Vermin Infestations

Vermin. Infestation. Not pleasant words nor pleasant thoughts.

Someone I know has had to compromise her high standards and accept that the rats infesting her balcony cannot be eradicated, just locked out. There are reasons, but are they good enough?

In the western world, we are suffering violence of an insidious and unprecedented nature, at least in my experience. Sudden wickedness erupting in sleepy country parishes, shopping centres, joyful national celebrations. Why? Vermin thinking left undealt with. Allowed to flourish. There are reasons, but are they good enough?

Today I am thinking about those who are dreaming death and destruction on minor or major scales. I am remembering a man, Saul of Tarsus, who headed for Damascus two thousand years ago, breathing death and destruction against those who didn’t agree with his brand of religion. And on the way, he met a Man. A resurrected Man who is also God Almighty. And he was changed in a flash. Literally. So I am praying that those who have been subverted by evil will meet Jesus today, tonight, tomorrow, as they move along their dark roads, and the Light will obliterate the darkness. 

More than that, though. Vermin thinking flourishes when fed by injustice. We have to recognise our part in creating this vile food source. We have got to clean up our actions, our attitudes, and our prejudices. We have got to live out the ideals of the Man from Galilee – love the God of peace, love our neighbours, love ourselves, stop judging one another, celebrate diversity, be filled with the Holy Spirit who brings his fruits – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. So today I am praying that those of us who try to live good lives, and those of us who confess Jesus as Lord, will also meet Jesus today, tonight, and tomorrow, so that the Light will obliterate our darkness, too.

Enough of evil infestations. Let there be light.

Thin Places

Our plans this morning include a visit to a location which is for me, a thin place. I understand a thin place to be a geographical spot where heaven and earth overlap in an almost tangible way. I would say the islands of Iona and Lindisfarne are such thin places, spots where the prayers and faith of many, extending back through time, have eroded the separating wall between here and eternity.
I would think the Sea of Galilee is also such a place, as believers think about Jesus and imagine him bobbing on those waters, two millennia ago. I found it so when I visited with my mom a few years ago.
The thin place this morning is not such a universal spot. No doubt many people pass by there completely unaware of its qualities. It is just a gated garden next to a church.
In the soil of that garden, though, lie the cremated remains of my dear sister and her husband. I accompanied them to church services in that church, it seems centuries ago. When they were both full of life and laughter and hopes and dreams.
Now the church is occupied by people of a different nationality, speaking a different language. Everything has changed, except the content of that soil. Nothing magical about it. Nothing more sacred than anywhere else. But for me, and for my family, a touchstone with a loved one who went away before her time, a loved one whose memory lives on but more importantly, whose spirit lives on in a place devoid of pain, sorrow and tears. A place where Jesus can be seen face to face.
I am glad she is there, but still I miss her. She went away at 37; next Wednesday she would have turned 66. I can't imagine her at that age, but I can imagine the laughter and fun we could have still enjoyed had she survived.
There will be tears in that thin place this morning. Tears of loss but tears of hope, too, for I trust in God's promise that he knows the plans he has for us, at all ages, plans for good and to prosper us to give us hope and blessing. The tears, really, are because I miss her still. There is always catharsis and healing when I visit this thin place.

Breakthrough

I was looking at my photos from a trip to Israel last March, and uploaded one of the Sea of Galilee as the desktop of my laptop. Now I can dream and remember, and imagine Jesus and his friends seeing the same sight, perhaps many times. 

It’s the breakthrough of the light that I find so breath-taking. It was dawning a rather stormy day, and we were due to go out on one of the Jesus boats in the picture. Perhaps a storm would brew up suddenly, like it did when Jesus was crossing the Sea a couple of times, recorded in the Bible. 

In the event, it didn’t. We had a calm boat trip and I found it amazing to be in nature, where Jesus was. So much more moving than being in a man-made church full of gold and glitz erected over a probable holy site. 

We are having grim weather here in the UK. Unseasonal they say, for March, though I don’t know. In nearly forty years of living here, I think I’ve gone through plenty of Marches where the weather continued to feel more wintry than spring-like. Snow, gales, ice. It can feel pretty grey and cloudy.

This morning, though, I received an email from a childhood friend, an echo down the corridors of time and space. A long and welcome communication full of memories and thoughts about our relationship and relationships with those we have loved and lost. An encouraging note – something we all need.

It was like the sunshine breaking through the clouds. The glory from heaven to earth. Jesus is closer to you than you think.

Walking on Water

Below me palm trees wave in the wind. The green grey sea laps gently against the rocks of a man made harbour in which nestles one of the fleet of Jesus boats which carry thousands of pilgrims out onto the Sea of Galilee every day.
I watched the sun rise here this morning. I have walked the hills of the north shore of the Lake today, hills where Jesus walked and taught, where crowds streamed out to him for teaching and healing. I have been in sight of Lebanon and Syria while visiting Caesarea or Bania, where the Roman gods were worshipped and where Jesus asked his disciples, Who do you say I am?
The closest I felt to him was bobbing on the water, looking at the same hills which were so familiar to him, where he often went to in the nights alone to pray, from which he watched his friends in trouble on the same water, in a storm, and he walked out to them.
Peter got out of the boat. He lost his focus and started to sink, but he at least got out of the boat.
For the rest of my life, I pray that I will always have the focus to get out of the boat. And walk on water.
Will you?