Living the Life

wise men and pearls

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epiphany  əˈpifənē/:  a sudden and great revelation, insight or realization.

Last tuesday we celebrated the festival of Epiphany (another national holiday here in Cyprus), remembering the revelation of God to a group of magi (wise men) somewhere in the east and their subsequent journey to worship Jesus in Bethlehem.  I always wonder exactly what it was that they discovered and how they found it, because it’s clear that those wise men(however many of them there might have been) were so taken, so intrigued by whatever had been revealed to them that they chose to undertake a long and probably arduous journey in order to discover more.

Interestingly, it seems likely that they followed a similar route to Abraham, who also travelled from the east in search of the answer to a promise God had revealed to him.  Abraham found the promised land, but the magi found God himself.

This idea of a sudden and great revelation that leads to a journey has reminded me of one of my favourite Bible stories:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Matthew 13: 45-46 NKJV

The merchant had his own moment of sudden and great realisation:  the knowledge that there was a pearl so beautiful that every other that he had ever seen paled into comparison beside it.  And it led him to begin an uncompromising pursuit of that pearl, giving up everything he had previously valued in order too have it.

In all these cases that what fired the pursuit was a revelation that there was something of inestimable value to be found or gained.  A sudden understanding that it is was worth looking, worth hunting, worth travelling out of your way, worth pursuing, worth paying the fare, worth letting go of everything else to find it.

It was a lightbulb moment – a hearing from God moment – a moment when everything changed and the world snapped into different perspective that motivated the wise men and Abraham to start their relentless pursuits of what had been dangled tantalisingly before them.   It wasn’t something that man did, but something that God did.

I’m feeling like this month, epiphany month, is a time to ask God to weigh in.  Ask him to weigh in with ‘sudden and great realisation and revelation’ in the lives of people you love, in the lives of your work colleagues and friends and even in the lives of people you don’t really know.  It’s a time to ask for God to reveal himself and to draw people into a journey towards the promise he has for them.  It’s a time to ask him to dangle the pearl of great price that is the kingdom of heaven in front of their noses so that a unquenchable yearning for more breaks open in their hearts.

And, while we’re there, perhaps we should ask that he does it for us too.

 

 

This post 52, and it marks the end of a full year of postcards.  Thank you to every one of you who has read them and shared them, and especially to those who’ve written to say you’ve heard God through them.  I’m going to post regularly on a thursday this year as my wednesdays have got a bit busy… See you then, Ellie x

 

 

Living the Life

Happy New Year – Hill walking

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I’m quite partial to a long slow walk in the countryside, especially if it’s between tearooms. And I particularly love walking (very slowly) up hills.   I often come to a point in the walk or climb where I’m ready to have a little sit down.  I’m very British, so it’s a joy to me to sit down somewhere sheltered-ish on a fold out mat, get out a flask of tea and a sandwich and just sit for a while and look.  And I think the first couple of weeks of a new year might be the perfect time to do a good bit of looking.

Looking should be savoured. In my opinion it’s better than the actual walking… I like to look back and congratulate myself, remember the pain and the exhilaration;  look at where I am now, enjoy the view;  and look ahead to where I’d like to get to, when I feel like I’ve got the energy to get up and move again.

It’s good to look back at where you’ve been.  To remember that stretch where the walking was a joy and the scent of the flowers around you almost carried you along; the slope that seemed a particularly hard climb; the part where you slipped and fell into the thorns and came out limping and bleeding and yet somehow got up and carried on.  If you look back at the journey of 2014 there will have been different kinds of terrain, injuries, happy times, and people who came and walked beside you in it all, it’s worth taking some time to reflect.

It’s even better to sit next to Jesus and ask him to show you where he was, how he helped you, how he felt as he walked beside you on that climb. Joys and struggles, triumph and disaster.  Don’t judge for yourself, ask him to show you what you did well, what you learned, how you’ve grown.

And while you’re resting with Jesus at the very beginning of 2015, you might choose to have a quick look through your back pack for any rocks you might have accidentally picked up and carried with you this year. Lumps of unforgiveness especially have the ability to slow you down.  It might really help to get rid of them now and not carry them through into the next year!

Looking ahead is harder.  The view back is always clearer than the one in front.  It’s probably better not to second guess it,  and if you’re like me you’ll be in the thick of January before you have time to ask too many questions.  You might just ask for one word or picture that says something about what God wants you to learn or be in the next year and then, if you’re brave enough, look up into Jesus’ eyes and say “I’m not sure where I’m going, but I trust you to lead the way”.

 

Living the Life

A Christmas Card from Postcards from Heaven

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I’ve been in conversation with God for some time now about what picture should appear on the front of your Christmas postcard… A scene of Bethlehem? Something tinselly? But no, this odd little bauble-bottle is what keeps coming into my head and there’s no getting away from it…

it doesn’t have a name, as far as I know it doesn’t even exist and I can’t imagine it would be useful, but Jesus often doesn’t follow my rules and I always eventually realise it is easier just to go with what I think he’s showing me! So this is it: A two-chamber bauble-bottle that holds more one type of liquid.

Christmas is just like this.. Christmas is a container that holds more than one thing..

I really love it.  I love the kids’ excitement, the preparations, the sense of specialness, the time with friends, the family traditions, the special food, the random animals in nativity plays and even the theologically-challenged carols.  I just love it.

and yet…

Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday, and this will be our sixth Christmas without him. And at this time of year, I miss him more than ever. I can’t enjoy our traditional family singsong without missing the sound of his voice, I can’t watch my kids in a recital without thinking how proud he would have been of them, and I just can’t do Christmas day without missing his energy and sense of fun.

And I’m guessing for many, if not most of you it’s the same. Along with the joy comes an acute awareness of what has been lost.

Christmas is a container that holds both joy and sadness, and somehow they can only be poured out together.

For me, it’s not possible to experience the joy without also walking through the sadness.  To not allow one of them to be released from the bottle would be to stifle the other as well.  And I really want the joy…

It seems to me, at this time of year, that the world is conspiring to show me a perfect Christmas.  One with perfect, complete families where no-one gets sick, or forgets anything, or worries about money or falls out over the rules of a board game.  Where teenagers leap with joy at the idea of a game of charades, the roast dinner is all warm at the same time, the whole family gather around the piano to sing carols (in four-part harmony) and above all, no-one feels sad, not even for a moment.

It’s not true of course, there is no ‘perfect’ Christmas.  It’s just another impossible standard for me to fail to reach. Not everything has to be perfect anyway, and I suspect that the fact that the joy always comes mixed in with sadness just makes me normal.

For those of you who are similarly normal: Know that God understands.  He understands great joy and deep sadness.  And he reaches out to carry you through both.

So on this festive postcard I will wish you a Happy Christmas, but because that on its own doesn’t seem quite real enough:

This Christmas

May you have enough joy to soften your sadness

Enough peace to calm your storms

and enough hope to look up into the eyes of the Saviour of the World and to find yourself covered by his love.

Living the Life

Bigger on the inside.

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If you’re reading this in the UK you probably don’t need me to tell you what this is, or why I associate it with Christmas… but for those of you that aren’t:

This is the TARDIS. It’s from the long running UK TV show Dr Who and it’s a time-travelling spaceship. It’s become something of an iconic image and because of the unmissably excellent Christmas Day special episodes, it doesn’t seem entirely out of place in the jumble of jolly santas, cherubic angels and sprigs of holly.

Apart from that, all you need to know is this: It’s bigger on the inside.

On the outside it’s the size and shape of a 1960’s British Police telephone box (a regular sight on UK streets when this series started, ten years before I was born!), but on the inside it is apparently vast (there are even rumours of a swimming pool.)  Ask any Dr Who fan to describe the TARDIS and that’s what they’ll tell you – ‘it’s bigger on the inside’.

Think of how you would gasp in awe and wonder if you were to walk through that little blue door and discover that it is so much more than it appears to be.  Think of how you would run outside again to check and double check what you were seeing.  Think of how much your mind would be expanded!

Wow!

Awesome!

That really would be amazing.  To see something that so defied my understanding of how things are, how they work, of what is possible.  I’m pretty sure that I would be bursting to tell people about it but might also struggle to find the right words to describe how that discovery makes me feel…

All this reminds me of another image I associate with Christmas day:

A new-born baby.  Small, soft-skinned and helpless. Wrapped in a cloth and lying in a straw-filled manger.

And when I look, I hear God whisper,

“Can you see it?… Can you see what the shepherds saw, what the wise men travelled to see?”

“He’s bigger on the inside”

This is the extraordinary miracle of Christmas for me, perhaps even more amazing than the Easter-miracle of the resurrection:

Our God who spoke the universe into the existence and holds every part of it together; our God who said “let there be light” and who is the light;  our God who is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely creative, infinitely loving, infinitely big; everything that he is is somehow contained inside that tiny cloth-wrapped package in the manger… Astounding.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him

Colossians 1:19

Take a moment today to let that sink in again.

Take some time to be awestruck,

to marvel.

and don’t be fooled by the tiny, helpless, sweet-smelling, soft-skinned baby in the manger…

He’s so much more than he appears to be.

Seriously bigger on the inside.

tardisfeat

Living the Life

A Crucible for Silver… or Steel?

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The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.

Proverbs 17:3 NIV

This week’s postcard had a particularly unusual beginning!  A friend walked up to me on Sunday morning and asked me if I knew where in Sheffield the World Snooker Championships are held.  Predictably enough I had no idea.  So he filled me in – “The Crucible”, he said.  And then walked off.

You may conclude from this that I have some rather odd friends, but later that day when my poorly 6-year-old requested a pantomime on TV, and I picked the first one on Youtube, the opening shot was the word ‘Crucible’ up in lights on a billboard and the words ‘live from the Crucible theatre in Sheffield” at the bottom of the screen.  At times like this, I start to pay attention…

This postcard of a crucible in action might be making you concerned for tough times ahead, a fire that will heat you up and draw impurities to the surface so that God can skim them off.  Probably good, definitely terrifying, possibly true;  and the way people often interpret this verse.

But the journey God has taken me on while praying about this picture has led me to some other places, and I’ll share them with you now, in case he has something to say to you in them too.

The first thing I’ve been reflecting is another verse from Proverbs, which casts a light on how the Lord tests us for purity:

The crucible is for silver and the furnace is for gold, so a person is tested by being praised.

Proverbs 27:21 NRSV

So it’s not the oncoming stress of Christmas that’s going to test your heart in the crucible; or people yelling at you over the things you did or forgot to do; or grumpy teenagers, or any of the many genuinely difficult things you face.

No.

It will be the praise of men: the pats on the back, the applause, the people telling you what a great mum, cook, crafter, house-decorator, work colleague, singer, teacher, father, pastor _________ (fill in the blank) you are, that will be the heat that drives the impurities to the surface and shows you up for who you really are.

Of course, I’m not saying it’s bad to give or receive encouragement or praise, I think it’s great.  But just be aware that it will test you.  When people praise you, notice what rises to the surface, how you react and feel.  It may be an opportunity for revelation!

The other thing I felt God say when I looked at this picture is:

“Don’t think you’re always the silver, sometimes I am calling you to be the crucible“.

So I looked it up. A crucible is a container made of a material that is able to withstand very high temperatures.  It can be used to melt metals to make tools or beautiful jewellery, and also to create alloys – a combination of metals that can’t be reversed – like bronze or steel.  The reaction that needs to take place to create these strong, important, useful materials can only happen in a container able to cope with very high heat.

Some changes, some miracles, can’t take place without a crucible, a person willing to carry the miracle, a person willing to take the heat

And at this time of year, when I’m thinking of the ultimate miracle of the incarnation, this reminds me of the extraordinary faith and courage of a very young woman who looked into the heat ahead of her and said: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38 NRSV)

This Advent, may you each have the faith and courage of young Mary, and if God calls you to be a crucible for your miracle, or someone else’s, may you be able to say with her, “Yes,  let it be as you have said”.

Living the Life

Apple Chunks

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Today I felt God saying that for this week’s postcard I should paint an apple.  So here it is.  My favourite kind, a sweet crunchy Gala. Yum.

Shortly after I painted it, my youngest asked if she could eat it, and as she is still a bit short in the front teeth department, whether I would mind cutting it up for her.

I wonder if what God is trying to say to me today is in there somewhere.  The good news about Jesus is the sweetest, most beautiful, healthy ‘food’ we could ever have the joy to taste.  But it’s also easier to eat if it’s cut up into chunks.

The advent season is a wonderful time to talk about Jesus, about the extraordinary miracle of God becoming a helpless child, about that tiny baby who was also the Saviour of the World, about the stories of shepherds and wise men and how they responded to him, and about how we choose to respond to him.

Advent is a time when faith conversations naturally start, so watch out for opportunites, and when you see them, don’t be ashamed to catch the moment and join in with what God is doing in people’s lives.

But, (and here’s where my picture comes in) don’t feel like you have to give them the whole apple.

Cut it up and hand out some slices. The gospel is biiiig. It’s much easier to digest in little chunks. And it’s also possible to share it out while remembering to eat some of it ourselves!

And, you know, when people taste that sweetness, many of them will come back for more.

I don’t know about you,  but I like this picture.  It takes the pressure off a bit, and I need that at this time of year!

But it also helps me to think that it might just be possible to join in with the conversations God is having with my family and friends this advent, and to have some conversations with God of my own in amongst all the pre-Christmas chaos. And that would be good.

Living the Life

Carried Away…

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You hardly ever meet anyone from the UK who is ambiguous about the contents of the little black jar with the yellow lid.  Personally – I LOVE it, but Marmite (yeast extract, for the uninitiated) is one of life’s dividers, and as they say in their ad campaign – “you either love it or you hate it”. There’s no middle ground!

Here’s my revelation for today:

God is like Marmite.

When I first decided to follow Jesus I was fifteen, and I remember my grandfather saying to me at the time:

“Ellie, a bit of religion is OK, but you don’t want to get carried away”

Funny, the things you remember.  He was a good man, my Grandfather, but on this occasion, absolutely wrong.

The God who gave his only son so that the world could be reconciled to himself; the God who invites me to call him Father, and calls me his child; the God who created the glorious expanse of the universe with his words, and uses that same voice to whisper his love into my ear; this God who is unknowable and yet allows himself to be known by us..

deserves everything.

All my passion.

All my time.

All my energy.

All my trust.

All my dignity.

Everything.

God is Marmite.

You can’t be ambivalent, easy-going, under-control, take-it-or-leave-it, calm or cool about him.  You can’t be half-hearted or hold back to keep yourself ‘safe’.  That’s not what he deserves and it’s not what he’s calling us to…

So this week my friends, when you have the choice, choose to be passionate, choose to be abandoned, choose to be all-in, choose to be wholehearted in your pursuit of our amazing God.

Get carried away!

He’s more than worth it.

marmitefeatured

Living the Life

Pray First

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Have you ever tried cutting fabric with children’s paper scissors?  Or worse still with plastic-blade safety scissors? Actually – why would you ever choose to make life that difficult?

If you do try – it’s just possible that it can be done, but with short blunt blades it’s likely to be time consuming, difficult and very frustrating.  And those short blades will mean you can only take short snips (or hacks!) so chances are your line will end up ragged and wonky. It will be hard work and take ages.

What a difference it makes to use my special dressmaking scissors (woe betide any child who ‘borrows’ them to cut paper!).  These are the tool for the job – large, sharp-as-can-be and heavy enough to take some of the hard work out of cutting even thick fabrics.  If you had the choice, you’d never go back to the plastic version. These beauties can eat fabric for breakfast.

The picture for this week is really simple.  I felt God say to me that every job I do without taking time to pray first is like trying to cut fabric with paper scissors.  Sometimes they will be enough, and I can struggle through alone. I might not do a brilliant job, but it will be OK.  Sometimes, however, it will be all but impossible. I will give up frustrated and exhausted by the task.

But if I ask, the Holy Spirit can transform my ‘enough’, my little scissors, into dressmakers shears that can cut easily, fluidly and well.  Prayer makes that kind of difference: It can make the difficult easy and the impossible achievable.

I can keep going (with my little paper scissors) and face every challenge all by myself, but…

…why would I choose to make my life that difficult?

So there are only two words written on the back of this particular postcard.

They’re transforming my week.

I hope they transform yours too.

“Pray First”

scissorsfeat

Identity, Living the Life

Wallpaper

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Sometimes you just become so used to things that you can’t see them anymore.

After we took down the old cooker hood in our first home we were left with an ugly taped-up wire sticking out of the kitchen wall. In the beginning it really annoyed me, but after a few months I stopped noticing it and after two years we were discussing jobs that needed doing and I genuinely thought we had already had it fixed!

Even gruesomely patterned wallpaper like this one can eventually become so familiar that you no longer notice it (or no longer find it offensive!).

Whether or not we notice it, most of us have wallpaper inside our heads:  The background messages of the things that were spoken over us, or that we said to ourselves, when we were kids and trying to make sense of the world.  Messages like ‘I’m not important’ or ‘it’s not safe’, ‘I’m lazy’ or ‘I’m not good enough’.

Many of us have come to faith in Jesus and have valiantly tried to paste the truth he has to say about us over the top of the words of the past, covering up the old messages with the new ones that know in our heads are true.

I don’t know about you, but my trouble is that the wallpaper of my past is definitely of a 1970’s variety – Bright bold patterns and made of shiny vinyl.  It’s a big job to get any new wallpaper to stick over the top of a decorama vinyl like this one… and even if you do get it to stick, chances are that a pattern this bright and bold will show through whatever you paste on top!

When this happens to you, it’s not a sign that you’re not a good enough Christian; that you’re not ‘saved’ enough; or that you’re not believing hard enough… It just means you need to do some redecorating..

If this was a wikihow, there would be pictures… but:

Stage One: Notice what’s there

Ask God to show you what it is your believing about yourself, or Him that is not true.  Even if you’re so used to it that you don’t really see it anymore, ask him to show you the wallpaper.

Stage Two: Look at it

Admit that what’s there is not the truth about you.  Even if you’ve got so used to it that it feels kind of comfortable and familiar, if it’s not what God says it has to go…

Stage Three: Get rid of it

Now you’ve seen the ugly truth… Don’t just try to cover it up again! Start stripping it off. Confess to God that you believe a lie about yourself, or Him.  Repent of it.  Choose not to behave as if it’s true.. Ask him to reveal the truth under the layers…  Just as it takes steam to melt the glue that sticks the paper in place, so it takes some prayer (yours and maybe someone elses) to loosen the grip of old lies in your life… but it can be done.

Well doesn’t that make it sound easy.

Honestly?… Anyone who has stripped off Vinyl wallpaper will tell you it’s really hard work, but not impossible.  Be kind to yourself… do a bit at a time!

And finally- Whenever we take down old wallpaper in our house in England, I’m always afraid that the plaster on the walls is going to come away with it, like actually it’s only this sheet of wallpaper that’s holding the wall together, and taking it down is probably a really bad idea.

If you’re afraid of taking down your wallpaper, because of what you might find underneath – know this: The moment you trusted in Christ, and handed over the reins of your life to him, the plaster, the part at the core of who you are, underneath all the messages you’ve papered on, was made completely new.

Perfect.

Spotless.

Without bump or blemish.

New.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

wallpaperfeat

For your Journal:

Ask God if there’s a wall that needs a bit of attention in your heart.  Ask him to show you if there’s a lie you are believing about yourself or about him.

It might not just ‘fall into your head’, but at some point this week it might be that the Holy Spirit draws your attention to something you think or feel, or an incident that hurts you or angers you more than you think it should.  If you have one of these ‘aha’ moments, choose to look at the wallpaper and see it for what it is.  Then start to take it down.

Living the Life

Rolled-up Walls

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I have tents on the brain this week.  Next weekend I’m taking my Girl Guide unit camping for the first time, but not, thank heaven, in one of these!

This is the kind of tent that I used to camp in back when I was a guide.  It had two very sturdy wooden poles supporting a ridge pole and was made of a heavy green canvas that always smelled slightly damp.

In the picture God showed me this week, the tent was set for daytime, with its doors unlaced and tied back and its walls rolled up to let air circulate all the way through and blow away the dampness of the night.

I’ve been pondering and praying today about what God might be saying to me through this picture.  Perhaps you could tell me what it says to you, but this is where I’m up to:

In brick or block built house, all the strength is in the walls, the boundaries.  take them away and the floors and roof would fall, leaving no house…   In this tent, all the strength is in the centre, on two posts and the ridge, and in the main guys, which hold those poles in place.

Because in this kind of tent the walls play no part in holding the whole thing together, it’s possible to roll them up and store them out of the way.  So in the daytime it’s possible for people to crawl into the shelter of the roof from any direction, not just through the doorway.  The walls are just not as important as the poles.

I wonder if God is saying to us that some of us are treating our lives (and our churches) as though they were brick built houses, with all the weight being carried by the boundaries.  We fear that if we shift those boundaries, or roll them back to allow more people ‘in’, the whole thing will come tumbling down.  But in this picture all the weight is carried at the centre.  And as long as those weight-bearing poles are held in position, the walls are actually optional.

A lot of the Christian writing I’ve read lately seems to be more concerned with the walls than the poles.  Who can be ‘in’ and who not. I wonder if we all want to draw a ring around a group of people (with ourselves near the centre 🙂 ) and say “inside this line is OK, acceptable.  Outside, well, I’m afraid not.”   We want there to be walls – they make us feel safe, reassure us that we are ‘on the inside’.

And yet we also all know that none of us are ‘acceptable’, except through the sacrifice of Jesus. None of us earned the right to be on the inside by believing the right bit of doctrine or by toeing the right line.. Our position was (and is) beautiful, extravagant, undeserved.

I don’t know exactly where I’m heading with this one folks,  tough meat takes some simmering, and this might still be a little underdone in my head…

…but, I think the important thing must be to decide what bits of our doctrine, our rules for living, our limits of ‘acceptability’ are part of the ‘posts’ and which bits are ‘walls’.  What is really weight-bearingly important and what isn’t.

And then?

…Then we humbly lay down our need to be ‘right’ and roll up the walls in order to welcome more people in.

rolledupfeat

P.S.  Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to you at all.  Maybe you were most caught by the idea of the warm wind of the Spirit blowing away all the dampness of the night.  If that’s the case,  then maybe he’s just calling you to open up more of your edges to him. To let him blow through parts of yourself that you’ve kept closed off, and to know that it’s OK to roll-up the walls… the roof can stay up without them. x

Words and Pictures to help you hear from God