Advent and Christmas Journey
This story, this moment, is the fulfilment of a promise. This is simultaneously the completion and the commencement of a plan. A moment foretold and foreshadowed as long as God's long story had been unfolding. A moment that is a line in the sand that will change every other moment from then on.
December 14th Strengthening Strength Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) In the beginning, in the first garden long ago, God drew close. As close as breath. And then with His breath He spoke truth into the hearts of the first human beings: Loving truth. Generous truth: ‘You are free to... Continue Reading →
Our son Oliver doesn’t sleep well. He has a very creative imagination and a world full of ideas whirling in his mind. Between this and all the natural worries fuelled by moving countries and struggling to adjust, he’s very often up at night...
This day a few years ago I was down. Way down. Weighed down by worries and stresses and cataloguing my anxieties in a litany of self pity.
I was making pizza, rolling dough, cutting toppings, listing all the reasons why life was just too hard...
There are a lot of things in this world vying for the human heart, so many calls enticing our eyes, our time, our lives… so many convincing claims calling us to give our story over to their ‘sell’...
Day 25 Your Heavenly Father When my daughter was around eight years of age her imagination was captured by a lego set modelled on a speeder bike ridden by the young heroine from star wars. She started saving her pocket money towards it (which wasn’t very much) but also every night for several months... Continue Reading →
Memory is an interesting thing.
Many years ago I had a time that was, at the time, the most challenging season I had been through. This was not long after I had moved to Jamaica to be fully dedicated to the ministry in the inner city. I can clearly remember many of the moments that were so challenging … but just yesterday I was looking through some old notes I made at that time, and was shocked by what I had not remembered. None of my memories were false … but every single one of the challenges had ended up turning out so much better than I remembered. Some of them miraculously so...
Day 23 Look At The Birds Of The Air I don’t know what your experience of worry and anxiety is. For me, when I’m feeling anxious about something I ‘churn’. I go over things again and again in my head like I’m an out of control merry-go-round carousel going nowhere but always spinning. My... Continue Reading →
Jesus’ words on this mountainside, they sound like good advice, like a comforting mantra to live by, but Jesus isn’t giving us advice or a mantra to chant: He’s giving us eye surgery! Jesus is declaring… change the way you see! He is operating on the way we human beings view the world because we’ve been seeing it all wrong all along.
I have to confess. I love charity shopping. The thrill of the hunt, the thrill of discovering buried treasure. I love searching through the eclectically laden shelves of charity shops looking for that one bargain, that one thing that is useful or pretty or special in some way.
Today, as I write this, a young man I have known since he was in his early teens, Deron … a young man who has served as a team member in Fusion’s ministry in Trench Town … a young man with a young family … can not safely live in his own home...
We were created for trusting authentic relationships connected with threads of truth, trust and intimacy with each other and with God. In the beginning we knew where we stood and who we were as children of our heavenly Father...
We learn fear.
Life teaches it to us blow by blow.
Sometimes by a trauma, sometimes by the slow drip of disappointment corroding courage, usurping hope. We tried. And failed. We got bitten. And bled. We got knocked down. And lived there.
Sometimes life can feel like a storm. And sometimes like a drowning. Like a flailing about without much to hang onto. Like a slow death by silence, soundlessly sinking in the waves of life.
The thing is, underneath it all, so often we’re not sure. Not sure who we are, not sure that we’re valuable, not sure where to place our feet in all this whirling world. Who am I? What on earth and I here for? What does it all mean?
Power. It undoes us. And like a drug, once hooked we crave for more.
Whether it is the power of knowledge, of social status, of influence or of wealth, once we have it, we feel naked without it. So our fist grips tighter around it, and our reach extends wider for more, more, more, more.
We live in a natural world. But also a supernatural one. A world where wars rage in the material as well as the spiritual. We may think the weapons of Spiritual warfare are complex, exotic or strange. But actually nothing could be further from the truth.
Freedom. It’s always been complicated for the human race. Sometimes I wonder if we even know what it truly is. We make our choices freely and then our choices make us, building our existence around us. Choice by choice.
All real power belongs to God. And He chooses to use it in very different ways to human beings. Lasting change in this world is brought about not by might and strength. Lasting change comes by small people who’s hearts are beating in time with God’s, stepping out courageously with Him into the dark, armed only with the conviction that giants will fall before them, because God and them are strong.
It's easy for a word to go unnoticed on a page, overlooked in a sentence or brushed by in a paragraph. But this word is one we cannot overlook. It’s startling. Striking. Like cold water splashed on a face. Not because the word itself is confronting, but because of He who says it.
In the shadow of the serpent many things were lost and broken, precious things, beautiful things, things that God had woven deep within the sinews of our Imago Dei being and threaded into the rhythm of our beating human hearts. This image of God within human beings now wisps threadbare thin, torn threads pulling apart, fraying at the edges, floating on the breeze of history...
There are stormy days when the sky weeps. And days when God is grieving with it. Days when the darkness in humankind overcomes the light that once was us...
There are stormy days when the sky weeps. And days when God is grieving with it. Days when the darkness in humankind overcomes the light that once was us. How does God's heart so full of love, so full of goodness, witness all this breaking sadness that has become His children’s reality, and not break also?
Being lied to cuts like glass, and we’ve all felt the gash. It comes with being human- losing faith in human words. Trustworthiness is now an earned attribute, not an assumed one. And even those who earn it often fail us, falling into the temptation to let words smooth over the rough edges of life: “I’m fine”, “You look great” “It’s going to be alright, I promise”...
There were two gardens. Two gardens in this long tread of time. And God walked in them both. So did frail humanity, humanity forged in the image of God forgetting themselves and forsaking God. This is the story of the first garden, but only part of the story of the second.
Why was Jesus sleeping? Who can sleep in a thunderstorm? Who can be anything but thrown about by a raging of emotion? Who is this that just doesn’t seem to feel it when the world is falling apart? Who?
God has all the power Satan tempted Jesus with and more. He could dominate, He could take the world by force as Satan offered it. But He doesn't. Instead of coming with an army to control us, He came as a vulnerable human being to woo us, to walk with us, to win us. With love.
Hate may look strong and successful in the short term. But it never wins in the long run of things. Malice may win some battles, but it’s love who wins the war. Eventually. Always. Because God is on His throne, even when all we can see is the dark.
God wants to walk with us, partner with us, bless us and care for us, threading together the tapestry of all the thousand ways He loves us, a tapestry woven in gold and goodness, grace and givenness, justice and righteousness. All the patterns of grace in a life.
