28/02/2017

H,

“The Problem with Self”

We already know the answer to the great question of why we must give ourselves to higher things. Don’t we? This is the fulcrum of our faith. There is no substitute. We dress it up because we are afraid of it. It will take too much from the things we hide behind. In our fragility, we need to cling on to certain motifs to keep up the “feel good factor” or the more readily available “live with myself feeling”. Not that feeling bad and being ashamed are noble ends. It is just that the solution does not match the problem.

In church pews everywhere there is a growing need to feel the vacuum of present life with the titter tatter of inferior aims. There are all these days to appear in church laced with pseudo inventions of a curious sort of grace that is not grace at all. The need to anoint one head over the other. The need to declare talent over character. The need to make character equal to Holiness. The need to make human acts holy by mere effort and not by sanctification. We all need a lot of hot air to fill up the balloon that is vacuous life filled with empty days.

As always, God gives us a different way. He tells us to be quiet so we can listen. He does not put burdens on us as a means of exploitation. He does not tell us to be better from the haughty heights of a golden throne. He came down here to show us how to live full lives by emptying all our life to Him and that, mostly, in the way we treat each other. He comes closer now to whisper that refrain over and over again to willing hearts.

 To live without favourites, without utter distinction, without a head that is not Christ, without a set of routines that keep us within the lines of our own reason and without the crucial center of your own assumed identity is the grand adventure that Christianity presents us with.

How do we respond?

27/02/2017

H,

“The Problem with Self”

Well, of course the whole reason God wants to give you a self is so you can learn to give it away again. We often fail at this most crucial point. We think it is to finally crown our efforts with acclaim or to finally confirm what has been missing in the world: us. No. He is teaching us to be whole human beings like Christ, so our lives can be whole sacrifices, like Christ.

We are here to learn how to die.

There are so many signposts and hallmarks of this great call but let me speak of the personal experience we have both shared in different ways. We have both become fathers. There is nothing that changes your perspective on what is important than becoming truly responsible for another life. You see how ‘that’ does not matter so much as ‘this’ matters. There is a special haunting in the eyes of your child that pleads for selflessness in your conduct of their affairs. You can ignore this pleading in their eyes but it will make you a much colder human being to do so. Much like ignoring any call to be vulnerable will deaden your own soul.

Yet, even this is not the call to learn dying. It is an example, a slight spark that speaks of an everlasting light but loving your own child is by no means the height of giving over yourself.

This is the problem with self, is it not? It is hard to distinguish big acts from little progress. If you give one billion out of fifty four you seem like a giving person but if you give fifty out of seventy you are a giving person. We are constantly told that this is not the place to puff out your chest and rest on your own laurels. But it will seem a hard fought battle to look yourself in the mirror with respect and dignity and something to show for all the years of doubt and fear. Why would God ask you to give it all away again?

24/02/2017

You,

“The Passing of Time”

Do you have time for me?

You are constantly searching for more time. You always want to scrape for extra time every opportunity you get. You want to cheat time at every turn ad when you score some perceived victory you rejoice. But in all of your obsession do you set aside any time for me?

Nothing in your plan for your life involves me. No version of your world includes me. I am master over all of time. I gave you life. I gave you time. But in the end you do not have a moment to spare for me. And the eternal clock keeps on ticking. Time might seem to flow like a river but it is limited.

I ask you to wait, to stop, to be patient, to seek me. I ask all of these of you now while the clock of time is still running its course though you have no time to spare for me. Soon time will have reached its full limit and I will have no time left for you. 

23/02/2017

You,

“The Passing of Time”

Do you mean the hymns you sing to me? Do you believe there is truth in my words as you read them? I am calling your faith to question and putting it to the test. Can you wait patiently for my constant salvation? Can you wait for my appointed time? Can you wait as long as I say?

Well, why not? When have I left you in a muddle without providing solutions? When have you needed me and not seen my hand? When have you searched for me and not found me? When have I ever broken my word.

Vow after vow you make and break in my name. My grace abounds on your behalf and I have never come like a bailiff to your door to collect. You have fallen and I have lifted you up. You have forgotten me and I have come looking for you, my child. Why do you doubt me when I simply ask you to be still and watch, to trust and obey, to wait?

22/02/2017

You,

“The Passing of Time”

How is it that animals, these wild things, go from day to day, not a single worry to hinder them, not a thought for anything longer than an hour before their face? How can they survive it? However it is that they survive you are envious of them. They are free to roam this earth laying down wherever nightfall meets them and picking up again in the morning like nomadic spirits.

You also have this freedom. You reject it. You refuse it. You don’t trust it. But you bound by the same freedoms enjoyed by the flying birds and roaming gazelles. You too can live day by day without even one worry to keep you up into the night. You too can walk in peace thinking only of the immediately important. You too can lay down at nightfall and pickup in the mornings.

Look at you now! None of your worrying makes a difference. Nothing has changed simply by your need to fret over it. Time still keeps to its pace and rhythm. You squeeze years’ worth of worries into 24 hours. You are never at rest. You are never at peace. You are never happy. But if you let tomorrows worries be tomorrows worries, if you could live one day at a time, you would find yourself calm in the midst of a raging world. 

21/02/2017

I,

“The Passing of Time”

I am the master of time. Far beyond your small back-and-forth understandings, your limited imagination. I inhabit time. I don’t need a clock to mark the arrival of my appointed time. I don’t need to be reminded or directed. I haven’t lost time nor have I lost track of it.

Do you trust me? Truly trust that I have this all under control? Then why are you filled so high with anxieties? Nothing I have ever said has come back to me empty. When it is time for fire, there will be fire. When it is time for water, there will be water. But until then, all you need concern yourself with is that it is time for patience, reflection, communion, diligently doing as you have been called to do. I have never let time run too fast, too slow, or too far. Time will meet you as it has been appointed where you have been instructed.

There is no need to worry. Nothing can come of it.

20/02/2017

You

“The Passing of Time”

Almost as soon as you became aware of the start of your time on this earth, your preoccupation on some level or the other has been the running out of your earthly clock, often with little regard for the permanence of your eternal time.

You might worry about time with regards to your overall purpose on this earth: “How much time do I have left to do this grandiose thing I know I have been placed here to do?” Or you might simply worry about the day to day affair, the anxiety of getting things done. To be up at a certain time, to get the kids to school on time, to finish that work before time runs out…

Yet no one is perfect. You make mistakes. You miss the mark. You are ‘late’. And for all your fretfulness, the passage of time has not once crumbled for a missed deadline.

What was, is.

What will be, is

17/02/2017

You,

“Love of Self”

The high mark of accepting yourself in love or loving yourself is how you love others with the same sense of levity. This is the very point of it all. Once we accept that we are who we are, then we are ready to accept the crucial other as flawed, frayed, frustrated and fallen, just like us.

The elimination of the ‘them’ and the embrace of the ‘us’ is at the heart of the pilgrim’s progress. The love of God is consummated in loving, forgiving and giving our life for others. There is no short cut to that high level of consciousness. There is no avoiding others if you want to live the life that God intended. We are a body with a head not bodies headless and individual.

This is not to say that this comes easy and it definitely does not come naturally. Other people are annoying, guileless, selfish and hurtful. This is not denied. The thing to add to that is that there are human like us. We are also at turns annoying, guileless, selfish and hurtful. We must accept this about ourselves and be open to love and change. We must accept this in others as our pursuit of love and change. We move closer to the truth the more we accept the ordinary sense of things, the truth that we are not super or Meta or in any way especially exempt from the everyday aches and pains of being human.

This is not a gloomy view of our present state but a map to the great walk ahead of us all. We walk together. We experience God together. The individual connection with God is made to connect us all to an eternal symbiosis with each other. It will not happen in the church halls of Sunday and midweek services. It will happen in the everyday connections we make with each other as we move from ‘them’ to ‘us’.

This is the church of which Christ is head and for which the dark has no answer. Little lights and a mighty flame. 

16/02/2017

You,

“Love of Self”

Of course there is always space for abuse or the dilution of purpose. Truth is in fine lines but we can often colour the outside and live the beautiful inside free of our effort. This is not a reason to close our borders. We cannot say the truth must not be known or it must be controlled by us because it can lead to abuse.

First, that whole attitude is steeped in silent megalomania. The idea that the other will abuse the truth and not ourselves. The dangerous notion that if you speak freedom to the enslaved they will not know what to do with it. This is, of course, utter rubbish. It is a lie masquerading, as it so often does, in common sense. There is no such thing as protecting others from the truth. There is no such thing as the other.

Second, the evil wrecked on the world by trying to control our faith and legislate or execute its spread in organised forms is collected in blood stained history books everywhere. We cannot hope to contain the flood of grace. We cannot presume to tell people how to control their own portion of the Grace of God. The seminal separation of the temple curtain stands forever. There are no intermediaries between God and us. We are not here to explain God to each other. We are not here to present God in out tinder boxes and half-baked theologies. We are here to experience God together.

Let everyone come at the speed they are able to. Let everyone come with the self they are coming to give up to glory. Jesus had a whole self before He gave it away for the sins of the world. Let your fellow Christian grow up without the overbite of your sharp critic’s teeth. And let your own poor heart stop flailing under the useless standards you have set up by yourself, standards that you call collectively “following God” but really are just rules of the road from the guesses of the road user and not the wisdom of the road constructor.

Be sure there is a standard of holiness, a high path of beauty and glory as well as a terraforming love to learn. Be very sure also that you and I could never hope to reach these celestial heights of out loud living. This is why we needed a saviour in the first place.

Let us always give Him something to save. 

15/02/2017

You,

“Love of Self”

There is no perfection in the present human soul. We can agree on that. There is also no need to carry on like our view of a thing is the only way to see it. There has to be a clear line between the very healthy acceptance of yourself and you inherent value and the burden of thinking you are always right. To be clear, you are not. There are as many gaps in your wisdom as there are in your knowledge. This does not make you evil or your intentions void, it only makes you human and fatally flawed.

It is not enough to dwell there because that is only half of the story, either way. It is half of the story if you think you are always right, and you should always follow your instincts and defend your own fort. Instincts are not truth and many times they are self-protecting prophecies on how to avoid any form of hurt, even if glory rests on the other side. Jesus had his moment of instinct in the garden.

 It is also half the story if you think you are all wrong or beyond any real redemption. Redemption is for wrongdoing and light is the eternal cure of the dark. You are not here to be judge over anyone else and you are not here to be judge over yourself either.

The richness and fullness and height of grace makes another way out of the mire of self that worships either right or wrong. It rests on the idea that we are on the path to something greater and these things will fade away under the weight of the unfolding story of grace. It is not only come as you are but accept who you are. Be honest. Be brave. Look unflinchingly at that proverbial person in the mirror. Do not be bowed by other flawed beings purporting to tell you how you can be better. God is not into life coaches. They frankly do not know what they are talking about. They are frayed souls like you taking placebos and building castles of unrest that no real storm will leave standing.

Come to the light that cannot go out. Come to the tenderness that is eternal love. You will be transformed by it. You need a private audience and personal attention. You need to know that you are loved and no book or seminar or sermon can tell you that. At best, they take you closer. At worst, they take you further away. Yet, the thing itself is always in front of you. The being of beings has been calling to you in everything since the day you could be called. Listen, for once, love, listen. On your knees, sitting down, lying, standing, it does not matter. Listen and learn again how truly lovely you are. 

14/02/2017

You,

“Love of Self”

I have not always agreed that it is important to love yourself. In fact I have actively been against the idea. This was ignorance on my part and another reflection of my unwound anger at things. I thought there was something holy about self-evisceration. I was wrong.

To be clear the love of self is not selfishness. It does not mean that you think you are always right or mostly right or that you live under the sacred sun of freedom when you completely ignore the opinion of others and build a god-like fort around your own life as a method of seeming progress. It is, however, not the extreme acceptance of the opposite of all these things either.

The start is from what I sent you yesterday, in a quote.  It begins with the answer to the question of inherent value. There is much emphasis placed on “letting our light shine before men” and displaying the “glory of God” in our tin frame lives. This sort of duality, where we put our best foot forward, and leave our other foot bleeding in the dark is not to be recommended for wholesome living.

Inherent value is the start. Inherent value says we are enough for God and that is enough for everything else.

I know what you will tell me. I know you will say that sin and slyness deny you this right to be yourself. To live out as who you truly are. I will reply that you are wrong. That the exposure to the light, as you are, is the only cure for darkness. It is God who can heal the broken heart and it is God who can mold the crooked soul. The one who can fix you knows all the places that are in need of repair in you and does not hold back His love till He has fixed it all. He says, today is the day of salvation. There is an instant love and the repair is over a lifetime.

So, we do not have to live the fragile life of hating who we are. We are loved. We do not have to keep thinking on how we said this and did that and how that other person must think us dumb or worse. We are loved. We can stand in the light and take our medicine and be honest about our flaws but still know that we are worthy of love. We are already loved by the being who sees everything.

That value He sees must mean something. 

13/02/17

You,

“Love of Self”

To quote:

“You are (a) beautiful,

Wonderful

Creature of value

And...No matter what anyone tells you

God does love you”

10/02/2017

You,

“Finding Peace in Tent making”

In time, you might find yourself in the common drudgery of tent making. Here’s to hoping that you do. If you do, when you do, you’ll find it unrelenting – tedious at times. It will be difficult. It might sometimes feel like a distraction from that glory-filled calling you had envisioned for yourself. But you will find it necessary and perhaps even come to understand or accept its place in the grand narrative.

Nothing about the name suggests that it was ever intended to be a fun and leisurely activity. It is hard work. Yet something about the fruits of our own labours is sweet smelling incense to the heavens. It might not always be the most attractive of labours but it will always be, as intended, a lesson in remaining grounded. It will take you places you might not wish to go. It will humble you though all you see might be humiliation. It will teach you a lot about who you are and the space you occupy in this vast world. It will be subtle but never gentle.

It might come as a bit of a shock to you. You might think you have been relegated to merely be a bystander in the grand design of the universe. But no grand design would be complete if each of the designer’s tools was not used in the appropriate way. Tent making is not the mark of the purposeless. It is rather an important part of sharpening the Designer’s tools. So be steadfast even in this.

The very idea of it might make you want to shut all your doors and draw all the blinds. But what use has anybody ever been to God in their comfort zone? The truth to always remember about tent making is that it is an exercise in patience and faith. As such, all you need do is find peace in it. If you are to do it, it is to be done well. There is no use in worrying or being afraid. Simply find peace in the seemingly mundane acts. Build endurance. Build trust. Be at peace. 

09/02/2017

You,

“Do you want justice or judgement?”

A high horse is a funny thing. You can see everyone else so clearly, their faults laying bare. You can point them out from your bird’s eye view with accuracy and precision, rip them apart bit by bit. Yet none of that perspective helps you when it comes to seeing yourself clearly.

It’s an appealing kind of superiority because it works just as well for the people closest to you as it does for complete strangers. From that height, your all seeing eye can take in the world. Unfortunately, like many other things, it eats away at you. You cannot point out another person’s flaws without leaving yours visible and vulnerable. No matter how proud you are of your achievements in that moment, your finger pointing cannot absolve you of your own imperfections. 

What you are attempting to do is clear: “look at them and what they are doing. What will become of them? It is not right that they get away with doing such a thing”. Herein lies the problem, however. In your narrow focus you have failed to realise that where you would seek forgiveness for yourself, you want judgement for others. Where you would look for redemption, you ask that someone else receive punishment. You claim it is justice you seek, of course. But true justice would implicate you too.

No one is exempt from the all seeing eye of the ultimate judge. If it is justice you truly seek then surely you are prepared for what is to come; inevitably you too must pay a price. Would you be blameless if you were held up to the light? Would you be found without faults, without stain? Or would you be just as bad, maybe even worse, than the people you have been turning your nose up at?

The truth is, no one is holding you up to the light just yet. Not truly. No one is examining everything you do right down to the core of you are. Moreover redemption, forgiveness, unending mercy, an abundance of love are all readily available, still.