Category Archives: life

everything?

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I am kind of struggling today with the whole thing of letting people down.
My back is still painful, although much better after spending 30 minutes with the osteopath yesterday, which has meant I have had to cancel meetings in London, lunch with a friend and a trip today to meet up with Jim of Cambridge YFC.

One of my failings, so I am often told by others, is of ‘not suffering fools gladly’ which tends to manifest itself a lot in being let down or letting others down. I hate cancelling things, or being cancelled as it were – so the last few days have been painful mentally as well as physically. I guess I have a sense of guilt brought on by my self-confessed stupidity of trying to lift a box in the wrong way.

Currently I have a passion for not singing in worship. It’s probably a ‘stage’ I’m going through, but I find many popular worship songs of the moment that talk about ‘me and my emotions’, rather than focusing on God annoy me and seem to be shallow. I smile when we sing ‘it’s all about you Lord’ in the middle of such songs as the reality of the words of the other songs suggest otherwise.

Today, however, the words of Tim Hughes ‘Be My Everything’ clearly came to my head as I was considering my feelings. The words of verse 2 particularly struck me:

God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing

Reading those words as I currently feel brings a whole different understanding and meaning to the words. I have forgotten, and so missed, God in my hurting. I have been so keen for healing to be able to move on, that I have missed that opportunity of resting with God in pain (which I acknowledge is minimal to pain experienced across the world my others on a daily basis).

My prayer today, then, is not ‘God be my everything’ as I’m not sure what that means. I pray:
God, show me what it means to let you be my everything

Slowing down

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Today I have had to slow down.
I don’t like it!
I haven’t got time for it!
but my back insists that every 20 or so minutes I need to move.
move is an elaborate term for what I do when I shift.
This is a whole new experience for me – I’ve resorted to painkillers which I don’t do and sarah has made an osteopath appointment for me tomorrow.

Today I feel old and aging!

But … today I have had time to reflect, to read, to reflect more, and to read more – in 20 min stints.
I’d like to say that I have prayed a lot – but I seemed to have missed that one, so maybe tomorrow!

upgrade

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I’ve had a memory uprade which has resulted in me zooming through stuff today which has been building up due to my memory struggling and chuntering along.

My laptop has been working much better today than even before it was new! I have quadrupled the memory to its maximum so the speed is noticeable.

It’s a shame I can’t actally have a personal memory upgrade! An upgrade that would allow me to function even better than when I was ‘brand new’. An upgrade where I automatically chose the ‘best’ route to achieve something!

reflections on the last few days

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It’s been a busy few days and I need to get up early in the morning to travel to Weston Super Mare to meet up with some of our centres working in the south west.

But I wish to write some reflections on the past few days – I welcome the discipline of reflection and writing and have a concern that the less I do this, the less I force myself to stop and reflect.

The church planting conference last week was a great day and a good opportunity to catch up with some friends, and make new ones. I had some concerns which I shared in one of the workgroups that a ‘motivation’ given for church planting was that the church was in decline and so we needed to plant. I have a problem with that. I think we plant because God has started to do things. Motivation from a negative self preservation stance is always going to be artificial and humanaly motivated wheras the creation of new church as a response to God must be the only possible way forward.

My day in London was a time to meet with a variety of people. It was great to be able to meet up with Andrea Minichiello Williams, of LCF and Christian Concern, who I have not seen since we left Weymouth Grammar School some 24 years ago! Andrea was one of those people at school who was integral to my coming to faith. We shared stories and I left the meeting glad that we were able to find the time catch up and very conscious that Andrea needs the support of our prayers as she deals with many complex issues of todays society.

Afterwards I caught up with John Baxter Brown from Churches Togethr in England to chat a little about the Olympics and Greenbelt. Afterwards I was able to check out a coffee shop with Rachael before meeting SEITE friends to think about worship using a Labyrinth at our next residential.

Packed days … I love them!

memory lane

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I’ve been forced over the last few weeks, and again today, to think about those things that I see to depend on, or in other words those things that are important to me.

Many of you will know that over the summer the YFC servers failed and so a number of us have been struggling with email programs. A week ago my email program started to fail again which has stumped us all today when we tried to fix it. On Wednesday I’m at head office so I hope our IT expert will be able to sort it.

The technology problems have forced me to re-think how I work and I have had to re-learn old skills that I used before I had a computer to use for my main communication method.

The result has been more phonecalls, more face to face meetings, more time for reflection, more time to listen to others and to God, more time for people and less time for machines. It’s also true to say that I have felt less tied down to sitting in front of a screen.

I have learnt from this trip down memory lane some lessons that I had not so much forgotten, more secrets that I had started to unconsciously neglect. The experience has brought to my mind the need for real relationships and real conversations at a time when we seem increasingly bombarded by a virtual reality. Some are talking of ditching the virtual platforms, but I am going to reflect more on how, and why, I use them. An interesting point Sarah makes about Facebook,for example, is ‘I don’t get it … what’s the point!

It’s not a bad question! I couldn’t come up with a great answer … can you?

why?

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Today I had a great day catching up with Paul at Wycombe YFC.

On the way home I heard those ominous words on the radio; ‘between junctions x and y on the M25 was a jack-knifed lorry with massive cues forming on the …. clockwise side.’ I only breathed a selfish sigh of relief for a second beofore I realised there would soon be a queue of cars on the anti-clockwise side too as people slowed down to have a look. 4 miles away from the accident the almost customary queue formed and travelled slowly at 15/20 mph.

The accident was a car transporter of BMW’s blocking all 3 lanes – nasty if you were on in the stationary queue, but thankfully no-one was hurt – but WHY do people have to slow just to gawp. Amazingly as soon as were past the scene the cars were all up to speed again.

What is it about the misfortune of others that makes us want to slow and have a gawp? Why are we so nosey?

what she say?

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We had a great holiday.
Some of the funniest times, when we laughed a lot, arose from people misunderstandings.

One example comes from a campsite where the wardens sold home produced stuff. Joe came back one morning and asked what would be in Tom’s bags and could he have £1 to buy some as the sign outside the shop said ‘Bag of Tom’s £1’.

Another happened when we were hitching the caravan to move to another site. I asked Sarah to turn the stabiliser in the direction with the arrow pointing to ‘on’. She replied that there wasn’t a ‘on’ but there was a ‘no’ with an arrow next to it!

My final example comes from a child in Sarah’s class who had drawn a picture of a person. When Sarah asked what a part of the picture was the conversation went something like ‘that’s his willy’ ‘excuse me’ ‘his willy … you know, willies that you wear to jump in puddles when it is raining’!

A lot of confusion can occur when we mis-hear, see differently, or misunderstand what is happening. It strikes me that the church is in this position at the moment with people not quite grasping what is being said but immediately interpreting what they think is being said in the light of their own exprience.

For unity, for witness, to show the love of Christ we need to properly hear and understand ech other, which requires more than just listening.

Integrate for integrity

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Sarah led the family service today and the theme was integrity. Sarah has this great talent for using simple but profound images that draw you in to the topic and then keep repeating on you – like a good pleasurable meal!

Today Sarah made bubble solution from water, washing up liquid and sugar. From this she drew that if we integrate all 3 of these useful things then they produce a new substance which is quite fun to have. She then went on the use the seprate ingredients symbolically to represent different parts of our lives concluding by asking if we live boxed lives which are seperate, or do we allow all parts of our lives to integrate allowing a certain transparancy. Integration then leads to integrity.

It had never really struck me before that if we allow integration of the different spheres of our lives then we may achive integrity in our lives. When we live separate little lives we don’t.

Place of disgrace or blessing?

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It was a London day today.
I love London days – no getting stuck in traffic, time to read on the train, or sleep!
I attended the NCVYS chief execs meeting at their new office just across the road from The Angel Tube.
Strange … while I was enjoying London city sunshine, apparently Gillingham was experiencing torrential rain – this weather is weird!

I managed to read a few chapters of Unofficial God which is a good read. I like some of the suggestions and observations that Bishop Brian makes, not because they are necessarily new, but because it is a bishop who is responsible for placing curates that is saying them.

Essentially the whole theme of the book is whether we are inside or outside the walls. He notes that we, as ‘church’ consider the church building, that space which is inside the walls, as a place of purity while outside may be considered as a place of disgrace and separation from God.

Brian then draws our attention to the place of Jesus birth, baptism, crucifixion and resurrection. Each of these places can be considered as outside the walls, in the place of disgrace. By his very presence Jesus has transformed these places of disgrace into places of blessing.

I find that so exciting. By his presence Jesus transformed places of disgrace into places of blessing. By our presence in Jesus, can we transform places of disgrace into places of blessing too?

a personal mission statement

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One of my readings this morning in the Daily Office was Micah 6: 6-8:

How can I stand up before GOD
and show proper respect to the high God?
Should I bring an armload of offerings
topped off with yearling calves?
Would GOD be impressed with thousands of rams,
with buckets and barrels of olive oil?
Would he be moved if I sacrificed my firstborn child,
my precious baby, to cancel my sin?
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
what GOD is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour,
be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously-
take God seriously.

Do what is fair and just, be compassionate and loyal, don’t take yourself too seriously – seems a pretty good aim to me!