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.