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