Episode 101 - The Unfamiliar Places of God

I’m currently in the middle of three weeks that I will spend volunteering at my old college. I have mainly been helping in the kitchen so far. I have never worked in a kitchen before. And before you say it, yes I have cooked before! But working in a kitchen is very different, they have deep fat fryers, and food mixers the size of normal ovens. Everything is much much bigger and most meals are made for at least sixty people as opposed to six at most. And it’s not just the equipment and the scale of everything which was new to me. All of the tasks are new to me too, even the simple things needed to be explained thoroughly so that I understood exactly what I was required to do for each task. 

At first it is quite uncomfortable being in a totally unfamiliar environment, not just not knowing where anything is kept, but also not knowing what most of the stuff there is either! On top of that there is the not knowing how to engage with your surroundings, how to do even simple tasks, not knowing how to do the very work that you are there to do. It must be said that in many of these respects it’s not too dissimilar to doing “missionary” work abroad! I have to say that although not comfortable at first, and a little frustrating, I think it has been good for me.

For most of our lives we spend our times in places that are familiar to us doing things that we have done many times before. Even when we do go to new places or try new things they usually have aspects of familiarity to us and we usually only engage with them for a short time before returning to more familiar places or activities. Being immersed in the unfamiliar for long periods of time has helped remove some of my self-reliance, my pride, my inward focus and my blinkeredness to others. It has helped me to cultivate under used skills, not just cutting carrots and peeling potatoes, but things like asking for help and advice.

There seems to be a sort of sweet spot in the world of the unfamiliar. Just beyond the overwhelming disorder but before familiarity sets in, where something special seems to take place, where all of this seems to happen. And I can’t help noticing that all through our lives God seems to keep bringing us to that place, to new and unfamiliar things. Partly this is undoubtedly because He always has so much more that He wants for us, but I’m also starting to see that perhaps he wants to help keep us in that place; a place where we come to Him rather than looking to our own wisdom for the answers. I just wonder if sometimes I let my own comfort keep me in my familiar places and stop me from following Him into the unfamiliar places of God.

Episode 100 - More Frogs

I’m not really much of a reader. I read slowly, I get easily distracted and I generally find it hard work. Despite this I love stories and I even love books, I just don’t read them much. But there is one book that I read a little bit of every day. My Bible. I read it every day because I genuinely believe that God speaks to me through it and that He uses it to help me become a better me. Now I have read it before (so you don’t need to worry about giving me any spoilers), but unlike the other books on my shelf that I’ve read once and have ever since been collecting dust (or that are collecting dust as they still wait to be read for them for the first time), I keep coming back to my Bible. And the incredible thing is that no matter how many times I read it, God always shows me something new (or sometimes something I’d forgotten…).

Recently I’ve been reading about how God brought the people of Israel up out of slavery from Egypt. In the story Moses comes before Pharaoh (who is enslaving the Israelites) to speak on God’s behalf. Moses would tell Pharaoh that unless he let the Israelites go, God would do something bad to Egypt. Pharaoh would ignore Moses, something bad would happen, Pharaoh would plead with Moses to ask God to stop, God would stop and then the whole thing would start all over again. This happened ten times until Pharaoh finally gave up. It’s a story I’ve heard hundreds of times before since being small and even so, this week I noticed something in the story I’d never noticed before.

At one point in the story Moses tells Pharaoh that unless he lets the Israelites go, God will send a plague of frogs upon Egypt. Pharaoh refuses, and so a plague of frogs appears and there are frogs everywhere. The stories in the bible never fail to amaze me. Often it’s the Character of God and the choices He makes, sometimes however, it’s the people in the stories and the crazy things they do. Upon arrival of all the frogs, Pharaoh calls all of his magicians and wise men to come before him and respond to the crisis in the land. And respond they do. How? Why by summoning more frogs of course. MORE FROGS! Why would anyone think; “I know what this situation requires – more frogs!” I mean if I was Pharaoh, I’d be saying; “that’s just great guys, thanks so much for making the situation exactly twice as bad as it was before you started”. The strange thing is that he doesn’t seem to respond at all. Pharaoh’s not a nice guy. He’s the kind of guy who would have anyone who displeased him killed, along with their families, but it seems that this was actually what Pharaoh wanted them to do.

Well this just seems crazy to me. Or at least it did. Until I really thought about the question that wouldn’t seem to leave me alone; WHY!? Why on earth would anyone do that!? And then I realised that I had made a terrible assumption. I had assumed that Pharaoh, the most powerful, revered man in all of the land was trying to fix this problem that had hit this land which he was supposed to look after. He wasn’t. He had no interest in preserving his country, only his pride. He was used to ruling the roost, giving out the orders and doing what he pleased. Suddenly this guy came along, challenged his authority and told him what to do in his own palace! Pharaoh felt he needed to show his authority and power, to show that Moses (and indeed God) had no business telling him what to do, to show that whatever God could do, he could do to. Even if that what was causing havoc in the country he was supposed to be looking after. Pharaoh’s folly seems obvious to us but it was hidden from him. It would be easy to condemn Pharaoh but the truth is that I can’t say I haven’t wreaked havoc to myself and those around me trying to save my pride. I guess we all have a bit of Pharaoh in us, and we have something to learn from Pharaoh’s foolishness.