Suntoucher

Yesterday, no, it was Sunday, Easter Sunday, and I found myself on top of a hill in the Algarve at 06:30 waiting for the sunrise. It was wonderful!
It had been ages since I took part in an Easter sunrise service, and my mind goes back to a Portrush headland in a dull grey dawn, to Tehran, to Faisalabad and to the beach at Karachi. But this was not an Easter sunrise service. Just me and the dawn and the cold wind. Because although it’s already the 12th of April, the early morning air is cold.

I settled down on the rough ground to wait, pulled my coat closer and leaned back against a tree trunk. And waited. Watching the hill to the east. First an intense glowing from behind the hill. Then, as it were, waves of golden light began pouring down into the valleys on either side of the ridge. Then a blazing wisp of cloud leapt up from the brow of the hill. And finally, and I watched, open-eyed in wonder, a silent explosion of light as if the very top of the hill had suddenly come off and revealed a boiling cauldron of molten – light. It boiled and hung in the morning air for some moments and eventually detached itself from the hillside. My eyes shut. Couldn’t cope with the intensity of the light. Burning into my soul. Blinding me to all else. The ground once visible and tangible, now suddenly plunged into a nether world of shadows once more. AND SO I THOUGHT…
This is what Resurrection means. A burning realisation that all we are in the here and now is transient, a vague dream that is soon over and gives way to the proper day. Thank you God for this moment.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. ~

See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples,

but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.”

Isaiah

“Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned”

Isaiah

“But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise

with healing in its wings.

And you will go out and leap

like calves released from the stall.”

Malachi

Bridge to Nowhere

Every morning we’re confronted with the amazing symmetry of the Vasco da Gama Bridge, all 17 kilometres of it crossing the River Tejo right by our house. It’s quite a sight especially bathed in early morning sunshine.

And on long summer nights with the window open, you can hear the constant hum of traffic, and the occasional roar of boy racers doing their illegal stuff across the bridge at two or three am. The point is, this bridge is going somewhere. It’s the gateway to the Algarve, to the Alentejo, to Sapin and anywhere else you might care to go. On Friday afternoons and holidays, it’s crammed with traffic getting away from the city.

A huge amount of thought, effort and expense went into the creation of this bridge. And much of that preparation would have included the approach roads on either side that define its usefulness and access to people. And then I see a bridge that lacks that. Solidly constructed yet with no function in terms of connecting people together. On the TV news last night there was a short piece on a motorway bridge over the A4 at Maia, near Porto. They showed a google map image of the bridge and you can see for yourself how its become a laughing stock after 14 years of just sitting there and going nowhere. Something to do with a dispute between the construction company and the landowners. And now its due to be demolished to allow for widening of the motorway.

Sometime churches can be bridges to nowhere. Either they are rooted in community, everyone has easy access, is welcomed on board, but then they find that their church does not actually deliver. It does not actually lead them on to know God, and move onto a road that will lead to a solid spiritual walk with the Lord. Or there are other churches, so well designed and constructed in their theology to deliver anyone on it safely to the other side, but so far removed from everyday life and culture, that few actually make it onto the bridge. Church needs to be rooted in both. Blaze a clear pathway to the other side of life with God, but understand and be rooted in the life and culture of the society it exists for.

Wales 15 Ireland 17

It’s nice to be Irish sometimes. Like tonight, at the end of a sunny day, in a packed Irish pub tucked round behind Cais do Sodré train station in downtown Lisbon.
(Apparently there are five such bars scattered around the city of Lisbon. But O’Gilins, as they´ll proudly tell you was the first and the only one with genuine Irish people behind the bar. None of your plastic replica shillelaghs here)

Anyway, back to the rugby match, and it’s in this amazingly colourful cosmopolitan atmosphere of Irish and Portuguese, with a few Welsh, Spanish and French thrown in, that the Irish have managed to do something that had evaded them for 61 years. And I thought to myself, my father would have loved this moment. To think that back then he would have been a young man recently demobbed from the military and making his way into civilian life during that last heady season when the Irish won the Grand Slam.

Now life has a funny habit of turning around on itself now and again, taking you way way back in an instant to something vaguely remembered and yet becoming crystal clear in that self same moment. Memory for me suddenly takes me out of the smoky pub (no EU directives here) and back down on the Belfast Dublin train line and to Lansdowne Road as a wee boy, clutching my father’s hand among crowds of flat caps and scarves hasting through the turnstiles, and then standing on the terraces in the drizzle. Those were the years when Van Morrison was writing lines like

“On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow”

And amazingly, the man’s still singing those lines to packed houses in Hollywood. But that first album “Astral Weeks” which had had such a profound affect on my growing up years in Northern Ireland, still manages to take me back to times like that on the Dublin train, and conjure up that unusual affinity created in a moment between a father and a son. So, my father never did manage to see Ireland win the Grand Slam again. Although I do remember him clearly on the edge of his seat watching the matches, even in the nursing Home, wincing with every disappointment, groaning with every failure. And my poor mother had to take a walk and visit a neighbour down the corridor when the match was on to get out of the way of him.

So life turns around again. He has passed on to Glory. And we’re watching the Ronan O’Garas and the Brian O’Driscolls here in downtown Lisbon. And I’ll bet he’s looking down, pleased as punch. Well done , Ireland.

Chaotic Order? Ordered Chaos?

We live at the top end of the Park of the Nations just next to the Vasco da Gama Bridge. If you walk under the bridge you come across a wide expanse of wilderness.

I think it is earmarked for a Golf Course in the grand scheme of things. But right now with spring almost on us it looks magnificent. A glorious swathe of cowslip or buttercups or mustard or whatever those yellow flowers in the photo are. Botany never was my strongest subject. And this morning, walking there, there was a riot not only of colour but also of sound, as the grassland came alive with pipits and finches, stonechats and redstarts. Pity is, the wilderness is closed off to the public so you can’t walk through it, only enjoy it through a cross linked fence.

Then you turn around 180º from this vista, and the magnificent sweep of the bridge comes into view, and beyond it stretches the city. In one direction Chaotic Order – the wonderful natural kaleidoscope of God’s workmanship that is so incredibly ordered in every microscopic way but also so marvellously random to the casual observer. Look in the other direction and Ordered Chaos - man’s efforts to bring order and symmetry to his otherwise chaotic world. Because, beneath and beyond the concrete and steel and under the hum of the traffic and the roar from Lisbon airport, lie tired souls and aching hearts broken by lies and deceit, frustrated by unfulfilled promises, trying to make some sense out of an often meaningless world, longing to find hope and a purpose in the chaos.

God entered into chaos once, and said “Let there be Light”

God entered into chaos a second time, and said “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him.”

Belas Ondas

Thanking God for the Nice Waves

Last evening we drove out along the coast to Estoril. Stopped at Carcavelos beach as the last vestiges of sunset drifted from the night sky. We were going to a prayer meeting in an old house that had been rented for the purpose for a weekend of nonstop prayer.

That evening the prayer was being led by a group of Christian surfers and it was excellent. Good to find a Christianity that is authentic, not trying to fit in to anything it isn’t, not trying to uphold dearly held traditions or maintain jealously guarded denominational lines. Simply trying to get close to Jesus

The guy opening the prayer meeting thanks God for the “belas ondas” - the nice waves. Now I’ve not been to many prayer meetings where the leader starts out by thanking God for the nice waves he had today. But maybe that’s because I don’t hang around surfers that much. But that’s how we should be. Thanking God for the things that matter to us. Recognising that He’s there and that He’s personal, and that He’s bothered about us and wants to be involved with us in our lives – the big things, the ups and downs, but also in all the details. Even catching a good wave. If you’re a surfer.

We had a three day break away last week down in the Algarve. It was the first time we’d managed to travel there since our arrival in Portugal. (And I’m sorry if I don’t get all the hype - the Lisbon coast has everything the Algarve has, and more!). But, sitting on a cliff overlooking the Praia de Falesia near Albufeira, I was amazed. Amazed by the immensity of it all. The blue, glistening with greens and white and silver. The small boats. Scatterings of cloud. An ocean that reaches out to forever. And a restless rush of water at the edge. That’s what waves seem to indicate to me. They’re powerful and they can be scary. But they’re a power at the edge of something that is much greater and much stronger. The waves tell us how strong and mighty the ocean can be. And so the waves of God’s grace on our lives, His goodness and the examples of His love washing over us each day, carrying us forward through the week. They’re all small indicators of something much deeper, more immense and much stronger.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus,

vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!

Rolling as a mighty ocean

in its fullness over me!

Thank you God for the nice waves today!

photos: colin crawford catching a wave last easter at costa caparica

Thirty Years On

An Imaginary Return to Iran

This week in Iran they are celebrating thirty years of the Islamic Revolution. Thirty years since the overthrow of the Shah and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in Paris. And so it must be thirty one years since I travelled the length and breadth of that amazing land. Young, single and fancy free at the time, I suppose, but it was an awesome experience. A time when I learned a lot... about life and God, and believing. Lessons that have stayed with me. The images on the TV news reawaken vignettes of that moment in my life.

..The Fertile slopes and orchards of Amol leading down to the Caspian coast

....The Snows of Damavand ...... the sands of Zahedan.

........Blues tiles of Esfahan ..... lofty minarets of Mashhad.

.....Lines of tankers off the coast at Bandar e Abbas .

................................. .... Lines of trucks at the border crossing near Tabriz.

.... Corridors of Islamic learning and tradition in the mosques of Qom

................................ .....The older Zoroastrian tradition in the awesome towers of silence in Yazd.

.... The depths of history in Queen Esthers’s tomb in Hamadan

............................. ..... and in the Behustan inscription near Kermanshah.

Wow, those were heady days indeed. What an immense privilege to be part of that world and at that time. The realisation that events happen, times passes, seasons change and things are never quite the same again. The period you live in in the moment you have is so utterly unique.

I wonder how it might look if I were ever able to return. What would have changed and what would have remained the same? Ideoligies come and go. Kingdoms rise and fall. But those vast open deserts, clear blue skies, warm welcoming people, rich ancient cultures. Things like that you can’t alter. Nor the God who created and sustained this glowious world of ours. I suppose I might close with a single line from Iran's greatest poet Ferdowsi (935 – 1020) -

“Take not this world in jest, but walk with those whose steps are right;
right as thine end propose If thou wouldst be with men of glorious name”

I Was Born Here!

“My brother was born here.
...........So was my aunt and my Mum.
................ ....and me too”

The Portuguese graffiti on the wall of the men’s lavatory in the Maternidade Dr Alfredo G Costa was intriguing. Not least because it was a lot less offensive than most of the graffiti you see in men’s toilets. But ... I mean ... do you know offhand where your various relatives saw the first light of day. It’s not the sort of information you tend to retain in your head. Some of us would be hard pushed to know which hospital it was in which even we ourselves popped out, a screaming bundle of energetic humanity, into the world.

I guess it’s a mark of the affection in which this noble institution is held in the hearts of Lisboetas. Not so much a medical facility, more a celebration of motherhood. According to our friend, Maria, the majority of this city’s inhabitants can claim their birthplace here. According to their website 5589 babies have been born there since the beginning of this year. Considering the population of the Greater population of Lisbon is 2.8 million, that’s a fair few babies.


And one of those little items is called Gabriel!!

He was born at 11am Saturday morning to proud parents Patricia and Milton Sanches, and is the latest little addition to our fellowship. I wonder, Gabriel, what life has got in store for you. I pray it will be good, and that you will enjoy discovering all that God has lined up for you.



Because at the end of the day, what’s important is not so much where you were born, or where you’ve come from, but where you’re going. Next week we will celebrate a historic birthday that took place in a roughly hewn stable in a corner of Palestine a couple of thousand years ago. But if Jesus had gone back there twenty years later, to see if he could carve his initials and “I was born here” on the wall, he may well have found it no longer existed. The birthplace of Jesus was important and it’s great to celebrate it, but far more important, is the destiny and plan and purpose that was contained in his life. That purpose that drew him and , eventually, in the fullness of time, took him an early death in his thirties - but a death that would change mankind for ever.

Celebrate his Birth!

Celebrate His Death!

Celebrate His Resurrection!

Celebrate His Life Forevermore!