starting again…

I had the absolute privilege the other day of being part of a most wonderful conversation between a young girl and her mother. Long story short – they had been at each others throats for the best part of 3 years and I was there to try to persuade both of them from going down the road of the care system within a children’s home. The girl was angry at just about everything and unfortunately her mum and the rest of the family were getting the thick end of it. I got talking to the girl and after a few tough questions from me, she broke – she literally broke, tears and all. I suppose you might have to know this girl and understand a bit about her history to recognise what a big deal this was for her. I then got a chat with mum and she broke, tears and all. Then we all came together and I sat and listened as the two of them released a lot of baggage that has been building up for years, and there were more tears. Everything is not rosey in the garden but the fact that they embraced for the first time in as long as they both can remember is a good start…a chance to start again.

I think the care system for children in the UK is fundamentally flawed – it responds to crises and social workers get very little opportunity, if any, to do preventative or therapeutic work with young people and their families. My dad will disagree with me completely on this and say that all those young people need is a good dose of boot camp! People have the potential to change and a belief in a God who does miracles inspires me.

Safeguarding children and child protection work used to make me want to run a million miles and to a certain extent it still does but how can I complain about the system if I am not prepared to be part of the process of change – optimism over pessimism and an injection of realism, it has to be every time or I’ll go mad!!

Straight talking…

I’ve recently been introduced (electronically anyway) to Mark Driscoll who is a pastor at Mars Hill church in Seattle, USA. I’ve been listening to some of his stuff online and have to say it has been a breath of fresh air to hear some authoritative preaching and teaching – that is not necessarily the norm from the front of our churches nowadays. It is not to say that the pastors and ministers in our churches don’t speak truth, but this guy speaks with a passion and conviction that I have rarely if ever seen. He is not everyone’s cup of tea and that’s fine, but I recommend you at least check him out.

Note to the guys in particular, listen to this and tell me what you think. Yeah I know it speaks mainly to husbands and how they seek to honour their wives and relate to their children, but I also think he is speaking directly to all men and how they relate to all women and how they should resemble Christ in their everyday lives and relationships.

the shape of the heart…

“Once upon a time there was a gardener who grew an enormous carrot. So he took it to his king and said, “My lord, this is the greatest carrot I’ve ever grown or ever will grow. Therefore I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” The king was touched and discerned the man’s heart, so as he turned to go the king said, “Wait! You are clearly a good steward to the earth. Iown a plot of land right next to yours. I want to give it to you freely as a gift so you can garden it all.” And the gardener was amazed and delighted and went home rejoicing. But there was a nobleman at the king’s court who overheard all this. And he said, “My! If that is what you get for a carrot – what if you gave the king something better?” So the next day the nobleman came before the king and he was leading a handsome black stallion. He bowed low and said, “My lord, I breed horses and this is the greatest horse I’ve ever bred or ever will. Therefore I want to present it to you as a token of my love and respect for you.” But the king discerned his heart and said thank you, and took the horse and merely dismissed him. The nobleman was perplexed. So the king said, “Let me explain. That gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse.”

‘The Prodigal God’, Timothy Keller

how versus why…

“Sometimes I admire people who don’t ask why questions, who only want to know the how of life: How do I get paid, how do I get a wife, how do I make myself happy, whatever. The why path isn’t so rewarding, if you think about it: Why are we here, why do we feel what we feel, desire what we desire, need what we need, hate what we hate? I saw this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon once that had Calvin’s teacher asking the class to turn in their homework. Calvin raised his hand and asked why we exist. The teacher told Calvin not to change the subject but to turn in his homework, and what difference does it make anyway? Calvin leaned back in his chair and mumbled to himself that the answer to the question determined whether or not turning in his homework was important in the first place. I think that is what I am talking about here, about needing the answer to the former question before the latter becomes important, about why questions determining whether how questions are important. And that is what I mean by admiring people who don’t think about the why questions, because they can just get a job, a big house, a trophy wife, and do whatever they want and never ask if it is connected to anything, whether their how is validated by their why.

Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller

new life…

I was out visiting my good friends Keith and Karyn tonight. They have just arrived home in the last few days from hospital with their first child, Amy. She is a gift and a blessing and contrary to what they will tell you she smiled at me all night long! Sure she eats, sleeps and poops in that order in 4 hour cycles and that will be life in the Irwin household for the next weeks and months, but the gift of life is something to behold – something to just stand back and be in awe of.

I can’t for one moment fathom how people can consider that life, the ability to procreate, the gift of a child, the wonder of love, emotion and relationship is blind chance or a process that has evolved over millions if not billions of years without any really sense of meaning or purpose. Surely we do ourselves a dis-service here with that train of thought. Surely we are so much more significant than such a random process would suggest. Not only do we do ourselves a dis-service, more so we do God a dis-service. I believe he is the creator of all things including the human race and I believe we are created for a purpose not just by chance.

I don’t think this is a particularly fashionable point of view these days but I don’t care. Science has its merits, it provides the answers to some of the how questions but not necessarily all of the why questions. I think we need to take a step back from what we are being force fed by the scientists and governments of this age and think a bit more for ourselves, ask the difficult questions and debate the answers.

Science is not the enemy, and neither is faith in God.

just when you think you can put your finger on it…

“It turns out the droplet of our knowledge is a bit lost in the ocean of our understanding.”

Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller

Why re-invent the wheel…

“The real adventure in Christian living lies not in discovering how outrageous and radical we can be as a new generation of believers. The real adventure is in accepting the challenge of walking faithfully in the tradition of righteousness established by Jesus and honouring the Lord and our brothers and sisters who have gone before.”

David McMillan

God = love…

“I heard once that real love doesn’t ask what is in it for me; it just gives unconditionally. It just tries to take the weight out of somebody else’s pack, lessen his load, and if it gets reciprocated, that’s great, but that isn’t what you did it for. It makes me wonder if real love, not the crap that we trade on the street, but real love, longtime, old-couple love, is another metaphor. I mean, I was thinking about it the other day and I couldn’t think of a purpose for love in terms of Darwinian mechanisms. It seems like there is a reason for sex, for lust and all of that, but what about love? How does love, like beauty and light, help the Darwinian process? And I wondered if love itself, the real thing, the Lyle Lovett kind, wasn’t another metaphor for God.”

‘Through Painted Deserts’, Donald Miller

When all else falls away…

“It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

Oriah mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder.

I think we find out alot about ourselves when we spend time on our own. When we do, we are forced to be with our own thoughts and in a sense we get to know a bit more of who we really are. I’m a people person most of the time. I’ve enjoyed spending the last few weeks hanging out with people again having had to shut myself away for a while with revision for exams. But I’ve been out and about lately having dinner and coffee and going to the movies and walking and talking with friends and it has been great.

But I also like time on my own. Sometimes I fill this time with music or reading. Sometimes I can become so distracted by the simplest of things. Other times I find solitude good for me, good for the soul. I can empty my brain of everything from the outside world and reconnect with God. It takes those times for me to reign myself in from being so occupied with what is going on in my own immediate world. I’m also so aware of my selfishness and sinfulness. But it is in this time and space, on my own, that I am so aware of the God in whom I trust and believe in. It’s where I find rest and security and peace, and in a world where we have pressures coming at us left, right and centre everyday it is good to make time and to take space, often on our own, and remove ourselves from the rat race.

30 words…

An expert in the law asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds with a question of his own, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” The expert replies as follows…

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

And so in 30 words we have perhaps the most concise conceptualisation of what it is to be a Christ-follower.

I think we all wrestle with orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). In a sense it is easier to give a ‘good’ and ‘right’ and ‘biblical’ answer to the searching questions that so many people ask. However, the problem lies in the gap that often exists between what we believe in our heads and the way we live our lives as an outworking of what we believe in, or more precisely in whom we believe in - Jesus.

I am guilty of a pursuit for intellectual knowledge – I never used to read but now I can’t get enough of it. Whilst I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, in isolation it means nothing more than a head knowledge and a head response to Jesus. The person of Jesus must break our hearts and mould our responses to the people we share our lives with, the communtites in which we live, the places where we work and study.

May we not cause others around us to think what Mahatma Ghandi said upon observing the Believers of his time,

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”