Fake news ... or Good?

Fake news ... or Good?

The white-gowned ‘doctors’ probed and cut and slit open the wide-almond-eyed cadaver as an inept cameraman filmed the autopsy. The autopsy of an alien invader, filmed in Roswell in 1947, the film makers claimed. Hmm.

‘God told me we should get married,’ the woman told our bachelor friend at church one day. Our friend blanched and blurted out, ‘Well, he didn’t tell me!’

Fake news, or good? Jesus spoke to the Father daily, and encouraged his followers to do the same. But our hearing can be a bit like a game of Chinese whispers. We hear something, perhaps a distortion of the truth, because we are hearing only with one of our senses and not corroborating it through engaging another sense. We hear in prayer, perhaps, but fail to corroborate it through Scripture or through the wise words of praying friends. 

God doesn’t want us to hear ‘Chinese whispers’ from him. He spoke loud and clear in Jesus, and he still speaks through his Spirit in us, but our hearing is imperfect, distorted by our own experiences, our own desires, our own understanding. 

‘Delight yourself in the Lord,’ Scripture advises, and don’t rely on your own understanding. God’s Word to us is Good News, and his Name is Jesus. May I be careful every day to pass on the Good News, by living out his precepts and endeavouring to follow in his steps, and by speaking out his words when they bless and encourage others. But may I be circumspect, too, and never pass on a version of the truth, imperfectly heard as if through a game of Chinese whispers.

Torn Apart

One thing about being knocked down with illness: it gives you time to reflect. So today, as I lay in bed, I was thinking about that utter devastation on the roadside verge that I described the other day. 

You know, where the JCB driver had just ripped and torn his way through the branches of any trees or bushes which he thought were growing too close to the road.

The other day I’d been reflecting on the way our Father the gardener prunes us gently and thoughtfully so that we grow beautiful and fruitful. 

Today I realized that most of us have the experience of being pruned like those trees on the roadside. We’ve had people criticise us, belittle us, ignore us, abuse us, not believe us, and treat us as if we are worthless. 

Some of those times, it has felt as if a limb has been ripped off, an eye gouged out, or utterly gutted. We may readily recognise the roadside scene of utter destruction and carnage and identify with it in a painful way.

The good news is that God doesn’t see us like that. The good news is that God loves us rather foolishly because we don’t really deserve such lavish love. Maybe we think we deserve to have our sinful habits hacked off in a painful way, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need us to be perfect in order to love us. He doesn’t require us to have everything right before he opens his arms and draws us into a loving embrace. And he doesn’t rip and tear through the things that are not quite right. He gently prunes us with loving care and wisdom.

His grace is enough to melt my heart and make me fall on my knees before him.

Good News!

Good News!

Yesterday I got a phone call and as soon as I heard the voice on the other end, I knew by his tone that it was good news. Wonderful news which was longed and prayed for. I not only wanted to shout Hallelujah and Praise the Lord, because I know he is the one who made it possible, but I also wanted to shout the news out to friends and family.

So I did – to a few. 

Today I have an email asking me to refrain from sharing this until it is made public officially. Oops. Too late. I can back-pedal now and button my lips, as my dad would have said, and I have emailed the friends I shared with but actually, the news is out in a modest fashion. 

Thank goodness I didn’t tweet it. I might have, being new to this social medium and enthusiastic about the Twitter Bug.

Good news is for sharing, of course, but sensitively, and at the right time and in the right way. I’m sure Mary didn’t rush out from her encounter with the angel Gabriel and shout out her good news. We aren’t told how she broke the news to her parents, or to Joseph, but we can be sure it would not have been good news to their ears until the truth of it – God to be born as man through a virgin – was accepted.

This is still the best news the world has ever known, or ever will know. That God, the Creator of the universe, chose to be born into humble circumstances in a miraculous way, but then to live a very ordinary life as if he were an ordinary human being. He was a refugee, a man without a home of his own, a pariah to the authorities, a joke to the soldiers, a martyr. 

His truth, though, is the truth, and he was vindicated on the third day in the tomb, when he rose again to life. 

The great news of the child in the manger is awesome when we know the whole story of his life on earth. Jesus Christ, Saviour. 

That good news is not to be suppressed. But my mouth will keep mum about yesterday’s good news – though in my heart, I’m dancing.