Thought for the Week...and another week...and another week!

Inspired by a new thing I tried today, joining a local group affiliated to the Association of Christian Writers, I decided to collate some of the 'Thoughts for the Week' I've written for the local paper, over the last couple of years and collate them as one blog post, for people who are interested!  As always, thanks for taking the time to read! (I don't know why the formatting went wrong or how to change it - sorry!!!)

The God Delusion?

In his best-selling book, “The God Delusion,” (2006), Richard Dawkins sets out his reasons why belief in God is ridiculous and irrational.  Whilst the book’s popularity evinces that many concur, for me and two billion others across the globe, the God of the Bible, who became man in the person of Jesus Christ, is still very much alive, real and at work for good in the lives of those who let Him in.

I admire those people who, instead of dismissing God outright, take time to explore and question for themselves – those who are unsure, yet open-minded enough to ask the questions, brave the outcome. Many agnostics have set out to disprove God (C.S. Lewis perhaps the most well-known) and found themselves, instead, enjoying a life-giving relationship with the very God they were convinced did not exist.

So what stops people, what makes them so sure it’s all a delusion? Suffering and evil? What if our very ability to recognise and categorise these ills point to a God-given intuition that things should be better (as there were once at Creation and will be again in heaven)? The inability to ‘prove’ God exists?  Fair, but if we could weigh, measure, see, touch and categorise God, then we would be denied the joy of learning to grow our faith and trust in Him.  Christians who give God a bad name? Guilty…we are not perfect and make mistakes, sometimes big ones, as we learn and change and grow.

We understand your doubts.  We have them ourselves at times.  But don’t let them stop you coming, don’t let them stop you asking.  Visit some churches, do some internet searches, ‘grill’ a friendly Christian – but, whatever you do, if there is even the tiniest question in your mind that God might actually be real and want a relationship with you, don’t let the questions go unasked!

 

What is it really like to be a Christian?

Say the word ‘Christian’ and, for many, the image evoked usually contains one of the following: a serious and sombre individual (usually in a black overcoat), wielding a bible at an unsuspecting and unwilling onlooker; a cold, half empty church, containing hard pews and an out-of-tune organ; or a life, lacking fun, lived in fear of a cold and distant being, whose disapproval is inevitable and whose approval can never be gained.

Today, think again! In twenty-first century life, that image is out-dated, but Christianity – and the God represented by it – is far from being so. Certainly (and unfortunately), there will always be those who give Christianity (indeed any religion) a bad name. But look around you – at your neighbours, friends, the woman you got chatting to at toddler group last week – and you will see endless examples of God at work in the lives of real, ‘normal,’ every day men and women. Yes, we go to church– but not the one you have been imagining. We laugh, we cry, we worship and we encounter a real, living, loving God. He touches us, heals us, changes us, takes the broken parts of our lives, gives them meaning and makes us whole again. He gives us hope – not just for a hard-to-imagine final destination after death, but here, now, as we live in reality, wrestling with the painful bits and celebrating the beautiful bits of this glorious, exhausting, exhilarating journey we call life.

So, next time you meet a Christian – or pass a church – how about taking a moment to pause? As you mentally dismantle your pre-conceptions, prejudices and previous experiences and approach (perhaps cautiously), with a little open-mindedness, perhaps you too could encounter, not dull, watered-down, empty religion, but the God who is real and living and truly touches and changes lives.

Embrace the Mud!

Earlier this spring, I took my two boys for a spontaneous trip to the park. Once there, I realised I had forgotten my wellies; it was the kind of day where you more than needed them! The boys were not to be deterred, so I squelched on, letting my leather boots get damp and muddy.  I swung my oldest son too high on the swing you dangle from by your arms, and landed him on his rear in the mud – in his new coat!  This was a good point to discover that I had forgotten the wet wipes, so we laughed, let the mud dry on his jeans and coat and our hands, and quite simply stayed muddy.

Faced with no other option, instead of becoming annoyed and upset, I embraced the mud.  The best by-product of this approach was the freedom the mud-wrestling mishap gave my son to henceforth abandon all care.  He was muddy.  It was Mummy’s fault!  Further cautioning about mud was entirely irrelevant.  We swung, spun, climbed and ran, and discovered that life was more than worth living, despite – and because of – the mud.

It felt like a spiritual lesson lurked somewhere, about abandon and surrender of control –one God was orchestrating with a chuckle! Something to do with landing on one’s bottom and being caked in mud being liberating because the mud brings a freedom not to expect things to be perfect; a freedom to laugh and plough on despite the mud (and the strange discovery that this is possible); and the freedom to trust that the mud will eventually brush off more easily later on, than if we’d stopped, cried, sat in it and tried to wipe it off, still wet and slimy, as soon as it stuck.

So, spiritually, it made me realise I sometimes need to drop my attempts to always be fully prepared, always have my “wet wipes” about my person – the things I think I can do in my own strength to control and minimise the mud.  Sometimes – much, more often in fact – I need to leave it to God.  I need to trust His timing and learn that it’s okay, even liberating, to walk caked in mud for a while, knowing that life continues despite the mud and that His gentle hand will brush it off when the time is right, restoring me to all I should be, with some richer experiences to relate, about the time I walked, caked in mud, but sparkling with His life and joy.   

 

Knowing the End from the Beginning

My son hates anything sad or scary, even on television.  Through movie afternoons, we keep asking him, “Who wins in the end?” eliciting the much-rehearsed reply, “baddies always lose, goodies always win.”  Watching ‘Cinderella,’ one Sunday afternoon, his usual panic set in.  The initial beauty of the film faded into the darker scenes and he announced that he wanted to watch something else!

Knowing he would cope better with the scary bits if he knew what lay beyond them, I pressed pause. After five minutes explaining about ugly sisters, wicked step mothers, magic pumpkins, glass slippers, a handsome prince and a happily ever after,  he was all smiles again, eager to press on.

As we watched more, it struck me that we, as adults, are not dissimilar in our approach to life and faith.  We meander happily through sunnier parts of life but when troubles and trials hit, we want to pause the story, hide away from the sheer discomfort of it.  If, we reason, we could just know that next week, month, year, things will look up, we could keep going.  The uncertainty makes us doubt and fear.  We long to know the end from the beginning but we don’t – we can’t.

There is, however, reassurance in knowing the One who does!  Sometimes we yearn for God to unfold our narrative in advance, as I did for my son; we reason that it would help us to anticipate the peaks and troughs, navigate them more gracefully.  Instead God calls us to a place of surrender and trust, where all we can do is place our hand in His and trust Him to lead us safely through, giving us all the grace we need for each moment.

We do not know what twists and turns will lead us through life to our story’s end, but we can count on two things.  Firstly, God will work out all things, joy-filled and excruciatingly painful, for our good.  Secondly, the final end to all of our stories will be one of rejoicing, wholeness and peace for all eternity, if we’ve put our trust in Him.  With my hand in the hand of an author who writes like that, I can confidently walk through my story, even without knowing the full script.  I can walk, trust and surrender - even stumble and trip - knowing that the One who wrote my story from the very beginning, will give me all I need to live it, right until the very end.

 Christmas

For self-confessed Christmas lovers, the countdown to Christmas probably began around August, while the rest of us were uploading our holiday pictures to Facebook. Some people are truly Christmas-a-holics, in love with Christmas and all things traditionally associated with it.

But for some it is a harder time of year; for the elderly it can be lonely and quiet. For anyone struggling with grief of any kind, it can be a time where incompatible opposites are in play – the desire to embrace the jollity of the season, coupled with a (sometimes more forceful) desire to hide in a room and only come out when it’s all over. I write this from experience, facing the memory, each year, of a baby, stillborn, at the height of the Christmas festivities.

For me, the key to facing all of life’s pain and challenges has been not just dwelling in the Christmas story, but going further - following the biblical narrative beyond the Christmas “baby-Jesus-in-a-manger” story, all the way through to what he did next, on a cross far removed from the joy of his birth. When that Christmas baby grew up and died, at Easter, for all that is wrong in us and our world, he invited us into a relationship with his Father God, who can feel and heal our pain, love us through dark valleys and draw us through them, stronger in His strength. It may sound far-fetched and improbable, but listen to the stories of any who profess this to be true, and you will hear the same threads of hope, running through each diverse and unique story.

So this Christmas, reflect on him – the true Jesus of the Christmas – and Easter –story. Visit a church where those who follow him already can point you past the camels and donkeys and make-shift manger, to the One behind it all, whose presence in our lives brings healing, joy and hope ALL year round!

 

Happy Valentines’ Day?

Valentines’ Day, in the modern world, carries with it the heavy weight of commercial appeal.  The moment the last of the Christmas tinsel is sold in the sale, shelves full of red, chocolate hearts and fake roses appear, stretching through shops, as far as the eye can see.  Valentines’ Day is big business; statistics released in 2013 suggest that Britain, that year, spent £1 billion on Valentines’ Day gifts and experiences.

Some people love Valentines’ Day, revelling in its romantic appeal ; they are the ones found trawling the internet for weeks beforehand to find that ‘perfect’ gift.  Some give it a half-hearted go – like the time my Dad bought my Mum a lovely card, declaring ‘To My Husband With Love,’ (he didn’t live that down for a while)! Others, as the dreaded day approaches, stumble past shops, trying to blank out gushing messages in cards, because, for yet another year the shiny, tinsel hearts rubber-stamp feelings about what their life lacks – a real sense of being truly and deeply loved.

Whatever your relationship status this Valentines’ Day, there is One who can love you better than any earthly person can.  Sadly for this current generation, love is rarely the first idea that comes to mind in the same sentence as God – instead He is often viewed as an unapproachable and disapproving deity.  In the Bible a verse in John’s Gospel tells us: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son….by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.” God loved us enough to send Jesus to die, to break down the wall between himself and humanity.  He loves us as we are, walks with us and helps us to become the best possible version of ourselves, as we learn to love ourselves and others, from the secure stand point of knowing we are loved by Him.

This Valentines’ Day I want to challenge you to look beyond your assumptions and stereotypes - God IS love and He wants you to know that His love is for everyone and one that won’t fail or fade. It will endure, long after the chocolate hearts are eaten and the cards have found their way into the recycling bin.  The saccharine sentiments of Valentines’ Day may fade, but His love will never fade.  Finding out more, in whatever way you can, may just change your life forever.