In the midst of the protests in Egypt @NevineZaki (HT: Richard Littledale) posted the photo below which says more than words can really express. As Muslims knelt to pray, Christians joined hands to protect them amidst the violence of Tahrir Square. Considering this is only one month after the violence against Christians in Alexandria it shows something of what this faith of ours really stands for!
Photo: Nevine Zaki
Once upon a time Zoe & I were avid followers of the series Friends, despite the poor acting, terrible scripts and awful lifestyles of the characters! Now when the repeats are on TV I find it really irritating!
Why inane comments about a show that finished more than 6 years ago? Well this weekend has been a weekend about friends. On Saturday we visited some friends who we have known for years and had a lovely time with them. Yesterday, (Sunday) two of our session ‘popped in’ and it was great to spend time with people we haven’t seen for months. I’ve spent the day with a smile because of having spent time with our friends.
I don’t really know what it was that has lifted me so much! Was it the conversations, the memories, the kids playing together? I honestly don’t know, but I do know that it was great, so thank God for friends!
Going back a couple of months or so I was going teach one Sunday from Matthew 6 about not worrying and in my preparation time I had one of those moments of revelation that transform your thinking to a whole new level. As I thought and scribbled notes the term ‘right now moment’ came into my mind and I just couldn’t shake it!
The basic premise is this! Far too often in our lives we are stuck in either the past or the future and they consume our thinking. Unfortunately, this affects every area of our life, including our relationship with God. So we end up worrying about what happened last week, dwelling on the things we’ve done wrong or the hurt that as been done to us. If we’re not in the past then we are concentrating too much on the future, trying to work out what we should do next in our lives.
When we concentrate on the past and beat ourselves up over things we’ve done wrong, or live in the moment when we were hurt; when we worry too much about things that might go wrong; when we concern ourselves too much about the future and making sure that nothing can go wrong, we stop ourselves being able to live in the present moment. And when we stop living in the present then we inhibit the possibility of God moving in our lives because God communes with us in the present; in the right now moments of our life.
I’ve just started reading a book with a great title, “Sacred Cows make great BBQs“, which has been written by Dave Gilpin. The premise of the book is quite simply that there are a lot of things that are part of Christianity/Church/Leadership that are really Sacred Cows.
Having only read the introduction and first chapter so far I can’t really comment much about Gilpin’s ideas, but some of his comments immediately leapt off the page as I read! At one point, he writes that:
It’s about time that intimate cuddles with Jesus be gazumped by increased capacity in Jesus…
Now that is something that I fully agree with! Of course our relationship with Jesus is one of love, but surely it is also one of discipleship. A disciple seeks to follow the teacher they are linked with and to live like them. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we gain a capacity to become increasingly Christlike.
Maybe the answer to my post a week ago can be found in another book that I’ve been reading recently. Deep Church by Jim Belcher seeks to find a way between the traditional, institutionalised church and the emerging church. In seeking to find that road, Belcher suggests that we need to go for depth rather than for simple answers.
There is a danger in reacting too much in one direction or the other. On one hand it is all too easy to retreat into theological safety, guarding doctrinal correctness above loving each other and caring about the communities we find ourselves in. On the other hand, it is also too easy to say that doctrine equates to some sort of strait-jacket and that everything we believe is up for grabs in the postmodern, post-Christendom world we now live in.
Surely there is something better; something that seeks to make church relevant to the people we come into contact with. Surely, discovering for ourselves a deeper relationship with Jesus and a deeper understanding of what church is actually meant to be about is the better path.
For me, well I’m still reading what Belcher has to say, and trying to contextualize it out of the American church and into the far more advanced decline of the UK. But there is something in it, something that could show us a way forward where two apparently opposed camps (traditional and emerging churches) can actually recognise that they both have something to offer and that they can learn from each other rather than perpetuating the petty arguments that seem to be prevalent whenever Christians disagree on an issue.
