Make me a mento in a bottle of cola

Have you ever dropped a mento sweet into a bottle of cola?  It's not something to do inside (unless you really don't like the person whose house it is). The reaction is great fun, a spectacular energetic fountain of bubbles firing high into the air which can even persuade the sceptical that science can be fun.  It's joyful; it's expansive; it definitely reaches the parts that an ordinary glass of cola wouldn't reach.

The image occurred to me this week.  Isn't that what followers of Jesus should be praying for?  Asking that the Holy Spirit will drop like a mento in the often closed bottle of the church?  Bringing joy, bubbles and refreshment.  Shaking things up.  Covering the ground.  Not allowing the complacent to sit there saying there's no point in trying as nothing ever changes. 

Shouldn't we also, as followers of Jesus, be praying that we would be mentos in the cola of our localities - bubbling up over injustice, hardship, despair ?

After the outpouring the bottle's half empty.
What do we do then?
Go back to sit at Jesus' feet, asking to be filled up again, ready for the next mento-experience.

Opportunity

Thursday is laundry day when I take our bag of washing down the street to Cheryl at the waserie. I was getting ready to leave with it when a coloured lady appeared at the open half door.

"Can I speak with you?" she asked.
I went outside and sat on a bench with her.
Her name was Charline. In January her husband had died after being bedridden for over two years, leaving her with three teenage children. She had no job, though she was proactively looking, her landlady was threatening to put her and her children out of the hut they lived in and onto the streets unless she got some money that day, her children went to school without eating; she wasn't asking for money but did I have work for her?

This week I'd been convicted by the actions of one of the students at Hugenote College.  He's from a township in Cape Town so not flush with money, but he'd taken a homeless man into the local Spa, bought him food, talked to him and trusted God for his own provision.

That morning it had struck me that though we were giving regularly, it wasn't up to ten percent for God. It's all very well to say our whole lives as overseas workers are for him but I don't think that excuses us from sharing what he's graciously provided for us with those who are in greater need.  I'd asked him what he wanted me to do. When Charline turned up at my door that morning saying she didn't know why she'd come but she prayed every day that God would provide, I thought it might be connected.  What would you have done?

I was curious so asked how she'd survived previously as she'd had no job because she was caring full time for her sick husband.  She told me that then many people had helped by bringing food and other necessities.  Once he'd died nobody came; she and the children were forgotten and left to care for themselves.  Another lesson perhaps?

Library

Wellington Public Library

A town with a public library is a wonderful thing. The whole world can be opened up to anyone through books and now free internet access.  Membership is a way of belonging to the community yet can also be a means of escape from it.  At the moment I use my membership to withdraw children's books in Afrikaans as that's about my reading level.  It's also helpful to be able to get out dvds in Afrikaans: it's not wasting time watching films, it's language learning and cultural acclimatisation.

All libraries need rules.  At university I had to promise not to kindle fire within the library before I was allowed a card. Getting a membership card from Wellington library wasn't quite as dramatic (though I did need to ask a resident friend to guarantee me) but there are a few things you're specifically forbidden to take inside.  Not all of them would appear on an equivalent poster outside a library in the UK.

Leaves

Last Sunday Fraser and I went to the evening prayer meeting at our church in Wellington. It was made up of the two of us and three others sitting on benches in the evening sun outside the church building. We chatted and prayed and joked about how nearly anything could be turned into a sermon or kids' talk illustration. Watch out for several of these in the next few posts.

At the moment the oak tree at the side of our flat is starting to decide that autumn's coming (it's a bit topsy-turvy season-wise for me in South Africa). Leaves are turning brown and falling. They have a propensity to gather just outside the back door. I can sweep a pile away in the morning but by evening you'd think I'd done nothing and they're again waiting for someone to tramp them inside.

Then it occurred to me that's what happens to us. We can sweep away a bad habit, a persistent temptation or attitude but unless we change our environment, circumstances or way of living, the thing we're trying to overcome or get rid of will always keep finding a way back into our lives.

Those leaves will keep coming back as I can't change the prevailing winds. If I were to cut down the tree that would solve the problem but would seem rather radical. Sometimes the radical is what we need, painful though it is. I pray that we'll be able to discern what it is that needs to be changed in our lives to bring us closer to God and have to courage to do it.

He knows what he's doing

It's amazing how many coincidences happen in a life lived for God; it's almost as if someone's taking an interest and arranging things.
I'm not saying that everything happens smoothly and there are no problems as we live in a broken world, but from time to time you do get a glimpse behind the curtain. It's not always life-changing (though it could be, if not for you then for someone else) but it is exciting.

I was encouraged to find a Christian organisation in Paarl (a town about ten miles from where I'm living in South Africa) which is involved in peace and reconciliation work and community development. This will be a place to which I can bring my experience with BRiCC in Jos, I thought. It wasn't an issue when the CEO asked to rearrange our meeting from Friday afternoon to Tuesday but then I got a glimpse of the reason when I was asked to join a meeting on Friday afternoon for students at Hugenote College who are interested in forming (we haven't got a name for it yet but something like) a Christian support/discussion group. 

A mixture of male and female, theology and social worker students came. The ease with which we agreed a time to meet regularly truly showed God's hand was in the venture and the topics they've suggested as subjects for discussion sound as if we'll have a very interesting time together.

This came at a good time for me as yesterday I was having one of my periodic attacks of the "ought-to s".  I'm sure you're familiar with them. "I ought to be able to do this; I ought to go to that meeting; I ought to spend my time doing what I don't particularly feel I want to or should be doing merely because I'm able to and it's in a good cause." 

God gives us skills and he gives us talents.  The vital thing is to offer them back to him and listen to his direction in how to fulfil them. Surprisingly to some, God doesn't want us to live miserable lives doing tasks that we're not suited for.  What parent wants to see their child as an unhappily round peg in a square hole?  However, there's always the poisonous whisper of the ought-to.  I'm learning to recognise it for what it is, an enemy.  Don't be lazy, but don't miss the best because you're fretting over the good that you "ought to" be doing. As Jesus said, he came so we can have life and have it to the full (John 10:10).  It's a wonderfully freeing feeling.

There's always hope when people want to talk about the important things in life - forgiveness, trust, purpose, calling, faith.  Too often it's too painful or difficult to bring up subjects that dig beneath the surface of the everyday.  God gave us all brains.  We all have the potential for independent thought but too many people neglect this gift and unthinkingly follow whatever they're told because it's easier.  Thank God for the difficult subjects.  Thank God that when we ask he helps us find the answers, even if they're not what we're expecting or particularly wanting.