Mustard Seed

Sunday was the turn of the seed and the sower in our series on the parables of Jesus. Picking up with my finger tip a mustard seed, it amazes me that something so tiny, insignificant, infinitesimal, has the potential for life. To the untrained eye it has no more worth than a grain of sand, but for the one who knows, it holds a wealth of growth and fruitfulness.

Looking around our room on Sunday evening at where we are at as a community of Christians, we may seem a small and insignificant group, yet we have the most amazing potential for something massive and awesome that God is wanting to do. Holding out this Word of Life in a crooked and soulless generation, and shining here like stars in the universe

This last week, the Portuguese newspapers related two events which, in one sense, had little to do with each other and yet had everything to do with each other. One was the launch of a new edition of the Bible by the Sociedade Bíblica de Portugal to mark 200 years of its existence. Not so much a new translation but an elegant new presentation, without chapter and verse numbers, created to look and be read as a work of literature

The same week heralded also the launch of Jose Saramago’s new novel “Caim”. Saramago is Portugal’s nobel prize winner, and best known author, probably best known for his book “Blindness” for which . Unfortunately his words at the Press Conference showed neither much nobility of spirit, nor vision. In a vitriolic and bitter attack on the integrity of the Bible, he called it a catalogue of violent acts and the worst aspects of human nature, and not a book suitable to be put before children.

Yes, if you don’t know the difference between a mustard and a grain of sand, you would be inclined to sweep up both and throw them out in the rubbish.

Doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly

We live in a rich area. You can tell by the clothes the children wear. You can tell by the way the roads and the lawns are kept tidy. There are all the tell tale signs of prosperity around us.

On discovering that this week was a special campaign of the Micah Challenge movement here in Portugal and that yesterday, Saturday October 17th was the Global Day of Eradication of poverty, we wondered what do with our regular Saturday morning activity in the square. How can we inspire our little “Lusitos” who come to us every Saturday morning for crafts and colouring in to think in terms of need, and hunger and pain.

How do you communicate to four and five year olds these harsh realities that are so much a part of life for the half of the world they know nothing about. This was the result. A simple do-it-yourself little cardboard hut. It was easy for them to cut out and put together and provided a talking point. “How do you think it would be to live in a one-roomed hut with your mum and dad, brothers and sisters, grannies, cousins uncles and aunts. How would you all sleep? Where would you all go to the toilet?”

I think the message got across. It’s a constant challenge, knowing how to inject what we do (plasticine and colouring pencils) with the values of the Kingdom. But as Micah himself says.

He has shown you, o Man , what is good,
And what does the Lord require of you
To act justly
To love mercy
And to walk humble before your God.
...............................................................................Micah 6:8

In all that we are doing and trying to be, I think that has to be the key thing. It’s at one and the same time, a simple thing to follow, and yet a profoundly difficult balancing act to maintain.

What does it mean for me to practice justice and righteousness in my relationships with my friends. What is mercy and how do I show mercy to the people down my corridor. And when do I find clear time to walk humbly with my God.

http://www.micahchallenge.org/

http://www.desafiomiqueias.com/www.desafiomiqueias.com/DM.html

Who's Getting your Best

Does God sometimes speak to you through rock songs? Well, probably not. But I don’t know. The lyrics sometimes come from human experiences born out of deep pain and frustration.
So when Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters screams out

“Is someone getting
The Best
The Best
The Best of you?”

Do I not sometimes feel God shouting at me in the same terms. Am I giving Him my Best? In the morning when I wake up, does he get the Best part of my day? When I receive my income for the month does He get the Best of my money? When I’m working does He get the Best of my time, the Best of my energy, the Best of my concentration?

Dave Grohl growls out what any lover feels. Jealousy! And the Book of Exodus (34:14) looks at God and calls him Jealous.

“Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God”

We like to have all sorts of other names for God. Good, Loving, Merciful, Kind. But this Jealousy is as much a part of His character as the others. He wants us all of us all for Himself. Not just a bit. He’s not about to share us with anyone else..

And while on the subject of being faithful to one person, doesn’t it strike you as odd that, in an age when monogamy is history and lifelong commitment to one person is out of date and everything is swinging, the huge number of song lyrics we listen to every day of the week on our car radios long for, yearn for, commitment to the One, possession by the One, and life long love for the One

"I could hold you
For a million years
To make you feel my love" ........................Adele

"No one, no one, no one
Can get in the way
of what I feel for you" ................................Alicia Keys

"No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know what I've been through
but you do

And I was made for you..." ......................Brandi Carlile

"Just like a tattoo, I’ll always have you" Jordin Sparks

It seems like people are crying out for something that will last, something that won’t involve the shame of lying, the wretchedness of leaving, and the pain and frustration of rebuilding. Amazing, isn’t it, that we already have that in God. And when we have God, we have everything else besides.

"Since he did not spare even his own Son

but gave him up for us all,

won’t he also give us everything else?"

* Romans 8:32

A Sense of Wonder

I don’t even pretend to be a literary buff but there was a poem by William Wordsworth that always caught my imagination. And it wasn’t “the Daffodils” either. “Intimations of Immortality in Early Childhood” was composed at Grasmere in the English Lake District aroud 1803. It is a long philosophical ode describing among other things, the “sense of wonder” that children instinctively have in all that is around them. As an impressionable 15 year old, the title itself of the poem was enough to intrigue me.



THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen
I now can see no more”.

Let's learn to look at stuff more with the eyes of a child. Today in our Saturday morning kids programme “os Lusitos”, we did autumn and falling leaves, and it was cool watching kids’ imagination run wild as they coloured in autumn leaves fantastic shades of purple and vermillion. Us adults, we would say, oh yes, the leaves change colour and fall to the ground. There's a simple scientific explanation. More than that it becomes someting of a nuisance to drivers. Children, on the other hand, possess that elusive “sense of wonder” that enables them to perceive the magic and the grandeur of their planet in a way that we have somehow lost as we deal with the prosaic.

Of course I have to quote Van the Man at this point. Anyone who reads my blog will know of my attachment to the music to my compatriot and his longings for East Belfast and the lost world (for him) of the Castlereagh hills. He describes Autumn and the passing of the seasons thus in “A Sense of Wonder”

.........................................“…I said I could describe the leaves for Samuel and Felicity
..........Rich, red browney, half burnt orange and green.
..................Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder
....................Didn’t I come to lift your fiery vision bright

Didn’t I come to bring you a sense of wonder in the flame.

It’s easy to describe the leaves in the autumn

And its oh so easy in the spring

But down through January and February
It’s a very different thing.

On and on and on, through the winter of our discontent.

When the wind blows up the collar and the ears are frostbitten too

I said I could describe the leaves for Samuel and what it means to you and me….”
(Van Morrison "A Sense of Wonder" 1985)

And so the song goes on. The point that I am making is this. Let’s never lose that sense of wonderment at life and love and creation and redemption and us and God. I like to feel that I continue to nurture that sense as I look around me, at nature, at the lives of my friends and neighbours, at marriage and childbirth, sunset and high tide, and a whole host of other daily miracles that we can so easily miss out on, and never see the wonder of it at all.

God of the City

Over the summer we have been blessed through listening to a powerful song “You’re the God of the city” . It was introduced to us as one of Chris Tomlin’s but later we discovered its origin lies with a group of guys from Belfast, Bluetree. It speaks so powerfully to us of God’s hand over this city, Lisbon, and gives us hope that He is powerfully working here, and that great things will happen when we serve Him here

You're the God of this City

You're the King of these people

You're the Lord of this nation

You are

You're the Light in this darkness

You're the Hope to the hopeless

You're the Peace to the restless

You are

For greater things have yet to come

And greater things are still to be done

in this City

Isaiah 26 talks also talks about the city, God’s city well protected on every side, with salvation for its walls and ramparts. As I thought about that, and Jericho, Jerusalem and all the other cities of ancient times, it struck me that one of the biggest differences between old cities and new ones is the way in which they are defended. Thick walls, battlements, gates and ramparts is what made you sleep peacefully at night in the days of wild Barbarians, Huns, Vandals and Visigoths who roamed medieval Europe at night. Or, in Portugal’s case, the threat of the Spanish. The eastern border of the country is dotted with a line of fortified cities.

But now you can enter any city without problem. There is no need for walls and moats and portcullises. We live at the north end of Lisbon and as you drive north from there leaving the city through mile after mile of straggling suburbs, its hard to tell when you’re in and when you’re out. That’s because the defence of the city in modern Europe no longer lies in the thickness of its walls or the height of its towers. But rather in its bank balance and its stock market. That’s where the shield and the fortress is. That’s why, in our day, many are reeling. But

You will keep in perfect peace

him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.

He humbles those who dwell on high

He lays the lofty city low;

He levels it to the ground

and casts it down to the dust.

The Lord, the Lord is the Rock Eternal. Isaiah 26