Last week I asked the question How faithful have I been to the disciplines to which I committed myself, not just in my spiritual life but in all of life? I then commented: I realize that before I can take this question seriously, I need to be more intentional about the practices that will shape my life in this coming season.
This week has been a good time for me to grapple with this as I have struggled to remember my new resolutions and be faithful to the disciplines I believe I need in my life at the moment. One of my important daily disciplines is my morning meditation times, which often give rise to these meditations. I start with a centering prayer, a time of quiet reflection and a pause in which to listen to God.
The prayer above has been my centering prayer this week. I sit quietly at my desk with my feet firmly planted on the ground and my eyes closed. In my mind I imagine those roots that grow deep towards God’s life giving river. I drink from it and am nourished by it. I watch the filaments that spread out connecting me to all God has created, like the mycelial network that connects plants and through which they communicate with each other. So amazing yet so fragile and easily disrupted. I imagine the nutrients that flow from me to others through this conduit, and I sit in awe of the incredible circle of creation of which I am a part.
What is your response?
Read slowly through the prayer above several times. Sit with your eyes closed between each reading and allow your imagination to be stirred. What imagery comes to mind for you? How does it encourage a deepening of your relationship to God, to God’s people and to God’s creation.
Now watch the video below, showing one of Denny Dyke’s beautiful walkable art pieces . Imagine yourself walking this labyrinth in the sand – such a beautiful way to connect to God and to the people we journey with. Yet this too is very ephemeral. It is designed to be appreciated and learned from now, for this moment. Then it is washed away with the next high tide.
I am reminded that all connections – to God, to others and to God’s creation – are fragile, so often designed to give us nourishment for a few short moments only. They move us further on our journey towards God and our neighbours and then are washed away. Each moment, each day we must reforge the disciplines we need for further nourishment and progress.
What is your response?
What images come to your mind as you watch this video? What response is God asking of you?
Photo by Michael Durana (courtesy of Unsplash)
This year, approaching the Day of Pentecost, my teenage daughter and I have been reading the book of Acts. For myself I am seeing it through new eyes as my daughter reads it for the first time. After making a commitment to Christ at this year’s Easter Camp, she has been hungry for God’s word. We have read the book daily until we recently finished it, and during this precious time I felt growing excitement at her desire to learn and understand, and deep thankfulness to God for hearing the prayer of my heart prior to Easter Camp, that she would have a touch of his spirit. Indeed he surpassed what I asked for, and ‘poured’ out his spirit out upon her.
But it is a pouring out we celebrate, this Day of Pentecost. The same God who lit the disciples and new believers alight with the fire of his spirit still ignites his fire in our hearts and changes lives today. I rediscovered the poem below written a couple of years back when looking for one for Pentecost. The picture by Michael Durana (courtesy of Unsplash), perfectly matches a poem which attempts to capture the power of God, which through the gift of his Holy Spirit resides in and works through us. It is a mystery, it is beyond comprehension, the wonderful truth of God in us. As we become more aware of who God is, we grow in awe that he would make his home in us.
This Pentecost I pray that you have new awareness of his indwelling presence. God’s purpose for his spirit to indwell his people, is twofold. It is for us, for just as Jesus told his disciples it was best that he must go so that the comforter might come (John 16:7), the Holy Spirit assures us we are never alone, and will always know the comfort of his loving presence. But it is also for others – it is his power working through us to love and heal the world, “as you sent me into the world, I send them into the world and I consecrate myself to meet their need for growth in truth and holiness. I am not praying for these alone but also for the future believers who will come to me because of the testimony of these. My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are. Father – that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me.” (John 17:18-21)
God of the storm
is living in me…
The infinite power,
all consuming, overwhelming.
A furnace of energy where the
thunder is stored,
and where the lightening is born,
resides in me?
Creator
Who makes moons that draw oceans,
stars to navigate by.
Whose vastness who can comprehend,
whose footstool is the sky,
is contained by me?
Father
Who gave His only Son.
Love that can only be measured by His suffering.
Hanging on the cross,
the cross ‘between the trees’,
dying for me?
So that He might be resurrected, so that I might be redeemed
that He would dwell in me?
Oh Great God
Who encloses and indwells me,
with the heartbeat of the blessed Trinity.
Whose river of living water
arises from eternity.
Never let me forget the truth of your presence.
For he who seeks you only without,
fails to know the rivers of delight
which flow from our innermost selves.
Oh Great God
Consume me, fill and transform me.
Not only with head knowledge,
but with a heart forever bonded
in relationship, in union with
You – Father, Holy Spirit,
Son of God.
Ana Lisa de Jong
‘In the last days,’ God says,
‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your young men will see visions,
and your old men will dream dreams.
In those days I will pour out my Spirit
even on my servants–men and women alike–
and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18; Joel 2:28-29)
Graphic ‘Hope-Becomes-Vision’ by Steve Wickham
Spirit, Come With Fire, Breathe, Empower, Give Life
FROM the day the Holy Spirit came, breathing the wind of life with fire into the disciples, God was reminding humanity that He, the provider God, is a giving God.
Christians are quick to own Pentecost, but the Jews had been celebrating Shavuot through the Feast of Weeks for over a thousand years when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost ten days after Jesus’ ascension.
The coming of the Spirit was a sequel of an earlier redemptive act of God.
The Law and the Spirit
God gave Moses the Law on Sinai on the fiftieth day after Passover and the Exodus — a full seven weeks after — just as God gave the Spirit on the fiftieth day after Easter. (Remember the significance in the number seven? It’s the number of completion.) On the first hand, He gave the Law, complete, and on the second, He gave the Spirit, complete. In the giving of the Law, Moses had a formula with which to lead the people of God. In the giving of the Spirit, the Church, and each regenerated person, has the Person of Jesus as a personal anointing. Neither the Law nor the Spirit is incomplete in its purpose.
The giving of the Law was no less significant than was the giving of the Spirit. Both came from God Himself, and both were/are, therefore, perfect.
In many ways, the coming of Jesus showed the Church the importance of the Law. The Sermon on the Mount deals with such important issues which are central to Jesus’ teaching. But without the coming of the Spirit, the Law was always not enough — the Law always held us at arm’s length from our Creator.
The Spirit In Actualising Redemptive Intimacy
The Old Testament shows us how veritable the New Testament is.
In Jeremiah 31:31-34, the prophet proclaims the Day of the New Covenant; a spiritual covenant of intimacy between God and His people. In Ezekiel 36:27, God makes the connection between having the Spirit, which moves a believer to follow His decrees and keep His laws, and the Law. And yet, if we’re led by the Spirit we don’t have to keep the Law (Galatians 5:18) — because the Spirit empowers love through grace that will superintend the law. Still, the Spirit doesn’t replace the Law; it builds upon, and consecrates, the Law — it upholds and meets the Law’s intent.
If not for the Law, the Spirit has no foundation, yet if not for the Spirit, the Law has no veracity for personal transformation.
When the Holy Spirit blew in and through the disciples in that house that Pentecost day — which may have been the ‘house’ of the Temple court where 120 people witnessed it — there was a gift given. It was a gift not unlike the Law, which gave the Israelites vital information on how to please God and live as God’s covenant people. But the coming of the Spirit added something vital — it gave each disciple, and every assenting believer, the capacity to want to please God and to want to live as God’s covenant people, now under grace, through quickening obedience.
***
In the coming of the Holy Spirit, in wind and fire, God breathes in and through us to the extension of our empowerment, for others, for the Kingdom. And this, because He has put His law into our hearts. No longer do we just know about God. With the Holy Spirit we know God.
The coming of the Spirit is about redemptive intimacy. In the Spirit we have the capacity for fire, to breathe change-making possibility into life, to receive His life so as to give life. Hope has become our vision. And hope makes us have faith for victory even in situations of seeming defeat. Only the Holy Spirit could do that.
Our prayer ought to be: Spirit, come with fire, breathe, empower, give life. And the operative Spirit can do no other thing.
For some years, we have holidayed as a family on Bardsey Island. Just 1.5 miles long, by half a mile wide, sitting two miles off the North West coast of Wales, it is a wonderful place. It has also been formational in my thinking around what it means to follow Jesus in today’s consumer culture, challenging me to reflect on how we live within the limits of this island we call earth; how I spend my time, and how I connect with the wider natural world.
As I write this, however, I am not on Bardsey Island, but sitting at the kitchen table of our terraced house on a Social Housing Estate. We have had dinner and our children are out at a youth group. I’ll need to go out soon in the car and pick them and their friends up.
A week or two on Bardsey Island may teach me some important things, but the challenge is how I live out what I learn in my everyday life. The reality, of course, is that most of us live in fairly ordinary places and we are trying to live our lives as best we can in those places: trying to do our best at work; keep our mortgages/rents and bills paid whilst putting aside something for the future; raise children (if we have them) as well as we can; keep our relationships steady, and not get too tired and worn out in the process. While we do that we face a cultural expectation that we should be upgrading and buying new things, moving gradually upwards in our lifestyle, and making sure that we – particularly women – look as beautiful as possible in the process.
At the same time, we want Christ to be at the centre of all we do and we know that should make a difference to how we live and to what we view as our life priorities. Added to all of this, we know only too well that we live in a world with incredibly complex problems: inequality, injustice, climate change, rising sea levels, energy crises, hunger, lack of access to clean water, species extinction, crashing fish stocks and so on and so on. Most of us have a deep sense that these, and other, issues cannot be ignored, and a deep desire to do something about them. The least we can do, we feel, is give some of our money to charities (and we are often pretty good at that), but we know it is not enough.
We have a feeling that there is a connection between how we live our lives, the culture we live in, our Christian faith, and the broader issues of this world, but sometimes it is all too much and, honestly, it is all we can do to make it through to the end of the day and collapse in front of the television with a glass of wine.
Just Living: Faith and Community in an Age of Consumerism looks at how those connections can be made and how living a connected life in this way need not be onerous and burdensome, nor lead to a life of deprivation. What I have discovered is that joining the dots can be a lot of fun and can take you on an adventure you never imagined you would have. Yes it may lead to a life where you say ‘no’ to some things, but it also leads to a life where you say ‘yes’ to a whole lot more!
Here are my seven top tips to help you make a start:
1. Ask God to keep your heart soft to global issues of need, and to show you how you can help.
2. Change your diet so it is predominantly vegetable and grain-based, with a little meat and fish if you like.
3. When you buy a treat for yourself, buy something for someone else too and bless them as well as yourself.
4. If there is ever a fairtrade or ethical option when buying a product, choose that one.
5. Get out your front door and get involved in a local community initiative.
6. Do one thing in your work (or predominant life) situation to make it a more caring environment.
7. Take ten minutes each day to sit in silence and root yourself in God.
This article was first published in Inspire, the UK’s good news magazine – see inspiremagazine.org.uk” Used with permission.
Dr Ruth Valerio is Churches and Theology Director for A Rocha UK, a Christian charity that works for the protection and restoration of the natural world. She lives in Chichester, England, with her family and together, they try to live out a life that integrates their faith with issues of justice and wider creation care. Ruth is a prominent theologian and speaker and is the author of a number of books and Bible studies. To find out more about her see www.ruthvalerio.net.
Pentecost is almost here and I have spent quite a bit of time this week thinking about its implications for our lives. It is fun to dress in red as we do at our church and have whirligigs for the kids to play with but forget that this was the event that launched the church out into the world. This was the event that radically changed the disciples from “behind closed doors followers” to “we can change the world for good” believers.
Pentecost launched a new movement towards justice and healing and peace and the question I am pondering as Pentecost approaches is: How do I live that out in my life?
More resources for Pentecost – ideas for creative worship here
By Andy Wade –
For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NLT)
It’s May and my backyard is a mess! Normally I’d be much further along with my garden adventures by now, but this year life has been much more chaotic than normal. I did get most of my seed starts going on time. Keeping them watered and healthy was a bit of a challenge, but they’re now ready to be planted.
[themify_box style=”light-green, rounded, shadow” ]Can we learn about our approach to neighborhoods and communities from how we approach the garden? I think we can![/themify_box]
The interesting thing I’m learning this year is that, even when life gets crazy-busy, timing is everything. As my garden went largely neglected, winter broccoli and kale began to flower and started to produce seed. And the dock (in the buckwheat family but considered a weed) is everywhere, sending its tap roots deep into the soil. My temptation is to rush out there and start ripping out the old and planting the new. It’s spring, after all; it’s time for my garden to look organized and productive!
But while the garden looks a mess, something spectacular is going on. Flowers on the broccoli and kale are attracting hordes of bees to the garden. Although my spring plants are not yet in the ground, these late winter bloomers are creating a healthy home for pollinators and other critters essential for the health and vitality of the garden that is yet to emerge. Not only this, but because I’m letting it go to seed, I can save the seed from these heirloom and organic wonders for planting next year.
And that dock? While I pull or cut it back before it sets seed (it spreads like, well, a weed, but if you’re willing to risk that, I’m told the grain can be used as a coffee substitute), the young leaves are tasty and those annoying tap roots actually draw to the surface and make available nutrients trapped deep underground. That’s right, even these tenacious trespassers can be a profound asset.
[themify_box style=”light-green, rounded, shadow” ]Similar to sorrel, beet greens, chard and rhubarb, dock contains oxalic acid (rhubarb leaves contain so much that they are toxic!). This substance makes docks taste sour, kind of lemony. Oxalic acid can be potentially harmful if taken in large quantity. Cooking decreases the amount of oxalic acid. Plants for a Future notes: “People with a tendency to rheumatism, arthritis, gout, kidney stones or hyperacidity should take especial caution if including this plant in their diet since it can aggravate their condition. Avoid during pregnancy & breast feeding.”[/themify_box]
In my post last week, See the Wonder, I explored our need to go deep below the surface symptoms in our communities to discover the people, the imago dei, behind them. So much damage can be caused by focusing on symptoms and issues ahead of the people behind them. In a similar manner, in our eagerness to get busy and “fix things”, we might not only hurt the individuals behind them, we might also destroy community networks that help an area thrive, or at least survive, when times get tough.
Like the dock in my garden, community networks often run deep, wide, and lie largely unseen. Without taking time to listen, watch, and interact, we can easily miss how these deep networks actually provide nutrients that can make the neighborhood healthy. In our rush to rip out the “weeds” we can easily destroy important networks for feeding the community in the future. Learning to identify and understand not just individual issues in the neighborhood, but also the essential networks that lie underneath, can be one of the most important things that we do.
While I don’t want the dock to go to seed because it creates a mess in the garden, the broccoli and kale are a whole different story. These plants, have reached maturity. The natural thing to do is to admit that there’s no more produce to be extracted from these plants so it’s time to send them to the compost heap.
This is often our knee-jerk reaction to out-dated and older programs and institutions in our communities. There are certainly times when sending them to the compost heap is the right move. But sometimes these dying programs and institutions have one more thing to offer – seeds for a future endeavor.
Unlike my heirloom and organic seed, which I want to produce plants identical to their “parent”, the seeds we’re looking for from past-the-due-date programs and organizations are those that bring with them best practices, connections, and insights that assist in bringing forth new fruit for changing times. When we yank them out too quickly we risk losing hard-earned lessons of the past.
The Lesson
Delay is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, like with my garden, it forces us to slow down, to remember what it’s really all about, and to stay on track. Intentional delay can help us to listen more fully and learn more deeply of the places we inhabit, which makes us better community members and our actions more effective over the long run.
My challenge for the week: Find a place where you can sit and listen, watch, and wonder.
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How might God be present even in programs and institutions you thought were long past their expiration date?
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What “seeds” might be present within those programs and institutions that might actually be beneficial moving into the future?
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As you observe the interactions between people and the flow of local trade and communication, what networks do you see that you didn’t notice before?
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What “nutrients” might be deep within your community and how are they currently being “drawn to the surface” and made available?
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With all of this in mind, are there things you may have been too quick to discount or ignore as irrelevant that might actually be important for the future of your place?
Image by Nell Potter used with permission
By Nils Von Kalm
In Christian circles, we generally place primary emphasis on believing in Jesus. After all, Acts 16:31 tells us that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus will be saved.
But what are we saved for? And what if God believes in us as well as us believing in God?
I have seen an encouraging move in the Church in recent years. It is a move which sees the Gospel as so much more than a ticket to heaven when we die. I think the Church is finally starting to see that our ultimate destiny is not a place in the sky once our life on this earth is finished.
We are discovering the biblical story again, the story that our ultimate destiny is a renewed heaven and earth brought together by God where God dwells with us and we live in a physical world with physical bodies where God’s rule has finally won the day.
Until then, God has saved us to participate in preparing for this new world, preparing for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. That’s why works of justice and caring for creation go right to the heart of the Gospel. They are part of preparing for the kingdom. In other words, God has given us a job to do.
Discovering this biblical narrative some years ago finally opened my eyes to the meaning of a cryptic conversation that the resurrected Jesus had with Peter as they walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee one morning.
Imagine what must have been going on inside Peter’s head. He would still have been reeling from the shame brought on by his vehement denial of his Lord just days earlier. His shame may even have been exacerbated by finding out that Jesus was now alive again.
On that fateful night before Jesus died, it is Peter, thinking only of himself, who pretends to the onlookers that he has never even seen Jesus before. It is of course when the rooster crows that Peter is confronted with the fact of failing his best friend. His bitter, painful remorse is then shown for all to see.
How would you have felt if you were Peter in that situation? You’ve just spent the best years of your life with the person your people have been waiting centuries for. He has chosen you to be one of his closest friends, he has stood up for you, affirmed you, and shown you a quality of life you never thought you deserved. But when he needed you, when the roles were somewhat reversed, you failed him. Can you imagine the shame of that? Can you imagine the bitter remorse?
For Peter though, and for all of us who have failed, it doesn’t end there. As is his character, Jesus gets alongside Peter and restores him. It all happens in a strange little passage at the end of John’s gospel.
Jesus is walking with Peter along the beach, and does something which seems quite odd. He asks Peter if he (Peter) loves him. Peter responds, saying “you know I love you.” But then, Jesus asks Peter the same question again, and then again! Three times!
What is going on here? Is Jesus so emotionally insecure that he needs the affirmation of his best mate three times before he will believe it? Far from it. It is Jesus who is affirming Peter, not the other way around. The three questions Jesus asks correspond to Peter’s three denials just a few nights before. Jesus is restoring Peter. He knows Peter’s heart; he knows that despite Peter’s failures, the outspoken disciple still loves Jesus beyond measure.
Jesus trusted Peter, the one who had failed him so badly, to be a pillar of the new Christian movement. Rather than getting him to step down because of his failures, Jesus told him to step up. This was affirmation, forgiveness and trust of the highest order. Peter had failed the Son of God so spectacularly, and what was Jesus’ response? Jesus believed in Peter, and gave him a job to do.
Anyone is welcome to serve at the feet of Jesus. God knows I have made many mistakes over the years, but God still chooses to use me. That is not big-noting myself, it is actually cause for humility, that the Source of all love and hope would use even me to work to bring that love and hope into this broken world.
Your history doesn’t have to be your destiny. Jesus restored Peter because he believed in Peter and wanted him to enjoy the privilege of playing a part in working for God’s kingdom.
Easter is not about salvation on its own. It is about restoration, transformation, and renewal. Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we are restored, renewed and transformed, so that we can live out our destiny of restoring, renewing and transforming the world. We are the most fortunate people in the world, and it is with this privilege that we continue to fight for a world in which the love of God rules the day.
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