Boxing Day

Traditionally, a day of getting over the excesses of the day before - of cooking leftovers, hitting the sales and catching up on the football. Re-runs of old movies and TV Christmas specials. I sat down this morning with an episode of a US sitcom, “Everybody Loves Raymond”, to my mind, one of the best of the current genre.

It’s a kind of Alpha Marriage Course in reverse, or how not to communicate, to resolve conflict, to deal with in-laws, to protect your “marriage time” etc etc. The eponymous Raymond is a New Yorker of Italian descent, and a lot of the plot lines have to do with his wife Debra coming into this clan, and dealing with the overbearing mother-in-law and her pampered husband and all the rest.

Today’s episode “The Wallpaper” was a classic, when the in-laws, Frank and Marie accidentally reverse their car through Raymond and Debra’s living room wall. The row that ensues about who will pay, then the repair of the wall ... and then the wallpaper! It doesn’t happen to quite match the existing stripy pattern, a fault which sends Raymond off into a whole litany of his parents’ other faults that he never seems able to express properly. And there follows an excellent few moments, as Debra tries to resolve the tension, by helping Raymond open up with his parents about all the other issues he has with them
Debra : Come on, Raymond, why are you getting all worked about about the wallpaper. It’s not such a big deal.
Raymond : Yes, it is. It’s a big deal for me. It’s the last straw.
Debra : That’s good. So let’s talk about some of the other straws then...

A good lesson in active listening, and developing openness and sensitivity in our relationships.

Birgitta Almeby

I hardly knew her. A Swedish missionary who has been serving in Lahore for 39 years with the Full Gospel Assembly, an indigenous Pakistani Christian church group. We might have met on a few occasions during our time in Pakistan, at a Board meeting or at a school or church function.

I was shocked to read that this week she was attacked and shot, though not fatally, at her front door by two men on a motorcycle. She is 71. Dawn, the Pakistan newspaper had this to say :

“According to the Swedish lady’s maid and some of her neighbours, Ms Almeby had just reached her residence when two motorcyclists appeared on the scene and fired a shot at her. The assailants fled from the crime scene without taking any valuables which showed that it was not a street crime, as was being portrayed by some policemen. Ms Almeby had been living in Pakistan for the last 38 years and was looking after social programmes of the NGO she worked for and had nothing to do with politics.”

In a week or so the news story will no doubt, be buried among a host of other crimes, injustices and acts of cowardly terrorism.

This, along with the shooting of 15 year old Malala Yousafzai, in Mingora, in the Swat Valley October 9th strikes me as the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the cowardly acts of bravado of today’s terrorists. No need to target heavily guarded army generals or political leaders, if you can get away with gunning an old retired spinster or a young schoolgirl and still create a climate of fear in the common people. Makes me angry.

But in the end, history proves that this kind of violence has a way of backfiring on the perpetrators and ends up doing more in service of the causes that the gun is trying to silence than against them. As we sing once again at year’s end “Peace on Earth, good will to men” may it indeed, be so.

Dying and Behold we Live

 This must have been my week for watching movies about condemned men on Death Row.... (and then subsequent thinking and meditating on sin and hell and judgment and repentance and forgiveness and such like as well). First off, I found the full movie of “Dead Man Walking” with Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, and glorious music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn on the soundtrack on youtube, of all places. ** Yes, all 2 hours of it. Well worth watching. I always thought that that movie was about a terrible miscarriage of justice, like one of those John Grisham novels. But, as it turns out, the Sean Penn character killer is totally guilty of murder of the first degree, but the film is about how he finds the release of confession and repentance and redemption through his relationship with the Susan Sarandon prison visitor character.

Then, I looked for  “The Green Mile” with Tom Hanks, and big man Michael Clarke Duncan, who died earlier this year. You can’t get the full movie on youtube, but a short clip of one of the last interactions between Hanks’ warden and the gentle giant inmate John Coffey (like the coffee, just not spelt the same) is worth finding ***. Hanks ask the prisoner whether he ought help him escape, because how can he face God on judgment day, when he’s asked how it was that he helped kill one of God’s “true miracles”. Coffey answers that he’s ready to go.

“I’m tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of not ever having me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we's coming from or going to, or why. Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time.”

Sometimes I feel like that these days, reading the media, and becoming angry/upset/weary with tales of miscarriages of justice, man’s inhumanity, and examples of perversity from all around. I suppose it’s a kind of a glimpse of God’s grief at sin and its effects, and in that sense, its right and proper that I feel it, but that it should impel me, not to a desire to depart, but rather to work harder for that which is right and honest and true.

** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSo5dDoXYAM&feature=fvwrel


*** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1_mlS_dpp4

Time Waits for No One

The hour went back on Sunday morning. Time in reverse, as it were. Snatching a free hour from the jaws of the inexorable forward march of time. But of course it’s a virtual step backward. Like crossing the International Dateline. A longer lie in and brighter early morning run by the river is what it meant for me.

Time, much like life itself, keeps moving forward. You can’t undo the past, you can only add to it, learn from it, adapt to it, in spite of all of those science fiction “back to the future” dreams. Which makes the idea of the gospel and God’s grace so healthy and healing. because it has a way of dealing with the past while looking forward positively and definitively to the future. As it says in the book of Hebrews “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith ... we throw off everything that hinders and entangles...”

Most of us live their lives with a whole pile of regrets, unfinished business and unfulfilled hopes, and there are always things we wish we had never done, relationships we wish we had never entered into. But few of us have a sure way of deal with the baggage of the past, other than moving on and trying to put it all behind you. Most couples would rather “unmarry”, if that could be possible, than divorce. The process of undoing that which you have entered into is messy and difficult, a tearing and torn edges are always painful to look at and to touch. It would have better, we think, if we could put the clock back to our previous life and try again

Jesus, through his cross, is able to heal our past - not to change it, or make it go away - but heal it, and, in fact, grow something better and stronger out of it, so that we can move on to more positive futures.

Old Man in a Hat

A quiet night in Lisbon. The gentle sounds of laughter and clinking glasses mingle with the lapping of the water along the riverfront. I’m on my way to meet an old man in a hat and a grey suit. To hear him sing. He’s been singing and writing poetry since I was in school. The man in question is Leonard Cohen, and the occasion is a concert in the Atlantic Pavilion - a birthday present from my three kids. I’m going on my own. I know that’s a bit sad, but in some ways it’s fitting too, to drown in the melancholy of that gravelly old voice. Well, it’s not really gravelly, much smoother than that. Tom Waits is gravel. Cohen is more like a smooth grey shale, sliding down the mountainside. But it is an old voice.

Cohen, along with Dylan and Van Morrison, were the principal voices in my head, growing up in the sixties in Northern Ireland. I’m always a bit wary, however, about the prospect of seeing them perform in their old age. Don’t want to be disappointed. But this was great. Really great. Superb, in fact. Probably because, not only was he on top form, but his band - each own was a superb musician in his own right - and the backing singers - well, that’s a slight to call them backing singers. The Webb sisters, Charley and Hattie, ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1gu4YdA6tE ) and Sharon Robinson  were amazing and sang wonderfully.

Lisbon packed out the arena, and as I looked around the hall at so many fiftysomethings just like myself, I realised how, while I was lying there in my bedroom in Coleraine as a 14 year old, drifting off to “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy”, in the midst of all the political reality that was unravelling in the sixties in Northern Ireland, these men and women were going through their own personal nightmares as children during the Salazar years of dictatorship and through the 1975 revolution. Poignant then, when he sang those lines at the end of “The Partisan”
 “Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing, 
Through the graves the wind is blowing,
Freedom soon will come; Then we'll come from the shadows.”
Portugal is different now. Northern Ireland is different. But in some ways, we’re all still waiting for our freedom...

No Longer at This Address

Well, Tesco managed to mess up the delivery of a box of groceries to Colin’s latest address in Bristol. It was supposed to be a welcome box, as he has just started a new job and settled into new accommodation out there in the west country, and to remind him of parents in far distant Lisbon who were thinking of him. 

But such is the lot of students and the recently graduated. To be “of no fixed abode” for months on end and to move from pillar to post before eventually settling down into some semblance of routine, and have a place to sort of call your own.

I was reminded of this transitory lifestyle recently, by a quote I read from a German theologian, Helmut Thielicke, of the last century in an article in the Evangelical Alliance’s online magazine “Idea”.

“The Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address
because its recipient is constantly moving house.”

Even back in the 1950’s, he recognised how rapidly the goalposts were being shifted, and how the way we communicate the eternal truth about Jesus Christ to one generation will not work for the next. And here we are in 2012. And I don’t think we’ve learnt an awful lot in the evangelical churches, how we need to keep on re-addressing the package, so it gets to it’s destination.

And, by the way, Colin did get the groceries!

http://www.eauk.org/idea/is-there-a-theology-for-pioneering.cfm

Jesus Está Contigo

On one relaxing afternoon last month, I was sitting, minding my own business, as it were, and enjoying a coffee by a river somewhere in northern Portugal, while I browsed the weekend newspaper. My eye caught something - the title of a book - that happened to be number three in the listing of bestseller books posted by the two big book companies in Portugal, FNAC, and Bertrands. “Jesus Está Contigo” , (or in English, “Jesus is with you”) by someone called Sarah Young.

I had to go and find out what this is about. It is truly astonishing that, in our secular, cynical age, when it seems that this country, at least, has moved far beyond faith and Christianity, a book of devotions based on a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ should hit the bestseller lists like this. Normally the religion and self-help categories in the local bookstores are filled with all sorts of exotic titles on zen and yoga and so on, with maybe one or two Bibles and a biography of Pope John Paul in the corner.

So I’ve discovered that Sarah Young is a Presbyterian missionary from  America who has served with her husband in Japan and in Japanese communities in Australia. And also that the format of her book “Jesus Calling” is sort of based on an anonymous old devotional from the 1930‘s called “God Calling”, characterised by daily devotionals addressed from God to the reader in the first person singular. In fact, I remember that old devotional on my mother’s bedside table.

Now, whatever one thinks about the potential danger in presenting words and thoughts, as it were, spoken by Jesus, I cannot help but be amazed that, without any significant promotion (as far as I can see) on the part of churches or evangelicals here, this book is finding it’s way into the handbags and onto the bookshelves of thousands of Portuguese. May God use it to raise an awareness of how great, how amazing and how wonderful He really is - something that is so needed in our current spiritual climate here in Portugal. 

Portugal's Top

There’s something very inspiring about standing on the very top of Portugal. Torre, in Serra da Estrela, is the highest point in the land, if you don’t count the volcanic Mount Pico which rises straight up out of the sea on the island of Pico in the Azores.

Portugal’s generally not known as a land of mountains, ice and snow,  but up at 1,993m enough falls in the winter to warrant a couple of ski resorts, and in the height of the August summer, it’s still chilly enough with a fair wind blowing across a bare landscape of granite outcrops. I read somewhere that the reason it's called "Torre" (tower) is because King João in the early 19th Century had a tower built to bring it's height up to 2,000m. I'd need to verify that. Sounds a bit like "The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain"!

Any sense of achievement we might have had in reaching Portugal’s highest point has to be offset against the realisation that we drove all the way up, rather than climbed, along with a hundred other visitors! Sorry, no walking boots this time!

Katie Price or Katie Taylor

Just returned from a week in London with our daughter Judith, and the joy of being with her was compounded by the incredible experience of being in London during Olympic fortnight. The feelgood factor was riding high and made London a genuinely enjoyable place to be. Even when the rain soaked us, standing to watch the women's marathon, the normal miserable mood was surprisingly absent.

To add to all the superlatives offered up by the British (and world) media about the overall experience, I would have to say that it was the role models that these young athletes with their golds and silvers represent for the upcoming generation. Whether it was two young brothers from Coleraine with their silver for rowing, or the girl from Sheffield who stole the hearts of the Saturday night crowd, or the young Somali immigrant who defied logic with his successes in the 10,000 and 5,000 metres, they all stood out from the conventional wisdom of what defines fame and celebrity status.

The difference can not be better exemplified than contrast between the two Katies. One, Katie Price, a manufactured pop idol/glamour model/media celebrity who, at the tender age of 34 has already managed to pen not less than four autobiographies about her life so far, and the other, a simple girl from Bray, Co Wicklow who happens to like boxing. When she, Katie Taylor, received her Olympics gold medal for Ireland, she is reported as having said “I’m here because of the grace of God in my life and because of Jesus in my life and without him I'd be nothing really. So praise God, thank you Jesus for such a great victory today." 

Her faith comes so natural to her and it was so refreshing to listen to, but, quite apart from the spiritual angle, just like Jessica Ennis, Laura Trott or Nicola Adams, she comes across as a genuinely nice young woman who has shown that you don’t have to be all plastic and starry eyed in order to become someone in this world of ours. Hopefully more young people will find some inspiration from these and other young Olympians, and not be sucked in by all the drivel that’s offered up in the media day after day.

www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-like-ring-skills-katies-religion-comes-naturally-3195805.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19094324

If Luther were Alive today...

In 1905 Max Weber wrote about the Protestant work ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, arguing that it was the impact of Luther’s Reformation in dignifying work, and encouraging thrift and the accumulation of wealth, that gave rise to the development of capitalism in our day.

Whether or not his thesis, and in particular, its view of the essential differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in regard to economic realities, holds water, the early 21st century reality is that the faultlines in regard to countries that are managing to hold together, and countries that are plunging further and further into debt seems to run very roughly between north and south, between what is traditionally Catholic Europe and Protestant.

In an article on the BBC news website, Chris Bowlby remarks on the different values held in Northern and Southern European countries and their overall approaches to saving and going into debt. The German word for debt, he says, is  “schuld”, which is the same as the word for “guilt” or “sin” . Quoting another commentator, Stephan Richter, he wonders back to the Reformation as to what difference it would have made, had Luther been alive today, and a political force in the Eurozone crisis. After all, the papal indulgences themselves of the 16th Century, were a form of fiscal management to get out of a crisis,  and a solution that was based, not so much on the concept of indebtedness, but of guilt and the need for forgiveness.

"Too much Catholicism" suggests Richter, "is detrimental to a nation's fiscal health, even today in the 21st Century". Worth thinking about...


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18789154

The God Particle

My browsing of the news media today came up with this little story about something that has been nicknamed the “god particle”, properly named the Higg’s boson. I think “god particle” has more of a ring to it. It is a sub atomic particle that scientists in that rarefied world of particle physics have been spending the last several years and about 8 billion euros trying to prove it exists. Because, if it were to exist, then a lot of other sub atomic phenomena would fall into place like a jigsaw. It would appear from today’s news stories that they have pretty much arrived at that conclusion.

What interests me, though, and much of the other media I’ve been reading, as well, is the nickname that it has acquired along the way. Given originally by the American physicist in the title of his 1993 book “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?”, it has been rejected as a misnomer by other scientists as being misleading in regard to the particle’s ultimate importance.

For me, the name appears at first, a contradiction in terms. How can you reduce the term “god” to that of a sub-atomic particle. On the other hand it also appears to me as strangely faith affirming.  For, if, for particle physicists the way things are and function in the universe, brings them to “believe” in the existence of a tiny object yet to be discovered, why not, by the same token, is it not reasonable for the average Joe, looking around at the design and purpose in this wonderful world of ours, to believe in the existence of an intelligent God who put it all together in the first place. Even though he can’t see or measure that God by the normal rules of scientific discovery.

I’ll let Alistar McGrath tell it better than I’m doing (article below). Suffice to say that I’m glad my faith is in a personal, all loving and communicating God who created and desires a relationship with me, and has communicate His plan and purpose for time and eternity in the Bible, than in some infinitesimal particle.  

www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8956938/Higgs-boson-the-particle-of-faith.html

Talking Balls and Minor Miracles

In the aftermath of the Spain Portugal semi-final, I read in the newspaper reports somewhere how Cesc Fabregas, who scored the winning penalty considered it to be a miracle.

“I had a premonition, an intuition that things were going to come off and that life had reserved something for me as nice as this. When I stepped up to take the penalty I said to the ball that we had to make history and it shouldn't let me down. I talked to the ball four years ago [when he scored the winning penalty against Italy] and it didn't let me down.”

It made me think how that’s how most of us live our lives. In the hope of minor miracles that will help make the difference in our lives between failure and success. The spin of the lottery balls in the tumbler, a sudden attack of temporary blindness on the policeman holding the speed camera, or the way an inanimate object might wing its way from my foot and bend and twist into the back of the net. We find ourselves, whether we have faith or not, offering up instant and urgent prayers to some superior being to intervene “please don’t let it happen!” or “please let it be so, this time!”

And the tragedy of all of this, is that in all of this quest for minor miracles  to happen at a time of need, we ignore the Major Miracle that makes everything happen in the first place. For in Him we live and move and have our being. He is before all things, by Him all things were created, and in Him all things hold together. ** Men will scoff at the idea of divine intervention on the grand scale through the saving power of Christ on the cross giving us life for all of eternity, while at the same clutch at the straws of a talking ball that will somehow help me towards the winners podium on a football field.

Now, I have no idea about Cesc Fabregas’s religious affiliation or spiritual outlook, but that kind of vague superstitious belief that something somewhere is out there looking out for me, and will intervene on my behalf, if I’m lucky, or am kind to animals or something, is so so common. So if you’re ready to believe in talking balls, why not consider something miraculous that is a lot more rational, and with hugely more significant benefits.

** Acts 17:28,  Colossians 1:17 

This is our "Fado"

Yesterday, it was all flag waving, horns and cheering, across the capital, in the build-up to the Euro 2012 semi-final against Spain last night. Spain - our nearest neighbours, closest cousins and biggest rivals. The form guides and the bookies predict a Spanish victory, a repeat of the last time the two met in the World Cup two years ago. And so it has turned out, though not quite as expected. Portuguese resilience kept the scoreline to 0-0, and the verdict had to be settled with that infamously random contest of the penalty shootout.

So the drive back from where we had been watching the game with friends in Cascais, was eerily subdued and quiet.  But a comment today from someone posting on Facebook this morning caught my eye as being quite perceptive.
 
 "We are portuguese, and this is our "fado", we will be sad for a bit, but we still have our sun, our ocean, our fish! Tomorrow we'll be fine again...”

Fado, roughly translated, means fate, and of course, it’s also the name for that musical genre of melancholy that is so essentially Portuguese. But, not only in regard to football, also down through history and even in the current stoic response to the massively serious financial crisis that’s hitting us, it marks out the character of the Portuguese. A readiness to accept whatever comes our way, and get on with life nonetheless. This is a great strength. But this same “fado” can also be the downfall of a people who seldom seem to really rise to the occasion and seize the opportunity to believe in themselves and become really great.

The Illustrated Man

With the news of the passing of Ray Bradbury this week at the age of 91 yesterday, I had to pull my copy of “The Illustrated Man” off the book shelf and have a read. Ray Bradbury is mostly known as a science fiction writer, famous as everyone would remind you for “Fahrenheit 451” and the “Martian Chronicles”.  Even Bugs Bunny (”) refers to his novel “Something Wicked this Way Comes” in the classic “Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court! Buts its a shame, if this writer is consigned to the SciFi shelves of the local library, (In between Western and Popular Romance) because there’s a lot more lyricism and beauty in Bradbury’s prose than first meets the eye.

I will always remember him as the author who opened my mind up, as an impressionable teenager to a sense of wonder in the things of the everyday world, and also to finding the potential for horror and mystery in the most ordinary of subjects. The dark spaces between the lamplights on the way home from school, through Bradbury’s imagination, became peopled with ghouls and monsters. His “Dandelion Wine” in particular evokes a world, on the surface normal, even humdrum, and at the same time, full of mystery and wonder. Probably why, quite often, his short stories are set in a funfair or a circus, where the weird, the ghoulish and the over-the-top theatrical are plonked right down in the middle of a mundane suburban neighbourhood. Hope people will still be reading your books a generation from now, Ray.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

The financial crisis continues to wreak havoc across Southern Europe, and the church in Lisbon is not immune. Over the past couple of weeks, we have heard one friend talking of plans to move to Mozambique, another of a job possibility in Switzerland, and another who actually moved to London temporarily last week because an opening for work suddenly came his way.
 

Young professionals are leaving Portugal in significant numbers as career prospects and job security become a rare commodity. In a small fellowship like ours that can have a major impact. At the very least, it’s unsettling. What about all the time and effort invested through relationship building and discipleship courses. Is it all lost. Well, “lost” is not the right word to use here, because we’re working for the kingdom, and not just for a single church. But you do feel a certain sense of loss, if the person you felt was going to play significant role in the future of the church finds he needs to move on.

But God, is also sovereign, and according to Paul in Romans 8:28, does everything well. So, where He guides one person in a different direction, He will always bring in others. That’s the way he works. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at “Soul Psalms”  in our Sunday evenings, focussing on the intensely personal struggles David and others went through and expressed through the inspired poetry of the Book of Psalms.

Psalm 62 expresses it well. “God alone is my rock... where I will never be shaken. To others, I may seem just like a broken-down wall, or a tottering fence.... but I will quietly before God and hope in him...”  Talking about jobs, I’m so thankful that Colin in Southampton at last has a firm job offer. He still has some more interviews ahead of him, but if he accepts this one, he will be starting in Bristol in September. God, you’ve been good, helping him through this time of uncertainty.

Comfortably Numb

I had to speak about Eli, the old priest, in our fellowship on Sunday, and the way he couldn’t manage his family. (We were thinking about the disfunctional family and how to be better parents, as May is the month of the family).

And as I prepared for what I was going to say the words “comfortably numb” came to my mind, that seem to describe Eli and his inability to awaken his sense of hearing to the voice of God. It’s actually the title of a song by Roger Waters and David Gilmour of the Pink Floyd, that quintessentially seventies rock band, (for those of us old enough to have lived through those heady years). There’s even a live recording of the most unlikely pairing of the band with Van Morrison in Berlin in 1990, Van looking like a middle aged grocer from East Belfast among those long haired rock stars.

Anyway the words “comfortably numb” seemed to fit Eli, who, while heavily involved in the religious business of dealing with the divine, had closed off his mind and heart so totally to the still small voice of the Spirit that it took the alive and listening heart of a young guy, Samuel, barely into his teens, to awaken him.  Yes, Eli, there IS someone out there, and he DOES have something he wants to say to you.

Is there not a danger that we might somehow become “comfortably numb” also, in all the noise that surrounds us in our twenty first century way of living. Are we not always in danger of crowding God out with our incessant activity and babble.

The last few lines of the Pink Floyd song, reflect something I’ve often thought, that the “Samuel” in us, that spiritually alive component, that is youthful, responsive and sensitive, can drift from us so easily. Lord, keep me spiritually “youthful”, even in my old age.Help me not become “comfortably numb”

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look
but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown,
the dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGOTJyE5JPM

Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean

Yesterday we made our way out to the western end of Europe - the Cape St Vincent, being the southwestern tip of Portugal. The weather for the last two weeks has been a mixture of clouds and rain, cold winds and periods of sunshine, so I expected a wild blustery experience out there on the cliff tops, with nothing but the boiling sea and way off, somewhere out there beyond the mysterious horizon, Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean.

As it happened, by the time we got there, driving out through bare scrubland out to Sagres, beyond the condominia and luxury resorts of the Algarve, the wind had died down to a moderately easy breeze, and the air temperature higher than it had been. So we found a cleft between two rocks to snuggle down in at the world’s end and gaze out to sea.  And watch the seabirds swooping down the cragged cliffs to some precarious ledge on which to perch, build homes and bring up their young. Oblivious, it would seem, to the perils of the foam below and their dangerously precarious position above the crashing waves below.

Makes me think about the lines of an old old hymn, that expresses the sense of hiddenness that the person who finds his rest and security in God knows, away from all the turbulence and uncertainty of life.

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life with the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,

Fanny J Crosby was blind from the age of 6, yet managed to see with eyes of faith, and understand the total security that was hers through knowing a God who personally loves and cares for her. Through the course of her life she produced over 800 hymns, many of which are still known and loved.

George

We met George on the very first Sunday we arrived in Portugal over four years ago. Or Jorge, if you prefer the Portuguese spelling. An affable Afro American guy settled into life here, married with two kids and involved in the life of a Christian community out to the west of the city which we had started going to. An odd job man, painter and decorator, always helpful and practical, ready to do what he could for you, and when we’d sit in a small discussion group on some Biblical theme or other, he’d often come up with a word of deep wisdom

So it’s strange to see his story featured in this weekend’s magazine, “Publico” in a four page spread, all about a forty year flight from justice and the case for his extradition to the US. It’s a story, that would have made a great  fiction novel, if it were not for the fact that for the most part, it is true. Here’s the gist of it. An armed robbery in a shop in New Jersey, in which the proprietor dies, incarceration in a US prison, and then escape from prison, involvement with the Black Panther movement, and then the hi-jacking. George together, with a small group of activists hi-jacked a domestic US airliner, released the passengers in Miami and took the plane and with it $1 million in ransom money to Algeria. The plane and the money were eventually returned, but the offenders were released  by the Algerian authorities and went to ground, only to be one by one hunted down over  the following years and recaptured by the FBI, all except for George. 41 years later they catch up with him in the unlikely setting of Colares, Sintra, and all of a sudden he’s all over the media

Interesting to watch how the media deals with someone you kind of know, and it makes me think about issues of justice and forgiveness, punishment and restitution. The US press paint him out as a villain who needs to come back and face the music. For the Portuguese he’s the smart anti-hero who managed to give the great super-power the slip. Nowhere in the media is there the idea that the man may have changed, that his life could now be marked by grace of God. That, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, he now walks with the God who loves him, values him and, yes, who does not overlook the wrongs that were done, but decides, on the basis of His son’s death on the cross, to freely forgive.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus .. through Christ, the Spirit of life has set me free from the law if sin and death..” “For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God”  (Romans 8:1, Colossians 3:3)

Biennial

Biennial happens for the European Christian Mission every two years. Obviously. Usually it’s the week just after Easter, still slightly out of season, so it becomes a bit easier to find a reasonably priced venue for a large group of people to come together from all over Europe. It was cold there by the Mediterranean, near Valencia, but the sun rose brilliantly most mornings and the sea was a clear blue

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This is when we, as an organisation, find our expression as a community, and as a Mission family. When we can re-energise in one another’s company, and refocus on our shared values and vision. It’s a huge commitment, in time and in money. For all of us. Even with the discounts it’s an expensive week.

 
But really, it’s worth it. As long as we don't become too big as an organisation and not too far apart, it makes a lot of sense to bring the whole community together for a few days of prayer and reflection (and fun too!). And sitting there, in the sort of hotel that you couldn’t normally afford to book into, gives one an extra sense of the value God places on your life and on what you are doing. Yes, it is all worth it. And three hundred and thirty five people (including about 100 children) all committed to making a difference for God in Europe and gathered together for that purpose makes for an amazing experience

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I like the fact that we’re such a mixture, with all our languages, and funny ways of doing things, and all our diverse backgrounds. And I like the fact that you can sit at table with someone else for the very first time and immediately find a point of contact. And having the worship music each morning thrown together by four extremely gifted lads from Ireland was an added bonus.



I’ll leave the last word with the kids and their constantly inventive way of making life as rich and fun as possible. (The song was created and performed by them at the conference and the movie put together by a creative Romanian called Florin)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgZefuIV97s&feature=youtube_gdata_player


 (sunrise photo : courtesy Nigel Cameron)

A Dividadura

 I was in the metro yesterday, and the man beside me was reading a book with this intriguing title. It would appear that the word “Dividadura” is in fact a made up word, invented by the author Francisco Louça, a Portuguese politician of the Bloco Esquerda (left wing). it connects together the the Portuguese word for debt, “divida” and the the word for dictatorship, “ditadura”. The English equivalent might be “debt-tatorship”. But the concept is an interesting one, especially today, as the country celebrates 38 years since the quiet Revolution that brought to an end a 42 year period of dictatorship under António Salazar.
In many ways there’s a new sort of dictatorship that seems to ruling the country, and it’s a dictatorship from outside, not from within, a dictatorship of the impersonal forces of the financial institutions and the markets of western Europe. That dictates what I can earn, what I need to pay in taxes, and what are my chances of having a job next year, and being able to put bread on the table. I have heard more than one person in recent weeks describe their own personal situation as a form of slavery - working long hours for meagre returns, or in some cases, no work at all, and still the bills to pay.

It’s good to look back in history, and to savour those moments of liberty when everything seemed rosy and bright and startling as you emerge from, as it were, a long dark tunnel. In fact the Carnation Revolution that took place in the early hours of 25th April 1974, and is memorably captured in the film “Capitães de Abril” is a particularly inspirational story, and reveals a lot about the Portuguese national character.

(The carnation idea, by the way, came from the spontaneous action of the flower sellers in Lisbon, offering carnations to the soldiers who marched in to liberate the city). But freedom, in the end, is elusive, and as political dictatorship gives way to financial dictatorship of a different sorm, the “debt-tatorship” as proposed in Louça’s book. In the end, the only lasting freedom is that which Christ gives. An internal liberation from all that enslaves - “Stand fast therefore in the liberty, where with Christ has set us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage...”  (Galatians 5:1). When you know that lasting freedom in your own life, you can cope with these temporary impositions that threaten to drag you down.

The Empty Cross

This Good Friday, as I reflect on the hours Jesus suffered on his cross, the thing that impresses me most is that, yes, He did suffer, but that it ended. By the end of the day, it was over. Out of the darkness, he could cry out “It is finished!”, and “Into Thy hands I commend my Spirit!” And Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday and the promise of His Rising again and the victory over sin and death and evil

Hailstones fell this morning - tempestuous clouds were scurrying across the sky, and there was a serious drop in temperature. Thunder was rumbling, and in the middle of all this, this most amazing rainbow was shining above the apartment blocks of Portela. A reminder of God’s eternal faithfulness to his word.

“Were heaven's praises silent in those hours of darkness?

Your Holy Spirit brooding round that empty throne?

Until the declaration "He is Risen", You are risen, Jesus,

"He is not dead, behold He lives for evermore".

(Robin Mark - Wonder of your cross)

We listened recently to an audio podcast from Mosaic church, in which Erwin McManus, in a series called “The Truth Between Us” sought to explore the Christian faith against a variety of other religious perspectives. On Catholicism, McManus, himself born into a hispanic Catholic tradition, describes vividly his first experience of entering a evangelical church and being confronted with an empty cross, and the deep shock he felt that - “my goodness, they’ve forgotten Jesus!” Anna related to that immediately. It took her back to the first time she entered an Anglican church in Kenya, and suddenly realised they have a cross without Jesus on it.

But that is the point of the hope that we have. He is not there! Neither on the cross, nor in the tomb. Yes, we focus on his sufferings and death, but we go on from there, to enjoy the full freedom of forgiveness and new life and walking with Him. Hallelujah

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6fv9rkIIZo&feature=related

www.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mosaic-audio-podcast/id74403741

Monsanto

This week’s edition of Time Out Lisboa featured Lisbon’s wonderful green space -Monsanto. “Fifty Things you have to see or do in Monsanto Forest Park before you die" was the title of the feature. Generally, Lisbon is a pretty green city. There are all sorts of little parks and gardens tucked away down quiet side streets. But Monsanto is a vast expanse of natural woodland to literally get lost in. It covers 900 hectares, that almost 10 square kilometres. It has a motorway running through it, the A5 out to Cascais, but you can just about ignore the noise of the traffic and enjoy the birdsong.

Growing up in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, “Monsanto” meant for me a chemical plant belching out polluting smoke by the River Bann, but here it’s a green lung for an ancient capital. And it’s not far from the centre either. 5-10 minutes by car out of the city centre will bring you into quiet leafy glades. In fact, according to Time Out, you can follow a “green corridor” from the central Marques Pombal square all the way out to the Park through cycle routes in only 3 km. Must try that some time.

Anyway, with Colin home, only for one week, we decided we’d go and see how many of the fifty things we might achieve. Some we discounted immediately, such the climbing wall or adopting a dog (the Municipal Kennels are situated in the park)! But we did manage to do a few things and saw some spectacular vistas of the river and the bridge, and Lisbon’s own aqueduct, which used to carry water into the city, and is a remarkable feat of 18th Century engineering and architecture. It was a fine evening, with the sun going down in the west, kids playing in the skate park, young lovers sitting on the grass, great lolloping dogs bounding around among the trees. These are moments that family memories are made of.

www.timeout.sapo.pt

Sometimes it Takes a Celebrity

It’s kind of sad when one’s awareness of the humanitarian issues in this world of ours has to be prompted by the sight of a celebrity in handcuffs. You would think, as a Christian, and involved in Mission work, you ought to already know this stuff, and be ahead of the game a bit more. But when George Clooney was filmed being arrested, along with his dad, no less, on the steps of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, it made me think, well, what’s put him off his coffee?

But what he did, through that act of civil disobedience, was to bring to MY notice, at least, (and hopefully to a few million others) what’s going on in Sudan. Since South Sudan gained its independence from the north, it has kind of dropped off the radar a bit, but there’s still a massive policy of injustice being meted by a brutal regime against the displaced people of Darfur.

In my further browsing about the Sudanese, I came across quite by chance, an amazing documentary about the so-called “lost boys” of Sudan. I think I was intrigued b the title of the movie “God Grew Tired of us” which is sort of extracted from something one of the central characters John Bul says in the middle of the film.

“In my imagination.I though that God felt tired of people on earth here, felt tired of the bad deeds, the bad thing that we are doing.... I thought God got tired of us and he want to finish us. When I think of it back then..."

They were a group of 27,000 thousand displaced boys and young men, who fled Sudan in the 1990’s and walked for hundreds of miles, first into neighbouring Ethiopia and then, when that country became unstable, all the way back through Sudan to the Kenyan border, to find refuge. Eventually some were brought to the USA, and this was their story. What made the documentary so important for me, was, on the one hand the incredible dignity, poise and faith of these young guys who had suffered so much, and on the other, the bemused and sometimes humorous ways in which they observed North American culture, and to be honest in certain respects, found it spiritually poor and wanting, compared to their rich Sudanese way of life.

You can find the whole documentary, even though its a few years old, available to watch on youtube, by following the link below. It’s in various segments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-JrOXwGWzM

Or you can see George Clooney's appeal for the Sudan here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p89OuPODBMM

And, if you want to listen to a bit of cool African music, here’s the opening track of the film “God grew Tired of Us” , a song called "Guramayle" sung by an amazing Ethiopian singer I just discovered called Gigi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlOygCw764A

Priv-i-lege /ˈprɪvəlɪdʒ/

Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the UK (though not here in Portugal - that happens in May) and the word that springs to mind is “privilege”. The privilege of being parents to three wonderful young people - of walking with them through life - being part of their journey - seeing them develop, in skills and gifting, in faith, and in love and compassion. A wonderful word to use. Yes, it's very special.

Saturday was also special. A regular prayer day for our Mission group here on Portugal, and, again the word “privilege” springs to mind. What a privilege to be involved with such an amazing group of people. Some weary, struggling financially and with tough situations, some upbeat, rejoicing in what God has been doing, but all filled with a deep love for God and a compassion for people around them. We were deep in the Alentejo countryside, at the Anema’s farm in Lavre - rolling hills, gnarled cork trees, dry grassland, because of the shortage of rain.

Sunday, we’re with our community at the Escola Vasco da Gama. “A Ponte” - the community of the Bridge. And again the word that comes to mind is “privilege”. Worshiping God together in Portuguese. "All of my life..in every season..You are still God. I have a reason to sing. I have a reason to worship..." What a privilege to be here in Lisbon, and watch a community grow - in the Spirit - in faith, in love and in hope. And to be aware that God is in the midst of it all. All that is happening. Amazing.

The weekend also saw St Patrick's Day pass us by. Out under the bright Alentejo sunshine. Privilege, to be Irish? Yes, of course. Soft rain on green fields, white foam on black rocks. To belong to two cultures, and feel privileged to be part of both. And the rich heritage of St Patrick's wisdom all down the centuries. Here's a little gem from his Confession

"The sun which we see rising for us each day at his command, that sun will never reign nor will its splendour continue forever..... We, however, believe in and adore the true sun, that is, Christ, who will never perish. Nor will they perish who do his will but they will abide forever just as Christ will abide forever He lives with God the Father almighty and with the Holy Spirit before the ages began, and now, and for all the ages of ages. Amen."