Living stones

When I was a child exploring my Grandad's greenhouse in Lincolnshire I used to be fascinated by the weird and wonderful plants he grew. "Caterpillar plants" - brightly coloured squiggles of furriness balancing on top of green leaves. "Sensitive plants" (mimosa) whose leaves would fold up shyly when touched but whose thorns I learned to respect when I encountered them years later growing as weeds on the side of tracks in Papua New Guinea. My favourites though were the living stones (lithops).

These aren't the most exciting of plants but in their own way each is beautiful, knobbly yet smooth, growing imperceptibly until new leaves push up, splitting and casting off the old ones which wither, shrivel and die (though the plant is able to absorb nutrients from the old leaves - nothing goes to waste).  Growth and life requiring putting off the old to make space for the new.

1 Peter 2:5 talks about believers being living stones (although Peter's thinking about building a spiritual temple rather than filling a greenhouse).

I can feel an affinity with the lithops.

Sometimes maturity and change don't seem to be happening at all. Sometimes it feels as if the new leaves the Lord's wanting to bring forth are having to struggle through and physically split the engrained habits and attitudes that are preventing growth. Like the lithops with its old leaves, absorbing lessons from experience as we put off what needs to be jettisoned does make us stronger. It's not comfortable but sometimes the old has to be cast off to shrivel and die to enable something better to thrive.

Years can go by and nothing much seems to be happening. A bit of a change, a couple of new leaves, but from the outside things look much the same. Then, unexpectedly, the stone produces a flower. Yellow, pink, white, it bursts forth - there's been a lot going on undetected.

Sometimes we don't notice what God's doing in ourselves or in other people. Sometimes he seems to take an awfully long time to do anything and we think nothing is happening. Then, at just the right time, something amazing emerges.

Washing feet

The message at church yesterday was based around Jesus washing the disciples' feet in John chapter 13. 

There's lots that can be drawn from the incident concerning servant leadership, the human propensity to pick up sin even after being washed clean by Jesus' blood and sacrifice, the need to keep examining and repenting, making sure our "dirty feet" aren't ignored and go on to make everything else dirty. However, what struck me was a question someone raised over coffee and biscuits after the service: 

"Why did Jesus include Judas when he washed feet when he knew that Judas was going to betray him?"

 

Depending on your view of predestination, perhaps Judas' decision to betray Jesus hadn't yet been set in stone. Perhaps there was still the possibility he would repent and realise he couldn't hand over the Teacher who loved him to the men who wanted to kill him. Being excluded too soon from the community of the disciples would only harden Judas' attitude.

 

Another possible explanation comes from our need to remember that everything Jesus does, and the way in which he does it, is to glorify God the Father and is also for us, to show us the way to live. 

 

Jesus knows what's going on inside every individual, good, bad and mixed up. He sees our thoughts; he sees through our motivations and (self) justifications; he sees our potential, the person we could be if only we trusted and allowed him to help us to grow and develop. He loves us, despite ourselves.

 

If Jesus, knowing what he knew, was prepared to wash Judas' feet, how can his followers refuse to show love and serve other people just because of what we think we know about their inner thoughts and intentions?

Jesus actually knew. He loved and served anyway.

We can only guess or assume, and it's not unknown for a person to get it wrong.

 

We don't have to agree with someone to serve and show love in our words and actions.

Sticky Stuff Remover

I was recently given a beautiful arrangement of silk flowers and chocolate bars displayed in a treasure chest. The chocolate was soon eaten, the flowers added to another arrangement and I wanted to repurpose the chest itself but there was a problem. The original arrangement had been fixed by five large splodges of strong adhesive. They remained, disfiguring the base once everything else had been removed, resisting my attempts to peel them off.

There's always something left behind when we want to do something new - those stubborn flaws that are hard to shift.  

That's where God's grace and the working of the Holy Spirit come in - a bit like the bottle of sticky stuff remover I used on the chest. 

 

First I sprayed some on each of the hardened splodges of glue and waited for a few minutes. I managed to scrape a little of the top layer off but the majority of the adhesive remained unaltered, rough, ugly, still stuck fast. Another squirt, another ten minutes wait, another shallow layer - each time a superficial change but nothing significant, not the result I wanted.

 

Sometimes we say we want to change but in reality we're too comfortable, too stuck in our ways or in too much of a hurry to allow the deep alterations that are necessary. Sometimes we're too afraid of what God might ask of us if we truly surrender to him so, consciously or subconsciously, we resist, thwart or ignore what needs to be done.

 

The third time I really saturated the glue splodges, then left the liquid to soak in, not for ten minutes but overnight. Some things can't be hurried.

 

Next morning I tried scraping again.

 

Each hard stiff splodge of adhesive came away cleanly and easily - its time had come. The chest was as good as new, ready for whatever I wanted to do with it.

 

Too often we want to hurry the working of God's grace within us. We might say, "I'm ready, let's go!" when there's still so much the Holy Spirit has to do, so many ugly thoughts and habits to change, things to be done in us and through us before God thinks we're ready to move to the next stage. He can see clearly. We get impatient, we don't trust God to know what he's doing and pride leads us to think we know better. 

 

We might be able to scrape away the top layer imperfectly but the majority of what needs to be changed is left stuck solid.

 

There's enough of God's grace to saturate the hardest, most sinful heart if we let him and trust him with enough time. Rushing the process, trying to force an outcome causes breakages and ends in a very shoddy result.

 

Soaking in grace and time, relying on God to know best, doing everything his way (the end never justifies the means) - that's what brings real and eventually perfect change. Anyone can be made new and ready for whatever he wants to do with, through and for us.

 

Ordinary things

God is in the small things. 

He is in the ordinary as much as in the extraordinary. 

God takes our ordinary and does amazing things with it,

if we let him. 

 

The world is full of signposts, pointers to God, 

reminders of his presence, concern and love, 

reminders of how we should live,

how we could live. 

 

Sometimes we need to slow down and listen, 

observe with minds open to his voice, not barricaded by preconceived ideas, unthinking traditions, habits, stubborn blindness.

Give me eyes to see, ears to hear, a mind that understands, a heart full of courage and love.

Hallelujah Umbrella

 A sister in Christ stood up and spoke about a tough time she'd been going through. She went out for a walk in the countryside to get a break and try to process what was happening around her. Whilst she walked a line from a song kept running through her head:

I raise a hallelujah, in the presence of my enemies.

I raise a hallelujah, louder than the unbelief.

 

She went on, worshipping and praising God through the pain, uncertainty and fear. She arrived home strengthened to cope, with Jesus, with whatever faced her next. 

 

Praising, raising a hallelujah, looking at God and enjoying him, marvelling at him, instead of coming to him with an agenda or a "shopping list" prayer, had made a huge difference.

 

The image came to me of our praise and worship rising up like an umbrella to shield us from the acid rain of the enemy. Too often we're drenched by attitudes and actions that have little to do with following Jesus but which draw us, insidiously or blatantly, into conformity with the world and its way of doing things. It's hard to escape being influenced by the society and culture that surround us and have moved so far from God. We live in the rain storm and it's easy to get wet.

 

How do we stay dry?

 

Keep our eyes fixed on Jesus - who he is and what he's done; on God's qualities, character and promises.  Lift our umbrella of praise and worship, louder than the unbelief.

 

Umbrellas come in many colours, sizes and even shapes. They shelter us when we're still and when we're moving. They can be angled towards the direction of the rain or the too-strong sun. They can even be shared or overlapped and require no special skill to employ.

 

Your umbrella might be brightly coloured with the many different glorious attributes of God interwoven in your worship. It might be a single colour as you choose one of the Lord's qualities to praise and examine deeply. It needs to be unfurled, examined, raised up and used regularly to make sure there are no little holes which will widen and ruin it. Praise and worship - no agenda except to gaze on the face of Jesus, enjoying his company and marvelling at who he is.

 

With an umbrella of praise and worship we can walk through the storm or the desert's burning sun, growing our shelter with heartfelt praise that never ceases. Sometimes we might get distracted, not pay enough attention, and find an arm or leg is sticking out - we're gradually being drawn into the world's way of thinking, back into the acid rain. Sing a hallelujah. Hold onto the umbrella, make sure every bit of you is covered. Worship so that it strengthens and you grow. Allow the Lord to shelter you as you keep living with your heart, mind, soul and strength fixed on him.