Stuck in the Mud

A voice calling at the back door (because the doorbell doesn’t work…). ‘Stuck in the mud. Help!’

Walking each other home is a lot like getting stuck in the mud sometimes. Here we are again, with inaccurate measurements on room lay-outs, trying to figure out scales and convert from inches to metric. I threw out my careful measurements of the furniture taken before the last move, so we are left trying to figure it from the floor plan…

It’s obviously a smaller room, but how much smaller, and which pieces will need to go this time?

Frustration threatens us, cat-calling from the side-lines as we struggle to stay in God’s peace. Yet his peace does continue to remain deep within me, a peace which I didn’t have with the last move.

God knows what he is doing. There is a lot of effort being expended in keeping Mom safe and happy, but God still has a plan for her here on earth or she would no longer be with us. Her days are numbered by him, and while there are more to run, his purpose for her is not yet complete.

She is a blessing still, imparting encouraging words to her granddaughter when she seeks advice. Yes, perhaps the memory is slipping, but the smile is still broad and the faith in God remains intact.

If we are stuck in the mud, repeating what we just did, there is a good reason for it. Thank God that I am not in charge.

Thank God for Easter

As yesterday’s early morning walk behind the cross drew near the church, those carrying the cross strode out of sight, followed by a few swift followers. The rest of us were ‘stuck’ behind a ‘bottle-neck’ formed by one old man with his cane, and his companions. 

Nobody overtook them. We knew where we were headed, so we kept company with those who were finding the way difficult.

Sometimes on our life’s journey we feel like we’ve lost sight of Jesus, lost sight of his cross. But he has left us map points by which to plot our course, guidelines in Scripture by which to live, and it’s as we continue to walk in faith that his cross comes back into view. It’s right that we adopt the pace of the slowest in our party, so that we can all arrive together. There are no prizes for the sprinter in the Kingdom but I think Jesus loves the marathon runners who slow their pace at times to accompany others who struggle along the way.

Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, as they struggled with Easter weekend events. He walks with each of us as we struggle to make sense of our circumstances, and the situations in the wider world.

Thank God for Easter.

Water-based Workouts

Water-based workouts are gaining in popularity. While balancing on floating mats, participants go through the exercises demonstrated by the teacher. This requires serious engagement of the core muscles to maintain balance on an unstable platform. I imagine there is a lot of hilarity and frustration as participants regularly plunge off the bobbing base.

We live life on a bobbing base. Storms of uncertainty, of sorrow and grief can seriously rock the mats on which we balance. Jesus told a story about building our lives on the rock of faith in him, but even when our lives are built on the rock of Jesus, we can still be threatened by choppy waves of circumstances and events. 

Though alarming and unwanted, these waves of life can help strengthen our spiritual core. We don’t really welcome trouble but Jesus also told us in this world we would have trouble. Jesus had trouble. He had the cross. 

The cross is our spiritual core. Tsunamis of grief and pain may threaten to sweep us off our rock of faith in Jesus, but as we cling to the cross we discover that we are anchored forever in him.

Yeast and Faith

Whenever I bake bread (rarely), I always have trouble getting the dough to rise, which I blame on the frigid nature of our old granite house. I do everything I can to raise the ambient temperature but am usually disappointed that it takes at least two or three times as long as it should to rise about half as high as it should. (Maybe I need to invest in a bread-maker.)

Yeast requires a certain environment in which to react and begin to work on the dough.

I was asked recently what I thought of loud, sometimes repetitive worship music in a service. I think there would have been a time when I would have found it boring or tedious. But over the years, I have come to love the privacy this sort of corporate worship affords: I drop in and out of the written lyrics, communing privately with God and then rejoining the congregation. It can offer times of profound worship and a real sense of the presence of God. 

Stay with me here because all these thoughts will coalesce. 

 Jesus warned his followers to be careful of the yeast of the Pharisees... the sincere religious types who really knew their theology. We are products of the Enlightenment and the age of reason, and so we are encouraged to rely on our brains and to be suspicious of our heart intelligence. 

I read the other day that faith is the expectation that God is always good and he will work in every situation. 

Worship music, repetitive or not but certainly sung from the heart, is the warmth that gets the faith rising in my heart. It is from that position of faith that I expect to see God to act – to see miracles. 

My fear is that in churches which rely on prescribed worship where the theological accuracy of the lyrics is the measure of its relevance, we miss out on that mystical faith-raising element which then releases hope and expectations.

Jesus told the man with leprosy who wanted to be healed and couched his request in a weak ‘if you are willing...’, ‘I am willing!’ Worship is the yeast that helps me recognise who it is I am asking for help, and know that he is willing.

Slugs and snails...

The annual effort to grow our own veggies is looking rather grim. Although the lettuce and spinach have sprouted, those which I’ve transplanted into the soil have largely disappeared despite all my efforts to hold the monopods at bay. 

The ones waiting in the seed trays are waterlogged from the deluges of last week. I know that there is farming in my ancestry but it sure isn’t apparent.

Jesus told a parable about planting, but maybe it pertained more to an arid climate than to a Scottish one. He missed out the seed that fell on soil that swarmed with hungry snails and slugs. There, all were devoured except those surrounded by chemical slug killer. Then there was the seed which was carefully nurtured in seed trays, but the trays had no drainage and the seedlings became inundated and eventually root bound.

Make of that what you will! For myself, I see some people I know struggling to hang on despite the attacks of slimy predators, who are hungry for the tender leaves of growing faith. They need the protection of older Christians praying but proactively coming alongside and repelling the temptations, doubts, and insinuations which can eat away at faith until it is no longer there.

I see others whose faith keeps them firmly planted in a safe church setting. Good worship and teaching need to be shared, passed on, worked out within the community and world in which we live. Without regular ‘drainage’ we become complacent, fat and root-bound. We cease growing and eventually shrivel and die.

Monday morning is here. Time to be out there sharing God’s goodness with those who are hurting and fragile in faith, and those who are yet to meet Jesus.

The Great Russian Adventure - 2

Broad boulevards, filled with expensive cars. Range Rovers, BMWs, Mercedes. I mean, filled. Traffic jams characterise Moscow’s broad boulevards. There may be poverty, but it isn’t out there on the streets of the big city. 

Has poverty been driven underground? Not that we saw. Ksenia gave us a guided tour of the most beautiful of the metro stations, and then set us loose to navigate the system on our own. With some forward planning, we were able to move where we wanted to in a short space of time: as the rear lights of one train disappeared down a tunnel, the approaching lights of the next could just about be seen. So many trains, most of them crowded even out of rush hour. We found it inexpensive, especially with the exchange rate in our favour, and bustling with people. People who were probably a touch irritated by the tourists impeding the flow by pausing to photograph and gawp at the artwork in some of the more magnificent stations.

Some stations are dedicated to the various republics which made up the Soviet Union. One memorable station in particular depicts the people of the Ukraine, bringing in the harvests from fertile fields. We saw armed soldiers in other stations, too, but that station had a cohort of four soldiers patrolling the platforms, reminding us of the tension and struggle in that area right now.

It is interesting that Stalin, ruthless as he was as a leader, had the vision for constructing this transport system in the 30s, at the same time he was wiping out millions of his fellow countrymen and women. Why did he think it important? 

He recognised the spiritual hunger common to all for something beautiful, something to celebrate and pledge allegiance to. He ordered the building of this system of trains, also grasping an opportunity to propagandise the suffering population by depicting scenes of heroism in the fields of corn and on the battlefields. Propaganda yes, but displayed amongst chandeliers and marble columns, carved on statues and exploding in colourful mosaics, painted on the ceilings, depicted on the walls and floors. Echoes of the lavish decoration in Orthodox churches, many of which were demolished by his orders, too. Yes, give the people beauty, but make sure it celebrates the glories of the Soviet experiment. God, he thought, is dead.

As the communists razed the Church of Christ the Saviour to the ground and replaced it with a swimming pool, they recognised that people need beauty to celebrate and give glory to.

Psalm 150 urges us to praise God in his sanctuary. In their desire to obliterate the people’s connection to God, the Soviet Union’s leaders lavished money they didn’t have (as much of the population was starving) on temples to the communist struggle and (hoped-for) achievements. 

The stations stand as a reminder that the human spirit is about much more than practicalities and economic success. The human spirit longs for God, creator of heaven and earth and of all that is in it. Puny man may try to erase that longing or replace it with a longing for something else, but such effort is futile because worshipping God is in our DNA.

Interesting that when perestroika happened in the 1990’s, the people pressed to have the Church of Christ the Saviour rebuilt. So the government dug out the swimming pool and rebuilt the church exactly as it had been. Inside is a riot of gilded columns and statues, and paintings telling the gospel stories. 

When we went inside, we found that it isn’t simply a gallery of art and beauty. It is a living church, where many individuals bow before icons and in chapels, lighting candles and praying to God. 

Psalm 2 describes this clearly. ‘The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying “Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.” The One enthroned in heaven laughs.

It hasn’t been a very funny period for the suffering masses of Russia, but their soul remained strong and vibrant.

Perhaps ‘religion’ is the opium of the masses, but faith in the living God sets us free. All of us.