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Living the Life

There’s more than one way to Manchester Airport

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When I was a child, if we were driving somewhere and Dad said, “I think we’ll take a scenic route” it was never good news. Usually it meant that we were lost…

Maybe because of that, or perhaps just because I’m generally impatient to get to where I’m going, the concept of the scenic route has never appealed to me.  I’ve always thought that journeys are something you want to get over with quickly – life happens at destinations.

I’m pretty much the same when it comes to living.  When I hear a whisper from God about where he might want to take me, I become anxious to get there as soon as possible.  I would pick the direct, fast, straight-line, know-exactly-where-you’re-going motorway route every time.

However…

In my experience, life with Jesus is much more like taking the A-roads (and often some ‘B’ ones).  There are destinations, sure, but he is in charge of the route to get to them, and he may well want me to take in some beautiful views and visit a few other interesting places on the way.

I learned something about this last year when some friends kindly offered to drive me from Derby to Manchester Airport.  “We’ll come early” they said, “and drive across country – that way you’ll enjoy the journey”. I didn’t tell them that it had never even occured to me that there was more than one way to Manchester Airport, or that it was possible to do anything other than endure a journey!

Our not-motorway route took us around the edges of the Peak District and past breathtaking scenery, through industrial towns and forgotten villages, up hills and down, through places where people live and nature grows.  It was anything but a straight line and took us much longer to get to the airport, but for once, I actually enjoyed it.

The A-road life can feel hugely frustrating.  Especially if, like me, you are wired a bit impatiently.  Where are the big blue signs that I’m heading towards my ‘destination’?  Where are the numbers that tell me how far I have left to go and how much longer I have to wait? Can I even be sure I’m heading the right way?

Even if I’m carrying in the back of my mind the feeling that the airport is somewhere up ahead in my future, I have no idea how long it will take to get there, or how near or far away I am.

On the B-road route, there are no signs pointing the way to the airport until you are almost there.

You could be five miles away and still not know.

You just have to trust the driver.

manchester airport

That’s it, that’s what I’m trying to get my head around:

I don’t even need to have a look at the map.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  He is the map

I just have to trust the driver, lean back, and see what I can learn along the way.

And if we take the scenic route, so be it, I’m going to enjoy the ride.

…because we definitely won’t be lost.

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Crowns of hope

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I’m writing this post from the tiny island of Büyükada in Turkey, where on April 23rd every year, tens of thousands of pilgrims come to hike to the top of the hill to try to hear from God.
It’s reminding me of people’s desperation to hear what God has to say to them, of the yearning for a sense of hope, purpose and direction that exists in those around us.
Today, each pilgrim will buy a crown of flowers to wear and as they hike for an hour up the hill they will unroll a length of thread, marking the path they have taken. By the end of the day the path will be a carpet of woven threads, each one a testimony of someone’s hope to hear something from the heart of God for themselves.
This morning I’ve painted you a pile of crowns. They are gifts from you to the pilgrims who are walking up the hill of life alongside you, at work, at school, at home, on your street, in your town.
You have the gift of a word from God for some of those fellow walkers in your grasp. My challenge for you is to listen out today to see what God has to say to one of them, and to have courage to share it. That’s what I will be doing this afternoon and this evening. I’d love to have your prayers.

*********
Thank you to all of you who prayed yesterday, it was a very special time. Now I will be praying for you as you share words and pictures from God with those he puts on your heart.

Living the Life

On building a swing

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Building a swing is the easy part, the trick is in knowing where to build it:

1. Strength.  Find a tree with a branch that is strong.  You want to be able trust this swing, to completely relax in it, and that means it needs to be well able to bear your weight.

2. Space.  Make sure there is room to move.  There needs to be space to swing out ahead and space to swing back behind you while all the while you actually stay anchored in the present.

3. Perspective. Tie your swing somewhere very high up. The higher the branch and  the longer the ropes, the higher you can swing. And every time you do you’ll be able to see the landscape around you from an entirely different perspective. Truth revealed.

4. Shelter. Choose a tree that will give you shelter from the sun, there will be days when you need it.

5. Joy. As well as building your swing, make sure you take time to enjoy it. Give yourself permission to play – have fun.

Strength, space, perspective, shelter, joy.  All things to look for in a swing, and in a friendship.

For me this is a picture of what friendship with God could be like.  It isn’t always, but it could be, if that’s how I choose to build it.

I don’t know which thing you need more of in your life today: Strength to carry you, space to breathe and move, a new perspective on your circumstances, shelter from the heat or the storm or just the exhilarating joy of freedom to play.

Whichever it is, it is in God’s hand, and he would love to share it with you.

You only need to ask.

Let’s build a swing.

tree with swing

P. S. I love this comment from my friend David (incidentally, the first person to tell me I should write, many years before I was ready to hear it):

“I would add – a friend to push you, to get the swing going and to keep on encouraging you to go higher”

If you find one of those friends, you have a treasure. Choose to be around them!

Surviving Tough Times

Living on the Leeward side

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“You get to choose which side of me you live on…”

Petra tou Romiou is a huge rock in the sea just off the coast of Cyprus.   We took some friends to visit it at the weekend and as we stood on the cliff looking down I was struck by the difference in shape and nature of the two sides of it –  the one facing the sea and the one protected from it.

The side exposed to the prevailing wind and the waves is almost vertical, bare rock, constantly attacked by waves from the sea.  The protected, ‘leeward’, side slopes gently towards the beach and has patches of moss and even sometimes some wildflowers on it.

As I looked at it I heard God – my rock – say, “you get to choose which side of me you live on”

It’s interesting to think that God is a rock like this one, with a leeward and a windward side.  On a clear, calm day intrepid young people climb up and sit in the sunshine at the top of the rock. They sunbathe there and I imagine, enjoy a wonderful view. But in a storm, as waves crash endlessly against the base of the rock,  you would definitely want to be sheltering on the leeward side.

I love the picture of God as a rock  and one of my very favourite lines in the message translation is from Psalm 62:

“He’s solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul.”

That’s my God: unmoveable, unchanging, strong and solid.  A firm place to stand and a shelter from the storms of life.

There can be no doubt that when storms come (as they always will, even here in sunny Cyprus) it is better to be standing in the shelter of the rock than out on the beach. But I’d never thought before about choosing to stand in the shelter of God’s protection rather than on the ‘stormward side’.

My pride would often rather have me out in the storm fighting my own battles, demanding justice and vindication in the face of the wind and waves.  The whisper in this picture is of God inviting me to step out of those battles and into the protection of his leeward side.

But that’s hard.  Somehow to my fragile heart it seems cowardly and a bit out-of-control to trust God to handle the battle for me, to step in behind him and not to try to fight my own fight.

And yet… when I look at this picture I can see how foolish it is to think that I am the one better able to face up to the onslaught of the storm.  There is only one sensible place to be in this picture, and it’s definitely not out attempting to defend myself (or the rock) against the waves!

I’m suddenly aware that there is a choice to made here… to conciously step into the leeward side of the rock… to know that to admit that I am weaker than God and need his protection is actually a strong choice – and a wise one.

Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress I shall not be shaken.

You might hear God saying something else through this picture… but if you hear him calling you to step out of the battle for your own reputation, or acceptance, or vindication, then have courage, and step into the leeward side.

Psalm 63:5-6

Identity

It is well with my soul… reasons to love Good Friday

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It’s the time of year when our thoughts are drawn to the cross, to the pain endured there, to the freedom achieved there.  But, if I’m completely honest, Good Friday hasn’t always felt like good news…

I first decided to follow Jesus when I was fifteen, and somehow in those early years I picked up the idea that Good Friday was all about feeling bad and guilty.  This was a special day in the church calendar when we all took a good long time to think about how awful we were, about how much our beautiful saviour went through for us, and about how responsible we were for that terrible pain and suffering.

I don’t remember anyone teaching me that this was ‘Guilt Friday’, but that’s what I learned. This was the day to look at the cross really hard, and then to feel really, really bad.

and I did.

But a beautiful revolution happened about 15 years later…

Late one lent evening, as I sat in a prayer-space looking at a wooden cross draped with red silk,  I had one of those moments where something you’ve known in your head for a long time finally makes it into your heart. God showed me the cross as if it were an enormous power shower towering above me. I suddenly realised that as I knelt beneath the flow of Jesus blood, as it poured out over my hands, my head, my heart, it didn’t stain me with responsibility, it didn’t make me guilty – it made me clean.

So I realised that on Good Friday I couldn’t come to the cross and feel bad about myself, or about how much Jesus suffered for me. Not because I’m not a sinner, or that Jesus didn’t suffer, but because some much bigger, more glorious things were filling up my head and heart so much that there wasn’t room for anything else.

As I said to a friend at the time:

“I know I should be feeling bad, but I just can’t help myself, when I look at the cross, all I can feel is clean”

Awesomely, gloriously clean.

And when I remember what Jesus was prepared to go through in order to heal my relationship to the Father, what he chose to endure so that you and I could be made clean and whole and entirely free from guilt and shame, I don’t feel bad (all that clean-ness gets in the way), but I do feel very, very grateful, and very LOVED.

Really really loved.

The words of this hymn, It is well with my soul by H. G. Spafford, explains the feeling that wells up inside me better than I can:

My sin – oh the bliss of this glorious thought! –

My sin, not in part, but the whole,

is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

With that in your head it just won’t be possible to look at the cross and feel bad.

So this Easter, as you’re celebrating the extraordinary victory of the cross and resurrection, take another look at the cross and see if you can see this power shower.  If you feel even the smallest part dirty, or guilty, or unworthy or ashamed – step in.  The cross can wash you clean.

.power shower

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

a moment’s peace

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I wonder how many times a day I wish I could have a moment’s peace and quiet?  Not just from the actual noise of my family, but from the things-to-do, worries, good-ideas and other thoughts that constantly spin around inside my head.

My life is inside-and-out noisy.  Good noise mostly just now, but I know from the past that grief, pain, anxiety, disappointment and not being very good at saying no to things can also cause different kinds of overpowering ‘noise’ that I eventually become desperate to escape from and utterly exhausted by.

I said I would write for the next few weeks on some of the ways that having a relationship with Jesus makes a difference to my life.  If I had to answer the question ‘What difference does it make having Jesus in your noisy, cluttered, slightly out of control life?’ – this is the picture that comes into my head:

My life is like an LP being played at full volume on the record player my dad gave me when I was 9 years old.  It’s loud with no pause button and I mostly love it, but every now and then, I come to God desperate for some respite, and for a moment he carefully lifts the needle from the record and holds me there, out of the noise.

recordplayer2

And those moments- of peace, of restoration, of rest – I could no longer live without.

The peace of being lifted out of the noise is not just silence… it’s a stillness, a quietness of heart that somehow enables me to hear the pure, clear song of heavenly places. The voice of God that can so easily be drowned out by the clamour of our everday lives, has the power to lift and restore us, to reset our perspective and slow down our anxious hearts.  Hearing it, allowing it to wash over you, leaning back for a moment into God’s arms and listening to the song he sings over you, is inexpressibly beautiful.

And after a little while, sometimes just five minutes, sometimes a bit longer, he gently lowers the needle again and the music begins to play in more or less the place it was in before. The noise resumes, but now my heart is better able to deal with it.

I know that each of you who reads this are living different, complicated, unique lives.  The noise you might need to be lifted out of might be very different to mine.  Loneliness or boredom can be just as deafening as busyness is.   However, I’m equally sure that there is noise that you need to be lifted out of and away from once in a while.

This picture is a promise to each of you.  Although the record will probably not stop turning, and your own noise may well still continue for a while; at any time you can call out to him,  and God will lift you out into this place of peace.  He will hold you so that you can lean into him, he will whisper to you in the stillness,  he will sing his song of love over you and he will restore your soul.  And then… he will put you back into your noisy world, but with the stillness of heaven in the centre of your heart.

Living the Life

“What difference does it make… right here, right now?”

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The leader of the missions team I went on as a teenager loved to shove a microphone into our hands and say, “Ellie, tell us what difference it makes to you to know Jesus, right here… right now.”

It’s a great question, if a little difficult to answer as a snappy soundbite in front of a crowd of young people!

What difference does Jesus make?

The next few postcards are going to be trying to answer that question, there are going to be many answers, but the first is that, for me, Jesus is like a cup of really great Latte.

One of the things I love about living in Cyprus is the café culture, especially the part where I get to meet up with good friends and drink (skinny decaff caramel) latte on a big sofa while we talk about all the things that are going on in our lives.

For me, this postcard -a massive cup of latte- represents three things about Jesus that I now know I couldn’t do without:

The first is friendship.  The kind where you can pour out your heart without fear of being judged or rejected.  The kind that doesn’t mind if you’re twenty minutes late and that you’ve got wet hair, or a bit of the kids’ breakfast has welded itself to your jeans.  And the kind that has time to listen to all the tiny things that matter to you without yawning or checking its watch.

Jesus weeps with me when I cry, he laughs with me over the crazy things that happen in my life, he shows me things I would never have noticed, speaks perfect wisdom and pours it all out with unending, grace filled love.  Best of all, he invites me into deeper and deeper friendship with him.  He asks me to join him for coffee.

The second thing is comfort.  This warm, sweet, milky drink is very like the ‘mellow birds’ my Mum used to make for me when I was a little girl.  It fills me up, the warmth seeping into my bones, helping me to relax down into the comfy armchairs.

Jesus’ love for me feels just like that.  It’s like being filled up with something warm and nourishing on a cold day.  Sweet, comforting, and I’m sure much more nutritious than a caffe latte, his presence warms and transforms me from the inside out.

Thirdly, Jesus’ love for me (and you) is vast.  Until last week I’d never seen a cup of coffee so huge it needed two handles to help you lift it but my lovely friend Jo ordered a grandissimo and this is what she got.  We both laughed at how enormous it was and wondered if she’d be able to lift it –  a massive, comedy-scale, giant’s kitchen of a mug containing a pint and a half of cappucino.  More coffee, as it turns out, than she was able to drink.

And I drew that particular mug (but filled it with latte, because that’s my favourite) because I am absolutely confident that I will never get to the bottom of the cup that is Jesus’ love for me.  It is bigger than I can imagine.  And, not because of who I am, but entirely because of who he is,  his cup contains much, much more than I can drink.

massimolatte

Living the Life

Meandering

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There are times when life feels like floating along a great big meandering river: it takes an enormous amount of time to negotiate a long curve and then, after what seems like an age, you find yourself back in almost exactly the same place that you were before.

Arriving back in a place that you thought you’d left far behind you can be deeply disappointing and frustrating.  Becoming ill again after a time of feeling better, revisiting a family or relationship issue, facing the same old temptation or just realising that once again you can hear God saying the same thing to you that he’s  said over and over again in the past; all these can leave you ready to give up or to yell at the Lord “but we’ve been here before!”

“All that effort and I’ve travelled no distance at all”.

It amused me this morning to read that in rivers, meanders are a feature of maturity.  Young rivers cut in a straight line to begin with,  and only as they get more mature (and more powerful) do they start to wander about revisiting old ground and seem to make only very slow progress forwards.

I wonder if life-meanders are more likely to be a feature for us too as we become more mature in faith? When I first became a Christian, so much seemed to be easy and obvious,  life and discipleship was much more of a straight line.  It felt as though I was quick to learn things and deal with things. As time as gone on I’ve realised that there are deeper things, ground-in patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that seem to need a different treatment.  Revisiting the same issues and challenges, each time armed with a little more experience and grace seems to be a part of that process.

If you understand this experience of having travelled the long bend of the river and found yourself, unexpectedly, back where you started, this is God’s word for you today:

It’s not about the distance travelled, it’s about who you’ve become while we travelled it together.

Because even if today you’re arriving back in the same old place, you are not the same old you.

On the journey to get here you will have changed, grown and learned. You don’t actually have to respond in the same way you did before.  You probably won’t.

And while you are back in almost the same place, this time you’re approaching it from a different direction and with grace and experience in your backpack.

So don’t get frustrated and lose heart my friends, when you find yourself back in old places, don’t believe the lie that you’ve travelled nowhere. Instead, remember that journey, and all the things that God taught you while you were travelling and then look down at the new you that Jesus has helped you to become on the way.

meandersreflect greens

Living the Life

a burst of yellow flowers

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It’s as if a painter has accidentally knocked over a huge tin of bright yellow paint, and puddles and splashes of it have ended up over the whole city…

Lizzie, Katie and I went for a walk along the trail beside our ‘river’ on Sunday afternoon.  For most of the year there is no water at all visible in the little creek that runs through the middle of the city.  The river bed, and the fields around it are dry and bare with only the dull green of eucalyptus and occasional olive trees to break up the grey of rocks and dust.

But this winter, rain has fallen. Days and days of it.  And melting snow from the mountains has swelled the dried-up river from a tiny trickle to a babbling brook.

The biggest change though, happens just as the rain has slowed and the sun has reappeared –  a burst of yellow wildflowers.

If you look closely it seems there is more than one kind of flower in the sea of yellow that has flooded the river banks and fields all over the city, but there they are, all gathered together, dancing in the spring breeze and refusing to be ignored.

It reminds me very much of this from the Song of Solomon:

My beloved spoke and said to me,
    “Arise, my darling,
    my beautiful one, come with me

 See! The winter is past;
    the rains are over and gone.
 Flowers appear on the earth;
    the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
    is heard in our land.
 The fig tree forms its early fruit;
    the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
    my beautiful one, come with me.”  

Songs 2:11-13 NIV

Spring is coming, winter is past, but never forget that the flowers are there because of the rain.

I love the beauty of the yellow flowers at this time of year.  I love that they spring up in unexpected places, nodding gently in the gaps in the garage forecourt, partying wildly in newly-green fields,  rioting across patches of wasteland and defiantly leaning out from behind dustbins and lamp posts.

But those flowers that make my heart sing come as a direct result of something I don’t like nearly so much – the continuous rain and cloud of winter.

I’m fairly sure that I’m walking into a springtime kind of a season just now…

For those of you who don’t see the flowers yet, for those of you who are still living in a season of cloudy skies, rain or storms, hear this:

The flowers are coming.

The seeds are deep in the ground but soaking up the rain and the day is coming when the warmth of the presence of God will call them to burst out in your life.

My great friend Ute, is forever singing this line of a song at me… ‘what if your blessings come through raindrops?’

I don’t always have the courage to look at the raindrops in my life and hunt for the blessing,  I don’t always have the ability to see it coming…  But I do know that eventually the day comes when Jesus calls out to me and to you:

  “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past;  the rains are over and gone.… Flowers appear on the earth”

yellow flowers

Living the Life

On being open

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This picture takes me right back to the first year of high school, sitting at a long bench on the top floor of the science block in a lab coat and goggles and nervously lighting a bunsen burner for the first time.

In case you’ve never used one, a bunsen burner is a very simple and common piece of laboratory equipment used for heating or burning things. It runs on gas and has an open flame which can be controlled by moving a collar at the bottom so that a little hole opens and closes letting in more or less air.

We soon got over our ten-year old nervousness and used them to burn all sorts of things we shouldn’t have.. but that’s another story. That evening’s assignment (my first ever science homework) was to draw two pictures of a bunsen burner: one with the collar closed, preventing air from mixing with the gas and producing a yellow flame; the other like this one, with the hole completely open, letting in lots of air and turning the flame blue.

The science is along the lines of the flame needing oxygen to make it burn more efficiently.  The hole-fully-open blue flame is much much hotter. If the gas is mixed with pure oxygen as in an oxy-acetylene torch the blue flame it produces can cut through metal!

The bunsen burner in today’s picture is burning much hotter because it is open to the air.

It’s made me think about my openness to the Holy Spirit and the work he wants to do in me and through me. I so much want to be open so that God can breathe into me and my flame burn hotter!

What I notice is that it’s really easy to let that collar slip round and become slightly (or very) closed to the Holy Spirit’s breath on me.

For me the killer is busyness: not taking the time to turn my face towards God and let him breathe, not taking the time to sit in the sunshine of his presence and be warmed.  But there are other airhole-closers…

Sometimes fear, fear of being hurt, fear that God’s power might overwhelm you, fear that you might look silly, fear of what he might ask you to do, even fear that he might reject you if you are that vulnerable to him, will drive you to close your heart off a little… or a lot.

For some people anger over what has happened (or not happened) in the past will lead them to punish God by turning their faces away. Just as we can punish other people by not talking to them, or not being open to them, it’s easy to fall into doing the same to God when we feel like he has let us down.

And lastly of course sin, whatever shape or form it takes can cut us off from the oxygen of the breath of God until we repent of it and receive his forgiveness.

For me, this picture is a call to be open, to be vulnerable to, the Holy Spirit and his work, so that the flame of our passion and ministry can burn hotter.

Today I’m going to ask God to show me how open I am to him and the breath of his Spirit, to show me how far the collar is twisted around on the bunsen burner that is my life and to show me what I can do to be more open to him. This week why don’t you find some time, make some time to be open to God and ask him to breathe on you again? Bring him your fear, your forgiveness, your pain, your sin and your hope, and in return ask for his life-bringing oxygen-carrying Holy Spirit.  It sounds like a good swap to me.

Burn hotter my friends, and who knows what you will be able to cut through…