Episode 99 - Tresure Hunt!

On Sunday Night my Church Youth Club had a treasure hunt in the park. I love treasure hunts. The anticipation. The excitement. The mystery. Going on a journey to some place unknown but knowing (hoping) that wherever it leads you there will be something exciting at the end. Solving puzzles (which for me is a reward in itself) in order to move forward and reveal a bit more of the journey and perhaps even clues as to the final reward. And of course, there’s the pretending to be pirates. Okay, that last one is entirely optional. And usually not taken up on by anyone apARRRt from me. Needless to say I had a great time.

Sometimes I treat my life and God like a treasure hunt. Like it’s one great mystery waiting to be solved. Like if I put enough effort in and am clever enough and solve enough puzzles I’ll be able to work out the next step or get the reward that I’m after. Let’s be honest life is full of mysteries and problems and sometimes we just want answers. The Bible has a lot to say about how to live life well and how to be a better person. It gives us all the clues we need to solve life’s problems and so it is easy to see how life with God is like a treasure hunt.

But it’s not. It’s not like a treasure hunt at all. In fact, if anything, it’s like a treasure hunt in reverse. It is easy to see life as a challenge that we need to pass by proving our worth and then we get our reward at the end of our lives in the form of a beautiful eulogy and eternity in heaven. But that isn’t the big reward, that isn’t our prize. Or at least it’s only part of it.

You see, God is the prize. Knowing Him and having Him in our lives. There is nothing better than that. And the crazy thing is that in this treasure hunt we get the prize at the beginning of the game! Having solved no mysteries and fixed zero problems we’re already rewarded with the greatest reward of all. And it’s only through this reward not earned by ourselves that we can complete the challenges that lay ahead; that is to live life well and be the people we were made to be. It’s not like any other treasure hunt I’ve ever played before, but it’s my favourite by far!

Episode 98 - Singing Songs Without Words

I can play the Ukulele. Not very well, but I can play it. I often like to use it to sing songs to God. Songs that would often be referred to as worship songs. Songs which express to God how I feel. But sometimes there doesn’t seem to be words to express how I feel. And so I just sit and play. Singing a song without any words because God knows what I feel and so I don’t need to use words to share those feelings with Him. And I guess too, that in those moments I need to listen more than I need to speak.

As I write this, I feel the same as I do in those moments. That in a way, my words aren’t necessary. So if you’ll allow me (and even if you won’t because you have no way of telling me that you wish to refuse me permission) I will stop. Instead of typing I will sit still and listen. And if you’d like to join me then I’d like to invite you to spend the next few minutes that you’d normally spend reading my long winded rambling explanation of my thoughts just to sit and listen too. You might find that someone who’s much more worth listening to than me has something to say…

Episode 97 - Yesterday Today

Although you’re reading this blog on, well, today, I actually wrote this on Wednesday. I did this because I knew something unthinkable was going to happen… I was going to spend the rest of the week somewhere without internet connection! How is this possible in this day and age? Is it even possible to exist without a connection to the internet? Did I survive? I don’t know. I thinks it’s safe to assume I did though. I am of course being intentionally over dramatic as this is something which is a semi-regular occurrence in my life and to tell the truth I actually find it quite refreshing. I’m more impressed that I was organised enough to remember to write this before I left!

It feels oddly strange writing a weekly blog after only half of the week has passed. I feel a little bit like a fraud, pretending to be somewhere in time that I’m not. Acting as though I would know things that I can’t possibly know. Anything could have happened between today and well, today. Look, I can’t even keep my perspective on time straight! Is today when I wrote it, or when you’re reading it? It’s all very confusing!

Although it’s not something I often think about, this only increases my respect for the writers of the Bible. The Bible was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago and is still as relevant today as it was then, and yet here am I struggling to write something only five days in advance! It’s good for me to remember as I read the Bible that it was written so long ago, as this helps me understand the real message being spoken outside the context of the time and place in history in which it was written. Understanding what it meant when it was written helps me to understand what it means now. Still it amazes me that something written hundreds of years ago can still have something valuable to say to me now.

I guess there are two reasons for this. The first is that people are people. Although our cultures may change, although we may have different technology and different daily experiences, people are still people. What it means to be human has never changed. You could completely change everything external to us, but still fundamentally we would be the same. The second is that although the Bible was written by men, its words were inspired by God. That is to say that the message carried by the Bible (sometimes clothed in another culture) are the very words of God. And God doesn’t see time the way we do.

You see, whilst I struggle to imagine what the world might look like three days from now, God already knows. He’s always known exactly what will happen in the next three days because He’s always known everything that will ever happen. The really crazy thing about God’s view of the progress of time, is that not only does God already know everything that will ever happen, but He doesn’t see life as a chronological exercise that starts at the beginning and finishes at the end like we do. To God time is based on the stories of the lives of those of us who exist within it rather than the hands of a watch. Although He works everything together perfectly at the right time, time is the servant not the master. At one point the Bible says that God is not slow as we understand it, but rather He is patient with us so that we might come to understand Him. What an amazing God That He not only knows everything, but knows everyone, and that He not only knows all we need to know but is patient with us that we might be able to understand it.

Episode 96 - 20/20 Vision

On Saturday something most surprising happened. It was sunny. Sunny enough to wear my sunglasses. I didn’t wear my glasses however, because it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be sunny enough for me to need them. Truth is I forgot I even had them. But it did start me think about how great sunglasses are, and in particular, how great my sunglasses are. When it’s too bright, too much light comes into our eyes and it becomes difficult to see – ironic huh? But Sunglasses stop some of the light getting to our eyes so that we can see more clearly. Genius! Simple but effective. Or are they? Whilst these kind of sunglasses help in bright conditions, they don’t do anything to help prevent glare from reflective surfaces. That’s why my sunglasses are so great! (Yes I know I’m starting to sound like a sunglasses salesman, but stick with me…)

The problem is that the light which passes through simple sunglasses like these remain incoherent. Uh huh, that’s right. Incoherent light. That’s a thing. I bet you wish I was being a little bit more coherent right now. Okay then, if you insist, let me grab my metaphorical geek lab coat and explain. When we see stuff, we can see it because light travels from it to our eyes. But that light doesn’t travel in a straight line, oh no, that would be far too simple! It travels in wiggly lines (that some boring people like to refer to as waves). Presumably it travels in wiggly lines because it’s following satnav, I don’t know. So instead of going in a straight line it also wiggles left and right. At least some of it does. Some of it wiggles up and down. And all of the rest of it wiggles at a variety of angles in-between the two. This angle of the light’s wiggle is known as its polarisation.

Any object that we can see has lots of light traveling from it to our eyes. All of the light coming from an object in normal sunlight will have loads of different polarisations – that is to say that although all the light will be travelling in the same direction, the wiggles will all be doing different things and it’s this which causes glare. What’s so amazing about my sunglasses is that they’re polarised, which means they act like a pair of bouncers at a very high end night club for rays of light, and only allow light whose wiggles are in a particular direction to pass through. As a consequence they reduce glare and allow me to see more clearly.

Sometimes life feels like it’s too bright and like all of the wiggles are pointing in different directions. There seems to be so much going on and there are so many voices speaking at the same time that I struggle to really see what’s happening clearly. Sometimes it’s hard to know what I should be doing or what I should believe. Sometimes I wish I had a pair of polarised lenses for life to make it all easier to understand. And as I thought about this for a while, I realised that I do, although not as visually obvious nor as easy to explain (yes that was the easy explanation). In the Bible, God promises that He gives His Spirit to all who choose to follow Him. And that His Spirit will help guide us when things get cloudy (or in this analogy sunny). I guess the truth is that too often it doesn’t occur to me that I need it or even worse I even forget that I have it, but life sure looks better when I’m wearing my Holy Spirit Sunglasses!

Episode 95 - Something from Nothing

Knitting is basically wizardry. You start off with a ball of wool and with nothing else other than a pair of sticks (I’m not sure whether these are best described as needles or wands…). Yet somehow you end up with a hat, or jumper, or a rabbit, or whatever else your heart desires. This week my mum finished knitting me a new jumper and I’m basically using this blog as an opportunity to brag about it. It looks awesome, it has cool little bumps (apparently these are called cables although they look nothing like any cables I’ve ever seen…), it’s super comfortable and it even has a hood!

I’m always amazed when mum finishes one of her knitting projects because quite frankly they never look quite like they could have possibly been made just with a pair of needles. This becomes ever more true having watched the process of the jumper being made. To be honest, there were times when it didn’t really look like it was ever going to become a jumper, a wind sock maybe, but not a jumper. To be even more honest there were times when I thought it had all gone wrong because the bumps just didn’t look right. And yet what looked like mistakes actually became beautiful detailing.

The journey of the wool intertwining with itself to create something unexpected and quite wonderful seems not unlike the journey of my life. I don’t always (read rarely) know where I’m going, and I often seem to be crossing over myself or going backwards, and there are many many bumps in the road, but somehow out of all of it, God makes something beautiful. Or at least that’s what happens when God is in charge of the stitches.

This may surprise you, but I can actually knit too. Okay, no I can’t. I have knitted, but that’s not quite the same thing. Unlike when my mum knits, when I knit, the bumps that form are not cleverly crafted details, they’re just bumps. And there are holes where there aren’t supposed to be holes. And the whole thing is structurally quite unsecure and falls apart at a slight tug or even a stern glance. This too is not unlike the journey of my life when I try to direct my life the way I want rather than the way God wants. Unfortunately I can’t always immediately recognise the difference between cleverly crafted details and straight up mistakes. Fortunately there isn’t a blunder that God can’t repair.

God’s knitting prowess doesn’t end there. In knitting there is something called Fairisle (that’s right, I know the fancy knitting terminology – even if I’m not certain that it’s a real adjective). Fairisle knitting is where a number of different coloured strands of wool are knitted together to create cool looking patterns. And that’s the amazing thing about God. When He knits the story of our lives, he doesn’t just knit them individually, but He knits them all together.   He perfectly Fairisles the stories of the whole universe together so that every strand meets and intertwines with one another at just the right place and at just the right time. I will never be able to fully comprehend just how amazing that is. And when God’s able to perfectly knit together the whole universe, why would I ever possibly want to be knitting my own jumper?

Episode 94 - A Blank Canvas

When I was ill, I felt trapped in my circumstances. I felt like my life was fixed to a pattern that I had no choice about.  But now that I am well, I feel completely free of restriction. There are no fixed ideas that I have to adhere to nor a paradigm that I had to follow. I get to make the rules for my new life. And even now as I’m starting to try to piece together what my future life might look like, I have almost complete freedom to choose. I have nothing tying me down, and no obligations to meet. In some ways it’s really quite daunting to have so much freedom and so much choice. It can be hard to know where to begin. But it is most certainly a gift, such freedom to determine my own tomorrow is rare isn’t it?

But is it? Why is it? As I think about how constrained I felt by life during my illness and the wild freedom I now experience by comparison, my thoughts drifted to other times in my life. Times when it seemed that I had complete control of my life and yet seemed fixed to a set direction that life had somehow determined for me. In a way I felt constrained and trapped into that life, particularly compared to now, feeling that all paths are open to me. But why?

That’s not how God works, nor how God made us to be. God is not bound by circumstance or fate. With God all things are possible. He can easily turn our lives and our circumstances completely on their head. Something I have experienced first-hand a number of times now. No matter how hopeless or stuck rigid our circumstances seem, God is able to change them. He is completely free. And Christ came to earth so that we might have that freedom in Him too.

The funny thing is that as I look back on those times that I felt life had become stuck and unchangeable, and I felt trapped by my circumstances, I wasn’t even unhappy with my situation, I just felt aggrieved because I felt like I had no power to change it. But I guess that’s the point – I can’t change it. Not on my own any way. The frustration comes when I try to determine my own future without the guidance or help of God – who knows what is good for me and what is bad, and knows what weighs me down and what sets me free. And I realise that the times I’ve felt the greatest freedom in my future has not just been now I have no constraints at all, but anytime (even when it seemed ultra-repetitive and every day was the same) when my life has been bound and fixed on God and I have trusted Him to determine my future.

Episode 93 - Mental Fitness

I think I understand the idea of fitness, it’s quite a simple concept. You can only do so much stuff until you can’t do any more. The fitter you are, the more stuff you can do before you need to stop. I particularly understand the idea of physical fitness – it’s easy to grasp because its effects are quite visually apparent. You don’t need to be very fit to walk two minutes to the shop but you need to be extremely fit (and a little insane) to run two marathons back to back. My lack of physical fitness is the reason that I get out of breath if I go up the stairs too quickly. And pushing myself beyond my current fitness level leaves me tired, worn out, achy and needing to rest in order to recover. All of this I understand quite readily. After I was healed I felt like I was completely back to my old self – fitness levels and all, but I wasn’t. However, despite this new found condition, I was not only able to quickly realise this but also able to quickly realise where my fitness levels were and what I needed to do to improve them.

Mentally however, not so much. Physical I understand, it’s something that I was taught in school and that has affected me most of my life. The physical is also something that (for me at least) is much more easily interpreted. The mental and emotional aspects of life are far more complicated to unravel. It all seems kind of airy fairy and cloudy and open to interpretation. As for mental and emotional fitness, well that’s just not a thing is it?

Well as it turns out, yes, it seems it is. After I was healed I felt like I was completely back to my old self – I hadn’t even considered mental and emotional fitness levels because I mean, what’s that? But I wasn’t. Since getter better, I still get mentally and emotionally drained far quicker than I ever did before I was ill. And that’s okay. Just like my physical fitness it will take time to build up again. The trouble is that whilst I understand the paradigm of physical fitness and recognise the signs, this mental and emotional fitness seems like a whole new language to me. And that’s okay too, I’m quite happy to slowly learn the language and learn to look after myself better. But that right there, is the real lesson.

I realise that I haven’t been looking after myself properly. Not just since I got better, but always. I’m used to looking after myself physically – I keep fit, eat healthily, and if I’m ill I go to the doctor. But it’s always been too easy to ignore my mental and emotional welfare. As it happens I’ve so far been very blessed and more by good luck than good management I have for the most part kept very healthy in this aspect of life, but I realise that I should be taking more responsibility for myself and for those around me. Not speaking the language is not a terribly good excuse. So now with my eyes open I will take this opportunity now to learn these things better and pray that God can help me make good use of these lessons throughout the rest of my life.