Searching the Deep Things

I can’t remember how long ago it was but it was certainly before 1993, or even what the problem was, but I went to see the doctor. The things that bothered me then are largely unchanged – it could have been the ears. I didn’t have access to the internet then and the buzzing in my ears might not have been given a name. It wasn’t just the buzzing though. I’d had a couple of intensely dizzy moments and felt constantly travel sick – again, something to do with the ears.

It could actually have been about contraception. I was engaged and about to be married and didn’t want to launch into motherhood right away. I wasn’t a teenager at the time. I hadn’t been a teenager for a couple of decades or more.

I remember the doctor doing something that I had never seen a doctor do before. He pulled out a medical magazine and started leafing through the pages. He scanned the index and then went back to the relevant pages. After a quick browse of the contents of the page, his finger tracing the lines of text, he arrived at a particular prescription for my condition.

I thought these things were already inside a doctor’s head. I thought they already knew what to prescribe and they didn’t look at medical journals.

Does it inspire confidence to see the doctor doing something like that? There must have been a look on my face that suggested the answer was “No”.

He explained.

Medical knowledge is expanding all the time. Research uncovers new secrets every day. New treatments are constantly replacing the old. It’s not a case of the old medicine no longer works, but that better medicines are being developed that are more effective or have less harmful side effects. Of course, he knew what he could prescribe for my condition – but he wanted to find out whether there was anything better on the market.

“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”

I read these words this morning in my time with Jesus. I was reminded of my doctor’s actions so many years ago. The Spirit knows exactly what I need to make the next steps in my walk with God. He knows what revelation will ignite my heart, what promise I can claim to equip me, what rebuke is necessary to convict but not condemn me or what will stir my faith. He searches for those things among the deep things of God, looking not for something that will do – but for the best thing, the most effective thing, sometimes for the thing that will have the least harmful side effects.

Does it inspire confidence in me to know that the Holy Spirit is doing something like that? There is a look on my face that suggests the answer is “You bet it does!”

“Zah-khor”

In our fellowship meeting yesterday we were introduced to the Hebrew word “zah-khor” which, among other words, is translated “remember”.It’s not just recalling the past, but “actively focussing the mind on the present".

I don’t often post FW challenge stories, but this came to mind as I was thinking of remembering. It may not qualify as zah-knor as it does recall the past, but there is something calling to the spirit within me to bring what was there in the past into the present.

The account is, for want of a better phrase, biogrpahical fiction. The video cassette exists somewhere and the events on it are real, but if it is in a carboard box, and I have many carboard boxes, I have never found ti.

The "me" I used to be

The unlabelled video cassette was in a plain brown envelope in the bottom of a cardboard box. As an archaeologist might date a fragment of pottery from the surrounding objects, the letters, photographs and notebooks in the box, confidently informed me the video was almost twenty years old.

I knew what it was, even before I slotted it into the video player.

The opening scene was a finger, encased in a red woollen glove, pushing down the play button on a cassette player. It should have been bagpipes that set the scene, placing the viewer some where in Scotland. The elderly couple in the flat below us didn’t have a cassette tape of bagpipe music so we made do with someone playing an accordion, evoking images of Switzerland instead.

A quick tour of Inverness was followed by various scenes of what it was like to be on a gospel outreach team. The year was 1989. I had just returned from an overseas teaching post in a small church school. Settling back into the state school system, where boys wore long hair and earrings, and the courses I had left behind had been consigned to the filing cabinet as new, and supposedly, improved courses had been implemented, had left me feeling somewhat bemused. I wasn’t yet an old dog, but reluctant to learn new tricks.

A year out on a gospel outreach team seemed a good idea.

The video tape is a trip down memory lane. There’s me in the High Street, with a clip board and a questionnaire, looking very official. We had sat one afternoon generating the questions. On paper they looked harmless, and no one seeing me approach had any idea they were about to be thoroughly evangelised!

That’s me doing a sketch board. I took to that like a duck to water. Boxes painted onto a large sheet of white paper, were transformed into letters by adding a line here and a triangle there. I remember this particular one. “Spot the Scotsman”. It worked well with the tourists, cameras with their zoom lenses poking out at odd angles. How did it go? Something about a Scotsman being more than just someone who eats haggis, wears a kilt and tosses cabers around in the backyard. You have to be born a Scot with Scottish parents and all that. Then I went on to talk about what makes a Christian – reading the Bible? Going to church? You can see where it was all heading.

Me again – this time doing street drama. “The Race of Life” Why did I always get the part of the posh lady with the high heels and the handbag? “I give money to charity!” As if that was ever going to get me to heaven!

I looked so much slimmer in those days. I was single then, with no mouths other than my own to fill. I hadn’t discovered Lorne sausages and well fired rolls! There was less grey in my hair.

Is that Avril? Gosh, when was the last time I saw her? Parent’s evening a couple of years ago. That toddler in the pushchair has just taken her Highers! Avril was one of my potential converts. I say converts in a very loose sense. She wasn’t a Muslim or anything – just one of those pew fillers in the Church of Scotland. I had hopes that she would catch a spiritual spark off me and defect to the Charismatic Church.

Oh my! A Sunday morning meeting! So many familiar faces have passed on to greener pastures. I can see me right on the front row, arms held high, hands held out in supplication. The expression on my face – if I knew the camera was pointed at me, would I be so abandoned and lost in praise?

You know, suddenly I don’t feel like smiling. This “me”, full of exuberance and radiating life, is almost a stranger. I am ashamed that somewhere amongst fifteen years of marriage and a demanding job, buying a house and making a home, planting a garden and stalking bargains on the supermarket shelves – I have lost something.

I am ashamed that I have, so obviously, climbed back into the boat and embraced a predictable and mediocre Christian walk. I feel like the third servant in the parable clutching a decaying leather bag in my hands. The talent inside is tarnished. I just don’t remember digging the hole!

Father, forgive me. Please, ignite my spirit again.

Justice Disabled

Let’s suppose that I walked up to you one morning and thrust a photograph under your nose.

“What do you see in the window?” I ask.

You carefully scrutinise the picture. There isn’t really that much to see. It’s a picture taken through the front windscreen of a car. You can just see the edges of the bonnet, so you know it’s a red car. It’s not quite in focus. You can see the reflection of the man taking the picture. There is something on the dashboard.

“The disabled badge?” you offer cautiously.

“Yes, a disabled badge.” If you were a sea lion in a sea life park, no doubt you would be clapping your flippers and waiting for the fish. “Now, ask me – where was the car parked at the time.”

You comply. You feel safer with a script.

“Little Church Street, just across the road from the back entrance of Marks and Spencer’s, in a disabled parking space.”

That makes sense – a disabled parking place and a disabled parking badge. You are not sure where the narrative is headed but things are slotting into place.

“Now ask me – did I have a disabled passenger in the car?”

Of course, you have no way of knowing whether I am one of those people that have a badge and use it dishonestly. The rest of the driving population circle round car parks like vultures waiting for empty space to land, but others have the privilege of the marked out spaces for the disabled. You are beginning to get curious so you ask the question.

“My mother, almost blind, mostly deaf and quite old, she is definitely disabled.” I supply the answer. I don’t bother to tell you which shops we visited or list our purchases.

There would be something else in the photo if the parking attendant had taken his photo after rather then before he slipped the parking fine under the windscreen wiper! Despite having a disabled passenger, and displaying a disabled badge in the windscreen because I was parking in a disabled parking space, I still got fined.

The badge was not displayed the right way around!

Of course, I marched up to the Town Hall. Most times I amble to places, but this was not a time for ambling. I didn’t have to wait very long before I could thrust the parking fine under the nose of the lady behind the counter. She was on my side – or perhaps it was just the great training she had been given in dealing with potential tornados that made me think she was on my side.

I filled in an appeal's sheet, swithering over the wording. Even I conceded that I had obviously not “correctly” displayed the disabled badge.

She read through my account and assured me that if they took it any further they would be in touch in the next six weeks. She gave the impression that she thought they had made a mistake and it would not be pursued.

So that brings us to today and my imaginary conversation dragging you onto my side of the line. The fine stood, despite the badge in the window, the wrong way up. If there had been no badge, I could have understood it – but there was a badge. They – the district council of Rugby - had the chance to see the bigger picture and act in the spirit of the law, but they chose to be small-minded, money-pinching, nit-picking letter-of-the-law bureaucrats. Most reluctantly I paid the fine, although a friend said I should have made a stand! The words “correctly displayed” undermine my confidence.

It occurs to me as I retell the sorry tale, that I am swift to defend what I consider to be an injustice against me. I am challenged to consider whether I am as swift to defend others. My paltry parking fine is really only a small thing compared with real injustice.

Just as a PS I would like to apologise to the man in the car park. I was told that the attendant had just gone back to the main car-park so I set off in pursuit. He was standing there, a file under his arm and a name tag dangling from his shirt pocket.

I harangued him for fifteen minutes. I am not sure what I said, but he nodded sagely as I spoke. He agreed that it was unfair, that there was a disabled badge in the window, that I was entitled to park there, that I hadn’t exceeded the three hour limit and that the whole experience had been unpleasant for my disabled mother.

“What are you going to do about it?” was my final challenge.

“Me?” He looked alarmed. It turned out that not only was he not the car park attendant but he didn’t work for the council at all. It was lunchtime and he was just on his way to eat his sandwiches in the park and had taken short cut through the car park!

Jesus the Father

I tend to allow Father’s Day to pass me by. I don’t have a father, and I’m not a father and I’m not married to a father either, nor married to a man who has a father. I think that covers all bases. I know a lot of people who are fathers, and of course, I know The Father – so I’m not entirely fatherless.

Last weekend we were encouraged to bring something to share at our church meeting – a testimony, a poem, a short word – something the spirit of 1 Corinthians. It was a warm day so we sat in the garden. The kids scrabbled silently around to pick buttercups and “colour” their song sheets yellow!

With that kind of freedom, there are some people, like me, that take advantage and wax lyrical about something or other. Other people stay quiet, sometimes under the mistaken impression that what they have is not good enough.

Someone shared with me later what they planned to say, but wasn’t convinced that it was appropriate!

Did you know that Jesus was a father? Back off with the stones until I explain what sounds like heresy and some kind of approval of Dan Brown and Divinci.

Isaiah 9 opens with “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned,” (v2) and goes on to declare, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (v6)

Yes, did you catch that phrase towards the end? Everlasting Father. Not spoken of God the Father, but of Jesus the Son.

One of the translations has it as “Father of Eternity”, and comments that the word “Father” is used in the sense of “Author”. Jesus is the Author of Eternity.

Regardless of whether you get tangled up with the creation of the world being according to Genesis, over six days and calculate the age of the earth in thousands or millions of years as opposed to hundreds and thousands of millions of years through a God directed process of evolution – Jesus was the author of it all and all that came before it. When there was nothing – Jesus was present.

That totally gets rid of BC and AD (or BCE and CE if we are being politically correct!). There isn’t a time Before Christ – because he has always existed. All time is in a sense AD because everything that is came after Jesus.

Amazing!

You are amazing
Truly amazing
Author of eternity
There before the world began
Before a single word was spoken
There has never been a time
Darkest night or brightest day
When you have never been there
Always, always there beside me
Amazing, amazing Lord

Excuses

A post card arrived this morning. I don’t know anyone who is not tied into school holidays in some form or another, so the idea of anyone on holiday right now is not logical.

There are four pictuersue scenes of Woolacombe on the front and a paragraph of scrawled writing on the back. The weather apparently is mixed rain and sun but not cold and a lot of walking has been done and large ice-creams have been eaten.

It was from my sister. I know her writing and she doesn’t scrawl. I thought perhaps that someone else, my niece perhaps, or perhaps it was even the great niece who is possibly five by now and reads well, but still has to to master writing skills.

Wrong on both accounts! The last sentence reads “Two more weeks of plaster cast – hope you can decipher the scrawl.”

I have to confess that my sister’s handwriting, even with a plaster cast on the wrist, is a lot neater than some people’s “scrawl” without such an injury! I might even suggest that it is neater than my own plaster-cast-free scribble.

What really impresses me though is that she wrote the card. How many of us in her situation would have a) got the niece to write the card, b) got the grand niece to write the card, c) the husband perhaps, d) phoned instead or e) just decided to dispense with the whole postcard business anyway on account of the broken wrist? I am so impressed that she didn’t do that and it makes me feel treasured.

It also challenges me. It is so easy to allow hindrances to stop us from doing things. I think of all the things that I opt out of. Sometimes I am looking for an excuse not to do it – it is cold outside, it’s dark outside, I have a bit of a tickle in my throat and wouldn’t like to pass on my germs to anyone, I’m tired, I’ve had a hard day…and that’s without thinking hard about it.

My sister’s broken wrist doesn’t qualify as an excuse not to send a postcard. It’s not an excuse at all, but a genuine reason. But she didn’t let it stop her. She wrote the postcard in a very untidy scrawl – better that, she thought, than no card at all.

I was thinking that lately I have been making too many excuses why I can’t do some of the things that God is asking me to do. I spoke on Sunday about the “greater things” that Jesus said his followers would do.

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

I am finding some of the not-so-great things challenging enough even before I begin to think about the greater things. My faith should not in my ability to do what is asked or not, but in God’s promise that says I “will do greater things”.

Prophetic Preachers

“Thus the work on the house of God in Jerusalem came to a standstill until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia. Ezra” 4:24

“Now Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the prophet, a descendant of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them. Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak set to work to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were with them, helping them.” Ezra 5:1

The space between these verses in feet and inches, or metres and centimetres, if you are so inclined, is very small. One chapter ends and another begins and on the page of the Bible the space is not a big one.

The space between these verses in minutes and hours, or months and years, is a big one. I think it is somewhere in the region of twenty to thirty years. The ex-exiles returning from Babylon, now living back in Jerusalem had come upon a brick wall of intimidation from their enemies. The work on the temple that they had been rebuilding had come to a standstill.

Some twenty to thirty years later, the work begins again.

The catalysts were the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. They brought the word of the Lord to the situation. It was a word that unlocked the situation and released the nation from the fears that bound them – or perhaps, in Haggai’s case, presented them with a greater fear to deal with – the fear of God – and they began building. Not only did they begin, but they kept on building even though the enemies didn’t let up, and they finished what they set out to build.

I read this a few months ago and at the time I was struck by the power of prophetic preaching. Haggai and Zechariah did not water down their messages to make them more palatable, or invited anyone to join in a debate or discussion, but spoke prophetically to the nation and where, once there had been a nation standing still, making no headway – through their ministry, things begin to happen.

It stirred my spirit.

There is a need for prophetic preachers who bring a word that doesn’t just tickle our ears, or makes us think about changing the way we live our life, but never really empowers us to do so. We need a word that compels us to change, that sticks to us and that will not fade with time.

More than this, it stirred my spirit to seek to be that prophetic preacher!

Elaine and I

I remember the voice, but I don’t remember the name of the boy who owned it. Let’s call him George. It was a music concert at the school where I was teaching – a small private school. George was the smallest boy in the class, so naturally he was placed at the front – right next to the microphone the “choir” shared. He was possibly the most enthusiastic singer, definitely the loudest – and probably the least musical. He did not have that sweet soprano voice that all choirboys envy . He didn’t have a sweet anything voice. George possessed a singing voice that only his mother would love. It was painful to listen to.

I find myself very much in the same position. I am the smallest person in our “choir” and they have placed me at the front for our music concert. I don’t claim to be the most enthusiastic singer, or the loudest, but I suspect I am the one person in the choir who is singing flat and not quite hitting the notes, or holding on to them as long as should be.

The concert is in a day or two’s time, so I thought I would get in some extra practice. Just type in “I know him so well” plus “karaoke” and you get to partner the great Elaine Page on youtube. In real life she might pass me by, but in the cyber world there is no escape for her! So we sang – I took the “second” singer while she belted out the “first” singers lines.

We didn’t sound so bad. It was a little bit slower than I was used to – but that gave me time to take a few breaths along the way. It might not have graced the Albert Hall, but the neighbours were not banging on the wall.

Elaine and I were making sweet music.

So what was the problem? If Elaine and I could sing it well together – why did I sound like a strangled cat when I sang with the choir?

Two things really.

Firstly, the song on the karaoke site is pitched higher. Famous singers can probably sing in a whole variety of keys – that’s why they are famous singers. Maybe there are certain songs that are deliberately pitched to flatter a singer’s voice. The key at which Elaine was singing flattered my voice too! The low notes were not too low.

Secondly, my voice is probably a natural soprano, but I am singing with the altos. I was off sick, or recovering from sore throats when the choir learned the soprano harmonies. The alto part appeared to be much more straightforward. So I joined the altos.

So here I am – the smallest member of the choir – standing at the front – closest to the microphone – swinging wildly between pitch perfect and tone deaf.

I suppose I wouldn’t be the first person to mime on stage!

The Pencil

If You surrendered the pencil
To me saying, “Write in My book.”
What things would I write for myself, Lord
How might my own entry look?

Would I bypass the tears and temptations?
Write only of sunshine and smiles
Of triumph and glorious victories
Avoiding the troubles and trials

I would write of a day full of laughter
A day where there’s nothing goes wrong
No worries and no disappointments
A day full of music and song

I think that You’d take back the pencil
And turn back to pages of pain
You’d show me the stains of Your teardrops
And ever so gently explain

There’s treasure residing in trials
And strength that’s revealed in the fight
But joy always comes in the morning
And You, in the darkness? My light!


“All the days ordained for me were written in your book” Psalm 139:16

The Wolf and I

“Would you stop a bullet for me?

The conversation had been about the practical implications of egoism - “if I’m on my way to a doctor’s appointment, and in an alley there’s a man that’s been attacked a gang? He is bleeding and he's really, really big and there’s really nothing I can do to help but phone an ambulance…if I walk away, what am I? Am I really going to walk away because my doctor’s appointment matters more?” We had just about exhausted all of the reasons why a person might help or not and what that person might get out of helping or not.

For a brief moment we had discussed whether Martin Luther King could have been an egoist, acting on his own long term personal benefit. We moved on to talk about altruism.

And then the question, launched at me by some small fellow on the edge of the crowd. Would I stop a bullet for him?

Some might say that I gave my answer too swiftly.

“Yes.”

I must have said it in the right tone as no one questioned that I would. It was an answer that bypassed the brain and came straight from the heart. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know many of the people, or that some of the ones that I knew I really didn’t like that much, the answer was “Yes.” Ask me the same question next week, next month or next year and one would hope the answer would still be “Yes”

“Is that because your religion demands that you stop the bullet, or because you choose to?”

I had been reading John 10 over the week, in little snippets and single verses, meditating and chewing over stuff. I’d got to the verse about the hired man who doesn’t own the sheep. They don’t belong to him so when the wolf comes he just runs away and the sheep are scattered. I had been doing a lot of thinking about hired men and wolves – more about the wolves if truth be told. I thought about the times when I felt that I had been left to face the wolf alone – and sometimes circumstances really look like that. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious anyone between me and the wolf.

The Wolf and I

Who stands between the wolf and I?
On whose support can I rely?
The hired help? He runs away
Where is the man prepared to stay?

Some time previously I had been thinking about Jesus, the good shepherd laying down his life for his sheep. It was not a select few that Jesus died for, the nice fluffy ones, the ones that didn’t look for the holes in the fence or the ones that never got lost. All of them were infinitely precious to Him. All of them mattered because they were His.

I might not have seen the shepherd standing between the wolf and I, but He was there, not watching from a safe distance, but there with the stone in the sling and the sling swinging over his head.

God has given me s shepherd’s responsibility – not a laying on of hands commissioning in a church setting, but in daily life. I am supposed to be on the lookout. I encounter people who feel that it’s just them and the wolf and the hired hand running out of sight.

He calls me to step between a man and his wolf, or between a man and a bullet.

Rescued!

I had a stab of envy this morning! I was reading Psalm 18 - David declaring God to be his rock, his fortress, his deliverer, his shield and his stronghold. David, in distress, called out to God and …

The earth trembled and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because he was angry.

Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.

He parted the heavens and came down

God thundered from heaven and shot arrows and scattered David’s enemies! Bolts of lightning blasted them and they fled. And then…

He reached down from on high and took hold of me

The imagery is so powerful – that God would get angry when his child is being threatened, and fly down in fury to rescue him. The boldness of His attack on David’s enemies is in stark contrast with the gentleness with which he stoops down to lift David up.

I felt the stab of envy because too often I feel un-rescued!

Part of the problem is feeling that somehow it’s my own fault – I have either done something where the attacks are deserved, or not done thing which has disqualified myself from calling out to God.

Stupid theology! It may be the way the world works, but it’s not how God works. Just because I don’t feel rescued doesn’t mean that I won’t be rescued! What is it that David did? He called to God! So I called…

I had a moment or two thinking that God just might sigh heavily, tut a little perhaps and say, “What is it now?” That didn’t happen at all. He got down to business!

“So tell me about your enemies…”

My enemies are not flesh and blood. There are people that I don’t get on well with, and probably don’t like me very much…and truth be told, I am not keen on them either – but they are not my enemies.

My enemies are the internal kind – fears, insecurities and inadequacies – the usual suspects, along with a few unusual ones!

As I sat with God, drinking a cup of chamomile tea (no milk in the house) I saw my enemies shrink to a non-threatening size.

God takes delight in fighting my battles because too often I want to fight my own battles and I don’t step aside and give Him space to bring about the victories He has planned.

“He rescued me because he delighted in me.” Psalm 18:19

Running the Race

Like many people today I had a little flutter on the Grand National. It’s only a little flutter – not a monthly wage packet, or the entire contents of my saving account…actually, right now that would qualify as a small flutter too. I admit to having some concerns about the race – there are a lot of runners, and a lot of fences, and a lot of horses fall, and a lot of jockeys take a tumble. I seem to remember one year the animal rights people doing something to get the race abandoned – or am I making that bit up? My husband, a man who knows horses and the betting game quite well, is of the opinion that if the horses didn’t enjoy the race they wouldn’t participate. He is also of the opinion that you just need to look at the horse at the end of the race to know whether it enjoyed the experience or not. Talking is not the only form of communication.

Hebrew’s 12:1 reminds us to run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

I have to confess that not only am I possibly not running any more, I am not even sure that I am walking. I think I might have just got off my horse, built a house somewhere between The Canal Turn (Fence 8) and St Valentine’s Brook (Fence 9) and planted a vegetable garden.

I have been reading the book of Ezra over the last few weeks. The people headed back to Jerusalem, after seventy years in exile in Babylon. Cyrus, a king that didn’t really know God, but had his heart touched by God anyway, had given them permission to leave, to rebuild the temple and make sacrifices to keep the royal family safe.

I guess that would be like the 40 Grand National horses setting off at a gallop towards the first fence. They left the starting line armed with enthusiasm and excitement – a cavalry charge heading to Jerusalem, to rescue and rebuild the temple. They just hadn’t anticipated the obstacles between them and the finishing line. I don’t think for a moment they thought it would be a stroll through the park – but there was so much rubble, so little temple remains and so many hostile neighbours to deal with.

Enthusiasm wasn’t enough – it never is.

Work stopped for a good sixteen years. Not only was the temple not getting built, but all the materials that could have been used to build the temple were being used to build their own homes.

Entrance Stage Left – Haggai. He was a man who was on stage for four months, who preached just four sermons over four days. He didn’t say anything that the people wanted to hear, but everything that they needed to hear. No one wanted to listen, but they just couldn’t help themselves. Haggai got to them. They picked up their tools and went back to work.

I need Haggai. I need him to tell me to abandon the house I have built between the two fences, with its vegetable garden, climb back into the saddle and finish the race!

Horseopoly

I don’t like Monopoly. I don’t like the whole philosophy that you win at someone else’s expense. I don’t like “Horseopoly”. It’s the same as Monoploy, but instead of London street names, you purchase horses. The houses are replaced by bales of hay and the hotels are transformed into barns, and three throws of double dice sees you packed, not off the jail, but into the trailer! Free Parking is Pasture, and you can win £50, not in a beauty pageant, but in a gymkhana. Disguise it any way you wish, it’s still Monopoly.

Disliking it didn’t mean that I didn’t play it for a few hours this morning. I was babysitting – although the “babies” are taller than I am. They are old enough to amuse themselves, but enjoy board games with visitors. My request for “Uno” fell on deaf ears and the “Horseopoly” came out of the box, along with strict instruction not to gang up on anyone.

I don’t like Monoploy because I generally lose. I don’t have the cutthroat nature necessary to win. I generally don’t rub my hands together with glee while my victim mortgages all her property and empties her bank account because she was unlucky enough to land on the horse equivalent of Mayfair, with its three bales of hay.

Yes, for once I was winning. More by luck than intention and I could see that both “babies” were struggling to keep their stables afloat. There was a deep breath as they rounded the corner and raced down the home straight. The trailer (aka Jail) became a haven where for at least three throws (unless they were unlucky enough to throw a double) they didn’t have to worry about stepping on my property. Theirs was mortgaged to the hilt and posed no threat.

That’s when I came up with my genius idea. I made the most creative deals to keep the game going. I was rolling in money and possibly had more money than the bank. One of my charges landed on the horse equivalent of Park Lane. With three bales of hay she owed me £1,400. I could have gloated. There was nothing to mortgage and the cupboard was bare. My deal? In exchange for her handing over the horse equivalent of Pall Mall, I would un-mortgage all her property for her. Basically she got £750 for something worth £90. The dice fell in her favour and I donated another £200 in the stretch of horses between the Trailer (aka Jail) and Pasture (aka Free Parking). She was considerably cheered

The other charge wanted a deal too. It was only fair. I was prepared to deal, but only if she landed on Mayfair or Park Lane. She had been trying to avoid landing there, but now she was eager to climb over my fence and trespass. She got her deal eventually – some old horse that was only fit for the glue factory in exchange for bales of hay on each of her sets of property.

It was probably the only time that I have enjoyed playing the game – not because I didn’t lose, but because I didn’t want anyone else to lose either. I was absurdly generous and I can imagine that Monopoly-philes would say I didn’t play the game according to the rules.

It made me think about God who doesn’t play by the rules. His generosity towards me is absolutely absurd. Just as I took delight in my deals that lifted the “babies” out of their horse-poo debts that they could never repay – God has lifted me and released me from a debt that I could never repay.

Hot Bees

I was watching a documentary last night. I’m not really a fan of Richard Hammond, but I caught the last half hour of his “Invisible Worlds”. He was looking at aspects of the world from beyond the normal light spectrum that people can see – the ultra violet and infra red, x-ray vision and radio waves, All these things are present, but our eyes are not designed to see them. If we could detect forest fires long before the trees started to burst into flames, we could stop them long before they get out of control. One little beetle can apparently do that. It sees things in infra red and sees the build up of heat in the air long before the tree starts to smoulder.

What really held my attention though were the bees! The camera went inside a hive. Looking with the natural lens it appeared that some of the bees were sitting around not really pulling their weight while other bees were very busy bees. I am familiar with groups of people – some apparently not pulling their weight, while others are firing on all cylinders. Switch to infra red and the busy bees turn black, and the lazy bees turn yellow. The sitting-around bees were hot little bees and the busy bees were cold bees. The hot little bees were so hot that just a few degrees hotter and they would have probably burst into flame! They were sitting around doing something important because they were generating heat and keeping the baby bees not yet hatched warm. The busy bees were feeding honey to the sitting around bees – the honey being converted to energy to keep them hot.

The temperature at which the baby bees not quite hatched were kept at determined what kind of bees they would turn out to be. A slightly lower temperature would produce a busy little worker bee who rarely left the nest. These little fellows fed the hot bees and generally kept the hive clean. They didn’t have long life spans.

However, a slightly higher temperature produced a forager bee. These little fellows were the ones flying from flower to flower collecting nectar and telling other bees where the food sources were. They were stronger bees, living up to ten years.

Whether it was a worker bee or a forager bee was all down to the temperature that the hot bee kept the baby bees not yet hatched.

I have been reading the early chapters of Ezra. The Jewish nation had been granted permission to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem. Some of them decided to stay put in Babylon, they had put down roots and were reluctant to move. Others were already packed and waiting to leave. When they got there they built the altar and made lots of sacrifices, but when it came to rebuilding the temple – it was a much bigger job and they encountered opposition. They were discouraged enough to stop working. Years later, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah were called in to bring a word from God. It was very stirring stuff.

Haggai’s word was in the form of a rebuke, chastising them for neglecting to build the temple. They were busy redecorating their own homes, adding fitted kitchens and conservatories, and God’s house was still in ruins. Haggai pointed out that the drought they were living in was linked to their neglect of God’s house. No matter how much they planted, they never harvested a bumper crop. They never had an abundance of stuff.

Haggai’s word hit the mark with me. Although I have my moments of revelation, for much of the time the word “drought” fits. I have been discouraged and downhearted of late. It has been a dry time and I have had to dig some deep wells to get to water! I just thought it was one of those dry times that we all go through. Seeing it through Haggai’s eyes, linking it into building, or neglecting to build, God’s house, has shown up my dryness in a different light.

I got to thinking about the hot bees. When the hot bees cool down, the offspring, the fruit of the hive, is made up of busy, short life worker bees that don’t really go anywhere. When the hot bees stay hot, the bees that get born are stronger bees, living a long time, going on exciting journeys, feeding the hive, helping it to remain vibrant.

If the Jews listening to Haggai had been bees in a bee hive, before he spoke they would have been the black bees seen through the infra red lens. Busy perhaps, but producing something that lasted for just a short time, something that never really went anywhere. The leaders were convicted by Haggai’s word and began to work on the temple. Under the infra red lens they would be like the hot bees, producing the forager bees, the strong ones that lived for years.

I am meant to be a hot bee. Somewhere along the line I have cooled down. The fruit in my life is not as strong, not as vibrant, not really contributing to the body in the way it should be. How do I get to be hot again? One of the ways in which the word describes itself is “honey”. Just as the hot bees needed to be fed honey to maintain their heat – I need to feed on the word. Whether that is “preached” word, “sung” word, “read” word, “prophesied” word or “dreamed” word matters not.

Amazing what lessons the natural world can teach us – even the bits we can’t see.

The Invitation

Anyone of his people among you—may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem.” Ezra 1:2

It was an invitation to a people who had been in exile for seventy years. It was an invitation given by a King – Cyrus, King of Persia.

For some, the invitation probably went straight into the bin. They had, after seventy years, settled down, made friends, got jobs, married and reproduced. They just didn’t want to go. Jerusalem was some distant memory and had no present reality for them.

For some, the invitation wasn’t meant for them. They were not part of the Israelite nation, but that wasn’t going to stop them. They went anyway.

For some, the invitation was put somewhere they could see it everyday. They were not quite sure. The invitation wasn’t in the bin, granted. But neither were they packing just yet. They were counting the cost of moving. Some days they were sure, other days they were not so sure. Maybe they had drawn out a chart and listed all the pros and cons – I would have done! It could have gone either way.

For some, the invitation was also put where they could see it – and the packing was in full swing. Not only was the best pottery carefully wrapped in paper and the linen washed and ironed, but the first thing packed was a tin containing all the legal documents – the title deeds to property, marriage certificates, death certificates, “O” and “A” level certificates – every piece of paperwork they could find.

The narrative goes on to say that the people that went were the ones that were moved in their hearts by God.

There are times in our lives when we make the big moves. I did it in 1976 when I moved to Durham to start my teacher training course. !980 I moved to London for my first teaching job. I982 I moved to Cyprus. My life is dotted with big moves. !989 and 1992 were very big moves…moving to Inverness and later moving into a blissful married state with Joe.

What came to mind, when I read Ezra’s opening chapter is that Cyrus’ invitation, the invitation of a King…for the exiles in Babylon, the invitation was a one off, once in a life time opportunity.

There is a different King that gives us a slightly different invitation…not once in a life time, but every single day to ”build the Temple of the Lord”. There are many Christians who are concerned to build “Jerusalem” in Jerusalem. I am not one of them. For Christians what does the Temple equate to?

Just as not all the exiles wanted to go back to Jerusalem, or some of them were agonizing over it and others were already packed…within the Christian faith, perhaps some of us are just a little bit too comfortable, a little bit too reluctant to pick up the gauntlet, which God throws down each morning.

Every day we have an opportunity to move out of something “less than” and into something “more than”. Building God’s Kingdom is an every day occupation, demonstrated in so many way…in words spoken, in love shown, in turning the other cheek, in rebuking sickness, in moving mountains with mustard seed faith, in claiming promises…

My invitation? I am thinking about what I need to pack!

My Own Personal Filth Files

I was listening to the radio in the car. Someone was relating a story about window cleaners. Apparently they had contacted a cleaner to come and clean their windows. The man had turned up the next day with the ladder, the bucket of water and his window wiper, took one look at the windows and withdrew his services. I am sure that the windows were no messier than anyone else’s. His complaint was the windows were too big!

When asked a few weeks ago about birthday presents…there was no asking involved now that I come to think about it, merely telling. I had wound myself up into a storm about late nights, ruined dinners and no telephone calls and, as ever when I get that wound up, the state of the house gets tossed into the argument. You know how it goes…working my fingers to the bone…coming home after a hard day to start all over again…the only one who cleans up around here…treat this place like a hotel..

Well, I decided to forgo the book, the CD, the DVD and any other such potential birthday presents. I wanted a firm to come clean my house from top to bottom! I was looking for a blitz on corners and grime and the stuff I never get around to doing.

Then I thought about the window cleaner story. Imagine if the van turns up, parks outside, unloads a plethora of bottles of stuff, and tins of polish, and scrubbing things and an industrial hoover and then takes one look at my front room.

“Oh, sorry, Madam,” he or she says, “there’s just too much dirt here. We don’t do deep cleans, just surface wipes!”

I have had two ladies that “do” – one needed the job to support a menagerie of pets. She was twelve or thirteen at the time. My husband, being the chairperson of his union, insisted I pay her a minimum wage and arrange the occasional work’s night out – a visit to the cinema and a pizza afterwards. There was a rumour, entirely untrue, that I tidied up before she arrived. We worked side by side for a couple of hours and the house was clean.

The second lady that did was a friend who just wanted to serve me. No rumour this time of prior tidying up. She managed a few weeks but then became incredibly stressed out. I don’t blame the state of my home on her stress. There were other things going on in her life.

So with the advent of the cleaning firm knocking on the door tomorrow morning – I kind of feel obliged to at least tidy up. I have already changed the bedding!

Mouths Wide Open

There are some people who are naturally open mouthed. They breathe quite happily through their mouth, rather than through their nose. In fact, closing their mouths is a conscious act, and keeping it closed is an act of will. It’s just not natural.

I am an open mouth person. This has it’s disadvantages in that at night time I drool. I wake to a wet patch on the pillow. If I just happen to be leaning against my husband, the wet patch is on his chest rather than on the pillow. I am open mouthed and I am a drool er! I dare say the drooling will get worse as I get older.

When I was younger, I spent some time in an convent – not in preparation for becoming a nun, although I think I would have made a good nun. There was an orphanage attached to the convent – I wasn’t an orphan, but home life was a bit traumatic at the time for my mum, and all us kids spent a week or two, or longer, in this place. We were there twice.

The first time we didn’t seem to be able to put a foot wrong and were heralded as the best examples of well-behaved children that had ever walked through the door.

The second time we had nits. I don’t know whether we brought them with us from home, or whether we caught them on the bus travelling to the convent, or whether some convent kid passed them on to us. All I know is that from being the best examples of well-behaved children on the planet, we became lepers. I don’t think the nuns knew about the shampoos you could use to get rid of nits. Their preferred method was thrusting our heads over a sink and dragging a fine toothed nit comb through the hair. We were faced with the little beasties in the water drowning slowly before our eyes!

The nits seemed to be just the starting point for all sorts of criticisms levelled at us. We couldn’t do anything right. I came under fire because I was an open mouth person. I never thought about how I breathed before. I just breathed through my mouth rather than through my nose. Suddenly my open mouth became this horrendous thing that double decker buses were liable to fall into! It wasn’t something that I deliberately chose to do. It wasn’t an act of defiance or anything, and yet that was how it was portrayed.

Open wide your mouth and I will fill it" (Psalm 81:10, NIV).

This is a verse after my heart. Not only am I allowed to be open mouthed, I am encouraged to be really open mouthed.

As much as my physical tendency is towards open-mouthed-ness, my spiritual tendency is probably not that at all. Picture bird’s nests and baby chicks, and the not only have you got really wide open beaks, but those beaks are often glaringly red or yellow, so the parent bird just can’t ignore it. The open beak is usually accompanied by a manic squawking that can’t be ignored either. It speaks of hunger, it speaks of utter dependency, it speaks of appetite and insatiability.

Transfer that to our spiritual lives! Does it transfer at all?

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.”