Episode 154 - Faith Like This

Apparently, the Bible records 37 miracles that Jesus performed. I say apparently because I haven’t actually counted for myself because I’m lazy (read efficient?) but it sounds about right so I’m happy to accept it. About two-thirds of these miracles were healings (I know, really going for pinpoint accurate statistics today). There are two which have struck me recently. The first is the healing of a centurion’s servant. The centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant but says that there’s no need for Jesus to travel to the servant because He can just say the word and the servant would be healed. Jesus extols the centurion’s faith, and the servant is healed by the time the centurion gets home. The second is the healing of a woman who had been suffering with bleeding for twelve years and had spent everything she had on doctors and medicine to no avail. She pushed through the crowd just hoping to touch the edge of Jesus’ robe because she believed if she did, she would be healed. She reached out and touched His robe and was healed. And Jesus declared that it was because of her faith that she had been healed.

When I first thought about these two stories, I hoped that my faith was more like the centurions than the woman who reached out to Jesus’ robe. The centurion is a striking character, one who exudes confidence. On the other hand, the woman who reached out to Jesus’ robe comes across as someone who has lost control and is desperate. I am ashamed to say that my immediate response was to be quite judgemental of the two characters and to jump to conclusions. I even wondered that if the woman who had suffered with bleeding had the faith of the centurion, she would have been healed a long time before. I’m fairly sure it doesn’t work like that though and I realised that I had been looking at it all wrong. The stories were not about these characters but about Jesus. And one person’s faith was not better than another’s, because it wasn’t about the faith they had, but about who they had faith in. And the amazing thing is that whatever our faith is, even if we are too weak to utter any words at all, Jesus is the same powerful loving healer to us all.

Episode 153 - All I can do

 

Sometimes all you can do is pray. There are times in life where we see pain and struggle and our hearts are moved to compassion to help. But sometimes there is no route for our compassion to blossom into action. It remains inside of us burning to be released by some kind of response to what we see. Sometimes all you can do is pray. These words are my response to some such situation. And even as I speak then I am filled with shame at the place within me from which they came. It's not that there is no truth in them. There is. There are often times where prayer is the only thing we can do to help. But these words echo a belief which I do not hold but often act like I do. That prayer is a last resort. That prayer is what you do when there is nothing else to be done. That prayer is the least constructive form of help and the one which is least likely to be successful. 

I know that that's not true so why do I so often act like it, and where do these words come from? Prayer is the most powerful thing I can do and should be the very first thing I reach to when my heart yearns to help. It's not that I shouldn't help in other ways too, of course I should in any way I feel able and moved to, but if my help isn't founded in God's strength, then how much weaker will that help be. I don't know if it's my desire for my help to be recognised or just my nature to trust in my own strength but whatever it is I know that they hold me back from helping as I truly want to. There are sometimes where all I can do is pray, but always, I can pray.

Episode 152 - Painting Over the Cracks

There are somethings that I enjoy doing and there are somethings that I’m good at. There are even somethings which I’m both good at and enjoy doing. Those are things I probably spend most of my time doing. I’m not really sure if I spend my time doing them because I’m good at them or if I’m good at them because I spend my time doing them. This weekend I spent my time on a woodworking project. I enjoy woodworking. I am not good at it. After finishing construction there were lots of marks and cracks in the MDF that I had used where I had made mistakes. Although I had corrected these mistakes and fixed the problem so that it was made as it should have been, these blemishes remained to bare witness to my failings.

Fortunately for me, there is such a thing as paint. As I painted over my mistakes and watched them disappear seemingly by magic, the phrase painting over the cracks came to have a clearing meaning. There was also another expression that came to mind, something which St Peter said in one of his letters; “You should love one another because love covers a multitude of mistakes”. It’s not just in woodworking that I make lots of mistakes, and like my woodworking projects I am full of flaws and failings. But when people chose to love me and chose to show me love despite all of these things, they lose their significance, both to me and to them. In some strange way I think I become beautiful again (not in an aesthetic sense) as I was before I had made those mistakes and as I would be if I didn’t have my flaws. I become free by the love shown to me, and this is never more true than the freedom I have found in the love that Jesus has shown to me.

Episode 151 - Running for the Joy of it

 There are some quirks of humans which I have never understood. There is one which I have observed on numerous occasions that continues to confound me. It is so prevalent that I can't walk home from work without witnessing it; I have been invited to partake in it and I even know that some of you who are reading this will be among those who embody this most curious trait. It is simply this; there are some people in this world who jog… for fun. I have never understood this. I understand running after something, like a football, or away from something, like a axe wielding barbarian, but running just to run seems kind of odd. When I was in school I always enjoyed PE lessons, except that is, for cross country running. It just never seemed fun, merely something I had to endure until I got to the end when I could stop.

One of the new testament writers, Paul, wrote a lot about life being like running a race, and sometimes my attitude towards life can be very similar to my attitude towards jogging. It can be hard and tiring and something that I just need to endure, without being able to see how I could enjoy it. I think maybe I need to learn how to enjoy jogging. And then I think of times in my life when I have run without any reason. Not jogging. Not organised run from here to there, but chaotic run around in circles without direction or purpose, like a lamb who had just learnt how. And as I think about these times, I realise that my joy did not come from running, but rather my running came from my joy. Running was an expression of the overflow and abundance of joy in my heart, not the source of it. I think perhaps to live life with joy is the same; my life must be an outpouring of my joy rather than my joy being the fruit of my life.