Standing when the darkness sweeps in

"1 dead, 19 injured after crash"

This is the sort of news that is becoming routine in our world today.  Here, a car barreled into non-violent protesters. We would link it to a terror attack, except this is not. It happened in the US of A - the land of the free and brave.

Some say it is getting darker. Most deplore the darkness. Some evil seem so obvious, like ISIS.

Many are eager to expect others to condemn and speak up. We look to leaders, spiritual and political to hand out answers and police the situations. But the news essentially never changes.

We need to keep praying for courageous leaders to emerge. Power is an attractive thing, and the good are often not drawn to it.









Other influencers, educated, powerful men and women, can become blind to the darkness in their hearts so that the darkness in each connects and coagulates and becomes a huge blob that snuffs out sense and light.

We need to pray for philosophies and practices that are driven by greed and fear to dismantle.


But it isn't just the folks who rule. 




Each of us is a little kingdom to our self, and we each have influence, often greater than we ever considered.














The Bible tells us that darkness lurks in all our hearts. With the speed of information spread today, and little time for journalists to do deep research, many of us are agreeing too quickly on shaky facts, and often we are adding to the vitriol. Much of it seem harmless: voicing our opinions, defending our positions, highlighting our preferences.

This is why any teaching that does not call each of us to account for our thoughts and deeds is far from the truth, and will never enable us to grow into our calling to be peacemakers.

From systemic darkness to personal demons, there is a way to understand this:

"...the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient...gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts." ~ Ephesians 2v2-3

It is personal.

There is a personality behind darkness.

This is the personality of actual human leaders. It is also the personality of a sinister and strong force that is against all that is light, good, truth, hope.

It is an opportunistic being that weighs in on our human ambition, the desire for revenge, payback for injustice suffered, our need for recognition and applause.... riding on what seems reasonable, the darkness embeds into our souls. When given time to grow beneath the surface, it can erupt as rage, murder, rampage, genocide.

We under-estimate the reality of darkness and ignore the forces of evil that lurk beyond our physical senses, to our peril.

The Bible does not whitewash this harsh reality. It refers to moments and a cataclysmic time:

"when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." ~ Ephesians 6v13

Has a day of evil come upon you?
There will be dark and incredibly difficult days ahead.

Thankfully, we are asked to do what we can: stand.

There are days when evil can come suddenly to plow us down.

At such times, all that is required of us is to stay standing.


Recently I was at a passing out parade of several platoons of soldiers. The parade wasn't very long, but I remember my own days when I loved to march as a member of the Girls' Brigade. The pride of marching however, dissipated quickly when the sun beat down, we felt thirsty, our stomachs growl and our legs begin to buckle. Only two things kept us standing: knowing we could not walk away, and trusting that we can actually do this or the officers would not require it of us.

Will we walk away when it gets hard?
Do we trust that the tough times are still a part of God's good and perfect will?

It seems to me, as old songs have a tendency to float back into my consciousness unbidden these days, that we took these challenges far more seriously in the past. We had songs like "this world is not my home, I'm just a passing through". But some of our luxuriant homes and lifetsyles (pastors included) makes me wonder if we have not sold our passport to heaven coz' it's just got so good here on earth.

Sir Glubb's* prescient essay about the rise and fall of great nations names 'the good times' as that which undermines our ability to stand and stay true, and so to give way. Wealth and ease weaken us.


God actually has a strategy for this, which we need to recapture in our homes and churches.

1] Accountability for personal growth: unless we will be open and vulnerable, we cannot help shine light and dispel darkness. How many are feeling lost, lonely, afraid. far from God - even as they may go through the motions of faith?

2] Contemplation for spiritual resilience: unless we fill our hearts and minds with things above, all of our senses will hold us hostage. How many are battling emotions and thoughts that weigh them down and cause confusion and a loss of vision for life?

3] Encourage each other: this is not merely gathering together to reinforce our platitudes such as "God is good, all the time". It is a serious effort to share our possessions and resources so that we can together enjoy God's bounty towards our needs. How many are struggling to make ends meet and wondering if God has chosen not to bless them?

This A.C.E. strategy is very hard to teach and implement. Yet it is also really very simple and powerful. The best place to start is to live it ourselves, in increasing measure.

And then, we must pray for our leaders in all fields, so that we may live our lives with godliness and dignity.


Sir Glubb's essay as referenced on Today paper

Bottom lines and the Bible : a leaf from Beauty

We want the bottom line.

I suppose bottom lines give us a sense of control, allowing us to say, "this is what it's about", "enough is enough", "no negotiation here". So often, I hear people asking for the bottom line:

We cannot divorce right?

Surely God loves me right?

How come others are more successful than me?

Whose fault is it?

The straightforward, clear, and predetermined answer that absolves so us from further thought, wrestling, and struggle.

But life bottoms out more than it has bottom lines.

Our bottom line approach can only get us so far. Perhaps this is why the Bible is so laborious: long meandering stories, unpleasant gore and savagery that can be so repulsive to our modern sensibilities, notions rooted in cultures alien to our urban mindsets...not to mention the names we may never know to how pronounce properly! 

How often we wish it would be an easier read, filled with clear injunctions and instructions. The straight and narrow should come with clear signs and guard rails!

I just returned from a trip to China which included a visit to the famous Jiu Zai Gou (九寨沟). It is a nine hour bus ride through mountain passes, dusty quarries, and remote Tibetan villages. Then, after all that wearying travel, you enter a Narnian world of wild and amazing beauty:

On a good number of the walks, the wooden slate walkways had absolutely no guard rails. I was concerned my ten-year old would accidentally slip into one of the icy lakes or rivers. Without the guard rails, the beauty and power of Nature seemed so much closer. There was nothing between us. My breath was swept away by the evocative and mesmerising power of such raw beauty. I felt enveloped by it and drawn to step right into it and be lost in it.

Michael Fryer describes it thus:

"Beauty is not some vague, abstract idea. It's the opposite... when there is a dearth of hope, beauty in all its forms, has the ability to create moments of transcendence."

Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist who wrote Man's Search for Meaning described the impact of nature on the prisoners:

"As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes forgets his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Aucshwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits flowing in the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those faces there the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty...we were carried away by nature's beauty, which we had missed for so long."

What do we do with Beauty's power? 

We try to capture it, interpret it, convey it - with photos, paintings, songs, and stories. [JiuZaiGou was the location for this cinematically breath-taking scene in the film Hero; which I suspect made many regular kungfu fans yawn at the lack of action! You can watch it here later: wow scenery, slow kungfu moves ]

Life according to humans is our technological manipulation of nature for our ends: to enjoy ease, pleasure and productivity. But in truth, nature teaches us what we need to know about life. 

Jiu Zai Gou reminded me of the sheer wonder of life and the God who lay behind its creation. The clear pools created in me such a longing for clarity and made me aware of how murky our lives are. The strange little buds growing out of fallen tree stumps that sit in the water speak to me of the persistence of life despite odds. The beautiful and pristine snow that will always melt when the sun shines on it calls out to me to let go, melt away as it were, because melted snow becomes life-giving water.

This encounter required eighteen hours of rugged journey.

God is actually less elusive and more accessible. But we must still make the journey.

The journey through your own soul's many twists and turns.

The journey through loving, being loved, hurting, being hurt in God's family.

The journey through seasons and stations, starting and stopping.
The journey through losses, gains, suffering and resurrection.

In particular, this morning I thought of a journey so many of us are reluctant to make and pay a high price for: the journey through Holy Writ. We are satisfied to have bits and bytes because the Bible really seems such a thick and difficult book.

I had considered being satisfied with looking at pictures of Jiu Zai Gou from the Net. That would be the bottom line approach perhaps. We had worked right before and after the trip and the thought of the journey felt wearisome enough.  But I also know that I am not likely to pass that way again. 

I am so grateful we went, even if at one point, the tour guide warned us that accidents do occur, prompting me to pray that we would be transported heavenward as a family and not leave anyone behind!

Perhaps the Bible, like nature's wild beauty beckons us to enter in and have transcendent encounters. 

The Bible is not a piece of literature to be mastered. Rather, it is a gift from God to tell us again and again the nature of life and the transcendence therein. 

When I was younger, I loved the hard-hitting words of Paul. They were clear and filled with specific practical instructions. We need those. But as I grow older, I cherish too the many stories, the histories, the word pictures, because as I enter the stories, I find that I am not alone in my cowardice, my fear, my little faith, my dreams, my hopes…

This Holy Week, I re-read once again the closing days of Jesus' life. The younger me would have tired of going over the same ground. I already got the bottom line. But after experiencing that the bottom line is a thin thread, I know I need something far better: a large safety net. As I read and enter into the details of the account, thinking about the facts, wondering about the events, feeling the emotions, sensing the atmosphere… I enter Jesus' story and life even as it enters me. It's as if truth wraps its self around me like a blanket against the biting cold realities of our world, enabling me to keep walking.

Christmas through eyes - like yours and mine

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘Christmas’?

Even as a pastor I find a little effort is required to focus on the Christ of Christmas as images of silly reindeer, a fat man in a red suit shouting ho-ho, jingles, bright lights and presents crowd into my view.

You too?

How did we get to see everything the same way? Big media. The loud, powerful, bright images and scintillating words have trained us over the years with the repetitive snapshots of buy-spend-eat Christmas.

But, the first Christmas, was a very different story.

It happened in a small sleepy suburb that was stirring only because some political order was given that made everyone pack a mule and muck some miles. Beyond this sudden influx of original inhabitants that needed to return to comply with a census, everything and everyone was going about business as usual; which wasn’t exactly a roaring city-scene.

I think if we step back from all that the media is yelling at us; if we stayed home just one night and refuse to turn to any form of media; maybe, just maybe, we can come closer to what Christmas is truly like. 

Maybe we can come closer and identify with some of these who were present when it all happened:

Shepherds

“and there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the LORD appeared to them, and the glory of the LORD shone around them, and they were terrified….Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God..” ~ Luke 2v8,9,13

I am guessing you never had an angel suddenly appear as you are marking those exam papers or reading your emails. I haven’t. But if I did, I would feel terrified as these shepherds did.

But what do we have on our greeting cards? Some meek, fairly frozen guys in robes, usually one cuddling a lil lamb. Pretty. Hallmark. Yes, it’s become hallmark; but it’s wrong. Those shepherds were anything but calm and relaxed!

First one angel, and then a whole lot of them – the whole night sky ablazed as heaven invaded earth-o-sphere and the usual blackness of the night sky is shining with light hitherto unseen. We don’t know how long this heavenly presentation lasted... but when it ended; the shepherds did what they felt compelled to: figure out a way to settle the sheep and go check out the news.

To a group of powerless, sheep-smelling men God chose to reveal the greatest event in humankind. (if our news networks got it today; what would become of it?). Simple shepherds who would be at a loss to find words to describe whatever they experienced except in the simplest of terms were privileged to receive the news. These shepherds, all shaken and awakened from their soporific states “spread the word …and all who heard it were amazed.”

Why cannot you and I share this such that those who hear it are amazed?

It’s become too familiar and not frightful enough. God came! We ought to get off our derriere to check it out and try to put it all in words!

For some of us, our spiritual awakening was indeed like the shepherds: we were going about our business and it got interrupted so big time we had to make a break with whatever we were doing in order to break the news.

But we find God-interruptions quite inconvenient. We wish they cease so we can return to ‘normal’; not realizing what we have isn’t normal by design at all. God breaks in to break us out of moulds that would stifle and eventually kill us. Like the shepherds, we need to find a way to check out the interruptions and find words to express what it all means.

Those shepherds probably remained shepherds. But the quiet as the sun sets, the grass, the night sky, even the sheep – have forever been touched by heaven. God can break in and what seems so mundane, ordinary and even, hopeless has forever been touched by glory. And their lowly jobs with those dumb, stubborn creatures? Well, you never know, angels show up.

And this openness to heaven, to God interrupting, to surprises, to angelic visitations lingered on in the church :

“do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for some have entertained angels unawares.” ~ Hebrews 13v2

Has 2014 sprung some surprises for you?
Did any of it feel just like heaven invading your earth-space? Is God wanting to share some news with you?
How can you live more ready for God-interruptions?
How can you be more careful about what feels 'normal' to you so you won't end up God?

 Next stop: Bethlehem


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Broken is normal in this broken world... and it's not an Iron Dome that saves us...

We are living in tired times.

There is so much bad news we grow weary listening to them.
Today, I simply had to turn the radio off.

After all, it's the same news all over again -
there is no peace.

Ebola, we first knew it from that movie Outbreak, a distant thing we like to believe modern science has conquered. But today, three nations are staggering to contain it, while the rest of the world hopes no one travels with it.
MH17 is one of three plane crashes in two weeks. There have been war casualties before; but today, we can all know fairly quickly, and get mighty angry at how protracted conflict can spill over to innocent parties. It takes a clandestine effort to pry open the normal processes of retrieval and resolution.
Speaking of conflict, the bombs going off in Israel almost reverberate here. Those militarily inclined report and post videos of how the amazing Dome is working its magic to intercept missiles and protect...

It would be good if intercepting ill was enough to solve our woes - then give us all a personal Iron Dome; but hurts and wounds come at us from so many places and ways....
And of course, it isn't enough in Israel's case, to intercept; it is necessary to root out the menace.
This is our way to seeking peace. Remove the problem point.

If it can be so easy.

As I get older, I seem more able to recall distant things, like songs I used to sing as a teen in church. O those songs, so many of them speak of enduring the earth and living as aliens longing for our true home.
When I was older, I was drawn to the higher energy, confident, even triumphalistic songs...but growing older does this: you learn there are no easy triumphs. Yes there are surprises, miracles and all about us is Grace-goodness; and they are the highlights and fireworks of an otherwise nearly unbearable existence.

But the Bible has already said it right there in the third chapter: we are broken in a broken world.

But - then - how do we not fall into the abyss of -
despair
fear
callous living
...  how not to live small lives of 'minding our own business' when our calling card says:

royal priest.citizen of a holy nation.owned by God.declarer of God's glory.rescued from darkness - for good

Well, there is chapters 1-2 before we hit chapter 3.
Those first chapters are the seedbed of our longing. It was all made and declared good. It was lovingly attended to, hand-sculpted persons with a direct breath of life!
And even in chapter 3, there is tucked in that dark moment of God and man/woman parting, of a cord that is not permanently severed. There is a promise of a reversal, a redemption, a rescue.

We are broken; but not irretrievably so.

And yes, events about us and things that we see within our souls can darken the corridors of hope but the doorway to hope is already open and we need only walk resolutely on, singing the songs - like this one:

Gungor's Beautiful Things


and remembering this -

Behold, your God!

"Isn't your God of your own making?" - the question doesn't always come from pugnacious Skeptics; very often, it is a genuine question surging through the layers of our intuition and consciousness.

So I sit and imagine what God of my design would be like:

- God would not use a masculine pronoun but be more embracing.. {but wait, the name God revealed is a set of consonants that put together sound like a breath: YHWH which is really neutral..}.

- God would make black and white clear and intervene so we never have to agonize over 'religious wars' from Crusades to terrorist acts. {but wait, all skeptics would hate how this will reduce intelligent speculation and discourse}

- God would at once punish all the evil and put a stop to darkness {but wait, in all honesty, I may be soot if it goes this way}.

- God will be perfect, beyond question {but wait, will I be good enough then?}.

I am pretty sure my version of God will not lower to Human levels; or live so much like us as to feel emotion, and experience hunger, grief, loneliness.....and then die at the hands of humans!

I want a God who vindicates, usurps the powerful and is free to break all rules because He made them.... Not one who suffers alongside by living like us; fully exposed to the verities of the human condition: poverty, class differences, gender divide, injustice, suspicion, betrayal, loneliness, death.

Yet this is the God the Bible presents me with.

An amazingly 'humble' God who doesn't dazzle and scare me into submission but invites me to enter a genuine relationship of acceptance, celebration, reverence and awe. A God I can love because as in the Cross I can see love in action.

"very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man

someone might possible dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:

while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" ~ Romans 5v7-8

Almost by instinct, the notion of God comes with the expectation of power, might, majesty, eternity. But we will never figure in humanity in the mix; for we know ourselves too well-- we are simply not God material. Even the Greeks had to admit limits to their God's, and all our superheroes are accidental or lab-produced.

A humanity validating, affirming and rescuing God I simply cannot conjure up myself.

But because of this God, I embrace Life and long to live it real and full, rich and free.