Better than porridge!

One of my favourite books as a child was about an old woman who had a magic pot that produced porridge. I don’t remember much about the story except that one day the pot went mad for some reason and would not stop. Porridge overflowed from the pot, filled the house, splashed out of the windows and doors and flooded the streets and other houses in the village.

I have just read Romans 5:1-5 in The Message, and it reminded me of this book! (I know I have a weird sort of way of thinking). To paraphrase a paraphrase, the writer is saying that as we shout our praise to God even in times of trouble, the troubles develop passionate patience in us which forges the tempered steel of virtue, ‘keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling short-changed. Quite the contrary – we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!’

Wow! I am praying that during these days we can all be like this, alert for whatever God is going to do next as we overflow with the Holy Spirit. May his Spirit overflow through our lives, through our homes and families, out the doors and windows and flood our streets and villages and cities. I am excited to see what God will do next.

He is with us. And he has a plan.

On Fire

We usually have an open fire in the evenings to warm the living room. I’ve noticed that when the newspaper is scrunched up too tightly, it is slow to catch fire and burn. Odd, because we think of paper as highly combustible, yet if it’s too tightly packed, no air can penetrate and it is slow to burn.

We women and men are made to be set on fire for God by the fire of the Holy Spirit. We can be too overwrought, though, or too self-absorbed, so the breath of the Spirit cannot penetrate and the fire cannot catch. We can overthink, over-stress, get ourselves tied up in knots, when really, Jesus says it’s so easy. Just rest in him. Just open up and let his breath inspire us.

I’m so grateful for the modern technology which brings us contemporary and old-fashioned worship songs on YouTube, which brings us sermons and talks on podcasts. We have so much access to fuel which should feed the fire within us, if only we weren’t so anxious.

Trust in me, Jesus says. I’ve been de-cluttering, and in the course of that I’ve been rereading some old Bible study notes from twenty years ago. It’s been an eye-opener to remember the issues which concerned me then, some of them continuously for years, and some flaring briefly and then disappearing. In all of them, I can see the hand of God as he worked things out.

One way to feed the fire within, is to remember what God has done.

Lighthouse for Jesus

An odd train of thought today. I’m struggling to give a situation to God. I keep picking it back up again and feeling irritated and, if I’m honest, angry about it. So, I felt hypocritical sitting in my prayer window this morning. I thought impatiently that I just need more of the Holy Spirit. Come on, Holy Spirit, fill me up again, I prayed.

And then I realised that actually, there is a lot of gunk in me blocking the flow. Hindering him getting in even; certainly impeding his work and preventing him from initiating his joy and peace.

High cholesterol causes blockages in the blood vessels which carry that vital life source round our body. Sometimes we have high cholesterol because of what we eat, and if we alter our diet to minimise fats and salts and so on, the super highway of our bodies’ life-giving bloodstream unblocks so that nutrients and oxygen can reach every far-flung cell.

I need to feed on the fruits of the Spirit, feed on the wholesome bread of life, and stop feeding on the regurgitated fat of rehearsed irritations. All that is doing is creating blockages in my spiritual life.

As I head into my day, my prayer is that God will enable me to do this, so that his Spirit can flow freely through me and I can be a lighthouse for Jesus.

A heart that grows two sizes in a breath

Oh, the thoughts I have as I look out my prayer window! This morning I realised that the bushes I trimmed a few weeks back are now throwing up new shoots, and the whole body of the bush is growing up as well. The view has shrunk by about a quarter. It led me to think how easily I can let shoots of thought – many of them selfish, critical, or negative – to grow up and restrict the God-given perspective Jesus wants me to have. It’s easiest to trim out those shoots one by one as they appear, rather than wait until they strengthen into wooden branches of unhelpful thinking.

Having read books for years to my four kids and now some grandchildren, I thought of one favourite – How the Grinch Stole Christmas. While the self-centred Grinch punched the air rejoicing in his presumed success at stealing Christmas from the Whos in Whoville, he was interrupted by the sound of sweet singing where he expected to hear heartbroken wailing. He had assumed that Christmas came in gifts – all of which he had stolen, rather than understanding that it is a Gift, and that Gift is love. And ‘his heart grew two sizes that day’.

The errant branches were pruned away and the Grinch could see clearly. The vision was breath-taking, transformative and life-giving.

May I recognise the errant branches in my mind today and prune them off as soon as they tempt me to think selfishly, critically, or negatively. Scripture declares we have the mind of Christ – but only as we work with the Holy Spirit to develop it. I long for his perspective, not my own, for in him only do we have fullness of life and are we set free from thoughts which rob us of our peace, compassion and love.

The Comforter

Hot water bottle on my back, still. I’m not sure it really helps but it does feel nice and hopefully is working away to loosen a muscle or two or unknot a tendon. It’s comforting, anyway.

I’m just back from a walk, where I was a hot water bottle for a friend. Sometimes there are no answers that can solve a situation, but a listening ear is like a hot water bottle on a problem, bringing some comfort, even if no solution.

Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. One of the sobriquets by which he is known is the Comforter. When things are hard, when pains don’t easily go away, having the Comforter beside and within is such a blessing.

Slow Down

A couple of years ago, I bought a machine to wash my windows. I thought it would be more effective than the method I’d been using (basically a bucket and sponge with a scraper). A little disappointing: it does the job, but no easier and with streaks. 

I’d gotten it to clean the dirt and bugs off the windows. Recently I realised that without the attachment, it could be used to suck up condensation after showers, baths, and drying clothes indoors. It seems to be pretty effective at that so far.

The Bible is God’s perfect window-cleaner. It can leave streaks if I cherry-pick verses to support my prejudices, presenting a distortion of the truth. When used prayerfully, though, mindful of the character of God, reliant on his Holy Spirit, it can suck up the condensation of my assumptions and presumptions and transform my thinking.

To read it like that, I need to slow down, take time, and linger expectantly in the presence of the Almighty God. What a privilege and blessing. The Almighty God. Wow.

Note to self: Slow down.

Beautiful Buds

Still thinking about the stunted growth of some beautiful buds. Crying out to God for those whose early experiences came as assaults of harsh winds and driving rain, leaving them bruised and hurting, wounding them deeply. Jesus called his Father the gardener, and Isaiah declares that this gardener won’t break a bruised reed, or indeed a beautiful rosebud. He is a nurturing gardener, a wise gardener, a gardener who (unlike me) knows which food to apply when, which branches to prune, which wee beasties to zap. He is a gardener whose healing touch transforms what is closing in on itself, encouraging it to open up to the sunshine and bloom. To be unique, fragrant and beautiful in a way that nobody else can be. To let go of the hurts and the torments and turn to Him, allowing his healing to flow through the hurt and bring restoration and assurance of his love, his everlasting, unconditional love.

I’m so aware that often God delegates to us, his children, and know that in and of myself I am a hopeless gardener, either outside or in trying to encourage growth and healing in others. So today, as every day, I cry out to Jesus, for a fresh in-filling of Holy Spirit, to guide, inspire and empower. He is my everything.

Just before Dawn

Always darkest just before dawn. We were out on the forward deck before 4 am; the moon shone but the focus was the approaching skyline of New York City. Perhaps the camera shook a bit with my shivering, but there was no way I was going back inside. I stood on deck with Don, poised for the gradual revealing of this iconic sight.

The Queen Mary 2 (CCR’s ‘Proud Mary’ going through my head – I guess that dates me!) ploughed ahead through the still waters of the Atlantic. We’d been told a pilot would come aboard but we didn’t see that transaction. But good to know that a local expert would guide us through the waters so that we would sail up the channel that is wide and deep enough for this huge vessel – and also that we would navigate safely beneath the Verrazano Bridge, which we cleared by a mere four metres or so.

Life can be dark and treacherous. Good to know that God has given us a pilot, his Holy Spirit, who comes on board to guide us through the darkness. Sometimes when things are rough we do just want to hide away, scarcely able to believe that it will ever get better. But if we can stand the shivering, it’s good to have our eyes on the horizon, watching for those first lights which herald a new dawn, a new day. 

Praying for all those affected by the Manchester bombing. Praying they will be able to hold on for the light that still burns bright and beckons us onward. Praying that out of this atrocity will come new shoots of love, blessings of peace.

God is good. Even in the darkness, he is with us, guiding us forward into the light.

Cairns

On a day out with good friends, we hiked part of the Cairn walk, which is a jumble of spaghetti trails on the Balmoral estate leading to the eleven cairns Queen Victoria had erected to commemorate weddings of her children. They sit astride hills of varying heights but each gives panoramic views of the surrounding hills. Although our walk coincided with the annual Balmoral runs, which attract hundreds if not thousands of competitors, most of the time we were alone in the wilderness forests above Balmoral. 

The cairns are dry-stane creations, it seems, rough and unhewn stones without mortar to hold them together. It is a skilled job to construct a pyramid of such symmetry, and not end up with just a jumble of rocks. Above the rest, the ‘daddy’ of all the cairns is that which Victoria had raised to the memory of her dear husband Albert, who died young and left Victoria alone and bereft for decades. His cairn was fashioned from dressed stones, fitting snugly together as do the pyramids of Egypt, requiring even more skill from the artisans. 

As each cairn crowns a wooded summit, we thought of the craftsmen who had to find and choose the stones and then get them up the slopes.  No mean feat: I hope that Queen Victoria appreciated the task she set them.

 

The Israelites often used stones to commemorate miracles of God – the crossing of the Red Sea, for instance, or the Lord’s appearance to Jacob at Bethel. God instructed his people to remember events through ritual or construction – the annual Passover meal is a prime example when the older generation rehearsed again the detail of their forbears’ flight from slavery, using word and carefully-chosen food to remind them of the event. 

Jesus took the ordinariness of bread and wine and lifted them to the level of a memorial of the most incredible gift the world has ever received. Believers still use bread and wine to remember this divine sacrifice for our sakes.

I’ve been thinking about cairns in my own particular past, markers of significant events that dot through my life. Meeting and marrying Don: that beautiful cairn is built of a box containing 8 months of letters and a photo album of the wedding. The births of our children: albums of pictures. The deaths of my sister and dad: tear-stained and intangible, that cairn is. The marriages of our sons: more pictures. The births, and the death, of our grandchildren: pictures cemented with tears.

The daddy of my cairns, though, has to be the moment I first met Jesus through the power of his Holy Spirit. My eyes were opened to see that Jesus invited me to have a living relationship with him. That he died for me, so that I might live with him. That cairn, built of no less than the body and blood of our Saviour, still excites a thrill of gratitude and love, having eternal significance and towering right through time.

So I’ll say it again. Happy Easter.

Migraine

Sometimes I am bothered with the flashing lights of a migraine, but thankfully, over the last few years, once they stop, it’s over. There is no lingering headache, for which I am very grateful.

Just prior to the flashing lights, I notice a blurring of focus. A sort of alert to expect incipient prisms of colour dancing round the periphery of my vision. I have learned over the years that if I choose to continue reading or writing or doing close work of any kind during these episodes, it is possible as long as I focus on the centre of my vision. One word at a time sort of thing. If the light show becomes too distracting, it’s time to close my eyes and wait it out. After twenty minutes or so my vision is restored.

Life is full of flashing lights. Things entice me away from my focus and if I am not disciplined, I can easily wander from my purpose and become caught up in all sorts of other things. Things that may be good, too, but that may not be what I should be focused on at this moment in time. 

I need discipline. Actually, I need the Holy Spirit to help me discern which are the flashing lights, and what is the focus for this moment, this hour, this day. There are times when I go with the flashing lights, and am left with the migraine headache. How weak I am, and how much I need to rely on God to help me make the right decision.