Imagine

Photo by Jeremy Beck on Unsplash

Youth leader asks, ‘What is a New Year’s resolution?’

Hands up.

Answer, ‘Something you want to accomplish in the next year.’

An impressed congregation raises a collective eyebrow at the eight year old’s vocabulary skills (fist bump Maghaberry Primary School – oh yeah)

‘So who wants to share their resolution for the year? Anyone?’

Holy Apricity

When your feet are freezing in your boots and the cold has permeated your winter layers settling like frost in your bones, there is a lovely word for that moment when you feel the warmth of the sun on a winter’s day – apricity, a word that has apparently fallen into disuse and is now sadly obsolete.

I don’t enjoy winter. I don’t like the dark and I don’t like the cold so any unexpected moment of catching warmth in the low lying sun’s rays is a moment to relish. It is a reminder that the season will pass.

As poet Luci Shaw puts it in her poem ‘Faith’,

‘Spring is a promise in the closed fist of a long winter.’

Springtime will come and there is nothing that winter can do about it.

Even though your feet are frozen, your hands are numb and you can’t feel a thing, look out for an opportunity to luxuriate in a moment’s apricity. Feel the skeletal fingers of winter being prised open and let it be a reminder that there is always hope.

Whatever is chilling your heart this season, turn your face towards heaven and feel holy apricity enwrap your soul.

‘Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.’ Luke 1:78-79 (NLT)

Physiotherapy and the Psalms

Psalm 27:14 (NKJV)                                                    Psalm 31:24 (NKJV)

‘Wait on the Lord;                                                        'Be of good courage,

Be of good courage,                                                    And He shall strengthen your heart,

And He shall strengthen your heart.’                           All you who hope in the Lord.'

They are Insta worthy verses are they not? These are verses from the Psalms that I’ve read in the past week. They’re the kind of verses that you might read on the Bible app and share on Facebook having superimposed the words on a scenic background of snow-capped mountains. They are good words to share and they were certainly words that I paid attention to when I read them, all the more so when they were repeated on different days.

They are words to write down, to speak out loud, to remember and repeat. Life is anything but easy and these words are in the Bible for us to have when we need them.

They are solid words of encouragement.

But

I have a confession.

Even as I was reading them and writing them and repeating them, there was still a part of me whispering questions. The kind of questions that can make the room go awkwardly silent in Bible study group, the kind of questions that you try to push away because they make things more complicated instead of easier.

How do I be of good courage?

What am I supposed to do to make myself courageous?

How is God going to strengthen my heart?

Why don’t I feel brave and why don’t I feel strong even though I’ve read the Bible and prayed?

Shush that girl in the room with the awkward questions!

Meanwhile...

there is a clatter of bamboo on my phone with a text from my physiotherapist.

It’s appointment time.

I’ve had a sore neck for ages. It bothers me quite a lot. Sometimes it feels as if my neck isn’t going to do its job of holding my head up. Just so you know, if you sit behind me in church and tap me on the left shoulder for a conversation, please don’t be offended when I don’t turn around, my neck doesn’t like it.

Nor does it like physiotherapy - not that I expected it to be pleasant.

Basically, your practitioner pushes gently but firmly and repeatedly on the sore areas. They lean into your pain, putting pressure on it, working the muscles and joints that are inhibited. You have to stretch what doesn’t want to be stretched in order to extend the range of movement. You have to move into the pain as far as you can. You have to let the physiotherapist do the work even though it’s at the very least uncomfortable.

It’s a slow, time consuming process and it hurts a bit or a lot depending on your injury or disability but the aim is of course restoration, both of movement and function. The exercises will strengthen the weak areas and help to reduce injury in the future.

There is both purpose and hope in the process.

When you put yourself in the hands of a professional, you can begin to let go and lean into the pain. When you trust in the expertise, knowledge and experience of the one doing the therapy, you can have courage. And if like me, your physiotherapist is also a friend, then you have all the more reason to trust their advice.

I find my questions beginning to be answered.

When God doesn’t simply remove our pain when we ask him to, it isn’t because he callously leaves us to endure. He has not left us but in fact his hand may be gently and firmly pressing on the hurt. Courage comes when we trust him. Courage comes when we rely on the promise that he loves us and does not abandon us but is working for our good. He is strengthening us where we are weak. It hurts but he knows what he is doing. Our hearts will be stronger in the end if we let him lean into the painful and tender areas, secure in the knowledge that we are in safe and capable hands.

There is no quick fix, no short cut to a pain free life but courage can be found when we simply allow Jesus to do the work that only he can do. It will take time and it will hurt and the process will have to be repeated over and over but restoration will come.

I will still wake up in the morning and not feel terribly courageous. My neck will still be stiff and sore. My fears and anxieties will not have disappeared.

My physio friend tells me there are more exercises to come and I’m probably not going to like them but maybe I’m a little closer to that being OK.

Maybe I’m a little closer to being of good courage.

Maybe my heart is beginning to be a little stronger.

I hope.

Who Do You Say God Is?

And it’s over for another year! We wave goodbye to CSSM 2017. No tears this time, we’re getting too old for that – by the time you’re a Cruiser and a Liner, you don’t hold your mum’s hand on the way in and you don’t cry on the way out but that does not mean we didn’t have a fabulous time as always.

It may be a kid’s mission but I never come away from this fortnight empty handed.

The Discomfort of Holiday Bible Club

‘Were you out of your comfort zone?’ says youth leader.

‘Yes,’ I reply with definite tone and raised eyebrow.

‘Good,’ says he whilst wiping the nausea inducing, stomach churning contents of a plastic basin into the bin.

Final night and clean-up complete, I stepped out of the week’s discomfort zone of the pre-teen, YouTube world and into the welcome, if slightly chilly embrace of the summer holidays. I drove away from another year of Holiday Bible Club, simultaneously making a mental list of books to pack in my suitcase and chewing over the events of the past week.

A Tribute To Children's Day

There is one day in the church year when it is completely fine to stand at the front and pick your nose.

It is completely fine to play air guitar with abandon and it is completely fine to dance a rhythmic yet mainly uncoordinated dance. 

It is also completely fine to have a rugby line-out and to have a huge rugby audience cheer when the ball is caught.

It is completely fine to sing totally out of tune, very loudly and also to do this only for the chorus because they’re the only words you remember, so for the verses you wave at your granny instead.

There is one day in the church year that we call Children’s Day.

For ragged edged people which is often parents.

‘I feel like this,’ I sighed, inspecting the ragged soft toy dangling by one tatty ear between my finger and thumb.

Jazzy the rabbit.

A sorry sight indeed after years of ownership. Still undoubtedly a boy’s most beloved possession but sadly no longer ‘plush’.

I cannot imagine a time when Jazzy, as forlorn a creature that he is, will not be loved. I’m no longer officially permitted to put Jazzy in the washing machine in case he doesn’t make it out again intact – my maternal outcry at the lack of hygiene falling on stubbornly deaf boy ears. (Unofficially however, without owner permission, Jazzy has danced with spin cycle death but that’s between you and I.)

Jazzy has been loved ferociously ever since he came home from the maternity ward, tucked in amongst the blankets with his swaddled owner. He has been loved so much that he haemorrhages stuffing. Denuded by years of childhood companionship, there isn’t a tuft of fur left on his floppy body, his nose has been partially rubbed off and he is coming undone at so many seams.  

Parenting can leave you feeling a bit like this. Much needed and much loved but worn out.

Some days, it might feel as if we’re splitting at the hem. Our stitching unravels and we become frayed and tattered at the edges. Human love does that. It rubs us raw. It makes gaping holes and everything inside spills out. It makes a mess of us, makes demands of us, day in and day out. Sometimes we’re weary to the point of exhaustion and our own love gets a bit shabby. It might feel by the end of the day that we have little left within us to give. A voice inside begins to whisper, ‘you’re not enough’ - ‘not wise enough’, ‘not strong enough’, ‘not good enough’.

Feeling hollowed out one day, God’s timing brings a reading of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians to a close with a final reminder of these verses.

 ‘I pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe in him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honour at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.’ Ephesians 1:19-20

And a needle is threaded. A stitch is sewn.

We are not left to simply put our collar up, cast our eyes to the ground and wait for the difficulty to pass. We are reminded that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that is within us and if that is true, if that is what we believe, it makes a difference.

It means that here is the power that makes us enough. It is the power that redeems every mistake and failure. It is the power that resurrects what is dead and makes it new. It is the power of the One who is always strong enough, wise enough and good enough.

It is the power that can re-stuff us with love every morning. The power that stitches and hems us together again.

Death tears and rips love apart.

Grace mends and renews love.

Parenting is not the only ragged edged place to feel the tension.

Perhaps all of life is lived in the tension between flawed love and perfect love.

On the days when we feel the tension, may we pray Paul’s prayer for one another.

Sunday Slippers

On reaching Sunday morning at the writers residential weekend, Lucan, Dublin.

The Sunday light filters into the room, distilling and gently evaporating the unease of previous days. The door lies open, allowing the tension to escape with a long mental exhale. The classroom becomes the sanctuary. Morning worship begins with a relaxation of spirit and slippered feet under the table.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to church wearing your slippers before,’ I comment with a smile, as my shoeless companion settles herself on the seat next to me.

We all stood on holy ground during our time of devotion that morning. Spring’s warmth and brightness blending with praise and gratitude, pervading the atmosphere with the sweet aroma of worship. Ground on which to tread lightly and reverently.

I think of the slippers on the feet of the person beside me, symbolic of being at home, feet treading softly and under the family table. We are members of the extended family of Christ, unfamiliar with one another and yet a church of spiritual relatives gathered together for a brief time, feet resting at the hearth of God’s home fire.

Home is where you feel comfortable enough to kick your shoes off and just be yourself. You slide your feet into warm, comfortable slippers and sigh with relief. This is my abode, my place of rest. This is the fireside I choose.

Home is where God’s spirit lives and moves. Heaven is everywhere. It streams in through doors and windows on morning sunbeams, filling the hearts of brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Holy Spirit softly moved among us, welcoming us as we stepped into worship. A writing people offering their words to God, the great author and story teller. We sang the story of redemption. We read our confession aloud. We penned our prayers. We listened to the Word, exploring his metaphors. The things of everyday life communicating truth and speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven.

And again the slippers, reminding me that it is possible to be at ease and at home even when physically distant from where we normally live, work and go to church. Even in a place where we are being challenged or stretched, where we are being asked to live out the tension of doing something we find difficult, there is a whisper in the ordinary evoking the joy of home.

Later in the day, we each return to the place we came from.

Another week passes. A fresh Sunday morning dawns and while I don’t go to church in my slippers, I go to a place where I’m surrounded by family. I go back to the people who waved me off in prayer on the road to Lucan a week ago. We sing in praise and glimpse our forever-home as feet again rest together under God’s table.

When you have no words for prayer.

A violent gust of wind snatches everything out of my hands before I can arrange it into any semblance of order.

A host of tiny letters dances through the air, flung hither and thither by the breeze, black marks printed on a grey page of clouds. Some scatter across the grass, others fly up into the swaying branches of a nearby tree where they catch amongst the bare twigs and riotously flutter out of reach. In the midst of the type characters, I watch whole words pitching up and down high above my head, dispersing chaotically, and colliding senselessly into one another. Dry leaves of paper are tossed into the atmosphere. Torn pages blow in every direction like small tumbling birds, wings powerless to direct their flight.

I stretch my arms out, leaping and grabbing in an ineffectual attempt to retrieve the jumble of letters, words and paper scraps but they lurch further into the sky, well beyond the reach of my fingers.

I shout in frustration but I am robbed even of wordless sound as it too is seized instantly by the wind and flung aside like winter debris.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot catch all the fragments whirling round about me.

If I could just gather them all together in one place out of this wind, I can perhaps begin to figure out how to stitch them into comprehensible sentences but the wind is far too strong. Everything eludes my grasp.

As I stand buffeted and bewildered, I suddenly notice the man. He is seated on the ground beneath the tree. I hadn’t seen him before, having been too busy in my frantic activity. As he sits, he calmly plucks letters and words from the air, capturing them in his hands. The wind whips his hair across his face and as he tilts his head sideways to shift the strands, he looks up at me and smiles. He doesn’t speak, but simply carries on effortlessly catching words. My words. One by one, the pieces are carried by the turbulent currents towards him and into his hands where they remain, no longer affected by the wind.

The scene ends there, just a brief flare of the imagination. A thought that drops into my mind as I attempt to pray one day. An attempt that feels just like chasing words in the wind. 

The cross winds of life can make prayer a difficult and sometimes impossible task for us. How do we order everything that we are thinking and feeling into words that can be called prayer?

What a relief to picture Jesus smiling his reassurance to us.

‘It’s all right, I’ve got this. Stop trying so hard and instead trust what I can do. I’m out here in the wind with you even though you didn’t notice me. I am your prayer maker.’

It’s OK that we don’t know how to pray sometimes. Jesus will write our prayers for us. He knows us far better than we can ever know ourselves anyway and he knows that when stormy winds blow in our souls, we need his help. We can stop being so hard on ourselves. We can stop reaching and struggling. If you don’t have words for your heart, then simply bring your heart. Jesus takes the heavy sighing efforts of our souls and makes them pure expressions of prayer..

‘Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, 

God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along.

 If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. 

He does our praying in and for us, 

making prayer out of wordless sighs, 

our aching groans.’

Romans 8:26 (Msg)

Perhaps when strong soul winds are swirling words beyond our grasp, the best thing to do is go and sit beside Jesus under the tree and rest knowing that he has it all under control. Wordlessly sit in a posture of prayer and allow his Spirit to suffuse us with peaceful reassurance. 

Choose to have hope

Let’s start the new year with hope. Let’s choose to believe that God has good things in store for us. The Bethlehem baby we’ve all been focused on, grew up and became a man. That man had one life purpose which he single-mindedly and courageously fulfilled – to make it possible for you and I to live a life full of hope.