Do I have an answer for my hope and faith?

Update on the Biscuit situation:

Biscuit came in today looking pretty miserable and I was convinced he’d failed his grading. Which concerned me, as I thought I was going to have to deal with the whole God doesn’t always answer our prayers how we want, especially when we’ve not done the work, issue this early on.

Anyway, turns out he was given a holding pass. Basically means he should have failed, but he has to be re-graded in the new year.

He wanted to know what I’d done to upset God, as he surely couldn’t have. I told him I’m claiming that one. A pass is a pass is a pass. So, that’s 2 in 1 week. We didn’t do lunch today – he was on a short lunch as he had to leave early, so we’ve not had a more indepth conversation about this. I did tell him, however, that I’d get 5 more ladies on the case for his next grading! I’ll get my prayer group on the case for it.

Still, interesting things could come of this. Question is – do I reallyhave an answer for my faith, as 1 Peter 3:15 says? This thing with Biscuit is challenging me in more ways that one. And at a time where I’ve been wondering myself what difference my faith makes in my life, as I don’t seem to be a better person for it.

I think this is something I need to think, pray and read through. Is this the desert God is walking me through at the moment? Or should that be crawling?

“Even though I crawl through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear, for You are with me, You are beside me. You comfort me, guide me, sustain me. My hope is in You.”

Deconstructing

tr.v. de·con·struct·ed, de·con·struct·ing, de·con·structs

1. To break down into components; dismantle.

2. To write about or analyze (a literary text, for example), following the tenets of deconstruction.

Interesting – I started this post back in April, when I decided I needed to deconstruct church. It’s taken me a while to get to a place I think is OK.

The point of deconstructing church was that it just wasn’t ‘doing it’ for me any more. I don’t mean that in a selfish, individualistic sense, but in the sense I wasn’t meeting God there, it wasn’t enabling me or equiping me for my week ahead. Or even the rest of my Sunday. And I cracked, which you’ll know if you’ve been reading for a while.

But in the last month or two I’ve finally set church free from my expectations. Which makes it easier for me to go. And also less burdensome – I also feel less guilty when I miss services too.

Church has now become that place where I do community. I go, I chat, I talk to people afterwards. I maintain and build friendships.

It’s also where I take part in communal worship.

But it’s not where I get my support from. It’s not the place that ’sends me out’ into my week. I’m not entirely sure where that is yet, but I’m working on that. I have friends I can call on, pray with, or who pray for me. I plan to join a homegroup, but that’s a few months ahead because of other commitment.

• St John Ambulance. After all, the church can only do what it has the resources – money, people, skills, time – to do, and at the moment, there’s little for me to get involved in. St John Ambulance is practical and is community-based. It’s not overtly Christian, but why should everything we do be? There shouldn’t be this sacred-secular divided that puts everything we do into one of two camps. We are called to live lives of workship daily, diong what we do to show love to others.
• Street Pastors. I hope to speak to some people in a month or so once it’s up and running locally and get on the training that starts in March.
• Refugee centre. Although all I do is sit on the sub-committee, I’ve asked if I could ’sponsor a student’ and am thinking of other ideas for raising money and awareness of the work they’re doing there.

It’s still work-in-progress, but that’s a life-long process! I think it’s going well so far, and it feels much better to have freed myself from the expectations of myself and of others! That said, yesterday I did Sunday School for the 3 & 4-year-olds. Little terrors – they are rather cute!

How do you want your religion, sir?

There appears to be an interesting discussion going on in the comments of my post on religion at the moment. Pop along and have a look. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Applied for the job!

Just submitted it about 5 minutes ago!

My computer stopped working part-way through, but thankfully it was just being temperamental, and after a few minutes of swearing at it, turning it off and on again, it behaved. And I didn’t lose anything! Phew!

Wait and see now… I’ve pushed the door.

Jim Wallis in London

Jim Wallis was over here in the UK, and I’m very grateful a friend let me know he would be talking a church.co.uk about his new book Seven Ways to Change the World.

A few nuggets. He didn’t tell us the 7 ways, and although I bought the book, I’ve not got that far, having found a bunch of friends there too, so went to the pub after.

• When asked what had been the things that had got him most into trouble: Going the places you’re not supposed to go, particularly as a white, middle class Christian. Walking past those invisible ‘No Trespassing!’ signs.
• The 2 big hungers in this world are for spirituality and social action. And the movement that combines both of this will set the world on fire.
• People will get excited about this different kind of faith.
• We’re not to just ignore bad news. Revival is the good news for bad news.
• Politics is broken.
• The most effective social movements – Great Awakenings – have happened when politics has failed to address a major social injustice, and have always had a spiritual foundation.
• Faith is what moves the mountains that are the seemingly impossible social injustices: poverty, trafficking, climate change, racial injustice, and so on.
• Social change requires commitment from each one of us. We need to start in our own lives, lead in our communities and that will make a difference on a bigger scale.
• It takes time. Wilberforce put his first Bill forward 9 times, and it took another 30 years before the slave trade itself was made illegal.
• Charles Finney ‘invented’ the altar call; and got each new Christian to sign up to the anti-slavery movement there and then.
• God needs to be real and personal to sustain the commitment and faith that moves mountains.
• Hope is a choice. Cynicism comes from unsuccessful attempts to bring about a change, but instead of persisting, cynicism gives up and declares nothing can ever change.
• Hope means believing in spite of the evidence. Then watching the evidence change.
• Bad religion calls out of us our bad stuff. We’ve seen a lot of bad religion. We want to see more good religion, which calls out of us our good stuff: compassion, action and so on..

Oh, and I didn’t realise he was married to the REAL Vicar of Dibley, one of the first women to be ordained in the UK, who went on to advise Richard Curtis and Dawn French on the show.

A little less cryptic

So a bit more on the cryptic post of yesterday. With a little background first.

India was perhaps an opportunity to run away. Itchy feet because of friends going and working overseas. A shaky time at work. Church being painful and exhausting. Singleness and a new year. Plus, I saw an opportunity to work overseas with skills that I already have.

Every time a friend ups and disappears to Africa or Asia for months and years at a time, I wonder, should I go? I look at Christian agencies, and realise I generally can’t afford them. And am also not sure if I want to pay to go and volunteer – surely that’s not what volunteering’s about? But anyway. So I usually end up looking at VSO. And getting depressed because I have no skills they want. I’m not a teacher or a doctor or a nurse or a dietician or… Or anything they want. In fact, when I had my interview with Oasis, I struggled to come up with anything other than I could do the admin and I like kids.

Aside from that, I find myself wondering what kind of career I could have that, should I ever get to that stage in my life where kids happen and I want to work part time, would work around family. And that is a little more grown up than being an administrator. Though I do a bit more than the average office administrator, I’m a little bit stuck – Jo of all trades, master of none.

A few months ago I was seeing in the news articles about a shortage of midwives, and wondered to myself if maybe I should look at re-training. Then decided I wouldn’t.

TEFL has been another option – train to teach English to non-native English speakers, either here or overseas. Loads of opportunities.

So Saturday night I was out with a group of friends, one of which has taught TEFL in Prague. And I, off the cuff said, ‘Maybe I should learn to teach TEFL’. And thought nothing more of it.

Whilst on the train on the way back to my friends’ house where I was staying the night, she said to me something along the lines of this:

“When you said you thought you should learn TEFL, I wondered if maybe you should become a midwife.”

That’s weird, I thought. Nobody had been talking about kids, giving birth or midwives at all during the meal. So I said: “That’s weird, I’d thought about that a few months ago.”

She then went on to explain that she had a friend who had trained with the idea being to work overseas, not here in the UK.

I just think that’s a little bit weird, so I’ve asked her to get in touch and see if I could meet or even shadow on of her midwife friends to find out a bit more about it. And I’ve just finished printing out the careers leaflet.

This is another door. It doesn’t mean that India is out of the picture. But it could mean that. Certainly in the short-term it would. Training is a 3 or 4-year degree. And would cost a bomb! But as with all of these things, if God wants it to happen, He will make a way. And if not, He will close the door.

So I’m pushing at another door.

What kind of religion do you want?

Is was talking about religion over lunch with a colleague. I don’t do this often and I don’t jump in there, evangelistic guns a-blazing. Rather, I listen, try to get where they’re coming from, then pray for them. And for me in my relationship with them. Sounds like a cop-out, I know. But we’re not all born evangelists and apologists.

But the discussion -well, not really a discussion, more a diatribe (have I used that correctly?) of what he thought. Which was along the lines of if he was to follow a religion, it would probably be Islam, because at least their book was written by one guy, and they at least have rules which make sense and are good to live by. And has a huge focus on family and community.

Which made me think… the rules are what I find deeply UNattractive about Islam (well that and the suicide-bombing jihadists and the women-suppressing male leaders. But let’s not talk about the Crusades, that’s not what this post is about). The same with Judaism. But Islam has been hijacked too much for his liking – the true, original Islam is what he’d like. And he’s right. It has. In many areas, Islam has been hijacked by the prevailng culture. So much greatness came out of the early Islamic/Ottoman Empire: culture, science, the works.

Of course, Christianity’s not been hijacked, has it?! I (gently) put that point across. The incorporation of pagan/Roman/Greek ideals – the fact that in the West we celebrate Easter on a pagan feast day, not around Passover, which is when it actually happened. Christmas is another hijacked pagan feast day. Has it assimilated so much of other rituals and superstitions that Christianity has lost its own saltiness?

But there’s often an inner resistance to Christianity in the West. Apparently it’s downfall was the incorporation of materialism, individualism and capitalism, according to my colleague. You don’t say?! That and excommunication – I can’t believe people actually had the gall to do that! Because only a few centuries ago, to excommunicate someone was to say they no longer belonged to society; because society was Christendom, was the church, and to be no longer part of the church meant you had no place. You became a non-person in the eyes of society. I’m glad we’ve moved on from that.

But getting back to my point about rules: we have 2 as Christians.

1. Love God
2. Love others

Everything we do is a part of that (even though we f**k it up so often). It’s about the heart of what believe, the motivation. Not because we’re told to do so. And that’s what makes Christianity so freeing. But also, I guess, makes it look so woolly and wishy-washy. There’re no hard and fast do’s and don’t’s (other than the 10 Commandments, and we all get hung up over our neighbours ass when we talk about them) that you see in Islam. There’s been a certain amount of rhetoric over the last few years about why young men become attracted to Islam, become fundamentalistic suicide bombers. And there’s a lot to be said for an element of certainty in a world that can appear rootless, drifting and excluding to young men of a certain age and race. It can offer that family support in an age of broken families. It can offer a set of rules and codes of behaviour in a society that looks out only for Number One, and that thinks as long as you feel good about it, it’s OK.

But then there are my friends who believe in God. But that’s it. Jesus? Probably not, because He’s harder to get your head – and heart – around.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. There’s a ‘why?’, I guess. Why do you or I believe? And a ‘what?’: what do we believe?

What & Why. What a merry pair of bedfellows they make. I think they snuggle up with Faith, because without her, they don’t make sense on her own. And that’s what people so often miss or haven’t experience.

It’s all about Jesus

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

Warning: this post shares a bit too much. Particularly for boys.

Death and sacrifice – the difference

What’s the difference between death and sacrifice?

death
–noun

1. the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.
2. an instance of this: a death in the family; letters published after his death.
3. the state of being dead: to lie still in death.
4. extinction; destruction: It will mean the death of our hopes.
5. Also called spiritual death. loss or absence of spiritual life.

—Idioms

1. put to death, to kill; execute.

sacrifice
–noun

1. the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.
2. the person, animal, or thing so offered.
3. the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.
4. the thing so surrendered or devoted.

–verb (used with object)

1. to make a sacrifice or offering of.
2. to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.

–verb (used without object)

1. to offer or make a sacrifice.

Sacrifice, more often than not, is a choice.

Death, usually isn’t. And often when it is, it’s a sacrifice, a martyrdom (which nowadays has become more associated with terrorism).

In spiritual terms, sacrifice is something we give up in order to ‘better’ ourselves, to develop our spiritual lives, our relationship with God. It is our choice.

In spiritual terms, death of something is out of our hands. God will end something, whether we want it to end or not. As sacrifice is painful, death can be more painful.

Death is obscene. It rips life apart, intruding on vitality and decaying it. Death is not glamorous – it is painful, noisy, messy.

But…

Today’s devotional

Keep your dream alive
The Word for Today, 01 Mar 2008
‘Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.’ EPHESIANS 3:20
When God gives you a dream, He places within you or within reach, all the resources needed to fulfil it. Do you have an unthinkable, scary, absolutely wild idea that won’t let you sleep? That’s the way it is with dreams, especially when God is in them. They appear crazy (humanly speaking, they are crazy!). Placed alongside the triangle of logic, cost and timing, such dreams usually seem beyond our reach. They won’t fly when you test them against the gravity of reality. And the strangest part is the more they are told ‘can’t’ the more they pulsate ‘can’ and ‘will’ and ‘must.’ What’s behind great accomplishments? Inevitably, great people. But what is in those great people that makes them different? It’s certainly not their age or gender or heritage or talent or environment. It’s faith! They are people who think and believe differently. Are you dreaming about writing a book? Don’t wait for a publisher, start writing! Are you wondering if all that work with the kids is worth it? It is! Want to go back to university and finish your degree? Do it. Pay the price, even if it takes years! Trying to master a skill that takes time, patience and energy (not to mention money)? Press on! Thinking about going into business? Why not? It’s hard to find satisfaction halfway up someone else’s corporate ladder. Without a dream and the determination to fulfil it, life is reduced to bleak black and wimpy white, a diet too bland to get anybody out of bed in the morning. So go after the quest that fuels your fire. Keep your dream alive!

See also this post by Awareness on possibilities.

Which dream? India?

Or does it mean anything that I read this after my last post about the deadline? Or am I just reading too much into it? (Which is not unlike me.)