More about Jesus' death... still thinking...

After posting a few days ago on the Beautiful Gospel, under the heading "Why did Jesus die?" I thought I should say something more...

Because I feel as though the explanation of Jesus dying on the cross I gave, is true but it is once again not all of the truth.

Christianity is a mystery, it is not easily explained. And we have tended as humans to want simple, clear, step by step explanations - largely especially in western Christianity because we like things clear and logical.

So when I read through my last post, it seemed that I had done away with a belief in the idea that Jesus sacrificed himself for my sins (known as the penal substitution doctrine.) But, there is a lot in the Bible about the idea of Jesus being the sacrificial lamb, whose death paid the price for our sins. I do not believe we can actually write that out of the explanation. But that aspect is the one that western conservative Christianity has focussed on: the metaphor of God as judge but sending his Son Jesus to take the punishment for us. And I think that Brad Jersak, and many many others, have wanted to show that this is not the only way of seeing the cross, this is not the only truth - although it is true. But by emphasising this metaphor, we may have ended up showing God as an angry judge/headmaster, requiring appeasement, sending his own son to pay the penalty on our behalf - and not giving enough weight to the other sides of the story, such as God's love.

There are various different facets of Jesus' death and resurrection in the Bible, and I think they all partly explain what happened there on the first Good Friday. I don't have time nor probably the ability to do justice to this. But I wanted to point out that there are lots of ways of viewing the cross.

For example, John in his gospel compares Jesus being lifted up on the cross, to the bronze serpent which was set up on a pole in the wilderness for the sake of the Israelites, who were being bitten by poisonous snakes and dying. God told Moses to make a bronze serpent on a pole, so the Israelites could go and look at it when they got bitten, and be cured of the snakebite and not die. John says that Jesus was to be lifted up like the bronze serpent. In other words, we look to him on the cross for healing, and for life - not in this case for absolution.

Also, Jesus is likened to the Passover Lamb - well in that case, the Israelites did not kill the lamb to pay a substitutionary penalty for sins (that was a different sacrifice altogether) - but at the first Passover, it was so that they could paint the blood on their doorposts as a sign - so that the angel of death would not enter their houses but pass over them. So if Jesus is the Passover Lamb, it means he dies so that we, as believers, can be protected/saved from death - again, as a way to life.

When Jesus died, the veil in the Temple was torn in two. This symbolises that the barrier between God and human beings was ripped apart through Jesus' death - so that we can now have direct access to God in prayer, and know his presence, and as it says in Hebrews, approach his throne unafraid. So here Jesus' body being broken, is shown to mean that he opened the way for us to God.

Dan is good at putting things into diagrams to help him figure them out. After reading my last blog post, he showed me this diagram he had come up with:



Father...................Son                                                                                

           JUSTICE                                                                            

Words like sacrifice, substitution,                                                                         
propitiation, expiation        

Christ......................Satan

                                                                                                                                     VICTORY

Words  like defeat over demons, spiritual powers,

                                                                                                   crushing the serpent's head, defeat of evil etc.



                                                         

    

                                                           Jesus.............................Me
                                                                             LOVE

   Words about restoring me to God, reconciliation, 

giving me eternal life

So there are many ways of looking at the cross. Whilst I would wish that we didn't have a crucifixion at the heart of our faith... I am at the same time grateful for it - how could I not be. Thankfully, it was a death followed by a resurrection! Jesus didn't end up dead, but alive. So we don't have to stay grieving, we can look on to the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, and to how Jesus speaks to us today in our hearts. Thank goodness for that!

Why did Jesus die?

When Jesus died by crucifixion at the first Easter, was it a human sacrifice? God hated the pagan practice of human or child sacrifice among some of the Canaanite people of Old Testament times (those who worshipped Molech, Leviticus 18:21.) Why would he have made his own son Jesus die, to appease himself, in the very manner he called despicable and abominable in the Old Testament? It doesn't make sense.

In the Old Testament, God did require animal sacrifices, as a way of dealing with the people's wrongdoings, to restore a right relationship with him. And it is true that in the New Testament, the book of Hebrews calls Jesus the one perfect sacrifice, paying for all our wrongdoings, doing away with the need for the sacrificial system.  Evangelical western Christianity has tended to home in on the language of sacrifice to explain the death of Jesus on the cross.

But I have read and heard a few things recently that have made me see it a bit differently. I have followed some debates as to whether Jesus was really appeasing his own father's anger on the cross. Could that be right? And when we say that Jesus "paid the price" for our sins, whom exactly was he paying? Was he paying God? Or satan? CS Lewis' first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, speaks to that a bit when the boy Edmund is captured by the White Witch - Aslan meets the Witch at night and offers himself instead of Edmund and so he Aslan is killed on the Stone Table. But the person demanding and extracting the payment is the Witch, not Aslan. She seems to be in the role of Satan. And after submitting to obey the ancient law (equivalent with the OT Law?) Aslan overcomes the law and death itself, is resurrected, and quickly joins his people who are already fighting the Witch, defeats and destroys her, restores all the poor creatures who have been subjugated to her, and frees Narnia to be the harmonious, beautiful, joyful land it was originally intended to be.

This story seems to fit with the understanding of the Christian Gospel which I heard described a few nights ago by Brad Jersak, under the title "The Beautiful Gospel." In his telling of the Gospel, he descries how, as often as human beings turn their back on God in rejection of him or his ways, God moves to where they are and faces towards them again, always seeking and longing to be face to face with them (us). He talked about something like "the unending pursuit of a relentless God" - but pursuing us with love, not anger. God longing for us to be in relationship with him.

In the beautiful Gospel, God never punishes us for our sin. That is not his desire nor his method. He does though let us take the consequences of sin. Every selfish act has bad consequences one way or another. For example, our friendships and family life get marred when we act selfishly or get angry, when we don't count each other's needs as equal to our own. Sometimes we don't suffer the consequences of our own selfishness, but other people do (like when we wear a cheap T-shirt made by a child-labourer somewhere else n the world) - and other times we do suffer consequences of other people's wrong-doing - like when greedy government policies result in poor planning and, for instance, the flooding of land which could have been avoided. Nobody is being punished - but we are living in a world where everybody's actions have consequences, for good or bad, and we are all bound up in it together.

So when Jesus died on the cross, it was not that God nailed him there to make him pay for us. It was that God entered the world as Jesus, God in man, and lived a perfect life. In telling the truth that he was the Son of God, and in gaining so much popular support because of his wise teaching and loving miracles, he incurred the anger of the ruling parties, who used the system to get him put to death. Jesus gave himself up to dying, he was not forced to do it by an angry God. It was a self-sacrifice, to carry through to the bitter end the battle between God and Satan. Jesus death was like the lightning rod for all of satan's hatred of God, for all the consequences of sin in the world, for all time. And the death was not the end - as in the Aslan story - Jesus overcame death, rose out of the tomb, and entered heaven. It is incredible - it is supernatural -, but, he is God.

Water water everywhere

This happened when we had only been in Uganda for a few weeks: we were staying in the Jacksons' house, and just down from us, our neighbours had four students staying in their converted garage - complete with lino on the floor, a table and beds, a charcoal burner to cook on. But they told us that the roof leaked when the heavy rain fell.  It was just as well that the practice was stopped not long after. Anyway, the campus is on the side of a hill which stands up above all the surrounding area, so that when the rains come, first the heavy clouds assemble, billowing and swelling over the top of the hill, and when they start to spread out over the top, the rain suddenly pours, - in bucketfuls. On this day, as the clouds began to gather and swell and the thunder began, we saw these four girls run out of their accommodation and take up stances in the road, faces pointing up towards the clouds, fists raised against them: "You shall NOT rain! In the name of Jesus, we command you, you shall not rain!" Unfortunately though the thunder growled and rumbled on, and soon the fat globs of water began to fall and splash around their feet, and then, slightly muted, "OK, you may rain, but you may not spoil our things!"

I have been saying the exact same prayer in my head over the last couple of days, even though feeling that praying against the weather is seemingly pointless. It is going to come. But England has been inundated with water again these last two weeks. There is flooding in the north, south, east and west. Hundreds of people were flooded out of their homes over Christmas. And we know from our experience in 2007, when our house in Gloucester flooded badly, that it can be up to six months before you can move back into the house, depending on builders, insurance and, the weather. So it is no small thing. 

Flooded fields just outside Gloucester today

Our area has just escaped so far although the big river Severn, in whose valley Gloucester lies, has burst its banks at several points. But the fields all around where our little house is, in Longford, are all covered with water now. A few more heavy downpours, and it seems likely that the roads will flood again. No, Lord, please! (We ourselves are living in a rented house in a safer part of town, but it is our tenant - and also our floors and walls - in the little house we let out that I am talking about.)

I have often wondered about God and the weather. I know we all ask those questions when there is a major weather-related disaster, such as the Tsunami, or the earthquake in Haiti - but also, what about just, a country getting a lot of rain? Or, a lot of sunshine, like Uganda? The weather affects everything - the economy, food production, as well as also people's mentalities, plans, and even their happiness levels. Is God involved in the weather? He must be. Yet it seems so random. And can we pray about it? I remember hearing people say, "You mustn't pray for fine weather for your wedding day/bbq/swimming party - think of the poor farmers who badly need the rain!" Annoying, but true I suppose! "Nice weather for ducks" about sums it up - the weather we want may not be what our fellow-creatures want.

What about this:

"He sends his command out to the earth; his word runs swiftly. He gives snow like wool, he scatters hoar frost like ashes. He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs; who can stand before his cold? He sends out his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow and the waters flow."  Ps 147: 15-18.

As God is in charge of this world, the weather is in his remit as well, of course, as this psalm shows. But it seems clear that God normally lets the world run along in its natural course, which includes the weather as well, for good and for bad - this is the only explanation for illness, for birds being eaten by cats in the garden, for people losing their jobs, and all those things that happen that we wish didn't happen. What I hold onto is that God can and does intervene at times, but honestly, it would be ridiculous to think of him providing the exact right weather for all our requirements from one day to the next - how could he run the world like that? He also expects us to use our brains to find ways of living in the world as it is.

But anyway, I shall still pray that Gloucester doesn't get flooded, because I really don't want it to! But I have to accept that if it does, God will help us and everyone else get through it, that this is part of living in a messed-up world, that this life isn't all we have.

Re-set

I've had a little hiatus from writing this blog, and I have been thinking... why should I start writing it again? I saw a hilarious cartoon of two dogs sitting down talking to each other, one saying, "I took up blogging for a while... Now I have gone back to meaningless loud barking into the night..." But I know that I enjoy reading people's blogs, and, I enjoy writing, so, I might just keep on barking. The blogs I enjoy most are either people writing their inner experiences, what they went through, what helped; blogs that are more like newsletters, with pictures, telling stories, just to keep us caught up; and blogs about books, as I am always looking for recommendations of good books to read. So those are the things that I will write about.

One reason why I hadn't written anything for a while is that it has been a non-stop few weeks. Dan has been away in Uganda. He went at the worst time for me, but, it wasn't his fault. He left just as the children entered the ridiculously busy last weeks of summer term: Alex is in his school play and needed an Elvis outfit, he is in two cricket leagues both trying to fit in their games before the summer break, Abby had sports day at a stadium in Cheltenham, oh I had a job interview... On one day I had a WTC (my workplace) conference, Alex's induction morning at his new school, Alex's old school summer fayre, our church Women's Evening, and both children to social events. One parent really can't do it all. How do single parents manage??? I had just stopped taking my amazing answer-to-all-my-problems tabs about two weeks before this hecticness started - maybe bad timing, but, there is always something coming up and so I just went for it.

Began to feel wound-up about coping with all these events and in some cases stresses (job interview...) Began to feel tense inside. Got very angry with our second child when he displayed grumpiness about doing a chore, so much that after shouting I rushed upstairs into the bedroom with slammed doors and heavy breathing and some crying. Woke up in the mornings with my brain ranging around for the thing to worry about. Stopped writing my gratitude list, as it seemed pointless. At church last Sunday, I went for prayer at the end and told the two people who were to pray for me, that I was worried I was reverting and that I just so want my security to be in God, and in his care for me, not in jobs and finances or in my own ability to do the things that I have to do. The lady had been at the Women's Breakfast in May when I talked a bit about anxiety and the resources I had found for dealing with it. She said to me, "Are you still writing your gratitude list that you told us about?" I told her I had kind of stopped. She urged me to get back to doing it, and she said,"It is spiritual warfare when you do that. Every time you write down something that you are thankful to God for, it drives satan away. The actual writing of the thank you's is the important thing."

Then this last week, the lady who wrote the book called One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp, wrote in her blog (aholyexperience.com) about how she had just been in a time of doubt and fear - and another blog I read, called A New Name by Emma Scrivener (mostly about anorexia and related issues - no I don't have it but I find her thoughts on self-esteem, judging yourself, redemption, and much more always helpful) at the same time talked about how she had hit a time of despair and was fighting back from it - and these two amazing women going through these dips, made me feel so hopeful - that even such insightful, Godly, able women still had to push off bad times. So my dip doesn't mean I have failed, it means, it is a battle and I am in it. And I have resources to call on. So, use them. Keep going. Fight for the joy and peace that I desire.

So I am now on "Things I Am Thankful For" number 542. And the most recent one is: Dan gets back tomorrow!!!

Angels bending near the earth

I enjoyed singing Christmas carols so much this year.

I decided my favourite one is It Came upon a Midnight Clear ... "that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold..."

Singing it, I had a picture of a massive angel, hovering over the world, head bent down towards it, seeing and mourning at the wrongdoing and sorrow, but also full of peace that all will be well. Peace that God is in control. Knowing that God sees all, but believing that He also knows the bigger picture, and that there will be justice, and recompense, and a setting right, in the end.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

These pictures are artwork to illustrate this same carol, by Erik Christenson, taken from his blog - I hope he would not mind. I love them.

This photo is of a tomb in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. I resonate with it because it shows how God and the angels grieve with us, even whilst knowing more than us. 

Because we live in a fallen world, that needs the God who came at Christmas, and who will come again.

Just thoughts

This is going to be very much half-formed and I will hope to feel clearer on these things as time goes by...

Last week in our small group we were thinking about the well-known and very helpful words, "What more does the Lord require of you, but to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?" If we are only asked to do these three things (which, granted, are very broad), then, they must be highly important in God's eyes. The so-called Golden Rule is very similar if you think about it: "Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself".

So, acting justly is the first thing required. And yet, for many Christians, justice is seen as a kind of hobby-horse for some, like green issues are for others. I think. Lots of evangelical Christians would see spreading the gospel as more important than fighting for justice in the world. But, here it is in black and white as the very first requirement.

When we discussed the implications of the words for us (asking the question, So what? as in So what does this mean for us?) -  we talked a lot about shopping ethically, Fairtrade etc, and about treating everyone equally and kindly in our daily lives, not wasting resources, and we moaned a bit about the unfair secondary school system in this country and how we don't think we should use our children as tools for the gospel so we go along with the coaching for the grammar schools test etc etc. But then I think we felt a bit stuck. I made the comment that in Uganda, it was so easy to see the justice issues, they were in our faces every day: low pay, people with zero opportunity to escape poverty, injustice in the courts and at the hands of the police, bribery, and the list could go on. And living there, we could on a daily basis do a little bit, to help a few people. Whilst here, on the surface there is a pretty high standard of justice for most people: a fair minimum wage, healthcare paid for by taxes so that it is available to all, schooling for everyone, social services of all kinds to protect the voiceless and disadvantaged.

Apart from buying fairtrade products, and signing a few petitions on facebook(...!), and maybe supporting a child through Compassion, what else should Christians in say England be doing?

Dan and I have made friends with some Redcliffe colleagues, Andy and Carol Kingston-Smith, who have set up a justice inititative called JusTice, with a webpage which seeks to network about all kinds of international and UK justice issues, and also holds seminars from time to time, and they also teach an MA course on Justice in Mission at Redcliffe. This is the link to their blog:
http://justiceadvocacyandmission.wordpress.com/author/akingstonsmith/

So I sat beside Andy at lunch at Redcliffe on Thursday, and told him about our group's discussion. Understandably, he rolled his eyes somewhat, and pointed out that the fact that often Christians are SO unaware of all the justice issues all around us, is a huge part of the problem. In fact he referred to it as the great sin of omission in our time. By being woolly and unaware, we are not just being woolly and unaware, we are actually sinning.

Now I begin to defend myself! I have signed up to their blog and read some of the articles (being honest). I did live in Africa and did a bit to help in Africa's development through higher education. I do try to buy ethically, locally, and not wastefully. I am interested in justice for women, equality, and in preserving the environment for future generations (if there are going to be any).

But I am in no way an "activist"nor am I very well versed in politics, asylum issues, labour issues, etc etc.

And, whilst the Bible is very clear that our God is a just God, who clearly desires and requires justice of us, there are also some ambiguous bits, like the parable of the workers in the vineyard where the farmer pays the workers as he decides and not according to how many hours they had worked, and, Jesus saying, "The poor you will always have with you" as if we don't have to work our socks off to eliminate poverty. But then again, Jesus was born amongst the poor, and mainly ministered among them. And the song of Mary says: "The poor he fills with good things while the rich walk empty away." The first shall be last and the last first. It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. The upside-down kingdom (I need to read that book.)

But I think there is going to be a new me! I am a convert to the Micah principal. What more does the Lord require of us, after all?

I would be very interested to hear any of your comments, by email if not on here,  - any light you can shed, or suggestions for living "justly" in our western societies...

The man who fell to earth and me

Today Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a capsule, 24 miles above the earth, right at the edge of space. He free fell and then parachuted down to earth, taking ten minutes. There were apparently many ways he could have died attempting this... (?!) He was breaking a fifty year old record by jumping from this height down to earth.

NOTHING could induce me to be remotely interested in doing anything anywhere close to this. Nothing could induce me to do a bunjee jump. I wouldn't even really want to jump off the high board at the swimming pool come to that.

However, if I think the thing is worth it, I will do it even if it scares me. Like, preaching to 800 Ugandan students and staff at community worship. I was scared stiff then. And like, moving to rural Zambia for two years, not really having a clue what it would be like. So maybe I shouldn't paint myself a coward. I just don't want to waste my fear on unnecessary pastimes, like, jumping off high places...! I have plenty of things to be afraid of without looking for novel ways to try out that feeling...

When we were still living in Uganda and thinking ahead to moving back to England, I felt sick with fear about some aspects of the move. I was really scared of leaving Crosslinks, my employer and support and safety net for fourteen years - mainly because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get a job and therefore an income. I was nervous about how financially we would get through the nine months before Dan's job at Redcliffe started. I was scared about what schools we would get the children into, and so scared of them ending up in oversubscribed sink schools with bad behaviour and poor results. I was also worried about what house we would find to live in. I was a bit scared that Dan would hate living in England and resent me for it. So, just a few small things like that.

But, I wanted to move back to England, and Dan and I both felt that the time was right. I read and reread a Bible passage from Ephesians Ch 3:14-21 especially the verse which says, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God." I kept telling myself that if I really knew how much God loves me, then, why would I be afraid about anything?

But I still grew more and more nervous as the move approached.

Before going to England we visited the US for some time. One day in July, we were in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, canoeing and camping with Dan's parents. Right after that holiday, I was booked to fly to England, ahead of Dan and the children, to begin setting up home there. I was tight with nerves on the last couple of days. But on the day we were due to leave the Boundary Waters, I was sitting on a rock at the edge of our campsite, overlooking the lake, praying, and soaking in the beautiful scenery all around. Suddenly I noticed a bald eagle, sitting majestic on a high pine tree, surveying the outlook, from one side to the other. He looked out and down over the whole scene, and had probably been aware of me there the whole time. It struck me that the eagle was like God, watching out for us, overseeing us, all the time, while we are mainly unaware that he is even there.

That picture of the bald eagle, king of the wilderness, stayed with me and was a comfort for quite a while. But I lived on my nerves for months until it built up too much and my body rebelled.

So I am in the process of trying to tackle this problem, anxiety. Why would a Christian who has believed in God for forty five years and who has seen God provide for her and give her a fantastic life and a wonderful family, who is in good physical health, who has friends and hobbies, why would this person suffer from anxiety? I think in the case of our move back to England, there was a lot to be anxious about, but still...

For now, I am definitely coming out of the other end of the tunnel. Practically speaking, the last piece of the scary puzzle was put in place last week - when Alex took his grammar school entrance test and got a good  high pass mark, so that he is guaranteed a grammar school place for next year. Such good news! So  - for now - there is nothing left to be afraid about (apart from global warming).

But I feel I am beginning to move in the right direction in any case - I wasn't even all that nervous about Alex's test, which I took as an encouraging sign. I have had some really good conversations with various different helpful people, which I might write about another time. The list of One Thousand Gifts (I've got to 69...!) and the lessons about thankfulness are a big help. I do think and pray and hope that I am making progress.

"Back From The Dead:" Ian McCormack's story

Abby, Alex and I went to hear Ian McCormack tell his story last night, at a bar in Gloucester. It is not the kind of story you hear every day, so I thought I would give a quick telling of it here, and if you want to read it in more detail, there is a website:

http://www.aglimpseofeternity.org/

When Ian was 26, he was scuba diving in Mauritius, and was stung by five box jelly fish. One of the local boys he was with brought him to the beach in a dingy but left him there and went to get others out of the water. He felt the poison seeping through him, but managed to stand up and approach some local taxi drivers to ask for a lift to hospital. When they heard he didn't have any money on him, they all left him. But as he begged for help, one of them gave him a ride, but only as far as his hotel where he dumped him out, literally lifting his now paralysed feet out of the taxi. The Chinese owners of the hotel refused to take him in their own car to the hospital as they could see he was dying, and it would bring bad luck on them if he died in their car. One of the employees phoned for an ambulance though.

Eventually the ambulance came, and as Ian was on the way to the hospital, he saw his life being kind of projected on the inside of the taxi, and then as he knew he was about to die, he remembered his Christian mother's words to him years ago, when he told her he had rejected her faith. She had said, "Wherever you are, however far away you go, if you call out to God from your heart, he will hear you." So Ian tried saying the only prayer he knew, the Lord's prayer - and he heard what he took to be God's voice, saying, but do you want to be forgiven, and then, do you forgive the people who have hurt you? Ian thought about all the people who had left him to die in the course of the previous hours, and struggled, but, he did ask God for forgiveness and to save him.

Later, in the hospital, he finally gave up the struggle to stay awake, and as he closed his eyes, he immediately found himself standing in pitch darkness. He heard angry voices telling him he was in hell and deserved to be there - but then he saw a ray of light which kind of beamed him up, through a tunnel, into a place of bright light. The light was emanating from a figure, who Ian realised was Jesus. When he was describing this part, he was quite overwhelmed still, even though it happened about thirty years ago. He described how waves of peace, comfort, and acceptance came from the figure. Some words were exchanged and finally he asked Ian if he wanted to stay, or go back. Ian said he wanted to stay, but, he then he thought of his mother, and so wanted to let her know that he had met Jesus and found faith, that he decided instead he would say "Go back." Jesus told him to tilt his head and he would be back in his body.

Ian said that he came to and found himself lying on the slab in the morgue, with a doctor pricking his toe with a needle!  When his eyes opened, the doctor jumped a mile, and the nurses who were by the door ran away up the corridor!

Well, that is his story. I think near death experiences are fascinating. I know they are controversial. But they always seem to have some features in common, and, they always seem to result in faith and comfort for the receiver of the experience. Ian said he has absolutely no fear of dying now, and, as I think about it, I think it gives me more courage as well about death. He said that heaven looked just like a beautiful version of earth, with fields and trees and a clear flowing river.

Certainly something to think about...

One Thousand Gifts

If you ever look at the Shelfari graphic over on the right and down a bit, you might have noticed that a book has been sitting there for ages: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.

I am finally reading it, and I am so glad I am.

A while ago I asked a Christian friend how to avoid allowing my emotions to be battered around by my circumstances. Her answer, which sounded a bit too simple at the time, was, be thankful. Be thankful to God for the good things.

In this book, Ann Voskamp asks the questions, How can we live fully in the now, in the present, whatever the circumstances? How can we live fully in the life we have been given, rather than wishing for  other things? How can we live fully so that we are fully ready to die? These are good questions. She lost her sister in a horrible accident, and lived for years with some depression, and shares her experience of learning to live fully even with the grief and memories.

She writes how she discovered that the Greek word eucharisteo (thanks) has at its roots two related words, charis which is grace or gift, and chara which is joy. Thankfulness comes from accepting the gifts, and it gives joy. Sounds so simple.

I am still in the first few chapters, - but I thought I would share the idea she was given, which led to a deep change in her state of mind: someone challenged her to write a list of a thousand things she loves.
I have immediately decided to do the same. She says just writing the list made her happy. She wrote a few things a day. I don't yet know how long it took her, whether she finished it, or anything else, because I have only just got to this part. But I love the idea.

I'll tell you how I get on.

The thin ice revisited...

Thinking back over my previous post, I felt that the metaphor I used about walking on thin ice for eleven months was not quite right, as it sounds ungrateful to all those who were there for us and helped us through that time. Let alone, to God who looked after us. We did have many one-off gifts from churches and individuals, and the offer of help from family, and, help from family. Our bank balance never even got scary over the time, it kind of stayed at a certain level. My job was also a gift which helped us keep going.

I know my problem - my security is too much based in human things. My faith is in a salary, a home, paid bills, a plan, school places for the children, good relationships with parents, colleagues and friends.
Like I was saying before about Jonah, my security really needs to be in God. O ye of little faith.

I hope that I have learned a bit more faith through this experience. I think I feel less anxious about the future, that I know everything is in hand, someone is looking after us... Someone with a better plan than mine. Someone who knows a lot more than me.

We were walking over a long long lake of ice, but we had boats nearby. And maybe also what I needed to learn was that, the lake was never very deep after all.

The Heart of the Matter

Still addicted to reading books about or set in Africa... A few weeks ago I roared through "Chasing the Devil," Tim Butcher's book about Sierra Leone and Liberia - where he describes his recent journey on foot through these two countries following the route taken by author and MI5 spy Graham Greene in the 1940s. Like his book on the Congo, it is evocative and very readable, bringing in in a very interesting way the history of these West African countries as well as their current situation and beautiful descriptions of the people, country and culture.

This put me in mind of reading Graham Greene's own novel set in West Africa, "The Heart of the Matter," drawing on his experiences in Sierra Leone. I had read the book years ago when I was in a Graham Greene phase, probably in my teens. All I remembered from that reading (some years before I ever went to Africa) was Greene's description of the overpowering heat and humidity, such that whenever he touched his wife or shook hands with someone, sweat sprang out of their skin. And the conflictedness of the main character, Scobie.

It was such a pleasure to read it again now. Partly just such a joy to read a well-written, carefully crafted book after rushing through a pretty rubbishy one before it (NOT Tim Butcher's!) But also this book has interesting themes and a background I could relate to to some extent, although set in truly colonial Africa.

In brief, the main character, Scobie, is a police officer whose marriage to Louise has long deteriorated into a relationship of pity and some guilt on one side (Scobie's) and dissatisfaction and continual complaining on the other. Eventually Scobie finds a way to send his wife to South Africa, to escape the heat and loneliness, and his failure to be promoted in the colony. When she has gone, he falls in love with a young widow, Helen, and has an affair with her. This is also largely motivated by pity for her, and his belief that he has to make her happy. This relationship begins to look a lot like his unhappy relationship with his wife. Then, just when Scobie has made a promise never to abandon Helen (in spite of his better judgment) Louise sends a telegram that she is on her way back by ship, having realised she should never have left him. There is also Wilson, who watches Scobie, and loves Louise. Everyone except Scobie soon identifies him as a British spy.

Scobie has a deep Catholic faith, but this mainly consists of a conviction that he has to be honest with God, that God surely pities the young and helpless, but that he will punish the unrepentant. Scobie comes to believe that by his adultery and then inability to make either his wife or his mistress anything but miserable he is also making God miserable. Eventually he decides that the only way to set them all free from the despair he has inflicted on them in spite of his earnest desire to make them happy, is to commit suicide. He believes that suicide will doom him to damnation, but he sees it as a self sacrifice to set everyone else including God free from the consequences of his sins.

The introduction to the book comments that this shows Scobie's terrible pride. It shows to me how little he understood his faith. But, there is incredible power in Greene's description of Scobie taking communion when he has decided to continue in the path of adultery, feeling overwhelmed by his hypocrisy and by the damnation he is certain he is eating and drinking on himself - but the most powerful part to me was the image of how as he took the bread and wine it was as if he was punching the already bleeding Christ in the face.

One telling thing about the book is how relationships with Africans are virtually non-existent. Scobie is described as feeling great affection for the local people, but he has no actual friendships with any of them except possibly his house boy Ali. That was no doubt true of the ex-pat community then. The smallness and claustrophobia, range of quirks and incestuousness of the ex-pat world is recognisable and conveyed very well - the goldfish bowl syndrome as we know it.

Greene makes the heat and the corrupted, down-at-heel atmosphere of the West African port city very real for the reader, but he rarely describes or uses a landscape explicitly, to the extent that the book could really have been set anywhere where there is a closed group of people, unhappy for various reasons and dependant on one another. There are frequent references to the vultures, cockroaches and rats living around the humans. One of my favourite sentences in the book describes a group of vultures gathered around a dead chicken, their old men's necks stooped over, their wings sticking out like broken umbrellas.

True, it is not a cheery read, but, it is fascinating and I loved it. Highly recommended.

Choosing your metaphors...

A few times in my life, usually when something difficult has been happening, I have had a metaphor or a story pop into my head which interprets for me what is happening. The narrative (to make this sound trendier) can be powerful as a way of understanding and therefore dealing with something real that is happening in one's life.

So to give one soppy example, when I was first in love with Dan and he was leaving England to go back to the US to finish his studies, and we didn't know when we would see each other next, but I was so sad to say goodbye, I had a large pink rose blossom in a little jar on my desk, that we had picked together, and when Dan had gone I pressed the blossom between two heavy books, and I thought to myself that just as I would be able to take the pressed flower out in a few weeks and it would be beautiful forever, so our relationship was being put away for a period of time, but we could come back to it at some as of then unknown time in the future and it would have been preserved in all its beauty. That image helped me in moving on with life in the meantime and finishing my own MA studies.

A couple of months ago, when I was feeling quite discouraged about being so anxious and feeling that it was the result probably of some years of stress and tiredness, an unwelcome image came to me that I was lying on the ground, a broken stick. But soon after that I was reading 2 Corinthians, the passage about having the treasure of God's blessings in jars of clay. I realised that God was showing me I was not useless and hopeless like a broken stick, but rather I was just a slightly worn out clay jar, which he was still using, and could still fix up and beautify for his purposes. That made me feel so much better!

And this weekend, I had a disagreement with someone, which threatened to revive the horrible old anxiety, and at first I felt as though there was a deep round pit full of water which I had been rescued from, but now I had been pushed back into it. But then this morning in church I saw a picture that rather than being back down in that hole, I was like a child who has been pushed over in the playground, but who can get up and brush themselves off and carry on. The metaphor makes all the difference. One story makes me feel defeated and hopeless, the other makes me able to get up and move on. And it makes a real emotional difference to me. The physical feeling of a heavy rock in my stomach melted away. Why are these pictures so powerful? And, where do they come from?

I remember years ago a speaker talking about how God wants us to be, yes of course humble, but also sitting on the throne with him, confident in him, able to sit up straight and to act and make a difference. Satan on the other hand wants us to be cowering on the floor, feeling afraid, doubtful, and useless.

I think these images are spiritual, and the ones that make me able to function and move forward are from God, whilst the ones that make me feel useless, broken, or lacking in confidence and certainty, are not.

I don't mean that God wants us to feel self-confident or complacent or that we are perfect and can do no wrong. But the times when I know I have let God down, he doesn't make me feel like a broken stick. That picture is just not from God. I think he shows us how we have failed but how we can do so much better, how he still loves us even so. You come away from that encounter feeling humble but hopeful and determined, rather than like a failure and useless.

So I think we shouldn't be fooled by the images that pop into our heads. We should think about them and ask, is this story a Godly interpretation of what I am going through? Or is this a way of bringing me down and preventing me from living positively?

I love how pictures are used in the Bible powerfully. One of my favourites is the beginning of Psalm 40 where the writer says, "God lifted me out of the mud and mire, he set my feet upon a rock and put songs of praise in my mouth." That picture is how I want to be.

Good Friday thoughts

To be honest this Lent I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about Good Friday. And I haven't given anything up, in fact, I have been letting myself be quite self-indulgent, especially with the Dairy Milk Chocolate...

Usually in the past, a lot of my pre-Easter thinking has been wondering how Jesus felt about his upcoming death, how he could do it, what it took for him to accept that path and allow it to happen, how he anticipated the pain, and how he felt about the humiliation and nakedness, and whether knowing it would be just for one day helped (as in a woman anticipating labour). This year when I began to think about it at the start of this week, I realised I couldn't put my mind into that place this year. It was too hard. So then I thought, shall I mentally take this Easter off?, as I pretty much have done with Lent. But then I thought, maybe I don't need to put myself into Jesus' place, maybe that's the wrong thing to be doing anyway. Jesus didn't ever expect me to die in public for the whole world. (Well, probably not.)

So in church this morning at a lovely service we went to at Trinity Cheltenham, I decided just to be in front of the Cross and be thankful for it.

That is why when I looked at some images of the crucifixion this afternoon, I loved this one I have posted, because my eyes are immediately drawn to the women, almost throwing themselves on the foot of the Cross.

But really, thank goodness for the Resurrection! I'm looking forward to Sunday!

Money...

I am not yet qualified to say much about wealth, poverty and contentment. Let's say I am still working on it... I would say it has been a testing point for me, for ever. Probably one day I'll be able to write a book about it.

When I decided back in 1992 to go to Africa for the long term, I didn't worry about money, or think about it, or the lack of it. It was not part of my decision. I think money became a worrying thing for me when we had children, and when we were living in Zimbabwe with incredible inflation - so that prices went up and up and up. So did the amount of Zim dollars we got for our pounds as well, though, and in fact we got richer as far as spending power went. But, for the last year or so, we could only get money there by exchanging our pounds for people's Zim cash, in huge bricks and chunks. Or at the tills of supermarkets, at the end of the day, by arrangement with the shop manager. At first when inflation got bad, we would buy ten one hundred dollar notes clipped together into a 1000 dollar wad called "one pin" (because of the way it was pinned together). But the pins soon clumped together into three inch bricks, and you needed a ruck sack or cardboard box to cart them around. We actually bought one friend's entire Zimbabwe savings from him over the course of a few months, with our pounds. Within another year or so if he had kept those savings in Zim dollars they would have been worth virtually nothing, so he kept assuring us we were saving him from certain penury. But it all felt very skewed, and more than a bit shady, although I am not sure it actually was - and we rationalised how we were managing, along with everyone else.

When we moved to Uganda, it was a great relief being able to use an ATM - although when we first arrived in Uganda there were only two ATMs in the country! Hard to believe now when they are found at every filling station. The two were in the very middle of Kampala, in places impossible to park near. So we still went mostly for our money to Downtown Forex. Even the hassle of getting to Downtown Forex felt simple and do-able after all the uncertainties and arrangement-making of getting money in Zimbabwe.

But we found the cost of living in Uganda almost double what it was in Zim, and we had to ask our churches for more support and add on more churches as well. We did get the extra support we needed, but I hated getting the emails frmo Crosslinks saying we were under-supported, and being featured on the website as one of several mission partners who needed more support. I began to ignore emails from Crosslinks and refuse to open bank statements! Ignorance is definitely preferable... And then we had money stolen from our bank account through paypal. And then our house in England flooded badly, meaning a big loss of rent as well as huge bills for renovation - in the end all covered by insurance but it was such a worry to me.

I have often wished that I had tons of money, so that I could fly off on holidays to amazing faraway places, and eat out in amazing restaurants, dress all in pure linen clothes with long leather boots and wear gold jewellery. That is who I feel I am inside... as well as tall and slim with long sleek hair... Seriously, I am usually put to shame when we have those "If I won the Lottery" conversations - would you all really give it all away?! I am sure I would give some of it away... even most of it, but I would definitely have plans for quite a bit of it...   However, I have been living on missionary allowance for twenty years, and I have not won the lottery (I haven't entered it in fact), so, I am not that linen-clad person... Ah well. And you know what, I wouldn't go back and change a thing. Not one thing.

You would think that after living in rural Zambia, downward-spiralling Zimbabwe, and poverty-stricken Uganda for all these years, I would have a better attitude towards money, and a better perspective on it.

In fact, I have learned some basic truths about money. I  just have not learned to spurn it yet. I still have a way to go...

But this is what I have learned. Much as I could have compared myself to our better-off expat friends (and did) I know all too well that wealth is relative, and that I was incredibly rich in Uganda. Unpacking my weekly grocery shopping in front of Florence or Naomi certainly drummed that one home effectively. It was usually quite embarrassing. Bagfuls of food, for one week? Having a vehicle to swan around in at my leisure was another indicator of our wealth in Uganda. Eating meat almost every day, ditto. Having a home with a separate bedroom for each child, a good roof with no holes in it, a cement floor not a mud one, running water, electricity, ditto. Our own computers, ditto. Many changes of clothes in the wardrobe, ditto. A cupboard full of children's toys. Books, dvds!

I also learned that wherever one comes on the economic scale, almost everyone feels they do not have enough. I am sure that almost every Ugandan I knew thought I was very rich. Yet I worried about money and would tell people I couldn't afford to help them send their child to school. Meanwhile my better off friends worried about how to afford boarding school fees for their children when back in England. Other friends who were living back in England earning competitive salaries worried about paying their mortgages. I would love to get to the point where I am conscious of how rich I am in so many ways, where I learn that I do have enough, that God has provided and will provide for us. I would love to get to the point where I am simply content with what we have and what we can do.

Money symbolises security to me, more than luxuries, in spite of what I have been saying. But this recession has surely served to show us all in the West that our savings, pensions, and incomes are not ever secure. Aren't we actually foolish to put our complete trust in them, when banks go bust, and jobs get cut? This year while we live on two part-time jobs and wait for Dan's full-time job to start, we are experiencing how God is taking care of us, and it is humbling, and faith-building. Maybe I am learning at long last that our only security is in God, after all. And he has been faithful to us the whole way.

We had our piano tuned today - beware... a parable from life coming up...

On a certain day, a man and a woman were given an old, worn out piano which fitted into their kitchen perfectly, and their daughter Abigail did love to play on it. But the piano was exceedingly out of tune after some years of neglect and a rough journey in the back of a clapped out van to cap it all. So Abigail played her beautiful pieces on it, but it sounded mournful, and clangy.

So the man and woman decided to call in the piano tuner. He duly came, and pronounced its condition "dreadful" and he worked on it for several hours... Each string was stretched and wound by its peg at the top, and each string did whine and protest, until it reached its perfect length and tension, and then it did sing beautifully and blend its sound wonderfully with the notes of its brothers and sisters.

Eventually after hours of awful pinging, sighing, and whining, the piano was played and it did sound clear and bright and harmonious, as a piano is supposed to sound. And Abigail and the man and the woman and their son Alex also were exceedingly happy.

Those who have ears to hear, let them hear...


It seemed to me as I listened to the strings of the piano complaining as they were being tuned, that this was a good picture for us humans. We can easily become out of tune, disharmonious and discordant with both God and our fellow human beings, family, neighbours, friends, and it happens, as with a piano, for a number of reasons. Neglect of our spiritual lives is probably the most easy and common cause for this to happen, in small, incremental ways. But also a trauma, or ongoing difficult circumstances around us, can also affect us and send us out of tune. God is the great piano-tuner (?!) and through his Spirit he works on us constantly to bring us to the right place, to be in harmony with him and with our fellows. When we are spiritually in the right place, we make that beautiful, clear tuneful sound that we were designed to make. If we are just a bit off key we can still make a lovely sound, but it is just not as lovely as it is meant to be. But the inevitable result if we don't do something about it when it starts to happen, is that we will end up clangy and horribly discordant and then noone will want to hear that piano played.

Another thing - while the piano is in the process of being tuned, it sounds painful. I don't know if the strings actually feel the pain of being stretched or wound (or maybe in some cases unwound), - but it certainly sounds painful! When God is teaching or moulding us, it can sometimes be painful, or difficult. But what I have found is that, whilst God uses difficult and painful times to teach me things, when he has something to rebuke me about, it is done in the most gentle way a Father could ever use, and is not painful at all, but is merciful and kind.