Lent

Aphra posted about Lent yesterday, with a link to this prayer guide (it’s a pdf). I thought it interesting and it has got me thinking.

I had already planned to look at the issues of grace, guilt, forgiveness and repentance (just a few little things!), to try and see how we as Christians can let go of unnecessaryguilt. So many of us are wracked with guilt that I think the Humanist Society has half a point with their athiest bus campaign.

Some Christians worry so much no wonder those who don’t believe can’t see what the benefit of Jesus in their life would be. After all, when most Christians they know have more hangups than then, why are they going to believe that Jesus makes life so much better?

I also thought about giving something up, but in a time of recession, I’m already cutting back. So I’ve decided to give up something that isn’t material or financial (though I might fast on luncthime a week to focus on the study, and give the money somewhere): I’m going to give up talking so much and take up listening; give up focussing on me so much (don’t laugh!) and take up focussing on others.

A Story of Gifts – loosely based on Matthew 8

A Story of Gifts – loosely based on Matthew 8.

“Let me put it to you this way…each of those events, demands, people, expectations…each exposes a window into your inner world revealing areas that need healing and restoration. You still believe the lie that experiencing life and being in relationship with me is about your performance. Even the person who wrongs you, or the one who places an unjust burden on you, or the one who makes you feel in their debt…any of these are a gift to you, if for no other reason than they expose what you work so hard to hide.”

So, what is it about myself that I am trying to hide, that certain people stimulate anger and irritation in me?

What is it about my ever-optimistic, loud, ‘Happy Clappy’ housemate that niggles parts of me I’ve kept hidden? Is it because I don’t have that supreme confidence in God he has? Is it because I am envious he always sees the silver lining? Though I don’t think it’s all that. He is oblivous to others in some way: the volume of his singing, the way he treats our home as a hotel for his friends on occasion shows a certain amount of disrespect for those of us he is living with. His insistence that things be done HIS way, that I adjust to him: I responded with a stubborness I didn’t realise I had. Maybe that’s it as well. He brings to the fore my own selfishness, my own desire to have things done my way. Which depresses me, because I’d really like to live on my own, but can’t afford it. Or else, with others but with certain rules. Whereas here, we have to figure things out among ourselves: and he seems to ride roughshod over what I think are basic considerations for those you live with.

There’s obviously things I need to work through and perhaps I need to start praying thankfullness for him, that he is a gift that will reveal the parts of me that need changing, the selfish, stubborn parts of me.

Or maybe he’ll just move out!

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.

Being human

I’m watching The Pianist. Some things consistently amaze me about humanity.

1. Our capacity for evil, for such darkness. Think German soldiers beating/shooting Jews on the spot for fun (I’m not saying they’re only ones who have done, just this film is set during World War 2); think (not too hard) genocide.
2. Our capacity for love, for self-sacrifice for others – even those we barely know – at risk of our own lives.
3. Our capacity for great beauty, for love, for creativity: for music, for art, for poetry and prose.
4. That we can be such a mix of good and evil, darkness and light, and yet be made in the image of God.
5. That God can love us so much despite our worst.

[I wanted to add a picture, but can't seem to get them into posts today.]