New Year's Redefinitions...

Hi everyone!

Sorry I've not posted on my Blog for a while, but here's a New Year's offering for you! Once again, I've posted here a post I made on the Repose website (www.findrepose.co.uk). Now,some might consider it cheating, other's might recognise it as recycling, personally, I like to call it self-plagiarism! However you take it, I hope you enjoy!

I don't do New Year's Resolutions... I can't remember the last time I even bothered to make a New Year's Resolution. Occasionally I might ponder the things I'd like to do in the course of the year, after all, a new beginning such as the New Year will normally inspire reflection on what has been and looking forward to what could be. But for me, Resolutions are out!

It occurred to me, though, that most of what people seek to do through their 'resolutions' is in fact to redefine themselves in some way... It might be physically - to work-out more, give up smoking, try a new hairstyle; or perhaps socially - to make more of an effort to visit friends, get out more and meet new people, start up a book-club to develop friendships with colleagues at work. Whatever it might be, it usually centres around a desire to be seen in a different light or recognised by different characteristics.

As I considered what it means to redefine ourselves - I started thinking about how God's character is communicated to us through Scripture. We always have a challenge on our hands when it comes to understanding who God is through the words of the Bible, because it's a human document, written by faithful but imperfect people, about a God whom they're seeking to know better but don't know fully. It gives us a helpful 'window' on the nature of God, but not the whole picture.

Have you ever written a text or sent a letter or an email, only for the recipient to mis-read it? And I don't mean, they didn't understand the words, but rather, they misunderstood your tone... When there's no other information to go on - no tone of voice, no facial expressions or body-language, only the text before you - sometimes even the most banal of words can seem 'loaded' with emotion.

The Old Testament is full of theological gems - it has held and continues to hold great significance for people of the Jewish and Christian faiths, in particular, and has much to teach people of all faiths and none for millennia, but parts of it leave us feeling decidedly uncomfortable, not least of all when it talks of God in terms that we don't like. However, we should not simply leave out the bits we don't like and neither should we avoid the difficult task of trying to understand just what they would have meant to the original audience. What we must do is allow God to define and redefine himself to us, and ultimately that happens in and through Jesus.

If we ackowledge how easily we can misinterpret others' meaning and be misunderstood ourselves, we mustn't be naive in thinking that we'll manage to truly understand God as he's revealed to us in the Old Testament. We can only have a hope of knowing God better as we know him through Jesus. This is why in Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfil them." And why, in John 14:9 he says, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." He spoke about the Law and the Prophets to redefine them - in other words he, as God-redefined, makes scripture's meaning complete and fulfils its true purpose. In every sense of the word he 'fleshes-out' our understanding of who God is and what he's like.

We really hope you'll make time this year to re-read those trickier parts of the Bible through the 'lens' of Jesus. And please do come and join us at Repose, once a month to get plugged-in to God's presence and to meet with our fleshed-out Father.

Happy New Year!

Present in spirit

This is a contribution I made on another blog called Repose (www.findrepose.co.uk) which I thought friends following my blog might be interested to see.

I don't know about you, but I often find myself getting distracted or sidetracked when I'm meant to be doing something else; I log in to my email to send an important message and I end up reading all of the jokes and ad-mail and log out without ever getting round to the very thing I logged on to do!


Having this technology available to us is fantastic and I'm sure it helps many people to work more efficiently or deal more promptly with problems that arise, but I think at the same time, it is contributing to a growing trend among people to be present in body, if not in spirit - that is, to be physically present when our minds are elsewhere.

In his DVD 'Everything is Spiritual', Rob Bell talks about how he became aware of a habit his sons had developed to always say, "Dad... Dad... Dad," when they wanted to get his attention - upon reflection he realised that this repetition had come about not as an annoying verbal tick, but because it would usually take them three attempts to get him to be fully aware of them talking to him.

Have we reached a stage where, to keep our attention, things have to be bigger, brighter, louder... more entertaining? How is it, for example, that an hour spent in church or at work can feel like it drags interminably, yet we can easily lose a whole evening watching funny or odd video clips online? I think it has less to do with our ability to focus and more to do with the fact that our lives have become a constant stream of consciousness. We're always contactable; able to send emails, texts, video messages, browse the internet and manage our social lives all on a single device that'll fit in our pockets. There's nothing inherently bad in that, but when there's no time away, no 'switching off' we get overloaded and find ourselves tuning out when our attention should be fully engaged - our bodies are telling us what our minds are refusing to acknowledge: that we can't be everywhere at once, constantly on the go and always available to anyone and everyone.

My challenge, to myself as much as to you, is to seek to keep a balance between productivity and presence - not to be spread so thin that we find ourselves physically present and mentally absent all at once; to allow ourselves time to 'be' and not 'do'. Most especially, if we want to enjoy the presence of God, we have to be available to Him and present in 'body, mind and spirit' if we are to have a hope of "loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matt 22:37).

Relational redundancy

I was reading an article today in the latest edition of Christianity Magazine on singleness within the Church and it got me thinking about about relationships as a whole. This is a subject I have thought about for some time and I'm encouraged to see a leading Christian publication taking up the challenge and asking people about their experiences, but I have my concerns about how the Church at large views the 'issue' of singleness. I think as individuals, churches, house groups and fellowships we need to ask ourselves not 'how do we cope with singleness' or 'how do we reach out to singles', but about the value we put on relationships across our whole church communities.

To my mind, the difficulties faced by singles are largely relational, and I don't mean it's to do with their lack of being 'in a relationship' - we're all in relationships, whether single, married, divorced, widowed or 'undisclosed'! I mean that we in society as a whole and certainly within the western church, have developed an unhealthy bias towards monogamous romantic attachments, making singles feel redundant. It is considered unorthodox for anyone to choose to be single - though it is often commended as a brave step for those engaging in a formal area of ministry or mission - and unfortunate for those who haven't chosen it!

Now I am not decrying marriage or romantic relationships, I've been in love and it's wonderful and I am the product of a long and happy marriage (my parents celebrated 48 years of marriage this June), but I am saying that life, whether in a relationship or not, isn't all about finding 'the one'. As Christians, surely we should hope to make pursuing Jesus our main goal - he is 'the One' for all of us (and I don't mean in a 'Jesus is my boyfriend' way!) - whatever our relationship status, our communities of faith should be about gathering together in the common pursuit of a life that emulates Christ.

I think in church we do couples as great a disservice as we do singles - singles are often thought of as being in a time of waiting for someone to come along, couples are considered to have arrived at their destination - neither is an accurate representation. Couples need the balance of strong friendships independent of their partners and singles need to be valued as equal members of the community. We need to take time to value and honour relationships of all kinds and to be engaged in the lives of others in our fellowships and outside of them. If we can't manage to form strong and authentic relationships within our churches, what can we possibly hope to offer to those wanting to explore the Christian faith and new believers?

So what do you think? Does the Church need to address singleness as a separate issue, or are there bigger needs to consider regarding our attitude to relationships?

If you're single, do you spend time with friends who are married or dating? Do you feel pressured to find a partner?

If you're in a relationship, do you still see and spend time with your single friends? Do you find it hard to balance time spent with your partner with time spent with other friends?

A Muse for my Musings...

My friend Jon told me some time ago to set up a blog so I could share my thoughts, ideas and writing with anyone who might be interested and to get more exposure as a writer, but I've only just got around to it since he set up a website for our monthly worship event, Repose - http://www.findrepose.co.uk/

Unsurprisingly, my 'muse' or inspiration in finally getting around to getting a blog up and running was the One that we celebrate when we gather for worship. I am in the process of trying to write a book and it is, at times, a painfully slow process, not least of all when lacking inspiration! But that's one of the things I love most about this life of faith - it's not all ethereal, unearthly, super-spiritual hype - it is in essence living with the hard realities of life, knowing that you're not in it alone. It's dealing with all of the injustices and contradictions of the world in which we live whilst acknowledging that there is One who feels and grieves over them it more deeply than we do. It's celebrating all that is good and beautiful about life and humanity and recognising that the One who created it all rejoices in it with you.

I really hope you'll enjoy my musings, as random and sporadic as they may be, and that in some way, I'll be able to help you connect with the One who has given my life meaning.

God bless!