Finding the Wonder but Missing the Magic

It never ceases to surprise me in the run up to Christmas that people get so taken aback when things don’t quite work out the way they expected. Relationships sour. Travel plans get disrupted. Presents disappoint. It’s like the Christmas season should be exempt from the normal run of disasters, whether trivial or serious, that happen in life. That promised love, joy and peace should come to us, at least for the season, unconditionally guaranteed. Instead, Christians are bombed in Baghdad, travellers stranded in Gatwick, homes flooded in Kent. Life’s so unfair. Shouldn’t this be a time filled with magic and wonder?

Well - Wonder - yes. I’m not so sure about the Magic. At least, not the sort of conjuring act magic that promises you everything you ever wanted on a plate. But there is a very real wonder about Christmas, and it’s a wonder that can be found even when life throws up the most awful things. Because it’s nota sense of wonder based on a jolly Santa Claus idea, but on a powerful God-with-us reality that cannot be shaken by circumstances.

It’s a carol from a previous century that expresses it well -  “How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given!” It is in the quiet unspectacular corners of the human heart that God works His wonders, and leaves us amazed.

Heavenward

This past week, two dear friends passed away. They were keen supporters of our work, and they had also been close friends of my mother. It is strange to think that they may well all be sitting and drinking tea by some celestial meadow and reminiscing together.

Sometimes it seems to me, and the thought might seem somewhat obscene to our conventional understanding of old age, that things are not always as they seem. That period of growing incapacity, mental or physical (and sometimes both), that often precedes dying is a kind of preparation for the bliss of having it all removed. All of the decay, the weakness and disability. And to be brought in, whole and perfect, to the presence of the One, the One for whom your whole life has been but a preface. It's almost as if, having one’s faculties and capacities  intact, becomes a hindrance to that process of spiritual preparation, and they need to be gently stripped away.

In our conventional understanding, death is seen as a winding down of affairs, rather than a building up and a preparation for a truer reality and way of being. Our efforts tend toward making the process as quick and painfree as possibility, and we question God when it becomes a prolonged season, wracked by pain and disability. Without a doubt, it's tough for those who love, those who care, and those who sit by bedsides with unanswered prayers. But for the individuals themselves, in my mothers case, for sure, and, I am persuaded also, in the lives of Margaret and of Betty, there’s a growing awareness that this is but a passage, and a preparation for something far greater.

For those who don't have this hope, no assurance of a life beyond, or of One who loves and is waiting to receive you in His arms, then it is nothing but a big obscene joke. One last bitter laugh of meaninglessness, when our small petty lives disappear down the drain. But for the one who has faith, it is a walking on toward the sunrise, like the sunrise over the Tejo this morning.

Falling Leaf

Last day of this amazing Canadian adventure, and we drove out to the Forks of the River Credit in Ontario, not that far from the city of Toronto to enjoy the autumn leaves in all their glory. Brilliant reds, oranges and yellows, and, with the whisk of a gentle breeze of this warm indian summer day, a whole shower of golden leaves falls like confetti.

Puts me in mind of a moment just about a year ago, when I was together with our Field Ministries Team for a retreat in the north eastern corner of Italy. Walking through trees to a lake, a sudden gust of, at that time, chilly autumnal wind, brought a similar shower of golden confetti around our heads. It was almost mystical. As we had been spending the afternoon in quiet contemplation and prayer concerning the future vision of our Mission, it seemed to me, as if God was giving a gentle confirmation of His continued presence going before us. And it wasn’t just me. When we got back to the Centre where we were staying, my Spanish colleague, Francie, said to me “Did you feel it, out there by the lake - the sense of his Spirit...?”

This Canadian adventure has been, yes, a holiday, but more than that. A refreshing, and a reawakening of the sense of God continually expressing Himself through what He has made, reinforcing what we understood of Him through His word, and what we recognised of Him in the lives of others. Whether it’s snow capped peaks, golden corn on the prairies, or red maple leaves dropping to the forest floor, this world is so full of His glory, it’s hard to miss.   

Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”
  

All in a Day

Rockies, Prairies, Badlands - all in one day. That was the drive back from Fairmont BC to Drumheller, Alberta. And along with the changing topography, fresh ideas about the God who created and shaped these changing landscapes. The road between Banff and Canmore ran by some knife edged ridges, violently thrust heavenward from the earth’s core, expressing the violence of God’s creative power, the Lord of Hosts, awesome in glory.

The highway then passes through foothills, and gradually the land around becomes prairie - great swathes of grassland with just a few ranches and oil wells dotted here and there, and the occasional combine harvester picking up the end of the season’s harvest. Suddenly the heavens are wide and empty with amazing arrangements of cloud stretching from horizon to horizon. Although it’s just sky and atmosphere, this heavenly canvas seems to possess a solidity that brings to mind the old fashioned word “firmament” - something firm and in place, while in a constant state of flux - a flowing palette of translucent blues, pinks and grays. This express the breadth of God in his Omnipresence, constantly there, constantly watching over that which He has made.

We skirt round the northern edge of Calgary and reach Drumheller just as the sun  sets in a red blaze of colour. The road dips below the horizon into a deep valley of dry broken rocky slopes, each one exhibiting a whole history in sedimentary layers of shale and sandstone. This is the badlands - dinosaur country - the landscape carved out by a great ancient water system long since dried out to leave weird rock formations, called “hoodoos” and a rich treasure in the fossil remains of ancient creatures. Here, then, is the Ancient of Days, the Lord of time, who is from everlasting to everlasting. So a drive through Western Canada becomes an education in finding out God.

A Bear Robbed of Her Cubs

Well, I feel I did find God over this past week here in the Canadian Rockies. Yet in an elusive sort of way, a bit like the bears they kept warning us about at the resort. “There have been a few sightings this past week,” we were told. “They’re timid creatures, really, so make sure you make some noise, holler and clap when you’re walking the trails, so they keep away.” It added just a little bit of silent menace to those otherwise wonderful walks, But it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. It added to the richness of the experience, to have that  dangerous strength somewhere lurking in the undergrowth. A bit like Mr Beaver’s description of Aslan, the lion, in the Narnia books. For me, the presence of God this past week felt like the presence of the bears, always there, just not visible. This was their territory. This was their land. We were their guests.

On the way back, driving to Lake Louise and Banff, we listened to a Tim Keller sermon on the jealousy of God - "I the Lord your God, am a jealous God" - and how that jealousy is manifested in what Keller called, God’s “angry love”. The phrase that immediately popped into my mind, I suppose because we were still driving through Bear Country, was “a bear robbed of her cubs”. That snarling blind fury of an animal when anything threatens its relationship with its children. And when anything happens to move us away from our relationship with God as our father, including what we ourselves do, with our laziness, our faithlessness, our waywardness, then we bear the full brunt of that fury of a Jealous God. But it’s a jealousy whose aim is ultimately not to destroy but to heal and put right that which is out of joint. The old prophet Hosea 13:18 describes it in his customary colourful language

“I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt...I cared for you in the desert, in the land of burning heat...But when I fed them, they became satisfied and proud.....Then they forgot me... So, I will come on them like a bear robbed of her cubs. I will attack them and rip them open....”.

James, in the New Testament, links this fiery jealousy to the reality of God’s grace which we receive in ever greater measure, and which works in us to heal the relationship, and thus avert the fury brought on by His jealousy.

http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/jealousy-god

Hosea 13:4-8.    James 4:1-6  “God’s spirit, which He caused to live in us, longs jealously for us. That’s why he gives us more grace...”

This Flight Tonight

Still on about Joni Mitchell, and, on the same album “Blue” she sings “Turn this crazy bird around, I shouldn’t have got on this flight tonight.......”

Well, ours is a day flight, out over the North Atlantic, Greenland, Hudson Bay and the North West Passage -- fabled place names and memories from my boyhood readings of Jack London and John Buchan **. Well, Joni may have wanted to get off her plane and back to her lover, but we’re quite happy to be heading out to Canada!!

And it’s down into the flatlands of central Alberta, out of the airport, and on to a road so straight you hardly need to use the steering wheel. Just set it on cruise control and sit back and enjoy the ride. Trans Canada Highway, and up through Banff, and over the Continental ranges of the Canadian Rockies, and down into the valley of the Columbia river to Lake Columbia

What is it then about this Canadian vastness that lifts the soul, and that seems to reach right up into the heart of God? It’s something in the majesty of the peaks, the green pines carpeting the lower slopes, and just the sheer scale of the place. With distant thunderings providing the soundtrack. I think I want to find my God in this place over the next few days.

 **  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_the_Wild and
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_Heart_River

Oh, Canada!

Sunday morning, (tomorrow!) we travel out to Calgary for yet another adventure. Two weeks in Canada, Alberta and Toronto. I shall have to dust off my Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young discs (or virtual discs as its all on mp3 now) so I can fill my head with lovely Canadian music on the way there. It all came about following a few conversations we had. First, together, just the two of us, when Anna asked me what would I really want to do to celebrate turning 60. I have always loved travelling, and central Canada is one of those far off places I’ve never been to. Then a conversation with our friends Rod and Donna Black, who live in Alberta, and it was sorted.

"On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
With your face sketched on it twice"

Such poetry - Joni Mitchell, who, in a few spare words, can express both a deep longing for place and for person. Come to think of it, not unlike the spirit of fado music *  that I’ve come to love here in Lisbon.

And then another amazing Canadian songwriter, Sara MacLachlan ** :

"Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance,
For a break that would make it okay.
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough,
And it's hard, at the end of the day....

...In the arms of the angel,
Fly away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room,
And the endlessness that you fear...."

Well, for us, it’s not exactly a dark, cold hotel room... but, we still need to get away. And, in our case, the Canadian angels God is sending are Rod and Donna, who have promised to whisk us straight off from arrival at Calgary airport up into the Rocky mountains.

Time to rest, reflect, think, pray, converse, listen, walk and talk, smile, laugh, and.... Bring it on, Rod!!

* “A Case of You” from  Joni Mitchell “Blue” (1971)  And for a genuine fado version of this song, you can’t get better than Ana Moura, complete with black shawl and Portuguese guitarra - www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiC_J8kCmzM

** “Angel” from Sara MacLachlan “Surfacing” (1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbAjj80NIM 

Hugger Mugger

I always thought that ‘hugger mugger’ was a word made up by our family, as it was so regularly used, during my childhood growing up in Northern Ireland, for any clandestine activity that involved wrapping presents and hiding them, or making secretive phone calls. Well, it’s actually listed in the Oxford dictionary, where it is defined as secrecy or secretive behaviour.

Well last week, there was a lot of hugger muggering going on in our apartment between text messages, emails, that culminated in the most amazing unique and unforgettable surprise party that Anna threw for me, on my 60th birthday last Saturday.

So, I’ve reached this milestone of 60 years. Earlier this year George Verwer celebrated his 75th. So that means that he was 35 when I was a 20 year old student at Imperial College, London. Having just recently found faith in Christ, I went up with a group of friends to a University CU meeting near Russell Square to hear this crazy American guy talk about Missions. I was totally struck by his straightforward way of talking, his utter frankness, and his insistence that you don’t need to wait till you get a theology degree something or have a packet of money before you engage in missions for God. Get on with it, get on out there, the world is waiting, was his message. What are you doing enjoying a spiritual feast here, when half the world hasn’t even had its first spiritual breakfast yet, he bellowed!

I suppose it is largely his inspiration that has given me this spirit of adventure that has taken us to Iran, Pakistan and now Portugal. In the party on Saturday night, they played a short video that the family, Judith Sharon and Colin had put together as a kind of retrospective of how they saw me. ( https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1WuAn0nscLeaEFWWkktemJZYk0/edit?usp=sharing )  It was totally unique, touching and very special for me. And this spirit of adventure was part of that view they had of me. I like that. It’s the way I’ve always been. So....thank you, George.

Joy is Strength

I’m always sceptical of news reports that start something like “Recent research has found that...” or “According to a recent survey...”  because the supposed results of the so-called research quite often contradict what has been reported the previous month. According to the news this morning, the latest one is that recent research has shown that bottling up your emotions and harbouring negative thoughts will increase the possibility of cancer by up to 70 % and knock years off your life expectancy.

Now the idea that “the joy of the Lord is your strength” might be millenia old, having been first declared by Nehemiah to the people of Israel in the 5th Century BC, but it seems that it might just be the right solution for our stressed-out twenty first century lifestyle. This last week, I spent four out of the five working mornings in hospital waiting rooms for tests and treatments in relation to my recently diagnosed melanoma.

It struck me as I watched people come and go, just how debilitating cancer can be. Just the expression on peoples’ faces, the way that they carried themselves, indicated how totally the cancer knocks you for six - the surgery, the anxiety and the waiting, the chemo and the radiotherapy. It all has the combined capacity to take the wind out of your sails, and the legs out from underneath you. One minute you’re up and busy, buoyant, full of the joys of life, and the next, you’re wondering what tomorrow will bring, and will you survive to the end of the year. It was written into the faces of the patients as they passed through the clinic, bowed down, enslaved almost, by this tyrannical force that had taken over with and was threatening to kill them.

So important then, to draw on the “joy of the Lord” for strength - to know that, not only, is He all powerful and all knowing, but also He has a plan, and it’s a good plan, for your life, and that His joy - that eternal, ebullient undiminished capacity to revel in life, and to enjoy it to the full - is part of that plan too.

The Godfather

No, not about the movie, but rather the concept of what it means to be a godparent. It’s one of those churchy things that people look at as a nice way of including your best friends in the joys of having children and bringing them up. Here, in Portugal it’s taken pretty seriously, and considered a great honour (and responsibility) to be asked to be “padrinhos”. And not just in the Catholic tradition, but also it’s very common among the evangelical churches, and not just “padrinhos” at the time of baptism/dedication of the child, but also at weddings. Friends who will stand alongside the new couple, and commit to give a spiritual support and nurturing to their relationship.

It’s certainly given us a special relationship with Duarte, our godson. At the weekend, I was detailed to look after him while Anna and his Mum were with other ladies at a party. When mum Sandra told him that Peter will be looking after you, he said “Yaay!” And then she said “You know that Peter and Anna are your padrinhos, don’t you.”  and explained a little bit what that meant. “Oh”, and then he thought for a minute “Então, Peter pode me afinar também?” (Peter, can refine me as well)

He had just been attending a children’s summer camp, at which they had apparently had a session in which they had been talking about spiritual growth and maturity. The leaders had mentioned the role that parents and godparents can have in refining or polishing our character as we grow up (afinação). That was a nice touch. Makes me want to make sure I do a good job as well.

Don't You Worry, Child

We've just had family with us this past week. Wonderful to interact with them, enjoy the beach together, catch up with where each one is at the moment, even if it is only for a very short period. All too soon, they were heading back off to England and to India. Here's an email I wrote to them much earlier this summer.

Hi family.

Little Duarte (our godson, aged 4) never ceases to amaze me with his outlook on the world he's growing up in.

Last week we had to collect him from his school a couple of days in a row, and, in the car on the way back on one of those days I had Orbital FM on the car radio playing dance music. And this started up - Swedish House Mafia's popular track "Don't you worry, child"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1MN4pR5wXM

And Duarte pipes up "Conheço esta música" ("I know this song")
"Oh, where, did you hear that before"
"They play it at my school" and he begins to sing along "Don't you worry, don't you worry, child"
 
Amazing little boy.

So this is my offering to you guys this morning, in all the struggles and challenges you are facing as you think about the options ahead. We, you parents, are with you, in it.  The Swedish House Mafia got it right. "Heaven DOES have a plan for you"  It says so in Jeremiah

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope"  (Jer 29:11)

Daddy

Under the Knife

Last week I went under the surgeon’s knife for the first time ever in my life. It was a strange kind of experience, scary - yes, but at the same time, reassuring. Someone was taking care of something that was wrong in my life - and someone who had more knowledge and experience at this than I could hope to have. There was the possibility of a cancerous tumour developing in my right ear lobe and, thanks to the dear friend who first spotted the potential issue, and the speed and efficiency in their response, of the Instituto Português de Oncologia, the object has been removed as of last Monday.

Along the way, I have only praise, and thanks to God, for all the care and encouragement I received, both professionally and personally, from family, and, especially, from Liliane, a dear friend who texted me every day with her conversation with God about my health. So last Sunday I decided to preach in our small  fellowship on the Word as a double edged scalpel and God as the ultimate surgeon.  Not only does He identify all that’s wrong with us and surgically remove it, but He also creates something new and wonderful in its place.

There's something about that moment of lying on the operating table, helpless, knowing that you can do nothing in and of yourself, when, at the same time something badly needs to be done, and then, trusting your life and your body into the hands of a total stranger on the basis of his credentials and qualifications.

Yet, how slow we are to believe that our God is someone worth trusting in, someone who, according to Psalm 139, knows us intimately and cares for us utterly, and that his scalpel, sharper than any two edged sword, can open up the deepest recesses of our innermost being, and remove all that is harmful, injurious, and threatens our well being.

"He knows the way that I take; and when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10) and 

"The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deut 33:27)

One Assumption Too Many?

Today is a public holiday here in Portugal. A “holy day” in fact, as August 15th celebrates the supposed Assumption of Mary the mother of Jesus into heaven, though,  today there will definitely be more people enjoying the holiday on the beach than in church. It’s interesting that this claim about Mary only entered into Roman Catholic dogma as late as 1950 (three years before I was born), and it does seem to assume rather a lot about Mary and her position in relation to Jesus our Saviour. Is she somehow, superhuman and Queen of Heaven? Is that what the Bible really shows? Using Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12 to defend this view of Mary does seem to require considerable stretching of the imagination.

Interestingly, yesterday evening, in a small group, we were considering the roots of idolatry in relation to the gospel and faith in our lives, and, it seems to me that veneration of saints, or lighting candles before statues, does not really figure as important in terms of idolatry as a lot of other things we do in life. An idol or, “the sin beneath the sin”, as the specific chapter in Tim Keller’s book “The Gospel and Life”, is subtitled, is basically whatever consumes our heart and displaces God in our life. It’s what we think about most when we wake up first thing in the morning. It’s what we get nightmares about. It can be the stuff of materialism, it can be work, it can be family, it can be sex. And every other way I mess up in life, every mistake, every lie, every false step, can be traced right back to that basic idolatry or displacement of God by something else. John Calvin said that the human heart is an “idol factory”, which I thought is a particularly contemporary description, given that he said it 600 years or so ago. We’re for ever inventing new and different ways of blotting God out of our lives.

How important then to ask Him every. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; and see if there is any wicked way in me (literally any way of grief, any idol, anything that will offend, you my God), and lead me in the way everlasting”  Psalm 139:24

That Filthiest of Lucre

Last week, three men were in the news, and all in connection with money and wealth. Two are churchmen, and the third, an animation filmaker. For the first two, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Francisco, the issue has been reconciling the relationship Jesus had with money, with the enormous wealth that the two religious institutions they lead have to manage. How can the church truly represent the spirit and power of Jesus, when it’s so linked in to the powers of this world’s “mammon”, the financial institutions we’ve become so accustomed to regarding as the big bosses that run things.

For the Archbishop, the problems arose when he sought to challenge the obscene greed of just one aspect of our 21st Century system of usury, the so called “payday lenders” in the UK. The media immediately took him to task by digging around in some of the more dubious investment practices of the Church Commissioners, the organisation that manages Anglican wealth. Over on the other side of the world, and in a spot more known for its ostentatious wealth and luxury

than for a spirit of self sacrifice, Copacabana Beach the new Pope sought to direct the attention of the three million masses, to a life of simplicity and truth, and away from the more obvious excesses of the Vatican hierarchy’s wealth and corruption.

Interesting for me to compare the two men, and to see how, the one having arrived at senior Church leadership from having had a role in big business, and the other having come up from more lowly origins as a priest, yet both exhibit a similar impatience and, indeed, revulsion with the way that money, and greed for more money, grabs our attention, and ultimately corrupts, and turns us away from the way of Jesus.

The third man, in total contrast, is Sam Simon, the co-creator of the Simpsons cartoon series, along with Matt Groening.  Simon is currently dying from colonic cancer, and has been facing up to an eternity without a cash in hand bank balance, by practically divesting himself of the millions he won’t need on the other side, giving them to charitable causes. There’s no particular indication of a spiritual side to his philantropy, or any faith commitment there, but he does confess to the great joy giving money away has given him. Setting these three stories from last week side by side makes me think about how I am at managing the resources given to me.

Praia de Malhão - Wish U Were Here

Down the west coast of Portugal, the Costa Alentejana, lies the Praia de Malhão, that most Irish of Portuguese beaches. Don’t know why it should be so, but it just feels Irish. Something about the smell of the ozone, the way the seagulls wheel around the craggy rock formations, or the splashes of colour where sea pinks and other flowers blossom in the cliffs. Or, maybe it’s the lack of access - no paved carpark, no boardwalk, no coffee shops, no restaurants serving bacalhau and sardines. But it’s wonderful. And still very popular in these summer months with Portuguese holiday makers from the nearby resort of Vila Nova de Milfontes. For me, it’s the undiscovered, non-Algarve, non-Lisbon side of the Portuguese coast I love the best

The sort of beach you want to send home picture postcards about. You know, the sort of cards that says “Wish U Were Here”. I was thinking about that, because of reading John 14:3 today, which is sort of Jesus’ holiday picture postcard to all of his friends, saying how he so wants them to be where he is. We tend to write postcards from holidays to people we care about for two main reasons - one, because we want to share how much we are enjoying it, and secondly, because we value our relationship with them so much, and wish they could be with us. But we often write these sentiments so casually, and without much meaning.

When Jesus says that his desire is that “where I am, there you may be also”, he means every word, and ... the postcard is written in his blood. It’s not a vague throwaway comment - “Oh, I wish you could enjoy Heaven with me”. It’s a purposeful statement of intent. I’m going to make sure that you will get to where I am going - even if it kills me

In it for the Long Haul

The BBC website this week highlighted a report by the Relate organisation, calling for more support for older people in maintaining their relationships. This in the light of the growing incidence of marital breakdown among the elderly, the so called “silver divorce” trend. So it makes me ask the question what gives us that “stickability”, and why is it that many couples do stay together for the long haul.

Despite appearances and what the media might say, people want a relationship that will stand the test of time. Half a century ago, the Beatles posed the question “Will you still love me when I’m 64”. More recently, and more poignantly, Lana del Ray, in the Great Gatsby sings “Will you still love me, when I’m no longer young and beautiful. Will you still love me when I’ve got nothing, but my aching soul.”

So, if everyone wants it, if that’s the way we humans are wired, to stay together for the long haul, then how come it’s so difficult to achieve. I watched a TV interview this week in which Patti Scialfa spoke of the complexities of a long term relationship. “People are imperfect.” she said, “We’re all flawed. When you’re young and you get into a relationship you always think love holds some simplistic promise of completion. It’s not true. How could you put that on someone else. It’s too much.”

Who’s Patti Scialfa, you ask, (and I did too). Well, she just

happens to have been married to rock legend Bruce Springsteen for the past 16 years (though, as a member of his E Street band) they’ve known each other since the ‘80s). It’s nice to see that, in the glare of the public gaze and the frenetic rock star lifetsyle, a couple can commit to staying together for the long haul.

This August we will have been married 33 years. And there’s plenty of flaws. But it has been great, genuinely worthwhile over time to discover within ourselves, by God’s help, a mutual commitment to love, and understand and cherish the other person. In August 1982, just two years after us incidentally, there was another iconic couple who tied the knot in Ireland - and they’re still together - Bono and Ali Hewson.

She figures briefly in one of his early music videos (“The Sweetest Thing” - it’s a song about trying to put things right) and I love the expression on her face  - a kind of “”Who is this idiot sitting across from me, and how is it that I love him so much!”

Yes. Thank God for his strength for the long haul

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23054615

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WybiA263bw

The Swallows of the Air

Consider the swallows of the air. They pay no rent, neither do they go to the supermarket. Yet, they manage to build a house in a rich man’s apartment, and bring up their young to explore the broad expanse of sky above the river.

Even as our good neighbours Sandra and Rodrigo move out of Torre Sul this weekend, we have acquired some new ones! The kind that don’t pay any rent, that make an awful mess of our tiny balcony, and that go screaming around the neighbourhood, making a racket. Still, we don’t mind. It’s a great pleasure to share our apartment with a family of swallows. To watch them as the evening sun goes down, wheeling between the high rise blocks to arrive in their tiny nest with a mouthful of flies and grubs for their young. And to hear those little ones bursting with energy and joy for living in their tiny nest above our heads.

I guess Jesus exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount to consider the lilies of the field is just that. Take your eyes off yourself just for a moment, and away from the mundane round of existence you are struggling with. Look at the grand design around you, and the way that things, animals and birds, apparently without effort, come into being and make their way through life, without thought of market rates, or economic slumps or whatever.

And, yes, turn your eyes to the great Creator of life, and give Him thanks for this one basic fact - that He cares for you far above any lily of the field, or swallow of the air.

And so to Bonhoeffer

I’m working my way through Eric Metaxas biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, at the moment and what a man he was. I’m not a great one for reading lengthy biographies, but this one gripped my imagination for the way the story of one’s man life is interwoven into the broad sweep of Twentieth Century History that it covered, and the insights of the Christian struggle against Nazism in Germany that it reveals.

Like many of my generation, I’ve had a copy of Bonhoeffer’s “Cost of Discipleship” on my bookshelf for long enough, but I’ve never fully appreciated just how much that cost meant for him personally, when the path of discipleship runs foul of the accepted wisdom of the day. The book traces his path as a student, thinker, Pastor and theologian and then as a pacifist, conscientious objector and finally co-conspirator in the attempt to remove Hitler, and eventually prisoner and martyr.

Makes me wonder how much does my discipleship cost me in personal terms. Am I guilty of being a recipient of what Bonhoeffer likes to call “cheap grace”? Grace, that is happily taken up without thought to what it costs in terms of living for Christ in the real world. How much more costly does that same grace appear for a North Korean believer, or for a follower of Christ in Vietnam, for example, than for me. And, is it likely, that that cost for us in Europe is set to increase with the continued erosion of Biblical values in our society, and as the tide swings further and further away from it’s Christian foundations? Few Christians in pre-WWII Germany fully discerned that welcoming the promised renewal of Germany's greatness that Hitler brought, would mean also adopting a  world view which so totally diminished and devalued the Christianity of the Bible. Tendencies can creep in so subtly, and in today's world no less so.
 
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer "The Cost of Discipleship" (1937)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bonhoeffer-Pastor-Martyr-Prophet-Spy/dp/1595552464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371723331&sr=8-1&keywords=bonhoeffer

In the End, God's Still Alive

I subscribe to The Courier Internacional, which is an excellent monthly Portuguese monthly news journal. As well, as it’s own analysis, it picks up and translates interesting articles from the world’s press like Le Monde, Die Welt, La Repubblica etc for a local audience. This June edition is running a feature on .... wait for it... God, with the tile “Afinal, Deus não Morreu” (“In the end, God’s still alive”) and comments that, whereas the Twentieth century was an era of post-religious ideologies and nationalisms that declared with various degrees of intensity, the death of God, the Twenty-first could well see a resurgence of spirituality and religious faith.

The article, understandably, talks as much about the rise of Islam, and the growing New Age style spirituality of today’s generation, as it does about any growth in evangelical Christianity worldwide, but that is also part of the conversation. At any rate, it’s interesting to see that particular slogan (that God is dead) blown out of the water.

Even an article by a leading secularist and columnist in the online magazine “The European”, Alexander Gorlach, which sets out to claim that belief in the existence of God or not makes little difference in the development of the European project, acknowledges the importance of religious thought and Christian values, not only in European history, but as recently as the latter post war period of the twentieth Century.

“After the destruction of World War II” he says “ and this is the flipside of the European project – there was the need for reconciliation. In the countries that had been occupied by the Nazis, some found the strength to forgive the Germans for what they had done. Forgiveness was fueled by the power and with the support of Christian faith. It is embodied in the common knowledge of the Christian tradition: Christ forgave his persecutors before he died. This ideal of forgiveness has been a role model of the postwar era.”

http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/alexander-goerlach--2/6722-european-secularism

So, we’re moving on into the Twentyfirst knowing that faith is important, that values like forgiveness and compassion are born out of an understanding of the nature of who God is, and that, in the end, God does matter, and that there’s a lot more to life than just that which exists in the physical, the financial and the political realms.

Rain, rain, rain, rain .... Beautiful rain

Sharon rang us on Skype yesterday morning from Mumbai, and I could hear the violent hissing of the first monsoon rains hitting the city in the background. She switched on video and we watched it teeming over her balcony and down into the street below. Took me straight back, in my memory, to those long hot days of late June in Pakistan when you were just gasping for air and longing for the monsoon rains to arrive.. Nothing moves. The sun seems to stand still in the heavens. The earth bakes. Just need some sweet refreshment from the intense heat.

And then came July, and the clouds began to gather (the monsoon arrives later in Pakistan than India) and, then, by about the second week of July, the skies grow heavy and thick, and eventually break, and then --- there was rain. Sweet refreshing rain.  Moistening the parched, hardened ground. Powerful, intense rain. Breaking bridges and causing landslides. The same rain can bring life and vitality, and can cause death and inconvenience. But, in the first instance, when it first arrives, it was always welcome.

Alexander Frater writes about the arrival of the monsoon, in "Chasing the Monsoon", a book I picked up some years ago - can’t remember where - probably in some second hand bookshop in Islamabad or Karachi. In it, he follows the course of the monsoon rains from the southern tip of the subcontinent to the north, and writes vividly about its effect on the land and the people.

Rain figures largely in a few examples of music I am listening to today. First in my list, there’s an electronic dance track by Armin van Burren, which cleverly expresses musically the incessant drumming of a constant downpour. Then, Ladysmith Black Mombasa, from South Africa, singing about the “rain, rain, rain, beautiful rain” falling on the dry African earth. Thirdly, any one of the countless expressions of  the “barsat kaa mausam” (Monsoon season) that appear in the musical genre of the Urdu ghazal (this one by Jaswinder Singh). And finally Misty Edwards, longing for the sweet rain of God’s presence with the track “Waiting for the rain". As the prophet Hosea says

“Let us acknowledge the Lord;
    
........let us press on to acknowledge him
As surely as the sun rises,
  he will appear;

........he will come to us like the winter rains,
    
like the spring rains that water the earth.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug7myED6nOk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pLWunYWWtQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHn3wmkNAU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXcqPPsz4Q0

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chasing-Monsoon-Alexander-Frater/dp/0140105166

God Has Left the Building

Today Pope Benedict resigns his office as the leader of the Roman Catholic church. And the above title was that given to an opinion column in the weekend Portuguese newspaper. It drew my attention, partly because the title was in English, whereas the rest of the piece, as the rest of the newspaper, was all in Portuguese, and partly, because it seemed mildly shocking for a country that continues to be for the most part fairly traditionally Catholic.

I thought the last paragraph by the writer, Luís Januarío, commenting on the ways in which the news of his resignation was received by the leaders of the Church, was worth recording here.

“It’s a symptom of the times, he writes, that the cardinals of the various factions, seemed to making declarations (about the pope) in the manner of professional politicians of a modern democracy, rather than in the old roman rhetoric. Applauding the decision of the Pope, many of them seem to be ratifying the secularization of the church and admitting that their High priest, is in fact an ordinary human being, albeit a saintly one, with a right to retirement and to resign his post. No longer, does it seem, is he the Holy pope of the Catechism, who was first infallible, then infallible in questions of faith, but finally, now one like the rest of us, capable of good and bad decisions”. God, the article, concludes is no longer in the Vatican.

Uncommon Grace

I listen quite regularly to Desert Island Discs. It’s one of those old radio programmes that has continued to be broadcast by BBC Radio 4 since time immemorial. The formula consists of an interview with a well-known personality linked with their favourite pieces of music and what those pieces have meant to them at certain times in their lives. It’s a simple formula that has stood the test of time, and hardly changed since the fifties. 

I was very impressed with the interview Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, gave on the programme last month. There are certain people in this life, and in history who cut across the neat Christian theological distinctions of common and special grace. (That distinction is, that, whereas all of humanity enjoys a common sense of the grace of God, special grace belongs to those who, through faith and repentance, have trusted in the redeeming  power of the  blood of Christ, and as such, confess Jesus as their Lord and Saviour). 

Aung San Suu Kyi is not a Christian. Her Buddhist faith is very important to her. And yet she displays in her bearing, in her statesmanship, in her conversation, an uncommon grace, and it’s impossible not to be aware of the image of God in her. At the end of the interview, when it is standard for the interviewer to offer any choice of a book, besides the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, to take with them to the desert island, Aung San replied that she would treasure the Bible, seeing that she often used to read it aloud to her maternal grandfather when his eyesight was failing, as he had previously converted to Christianity.

But I was struck by something she said about the nature of sacrifice. She was asked about the price she had paid for her political principles in terms of an almost lifelong separation from her husband and family. 
“When you have chosen a certain path in life” she said,  “you should walk it with satisfaction and with determination and not try to make it appear as a tremendous sacrifice. That can be like looking for something back in return for the sacrifice.Whatever you do out of your own free will that, in itself, should be the gift you give to the cause and to those you love." 

Whether it’s out of political motives, or from a religious or missionary calling, that’s a good principle to reflect on when you’re tempted to think that God, or the world, sort of owes you something for all that you’ve done and given up.

A River Runs Through It

At the weekend, we travelled to Bucharest for the wedding of Sam and Ioana. The Air France flight took us via Paris, and the takeoff from Charles de Gaulle on a crisp winter morning afforded us a magnificent view of the Seine curling through the city, and the famous landmarks of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame. 

I like to get a window seat when flying in Europe. There’s something magical about rising above the streets and buildings, and out into the cloud filled blue. And what stirs the imagination most for me is the sight of these great rivers, whether Tejo or Thames, Seine or Danube, snaking their way through the intricacy of the urban landscape. The river running through it gives the city it’s soul, creates the dividing line between the natural architecture of creation and the concrete and glass. And for getting around, is always there as a snaking landmark, giving you your bearings (which is probably why I never seem to enjoy Madrid that much - it just seems to be one big urban sprawl).

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of our God”. Psalm 46 makes a clear connection between the River and the City - the river as a source of life and freshness, the river cleansing and gladdening the heart of man.  From my ninth floor window, with the sun shimmering over the surface of the River Tejo as it passes through the city of Lisbon, I can well understand that imagery. This great body of water, passing beneath the bridges on its way to the sea, brings in fresh supplies of water every day, and carries all the waste and dross of the city out to the ocean.

Biggest Wave in the World

Some people come to Portugal with a single purpose in life - to be able to surf on some of the biggest waves in the world. Last week, Garrett Macnamara  flew half way across the world from Hawaii to do this, and broke his own previous world record, entering into the annals of surfing legend by riding what was believed to be a 100 feet monster in the Atlantic off the coast at Nazaré!  He described the experience as  “.. like snowboarding down a giant mountain. You're just chattering, flying down this bumpy, bumpy mountain. Your brain is getting rattled.”

It made me think about what drives a man (or a woman) to travel half way around the world like that to ride a monster wave. Anna also voiced it by asking “Now, how did he happen to know that by coming to Nazaré on the 28th of January he would find his record wave?” Of course that is as much down to a bit of scientific know-how as anything else - ocean topography, currents and weather patterns and all. But the fact is that Garrett, and many others like him, will dedicate their lives, their income and their relationships to following the surf.

Question I am pondering. How much do I dedicate my time and resources, and how much do I research and seek to understand, in order to ride the wave of God’s will in my life? For, if you talk to any surfer, it’s the thrill, the energy and the power that they want to experience, and that makes them follow. Well, what greater power is there in life, than following after the Creator of this world, in His plan of restoring all things to Himself? My, I need to get onto that wave!

Man of Steel

The Fifth Chapter of Romans talks about character being built out of sufferings. The theme came to my notice when reading Nicky Gumbel’s daily devotional last Friday, which caused me to think about the process we need to follow in the direction of Hope.

We have this hope of the glory of God, but it doesn’t just drop out of the sky into our laps. It’s is forged through suffering, which, by way of perseverance, produces that thing called character, and hope is then born - a hope that is real, living, vital and communicated through God’s love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

The very same morning, I happened to read about Saeed Abedeni, an Iranian Christian, though now a US citizen, and whose predicament under trial in Iran was splashed across the media  over the weekend. I was particularly struck by what the article reported of Saeed’s response to his sufferings. it said :

Saeed has been detained since his arrest last September; he has endured beatings, torture and threats at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran. In a moving letter to his wife, published last week, Saeed wrote about his ordeal:
“One day I am told I will be freed and allowed to see my kids on Christmas (which was a lie) and the next day I am told I will hang for my faith in Jesus. One day there are intense pains after beatings in interrogations, the next day they are nice to you and offer you candy.”
Saeed also reflected on how God is transforming him through these mixed experiences:
“I always wanted God to make me a godly man. I did not realise that in order to become a godly man we need to become like steel under pressure. It is a hard process of warm and cold to make steel. These hot and colds only make you a man of steel for moving forward in expanding His Kingdom.”
So what is talked about in the Bible is mirrored in real life. God has a foundry for manufacturing steel in our lives, and it is often through the people he places around us. Sometimes through persecution, sometimes ridicule and at other times rejection or simple frustration, we’re poured into the melting pot of God’s steel furnace. In order that he might make us into men and women of steel....like Saeed.

Smothering Candles

There’s a gentle irony in the fact that there we were sitting on a Saturday evening in the chapel of a convent in Belem out to the west of Lisbon’s city centre, listening to a song being sung in which a Donegal mother cries for her son who had defected from the Catholic faith and become a Protestant minister. The song in question “Fil Fil a Run o” is a popular tune from the northwest, dating from the 18th century, * (it has been recorded by Cara Dillon, the Irish Tenors among other artists). On this occasion it was part of a set being perfomed by a duo called Lumiere (Pauline Scanlon and Éilís Kennedy) from Dingle, Co Kerry. **

The rather sectarian content of the song is buried underneath a beautiful wistful melancholic tune, and you can really feel the mother’s heart beat for her son, and the scandal she found herself in. As the translated lyrics go, she cries  “you denied Peter And Paul, because of the gold and the silver. You denied the Queen of Glory, turned your coat and became a Minister” . And so it made me think about family ties and deeply held beliefs, and the freedom to choose and think and believe differently from your parents. It’s a natural desire that one’s children should share the worldview and beliefs that we hold dear, but it’s not a given, and one of the important keys of parenthood is that, having given the best guidance we can, we allow our kids the freedom to make their own choices and way through life, without fear of rejection or reprimand.

But it it also made me think about the strong manner in which “Mother Church” holds on to her own. Sometimes, it would seem to me, the light the institutional Church, offers to the world, instead of liberating and expanding vision, tends to smother the believer in a heavier atmosphere of tradition. Just as, in the darkened atmosphere within the convent, the smothering candles allow only the faintest glimmer of the world, and that seen through the lens of a particular ecclesiastical interpretation, excluding the light from any other sources. But the music was great anyway!
 
* Interestingly, the song is linked to the true story of one, Dominick O’Donnell, who was a Church of Ireland minister, and whose grave even now lies in the churchyard of Carrigart. 
**  http://www.lumieremusic.net/audio.aspx

One Generation

One of my earliest forays into an appreciation of classical music was an LP (yes, the old vinyl sort) of Handel’s “Chandos Anthems”, which were settings of various psalms for choir and orchestra. Even now, any time I turn to Psalm 145, I cannot read it without the extended phrase “One gen-er-a-tion shall praise Thy name to an-o-o-ther  n-o-o-ther” running through my head. Somehow, the musical interpretation of the phrase, in the 1975 recording I had, matches perfectly the idea of flow and continuity of the message of the Gospel and the adoration or our Creator God, being passed on from one generation to another down across the centuries.

And sometimes, it works both ways - the younger generation informing and inspiring the older to a fresh appreciation of the greatness of our God. It was exciting for us over New Year, to be part of the “Maquina de Sonhos”, (“The Dream Machine”) which was a 3 day Missions conference for Portuguese young people held in a big sports hall across the river from where live. It was great to see a new generation picking up the theme of eternal praise and making it their own.

And just meditating on Psalm 145, I am struck by the number of verbs that have to do with communication that are contained in just four short verses, vs 4-7, and how each verb reveals a slightly different nuance on the business of communicating who God is.

‘Telling’ (‘contar’ in Portuguese) - simple storytelling of the narrative that holds within it the ageless truths about our God, in oral or written form
‘Proclaiming’ - this is the business of the preacher, declaring with authority what the Bible says about God.
‘Speaking’ - a much more informal verb, the art of communicating through our personal conversations, and it's often as much about how we live, as it is about the words we use.
‘Singing’ God’s praise - applying our own artistic creativity to root the eternal truths in a way that is culturally relevant for every generation
And finally, ‘Commemorating’ or ‘Celebrating’ - using events and moments in time as important markers for the memory, so that the message continues to have prominence within the community.

 

Epiphany

Sunday was the Day of the Kings, or Epiphany Sunday. Traditionally here in Portugal and neighbouring Spain, it is a day associated with the arrival of the three kings, and the revelation to them that the promised Christ child, the Son of the Living God, has arrived and appeared unto men.

Much more so in Spain than here, the day has come to be the Christmas Day of present giving and feasting, in place of December 25th. Which is interesting. The reason to celebrate and rejoice becomes then, not so much the fact that Jesus was born in the manger in Bethlehem, but that He is who He is, and has been revealed as such! “Epiphany” means appearance, or manifestation, or a sudden realization of a great truth. In fact this is what it has come to mean in our current use of English. A new insight or enlightenment.

Something we need, not just on 6th January, but again in again in our lives. To wake up in the morning, and have an epiphany - This is God’s day!  Jesus is alive, and reigns on high and in my heart! That makes for a more meaningful Christmastime than a box of tinsel and a tray of mince pies.

So, happy Day of Kings, then!