Beautiful Day!

Seven Occasional Meditations for Lent #3 Creation

It's a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

It's a beautiful day

See the world in green and blue

See China right in front of you

See the canyons broken by cloud

See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night

See the oil fields at first light

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors came out

It’s a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

There’s sometimes so much sunshine here you can get blasé about the beauty of creation. Clear skies over the clear blue of the river – herons and flamingos – day after day – not always – but a lot of the time. So it takes a day of rain to change the scenery - and what rain. Just after the newspapers had reported the driest winter in 91 years, we have the wettest day in ten years or so. The heavens opened, the rains poured down the streets, and in some areas it seemed that the fountains of the deep had also opened!! But after the rains, the evening sunshine, and a masterpiece of colour, shades of grey and eggshell blue, with a touch of vermilion and burnt sienna.

Creation might not seem such an obvious topic for Lent and the run up to Easter, but in the dark clouds that gather around the cross and in the bright dawn that floods the skies over the empty tomb, the creativity of Gods plan and purpose is unveiled. God, in Christ, actively dealing with all the hurt and pain and evil that this world contains, “reconciling the world unto Himself”

Against the backdrop of this almighty drama, the world takes on a different hue. The storm clears. The clouds reveal a different aspect. All of a sudden there’s hope for the suicidal, healing for the wounded, forgiveness for the desperate. Enjoy creation, in the light of what God has done. Revel in the immense variety, enjoy the richness, rejoice in the colour. It's God's world. He made it, and he has saved it.

Oh happy day

(Oh happy day)Oh happy day

When Jesus washed

(Oh when he washed)

When Jesus washed

He washed my sins away!

He taught me how

to watch and pray

Oh Happy day, Oh happy Day

With or Without You

Seven Occasional Meditations for Lent -#2 Holiness

One thing that is implicit in the idea of light, is that it cannot exist side by side with darkness. To be in the light is to have come out of the darkness - to be distinct, separate and apart from the shadows., to be what the Bible calls “holy”. Darkness remains darkness, until the light shines, and then it is can no longer be called darkness. So when it says that God is Light, and that in Him there is no darkness at all, you have to ask the question, who can live with this kind of truth, knowing the sort of people we really are.
John says “This is the verdict Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” . We run from that which can heal us because we don’t know how we can live there.
The human condition, in reality, is a mixture of every shade of black and grey, and, like a Rembrandt painting, the layers of darkness are there to point through to and lead the viewer into the central subject matter that is bathed in light. Lent leads us through the deep darkness of peering into our own souls and finding only the darkness of self centredness, pride, anger and lust.

Through the storm we reach the shore

You give it all but I want more

And I'm waiting..... for you

.............................................

With or without you

With or without you

I can't live

With or without you

The lyric from the U2 song somehow catches the predicament we’re in. We can’t live as we are within this unbearable light of the divine presence, and yet we can’t live without it. Because there is no ultimate life to be found outside of the God who sustains everything.

So the dark night of lent yields to the clear dawn of understanding that the whole Christ event, the dying, the suffering, the giving of himself as a sacrifice, together with the rising again, is all framed in order that we might shake off our sinful selves, and be renewed and bathed in the holy light of his resurrection life.

There is a setting of Psalm 51, a glorious piece of choral music, called the Miserere, written by Gregorio Allegri in 1638, which was used during services of Lent at that time. The services called “tenebrae” (darkness) were held in the early hours of the morning, and would start with 27 candles burning and each would be extinguished one at a time until but one remained burning.

1 Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

9 Hide your face from my sins

and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me

Lent leads us in and through the darkness of our own sinful selves, to find a place in the glory of the resurrection where we can in fact live with a Holy God and rejoice in His glorious presence. Because He lives…

City of Blinding Lights

Seven Occasional Meditations for Lent - #1. Light

Last Tuesday we returned from a cold and rather wet weekend in Brussels, and I was stunned once again by the light of Lisbon. Maybe it was arriving late in the evening by bus from Faro, first a faint orange glow on the northern horizon, then the bridge, a string of dazzling pearls above a dark sheet, and then overhead the Christo Rei, the great statue of Christ the King that stands on the southern bank of the Tejo, a mighty presence. Maybe it was waking up almost dazzled by the morning sun bursting through the window – a white ball of fire in a clear blue sky.

Judith’s new home is right down in the city centre of Brussels, hemmed in by tall buildings on either side, and so the apartment does not receive a lot of natural light. That along with the dull weather and the darker mornings made the contrast with Lisbon all the more remarkable. Set me thinking about the nature of Light and the Lent season we are in

At Christmas, we make the immediate connection with light. The candles, the street lights, the evening star. But Good Friday and Easter always seem more sombre festivals, full of melancholy, betrayal and agony. But the light that was even then coming into the world with the birth of a saviour, according to John, continues to shine through his earthly life and is not extinguished in his death. We, who are Christians, continue to bear that light in our lives, living in the here and now as “children of light”.

Light scatters .........................darkness gathers

Light rejoices .........................darkness broods

Light overcomes .....................darkness vanishes

Light clarifies ........................darkness deceives

Light expands ........................darkness shrinks

But appearances can be deceptive. What seems bright and colourful on the surface, can harbour darkness and despair. A day at a carnival may seem full of colour and merriment, but who knows of all the grief and pain, anger and betrayal going on in individual lives. Lisbon may seem a brighter place than Brussels, but who is going to measure the level of spiritual light in either place.

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light, find out what pleases the Lord.

Everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
Light makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
"Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5

"Shriving" Away our Sins

Last weekend we went to Brussels for a cold wet weekend to visit Judith. She had just moved house at the beginning of the year, and we went to help her set up her room.

While there we decided to spend a day visiting good friends Roland and Carolien Smith who are working in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands. It just so happened that it was also the main Day of the Carnival celebrations in the run up to the season of Lent. The first indication we got that things were not quite normal in this town of 120,000 was when we arrived and needed to ask directions to the Smith's house. A white rabbit and little Bo Peep were waiting for a bus at 10:30 in the morning. Other bleary eyed inhabitants in strange costumes were wandering through the town centre. The city already had one day of fun and revelry, was waking up to a second, and would continue through to Shrove Tuesday night. The word "shrove" is a past tense of the Old English verb "shrive," meaning to obtain absolution for sins through confession and penance – wiping away all of the excesses of these last few days of Carnival!!

In the afternoon we wandered down into the city centre to see the main square filling up with an amazing array of roman soldiers, cowboys and indians, knights in armour, rabbits, lions and monkeys. There were brass bands, samba bands and even a very Scottish looking pipe band complete with kilts – where it came from, I do not know. It was totally amazing to see a whole city turned out like that on a cold and wet afternoon, and yet the open air revelries would go on long into the night.

Carnival is also celebrated at various locations here in Portugal, and right across mainly Catholic Europe The origin of the Portuguese word seems to come from “carne-vale” meaning to say goodbye to meat, and, of course, the celebrations are associated with the last days of feasting before the period of austerity and fasting of the forty days of lent.

As Lent begins it is comforting to think that we don’t need to “shrive” away our sins through acts of penitence or austerity, because Jesus has done it all for us.
It's good to remember that:

There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there is nothing you can do to make Him love you less.

That's exactly what "Grace" means