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No reflection tonight, because real life just got a bit more real than usual and I am not up for a lot of words. Instead, here's a verse upon which I shall cooking for a little while and perhaps it will give you some solace, too.
1 Peter 5:10 Wrote:And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. I firmly believe in light at the end of the tunnel, even when those tunnels are sometimes of your own making. Goodnight, my friends. Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Confession can be life-changing. To know that someone else knows your secrets and shames and forgives you, loves you even, that is a powerful thing, too hard to put into words. And you know then it's not because of what you've done, nor necessarily even because of who you are but because of who they see in you, the potential you, the perfected you.
Ephesians 2:1-10 Wrote:You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. I've shared this passage before, but I find it so mind-blowing that I come back to it again and again and again. Who has not felt that deathly shame at some point in their lives? The Bible teaches that our sin, which is so much more complex and subtle than an the big stuff you probably think about when you hear that word, makes us spiritually dead and we carry that death around with us wherever we go. But God - was there ever a greater conjunction? - didn't leave things that way, because he is 'rich in mercy', because of his 'great love with which he loved us', 'made us alive with Christ' and leads us on to be the best version of ourselves. The love, the mercy, the generosity, the extravagance of this passage are beyond belief, literally. Belief is just the beginning and all this follows when we put our trust in Christ, offer up our lives, in all their spiritual death, and honestly bring our sin before him. And he loves us anyway. Sometimes, even as a Christian, your sin catches up with you and you have to face it and name it and own up to it, not just to God, but to those whom your sin has affected. Being a Christian doesn't make you perfect - that's a work of God to be completed beyond this lifetime - it doesn't make you immune to temptations or stupid mistakes. If you've ever got the impression that Christians were 'holier than thou'... well, enabling you to think that was just one of them. We are sinners saved by grace, not from ever committing sin again, nor even from facing the consequences in this world of sins already past, but from the spiritual death those sins bring. If we're ever anything more than this, then that is by God's grace too and when we hit those low lows, it's passages like this, reminding us of the promised love of God, which help us to lift our eyes once more. Thank you, God! What strikes you about the passage above? What surprises you? What might you agree or disagree with? What might you confess? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
John 2:13-22 Wrote:13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. Today’s reading looks at a familiar event: Jesus’ clearing out of the temple courtyard, something usually associated with the week of his crucifixion, but interestingly, in John’s gospel, this event occurs towards the beginning of his ministry, just after the miracle at the wedding in Cana. Whilst we cannot discount the deliberate restructuring of events to make a point, it is also possible that this is something that Jesus did more than once and that’s credible because it was unlikely that the situation in the temple changed very much long-term as a result. Like constantly having to re-dust the same old surfaces, Jesus has to make the same points about God’s holiness over and over again. Our personal experience with His teaching must make it credible as well - how many times have we heard sermons on the same topics, yet not changed our behaviour, or forgot what those topics even were? It’s human nature to settle no matter how often we’re stirred up. We can see it in the stories of Holy Week, of which the clearing of the temple often forms a part. So much excitement and welcome for Jesus at the start of the week, with huge crowds singing hosanna, then a hornets’ nest of activity towards Passover, as Jesus teaches in the temple “as one with authority”, only for everything to turn around by the end of the week, as as the crowds turn on Jesus and He is arrested, tried and crucified. When I was part of the cast of the Aberdeen Passion, a series of plays each telling the Easter story in a slightly different way, I got to experience this physically. In one play, I was playing Peter and so spent much of the time following Jesus around the stage with the other disciples through event after event. During the clearing of the temple we were running and dancing, drawing the crowd into this amazing, shocking thing that Jesus was doing, whilst our choir sang triumphantly, but eventually, everything started to go quiet. At one point, just after the denial scene, I had the stage to myself and acted out a tableau of madness and despair whilst the choir sang again. Just like in the temple, I had the whole stage to run around in, but this time I was all alone and only the song had any hope at all. How easy to see that as a metaphor for the peaks and troughs of faith. Our tendency to settle back into old patterns of behaviour, to lose sight of Jesus, often leaves us feeling left out in the cold and away from God's presence. Sometimes faith can seem easy and can motivate us to respond to Jesus with all the clamour of the crowd, but there will always be times when we fall down, when our faith seems weak, when it seems all the sins we thought we had overcome come rushing back into our lives and we feel lost and low, as though we were the ones cast out of the temple. Just like with Peter and like in today's passage, that’s not where the story ends, however. Yes, we will always fail to live up to God’s standard and if we put our hope in our own ability to sort out the mess in our lives we will be bitterly disappointed, but God never disappoints. Just look at the end of today's reading. Jesus speaks about doing something that his listeners plainly understand to be impossible, the destruction and rebuilding of the very temple he’s just attempted to purify. They probably know that it’ll be full of traders again the next day. If Jesus can’t keep them out, how is He to do this greater miracle? But we know that Jesus is talking about an even greater miracle still, for He is a better temple than the one that stood in Jerusalem, one that cannot be defiled by commerce and confidence tricks. In His death and resurrection, He proves that “nothing is impossible with God”, so fixing our human life is easy. When we step away from a sermon and can’t remember the topic, when we read our Bibles and nothing seems to stick, when we feel our faith ebbing low, and old patterns of sin creeping back into our lives, we must remember that once we have committed our lives to Jesus He does not let go. Lent is an excellent time to let Him renew your spirit and miraculously rebuild His temple within you so that you can never be cast out, though there is never a bad time. Put your faith in Him and He will keep it secure. Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
This week, my devotional readings are all about the creativity of Celtic Christians and their fondness for storytelling and poetry. As many of you will know, this is an area close to my heart as I greatly value the power of story and imagination and the beauty of language.
I thought that, to begin this week, I'd share a piece of my own writing with a spiritual meaning. It's a poem based on an exposition I once heard of the parable of the mustard seed. Mustard Wrote:Darkness surrounds them, like smothering arms, The idea is that faith in Christ, sometimes slowly and subtly, sometimes in a sudden rush, always like a steadily growing plant, breaks through the darkness of lives imprisoned within sin to set us free. It would be wonderful if others felt like sharing some of their own work touching on faith this week, even if you think it might be more challenging. Anyone is free to contribute here, so long as it remains a safe space for people to do so. What do creativity and imagination mean to you? Are they important? Do they help you to transcend the mundane and, if so, do they help you to understand God a little? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Another day, another reflection. Except no two days are truly the same and even in the mundane there will be things to bring us out of repetition and into something more meaningful. Today was not a normal day as I made a decision to step out of the formal vocations programme of the Church of England and take time to develop myself further away from the demands of a timetable and lots of meetings. It wasn't an easy decision, but with a lot going on in my life right now, it became clear that now is not the right time. Instead, I will look for the time to come when I step back on and continue this journey to its conclusion.
Nothing is going to change here, however. The Church of the South Pacific will continue to be a safe place for spiritual discussion and I'll continue to share sermons and reflections and a bit of my heart. To whit: continuing this week's theme of creativity and hoping that it will encourage or indoor others to share as well, here is another poem. Cross Country Wrote:Pilgrims; I wrote this many years ago after taking part in a pilgrimage walk carrying a cross through countryside not far from where I now live, on Good Friday. I had no idea, then, that I would love down here or that the tradition it speaks of would be one I would feel a call to become ordained within. It's fascinating to see now, hints of how I might respond to these same ideas a decade or more later. I hope the poem captures the solemnity of the day, the journey of pilgrimage and the hope of the cross, but what do you see in it? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Tonight, I wanted to share another of my faith-inspired poems.
release Wrote:Caught under debris, the This was an attempt to capture something which, funnily enough, came up again last week in the readings I was doing about Rules of Life. In the poem, I explore in the form of rubble and eventually as a tower the ideas of total freedom versus regulation and how it is possible to be more free under a certain kind of order than in disorder. For the Celtic Christians, this was very much the point of Rules and, indeed, the modern English words 'rule' and 'trellis' are related and their Latin roots would have been more clearly so. There is something about submitting in obedience that can - when it is the right obedience - allow us to be more truly ourselves. And how could obedience to our perfect maker be anything but the right kind? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
As I continue this week thinking about creativity in relation to faith, I thought I'd share a psalm that I wrote once (I may have shared it here before). I wrote it because I had been struggling with the huge emotional crash after one of the Aberdeen Passion plays with which I was involved and, stuck in a melodramatic melancholia as I was, I felt a desperate need to express myself.
Since psalms tend to be melodramatic and a form of poetry for really expressing one's heart to God, it seemed a good fit and writing it was actually very cathartic. After the Passion Wrote:Why so disquiet within me, oh my soul? I was in a pretty strange place emotionally, and that psalm helped me to truth that into prayer and worship and, ultimately, healing. How do you feel about the Psalms? Have you ever tried reading them when you're struggling? Have you ever tried writing one? What would your psalm be about? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Tonight's devotional reading was about an ancient Celtic poem which depicted Christ as a conquering hero in the style of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon hero tales and it raised the interesting question of whether we ever see Christ this way? Christians often talk of 'the victory if the cross' and of 'conquering sin and death', but we can also be so wedded to the Victorian image of Jesus as 'meek and mild' that superimposing the hero image can be rather difficult.
But what Jesus did was heroic and the ancient Christians understood this. His life of example, His sacrificial death and His leading us into eternal life in His resurrection are unparalleled feats. Nothing else done by the hand of a human comes close to being so epic! But if we look at modern culture, we do not see many successful attempts to do as that ancient poet did and translate the awesome victory of Christ into modern storytelling forms. There most successful literal attempt might be the controversial Passion of the Christ, but that film was so visceral as to be difficult to watch and an the violence can distract from the point. Many other stories have touched upon it more allegorically. The Matrix comes to mind. But there a need for Christian creatives to be telling this story again and again in a thousand different ways in all that they do. I hope it's something that I can do better in my own writing. How do you feel about the idea of Christ as conquering hero, or war hero, or superhero? If the thought amuses you, why, do you think? Can you find anything in the story of the death and resurrection of Christ that might make a good film? What part of the story speaks to you? Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
I can't post a reflection tonight.
Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
Apologies for last night. I had what may very well have been a panic attack over something family-related, just as I was about to start writing and I was just too shaky and emotional to continue. These things happen. Life is all about ups and downs and we have to face them as they hit us. There's no shame in stepping away from something else during such a moment.
Anyway, here is the second of my two Sunday sermons for my local church, available (hopefully successfully this time) in both video and text form: Numbers 21:4-9 Wrote:From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5 The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” 6 Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. John 3:14-21 Wrote:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. The passage from Numbers, referenced in John, is, I think, one of the stranger parts of the Exodus story. In most incidents where the people have sinned and someone intercedes for them, God relents entirely or spares those who repent or responds to a return to full levitical worship practices and so on. Here, however, God asks Moses to do something very strange: the creation of a bronze snake - an image - which the people are to look towards in a very literal sense, and that will cure them. In truth, God the Father and, indeed, Jesus, often asks people to do fairly arbitrary-seeming things to ensure healing. There’s something about faith and obedience in that, but the bronze snake is strange because it almost looks like idolatry. These are, after all, the same people who, when they felt God had abandoned them for too long whilst he was with Moses on Mount Sinai, decided to craft another animal and worship it. And indeed there were snake cults both in Egypt, from which they had escaped and in ancient Canaan, the land they had been promised and, in later years, King Hezekiah would demand the destruction of this same bronze snake because it had been used for idolatry. But God doesn’t ask them to worship it, but rather to look to it, to face it, the cursed creature He has had lifted up. Rabbinical writings argue that the snake, as a symbol of deceitful words and a creature cursed to only ever taste ash, was a fitting medium of punishment for those who spoke against God and hated the manna God had given them, which we are told was sweet like honey. In looking to the snake, perhaps they were to identify themselves, face their sin and repent. It is interesting, then, that Jesus identifies his own crucifixion as being like that snake. After all, the curse that God puts on the snake in Genesis 3 talks about the enmity between the snake and the woman’s offspring - the messiah - and that they would injure each other severely. And surely, we are to worship Jesus, who is God? But when Jesus was lifted up on the cross it was not in exaltation, (though that’s a dual meaning of the phrase), but rather as one cursed. The Bible makes this very clear, for example in: Galatians 3:13 (emphasis mine) Wrote:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”— Jesus is cursed to bear all of our wrongdoing on that cross and so becomes like His enemy, the cursed snake. In doing so He reveals to us the fullness of our sin - convicts us - just like the snake may have done to those suffering from the bites of the poisonous serpents. We are made to face our sin, but He also redeems all who look to Him and worship Him, because, after all, Jesus is God. The passage in John makes clear that, though Jesus convicts us, he doesn’t condemn us. If we stand condemned, it is our actions that have done so, as the rest of the passage attests. The darkness inside us, our sin, condemns us even as we try to hide it in the greater darkness of the world, but in many ways it is through the process of bringing those things into the light of Christ, exposing them to both His judgement and His mercy, that we are saved from the condemnation of sin. Part of coming to Christ is being honest with Him and ourselves about who we really are, including all the wrong things that we have done and will continue to do and facing those parts of ourselves that we do not like or fully understand. Only with self-examination can we truly repent and receive the mercy which Christ offers. This is not easy to do, but we're not alone in facing it - Christ is with us - and we can take comfort in the fact that God loves us and that it is because of that love that we can receive mercy. And it is in this way that the passage is already summed up for us - indeed the whole of the gospel is - by this one verse, verse 16: JOhn 3:16 (emphasis mine) Wrote:For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. No wonder it’s the most famous verse in the Bible. Founder of the Church of the South Pacific [Forum Thread] [Discord], a safe place to discuss spirituality for people of all faiths and none (currently looking for those interested in prayer and/or "home" groups);
And The Silicon Pens [Discord], a writer's group for the South Pacific and beyond! Yahweo usenneo ir varleo, ihraneo jurlaweo hraseu seu, ir jiweveo arladi. Salma 145:8
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