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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God knows

God brings people into our lives.

He knows there are too many needs in the world for us to cope with (at times it can be overwhelming) so he chooses a few people at different times to connect us with particularly.

On Friday I visited some of "my" such people. We had an encouraging time together, talking about what God was doing, had done in their lives and their hopes and ideas for the future.

Two of them waited until I'd gone home before getting in touch again and asking for money (this was after I'd left them with a selection of non-monetary gifts). I'm sure you can imagine the human feelings this gave rise to.

My first opportunity of sending them money came today so off I went to the bank. All the time another person's name kept sounding in my head (though I hadn't been in touch with her for weeks) so I thought I should send the same amount to her.

So far she has been the only one to respond.

She was praying, bringing her needs, and those of her child, before the Lord, not knowing how she was going to do what was necessary. The little I could send was an answer to her prayer. She didn't know I was back in South Africa. I didn't know her immediate need.

God did and he connected us. 

Sometimes people are too ready to take the easy way, to assume that because God has used a particular method or person to meet needs in the past, that's the route we should always take. He knows our needs even before we can express them.  He has an infinite variety of ways in which he'll meet them and he likes to keep things interesting.

Don't dismiss the name that pops into your head just because you don't why it's there. Learn to recognise the voice of the Holy Spirit. Trust and obey. Step out in faith and see what the Lord will do. 

He is awesome.

Back in the UK

July 2024

 We didn't expect to be in England just now but we're not really surprised.

Two years ago we applied for our visas to be renewed but have been caught in the great South African visa backlog ever since. We've been able to stay in country as the Department of Home Affairs regularly granted blanket extensions to everyone who'd applied but not received a decision. The last extension expired on June 30th.

We waited until June 28th, regularly checking the government website for announcements, expecting something to come at the last moment, but by the close of office hours on Friday we knew we had to make a decision. 

Some people couldn't see why we were thinking about leaving. "The waiver will be extended. No one will chase you or even know you're here with expired visas. Just stay."

We couldn't reconcile that attitude with following Jesus in truth, honesty and integrity. Staying illegally when we had a choice didn't seem right.

The run up to the end of this extension period had felt different from previous ones, as if God was preparing us. The way that plane tickets, organisation and provision for animal care fell into place within twenty-four hours was a reassurance that we weren't doing this alone. We got through passport control at Cape Town airport a couple of hours before the deadline and arrived in Amsterdam the next morning.

It had seemed unfortunate that Fraser hadn't been able to fly on to Manchester from Amsterdam on the same plane as Dawn. When Dawn's phone went missing at Stockport railway station on the train leg of our journey (car-plane-bus-train-car) we were very glad he'd had to wait. Whilst Dawn filled in online police reports, thinking her pocket had been picked, Fraser was able to check at the station lost property office on his way through several hours later. He arrived at Doncaster station carrying the recovered phone.  "In all things God works for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28).

Whatever the reason, we know that the Lord has guided our steps and wants us to spend some time in the UK just now.

We do have return tickets for the end of August which we'll keep to, despite the new South African Minister for Home Affairs making his first announcement on Thursday an extension of the visa waiver until December 31st. In some ways it's as if God is telling us again that he has his plans for us. If the extension had been announced on Monday or even Tuesday our feelings about our hurried departure would have been far more conflicted. 

Would you be convicted?

Bible studies run in prisons can often use more legalistic language than discussions in other places as everyone there is intimately familiar with the legal system.

In Medium A today we were talking about how a person could be assured he was a true follower of Jesus (mainly looking at 1 John and discussing the blog posts of Richard Beck on the subject. This is the link to the first of four http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2024/04/notes-on-1-john-part-1-how-do-you-know.html). 

I asked the question, "If someone was gathering evidence on you, would he find enough to convict you of being a Christian?"

It was one of those "Sho," moments - the sound which shows the question has hit the mark, is challenging and accurate, deserving of further thought and action.

If you call yourself a follower of Jesus, would an observer be able to gather enough evidence from your words, deeds and attitudes to convict you?

Would Jesus?

Biblical discrepancies

 One of the highlights of my week is the time I spend leading Bible studies in Maximum and Medium A at Drakenstein Correctional Centre.

Whatever the ostensible topic of the day, we always have wide ranging and hard hitting discussions in (I trust) Spirit-led directions.

Last week one of the men brought up a good illustration to explain some of the apparent discrepancies in biblical accounts.

In Medium A there are various rooms (cells) which accommodate everything from one to 20-30 men. Each has to produce a "room report" every day which provides details of everything that's happened within the room. A single cell example might start with the inmate taking off his shoes and leaving them outside the door when he went inside. A multiple-occupancy room report would have the men going inside with their shoes on.

Fast forward one hundred years to historians researching prison habits in twenty-first century Western Cape Correctional Centres. One historian is convinced that inmates have to be bare-footed inside the cells, no shoes are allowed. Another historian says that's rubbish; he has evidence of shoe-wearing within prison rooms. Without additional knowledge who can tell which historian is correct? How can the discrepancy be resolved?

With a little bit of extra information it's easy to see how both views can be reconciled.

A man in a single cell has to leave his shoes outside because shoelaces can be used to commit suicide. When there are multiple inmates in one room it's more difficult to use shoelaces to kill yourself without someone else noticing and intervening. Therefore there isn't the ban on shoes in rooms containing more than one person. Apparent discrepancy resolved.

Sometimes all we need is a bit more background information and the humilty to acknowledge that there might be things modern people don't know but original writers and readers did.