsie in bed with Joe, wrapping my toes around his, what delight!

• Snowdrops in my garden tell me quietly that winter is nearly over and spring is most definitely on the way. It reminds me of the last verse of a poem I wrote:-

Beneath the cosy coverings
Of hats and scarves
I catch the scent of new growth
Discarding the layers
I skip and dance through puddles
And spring rainbows

• Discovering that not all birds fly south in winter. Not for me a glimpse of a single robin posing on a snow-decked gatepost as I walked to church this afternoon, but a whole tree’s worth of birds, sitting on branches, swapping noisy gossip. It was a bit like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Birds” minus the silence and the threat.

• I ate a Bounty Bar! My only regret is that I wasn’t standing in front of the weight machine at Tesco when I did it.

Madness

One of my assignments for a creative writing class was to write down ten things that made me angry this week – not in a short few words, but a little more descriptive. Here are mine:

• A paper aeroplane lightly tossed from the back of the room, retrieved and unfolded revealed itself to be the last page of someone’s workbook. The single passenger on the plane, seated in economy class was a well chewed blob of chewing gum.

• No one asks to borrow a pencil anymore. It has to be a “writing implement”. And they have to ask for it in French. And they stick it in their pocket afterwards and walk away with it.

• The car (why doesn’t someone just steal it?) is booked in for major surgery and an MOT tomorrow. There was almost a confession box feel to the encounter with the mechanic. “Forgive me, Mr Mechanic, for I have sinned…It has been almost one year since my last MOT…I confess that I have neglected to check the tyres regularly or top up the oil. There may be little or no anti freeze in the water and the last time the car got a decent wash was some time in the summer…”

• By the time I had meticulously untied all the knots between the plastic carrier bags of the Chinese takeaway order, everything had gone cold! And the diet coke was missing!

• No one seems to be reading anything that I write!

• A curious flashing green light on the new telephone ignited in me a sense of panic that refused to be ignored. The instruction book to tell me what to do was nowhere to be found.

• I haven’t won the lottery. I never win the lottery. The winning numbers edge up close to my numbers, touching sometimes, but they are never my numbers. The advert that says “It could be you!” should tell the truth and confess “It’s statistically unlikely to be you.”

• Those individual portions of tomato ketchup, brown sauce, mayonnaise or mustard should be replaced with the bottle version. This morning, while trying to wrestle open a tomato ketchup one, the sachet split open, spitting sauce bullet-speed not on to anyone’s chips, but across the table and into my hair!

• The weight machine at Tesco not only got my weight WRONG – two pound heavier despite being mostly good - but it also managed to knock of an inch from my height. Apparently I am shrinking, but not where I want to be! The scales are NOT my friend.

• Ross County pounded Sterling Albion with a 9-0 victory. I support neither team but feel rather like Sterling Albion these days. There may be no own goals, but a lots of the enemy’s shots are on target and hitting the back of the net.

• Silence angers me. That you never told me…that I never asked…that I never told you…that you never asked…that we never spoke at all…and all the time I had the answer to your needs…and you had the answer to mine…but we struggled on alone.

The things that maade me happy, the second part of the assignment, are on their way....

Chilling

“As Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next Sabbath. When the congregation was dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue in the grace of God.” Acts 13:42-43

I am not a loiterer. My daily life is punctuated by bells that ring mostly every forty minutes and time is compartmentalized. Every minute is not idly squandered but assigned a task. Yes, there is a bit of the control freak about me. In the effort to make sure that every base is covered, and every reaction from the young people I encounter is anticipated and planned for…life gets regimented!

Sometimes it spills out in the evening, this careful management of time. An hour gets assigned to the ironing pile, an half an hour to washing up, ten minutes here or there to sort out the veggie box, or toss out the rotting salad in the fridge.

I give a half hour here, an hour here…and when things run over time I am not comfortable. I am not as bad as I used to be!

Reading in Acts 13 last night, I could picture the scene – the sermon over and done with, the blessing spoken, everyone leaving to go home and have lunch…there was a crowd congregating around Paul and Barnabas wanting to talk further, reluctant to let the conversation end.

It brought to mind a sentence in the Old Testament. Please don’t ask me to try and track it down. Moses and Joshua were in the tent of meeting. Then Moses left to go and do stuff – an hour of ironing, perhaps. The next little bit says that Joshua stayed. He didn’t go off to do his pile of ironing, or whatever. He stayed with God in the tent of meeting. It doesn’t tell you anything of the conversation – just that Joshua stayed.

It occurred to me that I don’t stay! Obviously in my morning quiet times, there is a limit to how long I can stay. On an evening though, my time with God, when it happens gets the same time allocation as any other task – the single half hour, or hour. And if I think I have heard what I need to hear I will perhaps break off the conversation.

I luxuriated last night in a non-timed, non-clock watched time with God. My need for God stemmed out of a difficult week that had left me feeling a little battered. The need to just “be” was strong in my mind. I was also thinking of a word for Sunday. It’s my turn and what with the week’s traumas, I hadn’t felt like I had been listening much.

I meditated on recent passages I had read, prayed about various issues on my heart and I listened to a worship tape. I stayed. I didn’t fret about all the other things I could have been doing, I just stayed.

By the end of the evening, I felt on an even keel once more. I was no surer of a word for Sunday. This was not a meeting to discuss strategy and plans, or to direct the next phase of operations. It was chill out time – so I chilled. As God reminded me – the point was not to put the world to rights (except mine perhaps) but simply to be with Him.

Keep it Simple!

It was last Sunday during a discussion on Acts 8 that a friend of ours commented on how simple things can be and yet how complicated we make it – faith-wise.

At the end of the chapter we encounter the Ethiopian official going home after worshipping at Jerusalem. He was sitting in his chariot, struggling to understand a passage in Isaiah. God teams him up with Philip. He told the Ethiopian the good news about Jesus.

“As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?”

I think there are more than a few church ministers who would be thinking in terms of come kind of commitment course for a few weeks, or a Bible foundation class, or an Alpha course…something where they could evaluate whether the response to the gospel was genuine. We complicate it all – even though we may be acting in all sincerity. The Ethiopian became God’s responsibility, not Philip’s.

I was thinking about my tendency to complicate things this morning. I had been reading n from Acts 8 during the week and had come to the end of chapter 10, with Peter and Cornelius.

In v26 Peter says, “You know…” How did they know? How did Peter know that they knew?

The events that had happened with Jesus in Judea and Galilee had happened in another country. It is amazing how what happens in our country may not really make the news elsewhere. Apparently England might know all the details of a football match against Germany that they lost decades ago, but the Germans are more concerned about a match they played against Holland in the same tournament! What mattered to Peter in Judea, that had been personally life changing for him, might not have stirred anyone else a couple of hundred miles away.

My initial reaction was to assume the Peter was operating in the gift of discernment. He personally didn’t know what Cornelius knew, but it was revealed to him by the Spirit. I think I even started praying that I would pursue, more zealously the gifts of the Spirit, at which point I think God guffawed in heaven, and His throne room shook with divine mirth!

“Mel,” He said patiently, “Just how long did it take Peter to travel from where he was to where Cornelius was?”

“A day?” was my reply, not quite sure where the conversation was heading.

“And who was he traveling with? Cornelius’ servants, right? What do you supposed they talked about? They had a whole day of traveling in front of them. I would imagine that Peter asked as many questions as he could to find out what he was walking into. So when he said, “You know…” he knew what they knew because he had made it his business to find out what they knew. He knew because he had asked.”

Some things may be hidden from us and, perhaps then, we need to operate in the gift of discernment. Most times asking and answering will do it!

Keep it simple!

The Sanctuary of God

“When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God;” Psalm 73:16-17

Quite what it was yesterday that put me out of sorts wasn’t down to just one thing.

• A favourite skirt I planned to wear no longer fits comfortably! I used to have to put a safety pin in the waistband to keep it from falling down!

• I ran out of teabags! This might not seem like an issue. I need my daily dose of caffeine and I wasn’t getting it. Decaf teabags just don’t do the job required!

• The footpaths around the estate melting and freezing over successive days are fast becoming like ice rinks. My middle name is neither Torvill nor Dean.

• The bus driver didn’t hear the “ping” when I pushed the “stop” button. The next stop, in the city centre is a ten minute walk from work.

• The bus I had to catch to get to a Bible Study at a friend’s house after work was going to pass by my house. I wanted so much to stay on the bus and go home!

• At the Bible study a friend asked me how my poetry project was going. If poetry was like the digestion system of the human body – I am poetically constipated!

• My darling hubbie is away on a business trip and I am missing him. Coming home to an empty house is sad.

By the time I got home, I felt frazzled! I was surprised not to see myself coming apart at the seams. I wanted to cry, not for any specific reason but just because I felt out of sorts.

What I did do in the end was a pile of washing up in the kitchen. It always helps to bring order somewhere, in someplace where nothing fights me, or answers back with a smart comment.

Then I heard God tell me to come and sit with Him and tell him about my day! So I went into the sanctuary – the front room, legs up on the sofa, a cup of coffee on the table and a Bible on my knee.

I don’t think I really made any resolutions, but well into the first few days of January it did seem like I was establishing some very good habits. I was spending time in the word and my prayer life was improving. And then just three days back at work and everything was falling apart! What works in holiday time may not be so easy to maintain once you are back at work.

Just like the ice outside had melted somewhat, I felt the hard core of frustration begin to melt as I sat with God. There was a continual sense of a wave of wellbeing washing over me, as he reminded me that He loved me. Most times that is all I need to know.

Defintions

I came across a very sad tale this morning.

In 1938, a German merchant vessel sank in a storm in the North Atlantic. A lone sailor survived floating on a mattress. A British ship came by and came in close to pick up the sailor, even though it wasn’t the safest of manoeuvres. Someone on deck threw a life belt out to him. However, the sailor, realising that it was a British ship, an enemy of Germany turned away. His mattress sank and so did he.

The sailor chose to ignore the life belt because he defined the British as his enemy, and refused to change his definition even in the face of death.

I was reading the end section of Acts 9. Life had become unsafe for Saul in Damascus, and in the middle of the night he was lowered in a basket through a hole in the city wall. He travelled to Jerusalem to join the apostles, but got a very cool reception. They weren’t convinced that he was genuine in his faith.

The apostles chose to cold shoulder Saul because they had defined him as the enemy and were almost prepared to hold on to that definition, even though they had heard that he had changed.

It took Barnabas to stand with Saul to make them change their minds.

Supposing Saul, or Paul after his name change, had been allowed to walk away. Supposing the apostles hadn’t been challenged by Barnabas to change their definition – would we have Paul’s marvellous letters to the churches today? Would there still have been all those challenging missionary journeys with Barnabas, and later Silas? Would there have been a prison cell in Rome for Paul, and the letters he wrote there, and his example that he set?

How easily God’s plans for Paul could have been derailed even before they began! I am glad that Barnabas was there to make it happen!

A church that I attended for five years in Limassol, Cyprus had some very strong definitions about certain things. The activity of the Holy Spirit, in terms of the ministry of the gifts, was defined as something for the early church only. Their experience of Holy Spirit led ministry had been uncomfortable, touchy-feely and not, they felt, rooted in scripture, so they defined it as wrong. Even lifting a hand during whilst singing a hymn, or praying, was discouraged.

I am challenged about the definitions that I hold about things. How do I define church, for example? My mother was voicing concerns that now her church is growing, it is feeling less like a family. My own church remains very small and is like a close family and yet I long for a bigger church. So much of our church’s impact is out in the world – healing on the streets, Street pastors and housing the homeless – and yet I complain because no-one preaches a gritty sermon! My definition of church is outdated and self centred and needs to change.

And how do I define myself? I guess that puts me back with Stephen and Philip in Acts 6-8.

No limits

I treated myself to a new daily Bible reading study book. I am not one of these people who very faithfully work their way through them month in month out. I can get very “religious” about it all, and think in terms of earning my brownie points if I keep up. I know what I am like.

This one starts off in the Book of Acts. We had been working our way through Acts in our church meetings, but somehow came to a full stop at Acts 8. Acts 7 was good with Stephen, his stroll through Jewish history and his martyrdom. Acts 9 is good sermon material because you are into Saul/Paul and then Barnabas and missionary journeys. Acts 8 has a lot of things happening. It is the stepping stone from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth that Acts 1:8 promised.

What I like about Philip, and what I liked about Stephen, is that they were not defined by the roles assigned to them. They stepped in to make sure that no one was being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. The apostles didn’t think they should neglect the ministry of the Word to wait on tables. Philip and Stephen were among the “waiters” but they did not allow a label to limit what they could do. Stephen preached an amazing sermon that showed such a depth of knowledge and understanding that was as good as anything that the apostles had preached. Waiting on tables did not bar them from ministering the Word too.

Joe and I are hosting the Sunday meeting. The church leaders are away on holiday and will not be back in time. We were talking this morning about what we were going to do. A blank sheet of paper, a bit of blue sky thinking, no ideas rejected outright. Joe is quite happy to wait on tables and let someone else minister the Word. I am quite happy to minister the Word if someone tells me the subject matter or the Bible passage. We both limit ourselves in some way.

Philip impresses me because not only did he not limit himself, but he pushed himself to go to places other people didn’t go to. With the persecution, people were scattered, but I bet you they still avoided going to Samaria. Samaritans and Jews had a history and neither side liked the other. Travelling from Galilee in the north, to Jerusalem in the south, the Jews would go around Samaria rather than through it.

Philip doesn’t go around it. Just as he doesn’t put limits on what he can do, he doesn’t put any limits on where he can go. Jesus has been to Samaria and talked to a woman at a well, and through his conversation with her affected a whole village. Since then, no missionary teams had gone there to consolidate what Jesus began. It was just a one off.

Philip picked up the mantle that Jesus dropped just the other side of the Samaritan border. To get to the ends of the world, perhaps you have to start with the next door neighbour! The nest door neighbour isn’t the easiest of person to talk to given the history – but Philip refused to allow history to limit who he spoke to.

He did not put any limit on what he did, where he went or who he spoke to. He was a man that God could use – and God used him. Nothing that happened in the first few chapters of Acts happened outside of Jesus’ named disciples and apostles. Then there was Stephen preaching and being stoned for his message…and then there was Philip widening the net of who God used to take His message one step closer to the ends of the earth!

And then there was me. No limits?

Fighting for the Lentils

It is amazing how some very powerful little stories, simply because they are little, just a verse or two, slip through the net when you are reading the Bible in a year, three or four chapters a day.

One of my favourite characters who just gets the one verse, not really a story at all, is Baruch in Nehemiah 3:20. I just love the enthusiasm he displays in building his bit of the wall around Jerusalem. I am not sure that I would like to be building next to him. I am not sure that I wouldn’t find his enthusiasm just a little bit daunting. It makes me wonder when I am in an enthusiastic phase of life whether I make people feel that way. You don’t get the impression that he slowed things down or toned things down to make the people around him happy.

On Sunday we were introduced to another enthusiastic man. 2 Samuel 23 identifies some of David’s mighty men and v11-12 has a little tale of Shammah.

"Next to him was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines banded together at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel's troops fled from them. But Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field. He defended it and struck the Philistines down, and the LORD brought about a great victory.”

If someone climbed over my garden fence and pulled up stalks of rhubarb – that’s the only edible thing growing in my garden – would I take a spade and hit the man over the head to protect my rhubarb patch? Probably not! It’s just rhubarb. It’s not people. It’s something that I wash, chop up, stew with a touch of sugar and serve with my porridge for breakfast. It’s not something to fight over…or is it?

My step father had an allotment, a strip of land in a field that he grew vegetables on. There was nothing exotic growing there, and there were no prize winning marrows. It was just vegetables to feed the family and what we couldn’t eat, he gave away. There was a locked gate into the allotment field, but very often someone would take a wrench to the lock and then help themselves to the crops. It had taken time to clear the land of rock and stones, weeds and slugs. It had taken time to dig, and hoe, and plant and water, to debug and protect the baby plants from frost. And then someone breaks the lock, enters the field and steals the harvest.

The Israelites were continually being raided by the Philistines. This was the Promised Land, given to them by God. Everything they planted and nurtured was being stolen by raiders. This time the field wasn’t a big one, the crop wasn’t a precious one…but Shammah had had enough. So he drew a line in the lentils and challenged the Philistines to cross it!

The rest of the Israelite army had fled, but Shammah stayed and fought over a field of lentils. The rest of the Israelites didn’t think the field was worth fighting over, but Shammah did – it was part of the land God had given them and should not be surrendered no matter how small. How big does it have to be before it is big enough to fight for? How small does it have to be before it is surrendered? Every square yard mattered to Shammah and he made his stand.

There were bigger things beyond the lentil field – the vineyards, the fields of grains, family homes, wives and children. Let them take the lentil field and they are much closer to the bigger, more valuable stuff. Stop them at the lentil field and all the rest is secure.

The enemy wants to steal my harvest! He wants to rob me of my fruit! He was to see me spiritually under-nourished. He wants to take the land off me that God has given. He want to get to the bigger stuff, the more valuable stuff.

Fight for the lentils and the rest is secure.

Stirring the Gunpowder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Day is Enough

We were down to the last roll of toilet paper and my husband was looking longingly at the pages of some old second hand books that could be put to use. The snow was inches deep everywhere. There was no evidence left that we had cleared the front path earlier in the week. It looked like it was time to dig out the boots and make a trail to the local shop.

I picked up the camera thinking that I might be able to take some fancy snow pictures. I used to take lots of pictures when I was younger and worked my way up the camera hierarchy. Then I saw my brother Mike’s pictures and gave up trying. I have a simple point and click thing and I have never taken the time to read the manual properly! I have settled for “will-do” results figuring that the how-to-take-a decent-photo gene was all Mike’s.

Housing estates are not up to much in terms of scenery, even with a blanket of snow everywhere. Anywhere scenic is too far away to get to with the snow making many roads impassable.

It is amazing how much more carefully you look at things when you have a camera in your hand. I was looking up at the roofs of the houses, with their rows upon rows of icicles hanging down. The shadows of sunlight through bare branched trees were very pretty. I was looking for a robin to pose obligingly on the top of a snow capped garden gate but that didn’t happen!

Without the camera in my hand I would not have looked at things as closely as I did. It made the journey to the local shop a much more interesting one.

I wish I could train myself to be more observant, to take an interest in what happens all around me. How many things do I miss seeing because I have a head down, hands in pockets, marching from one thing to the next kind of attitude to life?

I was sitting down this morning thinking about changes in attitude and action – the New Year resolution thing. I think I almost heard God groan, push back the legs of the throne, scraping it along the gold tiles of the throne room, muttering something about coming back later when I was all done.

“OK, so it’s New Year, and yes, a new decade…but do we have to do this? Can’t you just make the change for one day, and then try it the next day…just one day at a time?”

One day is enough.

So, today I am going to remind myself to lift up my head, take my hands out of my pockets and take an interest in what happens all around me. I will seek to be more observant.

And then I will try and do the same tomorrow!

One day is enough.

When Heaven Invades Earth

A friend of mine told me that the Wesley Owen Christian bookshop in town was closing down and so I got up early to go and look for bargains. I have so many books already, some half read, some unread, some with interesting titles, some that months ago seemed to speak into my life…I really didn’t need another book, but I bought one anyway.

“When Heaven Invades Earth – a practical guide to a life of miracles.” I bought it because I thought reading it would help me to catch up with where some of my friends are in terms of anticipating God showing up everywhere and doing miraculous things.

It’s not that I don’t think God does that – it’s just that I have had recent experience of God apparently not turning up and doing miraculous things.

It seems to me that, having read the first chapter of the book, that some of the miraculous things that God does are unimportant things. An account where someone had one leg an inch shorter than the other, and people pray and watch the short leg grow – a short leg is not life threatening. It is inconvenient, yes, but no one dies because one leg is an inch shorter than the other.

Why is God so interested in the length of a person’s leg, but apparently not interested in poison accumulating in another person’s abdomen, shutting down all the vital organs, pushing them down into further levels of intensive care until eventually the heart gives in? Why does He apparently does nothing to remove cancer tumours seeding and spreading and turning someone into a frame of thin bones with skin stretched over it, and then the lungs fill with fluid there’s one last sigh?

Job never knew why bad things happened to him. It was enough for him to know that God was speaking to him.

Just thinking about God speaking – what He is saying to me is that I think too highly of this life, as if it is the only life there is. There is a next life – an eternal life that follows. Just because those that I loved and lost this year are no longer living this earthly life, doesn’t mean that their lives have come to an end. They are just living the next episode somewhere that right now, today, I cannot be a part of.

The miracle – there was a miracle – has been in me. I have not surrendered my faith because the answer didn’t suit me. I haven’t walked away.

Job says it for me - “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” 13:15

She Dreamed a Dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Turkey Issue

This has nothing to do with Middle Eastern politics, but everything to do with the Christmas dinner.

The issue comprises of a number of factors:

• Snow
• A dislike of driving on icy roads
• Frozen turkeys.

No matter how much I plan to get Christmas organised early, it always ends up as a last minute dash around the shops. Add a few inches of snow into the mixture of shopping lists, long queues and the scarcity of goose fat for the roast potatoes and the stress level hits the stratosphere!

I have a friend who just loves driving in the snow. Well, perhaps he doesn’t love it, but he doesn’t cling white-knuckled to the driving wheel with a hundred different scenarios running through his head that all end up with the car upside down in a snow drift. I rarely drive when it has snowed. I tried it on Monday and didn’t enjoy the experience. The car has been left undisturbed for the past few days.

I have been using the busses all week. They just don’t necessarily go to all the places I would like to get to, but the bus driver is better able to negotiate all the roads that have not been gritted and snowploughed than I am.

That gets us to the turkey issue. Our Christmas meal – the preparation of it, the cooking of it and the eating of it, has over the last fifteen or so years taken on a familiar pattern. The menu is the same, the choreography of the dance of the two of us around the kitchen from fridge to counter top to knife drawer to cooker is so well rehearsed we could do it blindfolded!

The turkey, frozen and usually defrosting nicely in the sink in the downstairs toilet (which is far too cold for human use this time of year – visions of bum frozen to toilet seat) hasn’t been bought yet. I have Bernard Matthews’ issues and he seems to have a monopoly on the frozen turkey market. I am not sure just how turkey friendly his farms are. So, one needs to find someone else’s frozen turkey.

Supposing I find the turkey, I have to get it home and in the sink before the end of the day. Tomorrow is too late to ensure the bird will de defrosted. The mechanics of it all – getting it home via the bus system, is a whole new level of stress.

I ran an idea past the husband this morning – the possibility of abandoning a whole turkey in place of a much smaller turkey joint. They do them is little foil trays that you slam into the oven for an hour or so. His face said everything that his lips didn’t say.

“OK, if you have to,” said the lips.

“Christmas is rapidly going down the drain,” said the face.

Despite what the lips said this morning, my husband believes in miracles. He believes quite firmly that I will find a frozen turkey, that said turkey will have no association with Bernard Matthews and be in the sink by the end of today, that the Christmas dance in the kitchen will not have to be re-choreographed and that, somehow, I will stop Christmas from going down the drain.

The gauntlet is on the floor. I can never resist a challenge!

An Organized Band of Snow?

I am fascinated by the weather report. It is snowing down south. It was actually the phrase “an organized band of snow is on the way” that had captured my imagination. Are the snowflakes in communication with each other?

“This is Snowflake 2,984,220 calling, over. The time is 0500 hours and my grid reference is 234 092, over. Our mission is to close the pass. I repeat…to close the pass, over. Requesting units 500 through to 700 to rendezvous at an altitude of 2,400 metres, over. Wind speed is variable, over. Do you read, over?”

“Snowflake 2,984,220 this is Mission Control. Divert your course, over. I repeat…divert your course. Your new heading is grid reference 579 208. Time of arrival is estimated at 0350 hours. Ground cover is precisely 37mm…I repeat 37 mm, over. Do you read, over?”

“Mission Control, This is Snowflake 2,984,220, over. We are good to go!”

“This is Mission Control. Good luck, Snowflake 2,984,220. Our intelligence tells us that there are a dozen or so snowploughs in the vicinity, over. Proceed with extreme caution…repeat, proceed with extreme caution, over. Over and out!”

“Mission Control, this is Snowflake 45,366,722. Snowflake 2,984,220 is down…repeat Snowflake 2,984,220 is down, over. This is Snowflake 45,366,722 requesting permission to mount a rescue, over. Do we have a go, over?”

“This is Mission Control. Rescue not advised, over. Snow ploughs sighted 3.5 km to the north of your position, over. Maintain high altitude. Over and out!”

“Mission Control, this is Snowflake 2,984,220. We are down, over. We have sustained heavy injuries, over. Enemy is 3.5 km to the north of our position. The wind speed has picked up and we are drifting, over. There’s quite a few of us trapped down here, and snow plough is closing in.”

…And so it goes on…our organised band of snowflakes bringing the highways of the country to a standstill!

November Chapbook Challenge

I am not quite sure what a chapbook is supposed to look like, but I made one anyway. It’s not quite stitched together and all that, but looks impressive anyway!

During the month of November, I joined in the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Chapbook Challenge. Things in my personal life were pretty grim and I needed the distraction. I think I also needed the discipline of trying to write poetry more regularly than I do, and challenge myself to write less inspirational stuff.

The final hurdle was to choose some of the poems, edit them, and present the chapbook manuscript.

I tend to shy away from editing my poems. I change the odd word here and there, but on the whole, what I write remains untouched. I once went to Creative Writing workshop and during one of the breaks I talked to the tutor about one of my poems, asking advice about how to improve what I had written. She suggested changing the order of the verses, and altering a phrase or two.

Who of us would give birth to a baby and then start rearranging the parts, moving an arm a few inches one way, or swapping blue eyes for brown? That is how I tend to see my poetry – not to be messed with! A poem isn’t a baby – one can rearrange lines and verses if one chooses. I have to stop seeing my poems as things written in stone.

Having been told to edit, and having carefully read through some of the poetry workshops, I set about a bit if rearranging.

One of the suggestions was about re-writing a rhymed piece without the rhyme. I friend of mine thinks that I think in rhyme! I suppose that most of the poetry that I have shared with her, in a church meeting, had been rhymed. I chose one of the poems, tore away the rhymes and the meter, fished about for the essence of what I wanted to say, and then built the poem back up. I suppose that writing in rhyme puts in limitations straight away. I have never been quite so confident that some of my free verse has sufficient structure to call it poetry. I did like the edited version. It has more heart, I suppose.

Another suggestion was to re-write a first person poem in the third person. In changing “I” for “She” the reader becomes more of an observer rather than a participator. It puts an interesting slant to it.

My husband was reading my chapbook lat night. Where I was impressed with the actual construction of it, the page numbering and all that, he was impressed with the poems. He made the comment that once something like a poem, or a story is written down, and someone else gets to read it, the writer ceases to have any ownership of it. The reader brings to the reading of the poem their own experiences and life history. What they read and what the writer wrote may not always be the same.

Take for instance one poem in particular. Among the chosen selection there were some that didn’t get changed, simply because no changes could have improved what I already had.

Shrapnel

A single word
Crammed with insult and innuendo
From lips that once kissed
Detonated inside my heart
A shower of spiteful syllables
Ripped through my soul
Shredding my spirit

Your shrapnel
Left me crippled

When I wrote it, I was responding to a prompt. I wouldn’t say that what I wrote was particularly personal, although I have been on the receiving end of thoughtless and hurtful comments. When Joe read the poem, he thought that it was personal and apologised for anything he had said that had caused so much hurt.

He also said that it reminded him of Siegfried Sassoon’s war poetry. He is a man that knows his poetry, so a comment like that is not easily dismissed!

So, my foray into the world of chapbooks is proving to be interesting!

Neither Silence Nor Consent

Amongst all the “faith” testimonies of great feats accomplished in the last year, I was sure that what I had done on Friday qualified. In my eyes, it was great, and in my husband’s eyes, but I have learnt from experience that not everyone shares my definition of greatness, or my definition of an act prompted by faith.

On Friday, I closed down my Royal Bank of Scotland account.

I had been following the discussion between the government and the Royal Bank’s directors. The directors want to give large bonuses to key staff members adding up to billions of pounds. The government doesn’t want them to, seeing as they are now the biggest shareholder. It would seem to me that there is nothing about the performance of the directors or their key workers that deserves any kind of reward. They and other greedy banks and money-minded institutions plunged us into recession – and they want rewarded for it?

I had had enough of them. I would like to think the directors would stick to their guns and actually resign if the government sticks to their guns, but I live in a world where compromises happen.

My paltry sum of money is not really going to be missed, no doubt. I confess that it wasn’t my main account. When Joe and I married we set up a joint account with another bank, but Joe never got around to shifting his money in, which means that it’s joint only in name, not in practice. So I suppose that closing my Royal Bank account down wasn’t that heroic or great.

The lady behind the desk asked me why I was closing the account, thinking perhaps there were things she could do to sort things out. I explained most carefully that I had no issue with her, or her colleagues, or any other bank stuff – it was the directors and their big bonuses that I had led to me closing my account. End of conversation really, although we both admitted that it was sad. I got the impression that I was one of very few taking direct action and my stand was barely a whisper on the economic stage.

Plato said “Your silence gives consent.”

I wasn’t silent and I didn’t give my consent.

Was it an act prompted by faith? The Bible speaks a lot about integrity. It may not have an obviously spiritual tag to it, but all of life is spiritual – not just the bits we label spiritual.