My Richest Praise

The opening lines of the hymn for Easter Sunday’s Morning Prayer in “A Shorter Morning and Evening Prayer” are:-

“Bring, all ye dear-bought nations, bring, alleluia

Your richest praise to your King, alleluia”

“Our richest praise”. I wonder what that really looks like. “Our richest anything” given to God – I wonder, too, what that looks like.

We make a big deal of the big celebrations of Easter and Christmas. We pull out all the strings. And yes, so we should. Those are the days that people who are strangers to churches and to worship make an appearance.

It is in the day to day ordinariness of life that we make our biggest impact. Our richest praise is not pulled out of the drawer and brushed off on special days – but every single day. The middle of the week Wednesdays as well and the end of the week Saturdays should see us demonstrating richest praise.

I felt very keenly some of the words from Malachi 1:-

“It is you priests who show contempt for my name. But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’ By offering defiled food on my altar. But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’….

When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty. “Now plead with God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?”—says the Lord Almighty. “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.”

I get the impression that if Jesus had his own way as he watched the widow carefully put her two copper coins into the offering at the temple that day, he might have pulled out the heavy bags the rich had so carelessly tossed in and handed them back. He might have said to them, “I am not pleased with you and I will accept no offering from your hands.”

Sometimes I find it easier to give what’s not always the richest. Sometimes I convince myself that I can’t afford to give what is the richest, as if I will end up with too little myself. Like some of the rich people giving their offerings, I toss in something that I can afford to let go of. I don’t always count out what is precious and surrender it to God’s hand cheerfully. I know people that do and the joy that fills their faces is all too evident.

Over the weekend I have had my fill of the nod to Easter in TV programmes. I began watching a three part drama on the life of Jesus. I barely made it to the end of the first episode. The absence of God in the narrative annoyed me. There was no dream to tell Joseph to take Mary and Jesus to safety but just a feeling something was wrong. There was no dove fluttering down, no voice of God claiming His Son at the baptism of Jesus – just John and Jesus alone in a river. There were no spoken words rebuking a demon or a command given, just a hug and a holding close and a quiet recovery from something not clearly identified as demon possession.

God has been erased from the story and Jesus, in the first episode, was not dynamic or charismatic, God-soaked or vibrant.

“What’s so different about your life?” said God, “Do the words dynamic or charismatic, God-soaked or vibrant apply to you?”

Ouch!  I have my moments. Too few of them.

The programme might have been striving not to offend, not to come too clearly down on the God side of the fence. Jesus never lived His without causing offence and sometimes deliberately so. His words take a sleeping man by the shoulders and give him a good shake to remind him that he is only sleeping and not dead, and he needs to wake up. Offence wakes us up.

In George Hebert’s poem “Easter”, which I also read this morning, his chosen method of praise is the lute. His heart, the strings and the Spirit combine to bring about his richest praise. My chosen method is poetry – my heart, the words and the Spirit combine as I weave a poem.

My richest praise. My richest everything given to God. Today.

Resurrection Morning

I thought the colour and sound
The texture and taste of the world
Would be less
Vibrant

I thought the sun would crawl above the horizon
Dressed in mourning robes
Yet she strides in radiant garments
Burning bright

I thought there would be silence
But the wind chases a melody through the trees
Birds chatter and sing
In noisy celebration

I thought this morning would be different
Because You are not here
Friday’s horror
Changed everything

How can the world be as it was?
Creation cast out The Creator
And silenced the Word that
Nourished all

But the world isn’t as it was
The fragrance of Eden
Before she fell
Is in the air

The cord of sin and death
That binds creation
And ties her into the cycle of decay
Has been severed

Nature sees the promise kept
She stands on tiptoe
Holds her breath and waits
For man to awaken

Eden’s crimes are forgiven
God sweeps away what’s broken
And invites me to step into
Something new

An Upturned Face

I bumped into a friend at the weekend. We were both waiting in a queue at the bank. It was a slow moving queue so we had plenty of time to catch up. She always asks me what I’m reading. Once she found out that I was retiring soon, she invited me round to her house to borrow books. She quickly withdrew the offer when I confessed that my library fines are possibly what keeps the library in funds. Returning borrowed books is not my forte. We also talked about gardens. She is a great believer that only people who truly love gardening should have a garden.

Back to the book that I’m reading. It’s my second time through Malcolm Guite’s book of Lent Poetry “The Word in the Wilderness”. My friend recognised the title. The book is becoming a well-loved friend.

This evening in our fellowship meeting we were talking about relationships and the need to connect with people. Some of us needed to work harder at growing friendships within church and outside of it. A post from a couple of years ago came to mind. Malcolm and I had been reading sections from Dante’s “Inferno” and had arrived at the end section.

Then, at a place in the shadow with the dew...

my master placed the palms of both his hands,

spread wide, likely and gently on the tender grass.

And I aware of what his purpose was,

offered my tear-stained cheeks to meet his touch.

At which, he made once more entirely clean

the colour that the dark of hell had hidden.

Dante and his hero, the poet Virgil,, had travelled together down through the levels of hell. They climbed out and up into the sunshine.

“As Malcolm writes in his commentary, it is a very touching scene. Dante emerges into the sunlight with a face smeared with the grime of hell and stained with tears. Virgil, his companion on the journey, gathers up the morning dew in his palms, stoops down and washes Dante’s face.”

I love the line where Dante offered his "tear stained cheeks to meet his touch". His upturned face invited Virgil to wipe the dust and the dirt and the tears away. Dante’s humility in tipping his face is met with Virgil’s grace in meeting his need.

I wonder if we are all involved in that exchange of humility and grace, of upturned faces and hands full of dew that wipe away the dust of life.

When I choose not to lift my face to you who holds the dew, I deny myself the opportunity to be refreshed. I suppose there was nothing to stop Dante from collecting his own dew and wiping his own face. There is nothing to say I can’t find my own ways of refreshing.

When I choose not to lift my face to you who holds the dew, I deny you the opportunity to bless me and to be blessed yourself in serving me.

When I choose not to lift my face to you who holds the dew, we both lose out. Two friends that could have been blessed never were.

All because I chose not to lift my face.

More

More than my height, my width, my weight

The parts I adore and the bits I hate

More than the frame of skin and bone

The knees that grind, the joints that moan

I’m more

More than the steady beat of my heart

The blood that flows life to impart

More than the scars that mark my skin

And the injury that’s deep within

I’m more

More than my thoughts, intentions, will

Secret desires unchecked that spill

More than the words tossed from my tongue

Some that healed and othes that stung
I'm more

More than the gifts that I possess

Love and rage, my soul express

More than my fears, the things I dread

The dreams once real that now seem dead

I’m more

I’m more than what your eyes can see

For God Almighty dwells in me

He adds Himself to all I am

And carries high this tiny lamb

I’m more

 

The Battle of Culloden - Part 2

Culloden Moor is my go-to place when there’s a clear night sky and I’ve a hankering to see the stars. It wasn’t dark when I went this afternoon and it wasn’t stars I was looking for.

I had been in Inverness perhaps a week or two when the subject of Culloden came up. I was on a gospel outreach team and we were knocking on doors and sharing the good news of the Kingdom. I had introduced myself and was about to launch into the well-rehearsed four point plan of salvation when the man, it was a man, held up a hand and said he didn’t talk to the English because of the outcome of the Battle of Culloden.  My knowledge of any history is sketchy at best but it doesn’t stretch to Scottish history. I thought the battle was recent and that he might, perhaps, have been a survivor! I was all set to apologise for any harm that had been caused.

A more recent visit to Culloden was on the way back from a long drive out to Grantown-on Spey. I’d been enlisted by the Crofting Commission to drive my husband to a meeting there. We had a cup of tea in the town before he went off to his meeting and I went shopping. It’s not a big place. His meeting took longer than my shopping expedition. I found a forest walk to amble along. On the journey home a toilet stop was required. We were just that too far away from home. We stopped off at the visitor centre – me to the bathroom, Joe to the shop. He bought me an ice-cream. It was a warmer day then.

Over the last few months I really have felt a little strung out. I wouldn’t say that I am losing battles but I am fighting more than my fare share. I felt the need to declare a few victories. I decided to look up a few Bible verses and march about, as some do, and proclaim battles won long before I fought them.

“Culloden Battlefield,” said God, “That’s where you need to go.”

“Culloden is all about defeat,” I replied. “I’m looking for victory, not defeat!”

“The place of defeat is the best place to start declaring victory,” said God.

It was six o’clock in the morning and it made sense.

“Take a friend with you,” He added. We both knew which friend He had in mind.

I looked up some verses and a victory prayer, printed them off and put them in a poly pocket. The forecast was for rain and I dug out a woolly hat. Umbrellas are not much use when there is a gale force wind ripping about the moor.

I drove around to the friend. The friend didn’t want to be taken and I didn’t twist her arm.  She knew that she wasn’t winning many battles but trailing around a battlefield on a wet and windy afternoon didn’t appeal. She wasn’t convinced that the exercise would achieve anything or that God was her side right now. We talked for a while but the bait I dangled didn’t attract.

It was very windy but not wet. Armed with my Bible verses I headed off along the path.

Deuteronomy 20:1-4 was a good reminder that being outnumbered by the enemy was no cause for fear. God had looked after me so far along my journey and wasn’t about to walk away.

I began to sing as I marched along – “In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, we have the victory…” I had the moor to myself. No one else was daft enough to be out there in the wind. Apart from one lady and her dog. Phone held to ear she was shouting that she was freezing. Yes, shouting – she hadn’t worked out that she wasn’t talking to a person next to her with the wind whipping away the words as she spoke.

Psalm 44:3-7 was another reminder that my victories were not about me and the strength I wielded. God’s right hand, His arm and the light of His presence were the reason for any success. If it was all down to me it would be a sorry thing Indeed.

Exodus 15:1 prompted another song. A golden oldie. “I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and rider fell into the sea.” Moses faced the Red Sea in front of him and the Egyptian army coming from behind. If I had taken my walking stick with me, I would have held it out in front of me and pictured the Red Sea parting. God always comes through in the end. There’s always a miracle just about to happen when we call on His name. We just don’t call.

As I kept up the Bible readings and the songs something in the heavenlies shifted. The battlefield scenery, the wind howling and my speaking God’s word was a powerful combination. I have a vivid imagination and I’m never sure that what I am sensing is just the imagination running amok, or if it’s something spiritual is going on. There was a sense of something hostile almost, saying this battlefield was their domain, but at the same time something not hostile almost glad to see a friendly face.

I read 2 Chronicles 20:15 and thought about all the battles I insisted on fighting when I should have stepped back to let God fight on my behalf. How long do we wait for God to step in? How do we know if it’s our turn to fight and not His? I thought about the soldiers at the battle back then – they probably didn’t have much choice in whether they fought or not. The movies tell us it’s better to go down fighting that live under a cruel king.

A line in “St Patrick’s Breastplate” (I Arise Today) about calling upon all the resources we have been given to stand “against every cruel, merciless power that may oppose my body and soul”. I sat on a bench sheltered from the wind and read the lines and thought about the powers – natural and supernatural – and called on God to “shield me today”

There was another battle on Culloden Moor this afternoon! There were armies out there – unseen armies.  I marched at the head of an army of angels. We snatched back the ground the enemy had taken – in my life and in my friend’s. It was an awesome battle. The victory songs are being sung in heaven right now!

He and Us and Joy

Long out of Eden

We forget the evening strolls

And talking with God

It’s almost as if

There never was a garden

And we walked alone

But God pursues us

Though we are men polluted

He chases us down

There is nothing else

But us in His tender care -

He and us and joy

So that's what goes on in RE

I like the “I” newspaper for two reasons, neither of which has anything to do with the news.

I like their sudokus. I have stopped doing them in pencil.  If I make a mistake, I make a mistake and I don’t rub out and begin again. I just abandon. I call it a good day when I finish them, and an “ah-well-there’s-always-tomorrow” day when I mess up.

The other thing I liked, but they only did it at weekends, and they’ve stopped doing it, were the whole page spreads with the poems generated by Nationwide Building Society.

Today I was seriously not happy with their cover story. It wasn’t so much the story itself as the misleading headline. The small breakfast in the café was anything but.

“Teacher gave terror lessons to UK pupils”

I am very protective of the teaching profession. The long school holidays – yes, I can see how that might add a few bees into a parent’s bonnet. Skipping off on holiday during term time – yes, I can see those bees shifting to a teacher’s bonnet.

It was the sub-headline that caused a whole swarm of those aggressive African bees to make a nest in my bonnet.

“Children shown brutal videos during Religious Education lessons”

Now, let’s step back a bit. Have I, or have I not, shown some brutal videos in my time? Last week even? Well, kind of. We watched the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in a lesson looking at a liberation theology response to poverty and corruption in El Salvador. We also listened to a heart breaking account of a woman whose children were killed by a raid on the wrong house during South Africa’s apartheid era. And there was the government and police responses to Martin Luther King’s civil rights protests. The world was and is a brutal place, make no mistake. Too many things happen that shouldn’t.

I read the cover story on p3. The school was a Muslim fee paying school somewhere in London. The headline didn’t really give you any clues on that one. The “teacher” was not a qualified teacher but an administrator. The headline didn’t make that clear either. There was no mention of religious education lessons at all in the article. It was in after school and evening classes at a Muslim fee paying school and a mosque that the IS inspired radicalisation was happening.

Florence Someoneorother had the by-line. I imagine she might be one of those people I meet sometimes who ask me what I do for a living. When I say I’m a teacher they pry further – what do I teach? When I tell them I teach religious education most people don’t really remember much about it. Some never did it. Some didn’t particularly like it. And some, the ones I used to teach a while ago, invariably apologise for how they behaved in my class. Florence strikes me as being in the last category.

“Ah, so that’s what goes on in RE,” says one parent, reading the headline but no further.

“Just confirms what I always thought – it shouldn’t be on the timetable,” says another.

“Religious nut-balls indoctrinating my kid,” says a third.

And all because Florence Someoneorother couldn’t come up with a more accurate headline. With a flurry of fingers over a keyboard she has made it seem as if all RE teachers are pedalling dangerous theology. She has also made it seem as if children are like blotting paper, soaking up everything without question. That is not true of the variety of children I meet. They know how to argue the toss.

Teachers are doing a great job. They don’t view the children in their classrooms as a captive audience and themselves as someone like Moses, chosen by God, to pass down something like the Ten Commandments. They actively encourage discovery and debate, critical thinking and creativity.

Florence, your RE report if I should ever write one for you would read “Florence should express her ideas more carefully to avoid confusion.”

“Postscript” Moments

Going for a walk is always on the to-do list but doesn’t often get done. Mostly it’s on account of the weather. I know I’m not made of sugar and I won’t melt but I don’t like getting wet or being cold. Just lately access to a toilet needs to be factored in. Today was an almost-spring day and I swear the sun called to me to come out and play. The sun and Seamus Heaney that is.

I read his poem, “Postscript”, this morning. In the poem he had driven out west and the wind and the light played off each other. The sea was on one side of him, wild and wave tossed. On the other side of him was a slate-grey lake and a flock of swans. It was one of those moments of rare beauty.  Nature lines up a spectacle and most people miss it. They are, writes Heaney -

“…neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass”

I suppose I didn’t want to be “a hurry” through which things pass. I wanted to be there when those moments happened and to not let them pass. Heaney had climbed into my head, I climbed into my car and off we drove to a forest trail that I like.

It might have been a sunny day but it wasn’t warm. The tide was out as I drove along the road that skirted the Beauly Firth. The firth stretched out in a dozen shades of the pale blues and the distant mountains were snow-capped. It was breath-taking in its beauty.

It was a Seamus Heaney Postscript moment.

I tried to stir the poet in me to write something. The Seamus Heaney in my head kept poking me to describe what I was seeing and scorned my choice of words. Later, not then, I wrote something -

I rest my eyes

Gazing on a distant horizon

Snow brushed mountains blur into

Cold blue sea

I inhale deeply and

My soul settles

I have worn glasses since I was three years old. I have worked my way through a number of NHS plastic frames of every colour of the rainbow. I once asked the optician if there was anything I could do to improve my eyesight. I’d read somewhere that there were exercises a person could do to improve the eye muscles. There were inspiring case studies of people tossing their glasses away because they no longer needed them. My eyesight problem did not fall into that case study category, said my optician. If I was looking for an exercise to do I should relax my eyes by looking at a distant object. It wouldn’t improve my eyesight but it might slow down the deterioration that would come with age. Looking at a distant object seemed more like putting strain on my short sighted vision but I did it for a while.

I relaxed my eyes by looking at the snow-capped mountains far off in the distance. Nothing was moving. Seamus Heaney might have had his wind tossed sea and a flock of swans with ruffled feathers. I had a light blue sea and stillness.

The stillness crept into me, through my skin and into my soul. The “hurry” in me slowed down and the known and the strange things stopped and tipped their hats and we engaged in conversation.

The Things Tied to Us

Yesterday’s Streetwise was all ours. The usual three people was down to just Joe and myself. It’s a Sunday evening ministry – preparing a meal for some of the people that the Street pastors meet on the streets over Friday and Saturday evenings. I try out various soup recipes, some more successful than others and there are sandwiches, crisps, tomatoes and cucumber. And there's pudding.

There is also a time of reading the Bible together, sharing our stories and praying together. Last night we read through the opening verses of Hebrews 11. I am working my way through a Lent poetry book and Hebrews 11 was one of the readings given for Sunday. It’s a lot to live up to when we read through the list. We have a habit perhaps of dragging out the mental plumb line to see how we measure up. What God calls us to is not Enoch’s calling or Abraham’s but our own. How we work out that calling doesn’t always look like Noah building an ark in the desert.

Verse 8 reads, “By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going.”

When I left Rugby to join a gospel outreach team in Inverness way back in 1989, the church prayed for people who it was sending out and they were sending me out. They spoke words of encouragement over us. This was one of my words. Just like Abraham I was responding to a call from God. I was called to travel to a place I didn’t know. I’d looked up Inverness on a map. It was a long way north of where I was. I left not knowing much about where I was going.

There were eight of us on the team, piled into a minibus heading north on the A9. We stopped in a layby in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t just having second thoughts about the destination and the job ahead. I had convinced myself that I was not the one for the job. This shy hermit didn’t seem to have a place proclaiming the kingdom of God on the streets. It wasn’t just Inverness that was unfamiliar but the “mission”. It was too big a change for me to deal with.

It was dark. It was in the middle of nowhere. There were not street light to pollute the sky. So many stars pressed down on me.

“Look up, Mel,” said God. Mel? I’d always been Melanie. New start, new name perhaps? There was of the Girl Guide in me to recognise a few constellations.

“See those stars? Those constellations are still the same. They are the same stars you saw back in Rugby.” I chose not to point out that the I rarely saw the stars in Rugby because of light pollution.

“Just as those stars in the sky haven’t changed – neither will I change.”

I might doubt myself and my readiness for what lay ahead, but I didn’t doubt God. The shyness was eventually shed like old skin. The hermit took a back seat but never really left the stage. I was in my element proclaiming the kingdom on the streets.

This morning, thinking about last night, God reminded me of the other half of the encouraging word that day back then when I was prayed over. It wasn’t tied into any particular scripture. Someone spoke over me a word about bringing down the strongholds that the enemy had built. I was marching forward to inflict damage on his kingdom.

I had fulfilled the Abraham word more or less. I had made Inverness my home. Sadly I had swapped the tent-frame-of-mind for a terraced house. I had settled and let go of my pioneering roots. This was something God said we would do something about. The bringing down enemy strongholds? The inflicting damage on his kingdom? That word seemed to have been forgotten.

I was reading “The Pilgrimage” by George Herbert this morning. It’s an allegorical that might have inspired John Bunyan to write “Pilgrim’s Progress”. There’s a verse that talks about passion and a wasted place and of being robbed of his gold. All the poet had in the end is “one good Angel which a friend had ti’d” close to his side. The Angel was a specific coin in those days. I was challenged to consider what I had tied to my side, or my friends, what they had tied to my side. Bringing down the enemy strongholds was perhaps one of these things.

I suppose I lamented that I hadn’t seemed to inflict that much damage over the years. I hadn’t cast out any demons. Yes, I prayed – but for the most part my prayers seemed pale and powerless to my ears.

“It’s the small victories, Mel,” said God, “and maybe the pale and powerless prayers are not pale or powerless when I hold them in my hand.”

I wouldn’t say my life passed before my eyes – but I was aware of so many times I could have reacted in a way that took away God’s glory, or demonstrated that I really didn’t trust in him – but I held firm. I have planted so many words through conversations over the years. The poems I have written have touched people’s hearts. It is the little persistent victories – I’m inflicting death by a thousand tiny cuts. It is in the choosing to do things God’s way that I inflict damage on the enemy’s kingdom.

That said, it is perhaps a good time to take the words that have been tied to my side and really look at them. They’re not dead words. They’re just covered in a lot of dust.

Time to dig out the spiritual equivalent of Mr Sheen.

All The Kingdoms

there’s Son

there’s a Father

there’s an enemy and

there’s a desert

there’s the Father’s promise

“ask of me and

I will make the nations Your inheritance and

the ends of the earth Your possession.”

there’s the enemy’s promise

“all this, all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour

I will give you

if you will bow down and worship me.”

the question isn’t whether

the Son gets the nations, the ends of the earth

and all the kingdoms of the world

make no mistake, they will be His

the question is not “if”

but “how”

how will He build the Kingdom?

how will He redeem the world?

“ask Me, “ says the Father

and He will give all the kingdoms to the Son

but the cross stands in His path

“worship me,” says the enemy

and he will give all the kingdoms to the Son

and he takes the cross off the table

the Son

asks the Father and

embraces the cross

More Than Pancakes

The supermarkets have gathered all the ingredients necessary for making pancakes and put together on the shelves even down to a new frying pan should you need one. I had a practice run earlier on in the week and I’m ready to tweak the recipe. That’s Pancake Day for you. Another day not safe from the curse of commercialisation.

Pancake Day goes by another older, less jumping-on-the-money-bandwagon name. I know where the pancakes come in, but wasn’t quite so sure about the “shrove” part of Shrove Tuesday. Shrove?  I know that we are on the brink of Lent, the season leading up to Easter and that it’s time of sacrifice. For us it is Jelly baby time – our replacement for all things chocolate. That still doesn’t explain the “shrove”.

Before Lent begins it was necessary to confess sins and receive absolution for them. It's a day of penitence, a time to know and own your sins and pull them out into the daylight. It’s time to be forgiven and to know a clean soul. It’s a day of celebration. The weight of all the wrongness has been lifted and tossed away. That’s the “shrove” bit.

Too many people are consuming their pancakes without being “shriven”. The holiday has lost its heart and soul and no one has noticed. Sims are not confessed and absolved these days but talked through and labelled, understood and perhaps excused.

This morning I was watching on old DVD with some young friends. “After Apartheid” followed the journey of a white police officer as he returned to a village where he had massacred eleven people. He had thought a meeting of black rebels was in progress in a house. Shots were fired through the window and the door kicked, all guns blazing. It was the wrong house. The police officer was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Then apartheid ended. A new government was sworn in. Decisions were made abut what do with the prison population whose crimes had been politically motivated.

This is the “shrove” bit. Prisoners were given the opportunity to confess their sins. If they were prepared to tell the truth of their involvement in the violence and death inflicted in the name of apartheid, they had the chance of amnesty and being released.

We weighed up every word spoken by the police officer, and every word not spoken. Had I been heading back to that village I would have done my homework. I would have known the names of every person killed that day and the names of every person that had been present, giving evidence at my trial. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” would not have been an option. The villagers shed tears while he remained “sorry” but dry eyed. We were cynical enough to wonder how sincere the apology was or his intention to redress the balance. He had been facing a life sentence and now, just by telling it as it was, he was about to be released after serving four years. Four years seemed too little a price to pay for ending eleven lives. Was he genuinely penitent? We also observed that he probably got off quite lightly too because of the camera crew filming it all. How would he had fared if no one was filming?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee that set Brian Mitchell, the white police officer, on his journey of repentance. Tutu had to listen through so many stories of the horrendous things one man did to another that day in day out his heart was being broken over and over again.

The confession and absolution, the really letting go and the really being forgiven, the release, the freedom, the knowing of our burdens slipping from our shoulders – that is the start of Lent, not the finishing point. Lent with all its sacrifices is not about earning the forgiveness and the release from guilt and pain. We cannot earn forgiveness. We can only accept it and live in the good of it.

The Lent journey tells me who forgave me, why and the price paid.

Being a Friend of God

An earworm according to the urban online dictionary is “a song that sticks in your mind, and will not leave no matter how much you try. The best way to get rid of an earworm is to replace it with another. Be prepared to become a jukebox.”

At our church fellowship meeting last night we sang a catchy little tune. “I am a friend of God…I am a friend of God…I am a friend of God…He calls me friend.” It was enough that I was singing the chorus over and over again throughout today, but I couldn’t stop my head bobbing from side to side as I did so.

“You do know what being My friend means, yes?” asked God. I got the impression from the words spoken to my heart, regardless of the head bobbing about, that the answer was something serious. Friendship with God really isn’t something to take lightly. It comes at great cost. It comes with great responsibility.

A story came to mind from Jesus’ teaching about prayer.

“Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within and say, ‘Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you’?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.” Luke 11:5-8

Jesus was talking about persistent prayer. The door opened not on the basis of friendship but on the basis of the man knocking and knocking and knocking.

Being a friend of God means that I don’t have Him yell at me through the bedroom window to come back tomorrow. He doesn’t say, “I’ve gone to bed. All the angels have gone to bed.  Heaven is closed for the night. You are taking this friendship thing too far!” I am assured that whatever the gap between what I have and what I need right now, God is ready to meet the need. He is not Old Mother Hubbard with an empty storehouse. I know that. What I know and what I do with what I know doesn’t always match up. I think it is an insult to call God my friend and then live my life struggling to survive on so little when He has so He is aching to give me.

That wasn’t the serious bit although that was challenging enough.

God fully expects me to knock on the door at midnight to ask for the three loaves to feed the unexpected guests.

“Yes, but,” said God, “It works both ways. If you are My friend, can I not also knock on your door at midnight and ask you for three loaves of bread for My visitors?”

Let’s be clear – God doesn’t actually need me, or my three loaves of bread.  God has chosen to give me the bread and I am to hold it in my hand so lightly that if He wants them back He doesn’t have to prise my fingers apart to get them. Yes, there is a storehouse in heaven but it’s as if God has plundered His own storehouse and given all the stuff away to His people on the understanding that when He wants something back, it is surrendered swiftly. Everything we have is His.  It never becomes ours.

I have been given all manner of gifts none of which I own. Yes, I can say that my gifts are well-honed because of the work I have put into practice and perfection. My hard work is what got me my degree. God gifted me the mind-set to do the work.  He wired the brain to be capable of making the mental connections to do what I do.

All of it is there to work for Him and His Kingdom. There’s a poem. He tells me, that I wrote years ago, but someone needs to hear it now because they need to be encouraged. They have fallen over, grazed their spiritual knees and to be lifted up. That poem says it all. Dig it out, He says, read it at the poetry slam. Not three leaves of bread to feed a surprise visitors, but a poem to meet the need of a hungry soul.

Yes, I go to God for the things I need but it works the other way too. He choose to come to me for the things he knows I have that are needed there and then. He knows I have them because He gave them to me. He doesn’t rip them out of my hands but asks…and asks…and asks. I get the message and I hand them over.

Chasing the Moon

There was a lot of hype yesterday about the moon. It was a super blue blood moon.  I understood only the super part of it as being bigger than usual because it was at its closest to the planet. I’m not sure where the blue bit and the blood bit come in.

Last night as I picked up my husband from work and turned to drive down the hill back into town, the moon was there, all big and orange and swathed in threads of cloud.

“The moon! The moon!” I said, excited. I tried to explain how it was different from other moons. I told him that I would drop him off at home, grab the camera and indulge in some moon chasing. By the time we got home, however, the clouds were no longer threads across the sky but hulking great masses of grey and spitting rain. The moon was hidden and the rain was getting heavier.

“Come on, Mel. Take a walk with me.  Let’s chase the moon,” said God.

I grabbed the camera, took a quick toilet stop, and headed along the path around the housing estate. I wasn’t sure I could get a big enough stretch of sky with no houses or street lights and decided to take the picture of the moon through the trees. They were still in the bare winter state, black naked skeletons again a bright moon. I had the camera lens on zoom and the pictures – just two of them - looked atmospheric and spooky.

I was reminded of a poem I had written last month prompted by another poem “The Moons” by Grevel Lindop.  I love these two lines from the poem.

How many times did you call me from the house,

or from my desk to the window, just to see?

On first reading I thought it was the moon calling the poet from the house or from the desk. Looking at the moon seems almost a waste of time. I have moments when I feel nature is calling me to go outside, to switch off the TV or leave the laptop behind. In this poem it’s another person. He responds by writing a poem, seeing as he can’t string a necklace of moon glimpses. He was called away from his desk, his place of work, to glimpse at the moon. It’s almost as if the work at the desk has become all-consuming, urgent and necessary.

Last night as I zoom-lensed in on the moon, I thought about my poem “Wasting Time” and the first verse in particular.

come and waste time with me, my love

stand beside me and see the moon

leave those pressing things behind for

tomorrow’s moon is not this one

How much we miss when we don’t allow ourselves to be called away from what seems important to do something that seems trivial.

How much we miss too when we don’t surround ourselves with people who will call us away from the desk.

I really thought about the phrase “waste time with me”. We live in a world where wasting time is frowned upon. “Efficient” is becoming a horrible word for me. I like the extravagance behind the idea of wasting something.

Yesterday’s moon isn’t today’s moon. Some of these wasting time experiences are just one off opportunities. They don’t turn up day after day. If we miss them – we miss them. There are some things that ought to be unmissable!

Jesus promised He had come to give life in all of its fullness:=

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10.

I have a friend in God who drags me away from the desk to waste time with Him chasing the moon. I might not think to chase anything if God did not stir up the adventures in me.