Shifting Sands

One of the things that blocks out the Lord is our independence. When things are going well, we rely on our own innate abilities and strengths and forget our need for God. Well, I’m speaking for myself here but I suspect there may be others who fall into this category.

This is why deserts can be a blessing. It’s when I’m in the desert that I cry out to God and I rely on him to reveal the blockages and pitfalls and mountains which impede my progress and keep me in fear. 

There are probably a lot of different types of deserts in the world. I’m no expert but I think I may google that later and explore what they are. I know that there are deserts of stone and then there are deserts of sand, dunes which shift and blow in the powerful winds. Don once rode a train across the Nubian desert and was amazed when it would stop in the middle of nothing but shifting sands and people would get off and head off home bearing their purchases and belongings. He could see no landmarks by which they could navigate but somehow the indigenous desert folk knew how to find their way. 

Perhaps they were guided by celestial lights, the sun and moon and stars. When I feel lost in a desert of shifting sands, the only place to look is to the heavens and trust God to guide me through. Note to self.

Cold Comfort

Cold comfort?

Wrestling with those opening verses of Isaiah 40 this morning. Hard to reconcile the God of love with a God who pours out double punishment on people for their sins. Am I reading this wrong? Is it really meaning that he gives double blessing to those who have been suffering greatly? Any insights on this out there?

Led me to think about how John the Baptist’s audience heard his cry (from verse 3 of Isaiah 40) about preparing the way in the desert. They would certainly have felt they were in a desert, with the Romans in control, so how would they have understood the injunction to clear a path for God’s glory to be seen by all mankind? Seems like they responded on a personal level – what about corporately though? I guess the Temple largely ignored him or thought of him as a solitary and singular figure.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension, though, those who prepared the way were filled with the Holy Spirit and the glory of the Lord was certainly revealed. As it still is.

On to today’s persecuted church. What do our brothers and sisters make of these verses, if they even have time and space to consider them? I’ve just read an article on the report by Open Doors on the state of the persecuted church in 2015 and it makes grim reading. Scattered and frightened, fleeing situations of brutality and often having no safe haven to run to, how can they prepare the way for the Lord? 

Where is there comfort for them? Is the onus on us to be speaking tenderly to our brothers and sisters and reassuring them that the tough times are over? But are they? And I am not happy with the implication from this reading that they are suffering because of their sins, when our sins are just as heinous.

What about the state of the church in the west? Today’s news coverage is all about the Anglican Community’s sanctioning of the American Episcopal church for its stance on gay marriage. More fracturing, more disunity but how to repair it? 

What I take from this reading this morning is that we are all in the desert and somehow in that desert we are to make an effort to remove the impediments which promote division and discord. How do we even identify these with integrity and love? 

Conclusion today is that more than ever we need to live and walk close to the Lord as the body of Christ, because only he can guide us on the way forward. That as we come together in humility and in a spirit of seeking the way forward, he will highlight and demolish strongholds of division and discord. And as these things happen, all mankind will see it and marvel and recognise the glory of the Lord. 

My prayers are powerful and effective, according to God’s word, so I better get on it.

Through the Desert

Moses sent scouts to check out the promised land. Go through the desert and on into the hill country, he instructed.

It seems that in every promised land, there are deserts. I am in one now, grieving for a very special dog whose bright eyes and wagging tail lit up my every day for the last 13 years. But I sense the instruction to go on through the desert, don’t set up a camp here and nurse the grief. 

We all face deserts of one sort or another. They are arid and lifeless places, monochrome even, and when the going is really tough, the temptation is to stop. To hunker down and live in the desert, live in the loss, live in the pain, live in the shadow. 

No. Press on. Press on through the desert towards the hill country, fertile and full of promise. Yes, there may be giants to face there, too, but as long as we stay close to God, they too can be overcome. 

Our lives become productive, feeding others the fruits which our experiences have grown as we encourage those lagging behind in the desert to press on towards the hill country.

I’m not in the hill country today, but I see it on the horizon. I will press on through, with God’s guidance, reassurance, comfort and help. My loss is so miniscule compared to the horrendous suffering in so many places in the world, but nevertheless, it is my loss and it is personal and painful. 

It has potential to become the compost for fruit to feed others, if I let the Lord use it.

With his help, I will.

Sweet Manna

They are fragrant, exquisite colours – but when I cut all the sweet peas to bring in the other day, I came in with about a dozen.

A dozen. 

I have seen other peoples’ gardens. I have seen wire fences thick with sweet peas climbing to the skies, blooming their heads off. 

Someone said that sweet peas are voracious feeders. They need good manure and compost dug in before being planted. Although I throw a bucket of the dissolving plant food onto the ground there every couple of weeks, it obviously just isn’t enough. 

We’ve been so busy with lovely folk staying for B&B, people from France, Germany and the Netherlands. We enjoy their company, hearing their stories, getting to know their customs. But it all takes time. Folks on holiday are relaxed and linger, eager to chat and be advised on sights to see in the area. We enjoy that, but it plays havoc with my daily routine.

I find that quiet times in my Bible and just in listening to God are often lost in the bustle of the morning. I get to lunchtime and feel like these sweet peas. The blooms are few and far between.

I am a voracious feeder – or I like to be. When I feed on the Bible, when I linger in prayer, when I ponder things, I am content. I am at peace and able to give more, able to bloom better. 

There is some compost dug into my life, past times of prayer and study on which I can draw. But I need today’s word to me to make fresh fruit in my life.

Makes me think of the Israelites in the desert. God provided manna on the ground every morning to sustain them, and gave them strict instructions only to collect enough for that day. It wouldn’t store but would go mouldy and wormy by the second day, except on the day before the Sabbath when they could collect a double portion so as to have a rest on one day a week.

I need my daily manna. And I also need to remember that about taking a day a week off... but that’s another story.

Thunder I couldn't miss

It was forecast – but then the forecast is so frequently wrong. We went to bed last night and left the telephones and computer plugged in. 

Four a.m. and I found myself aware of rolling thunder rumbling in the distance. It didn’t stay in the distance for long, though, and Don and I soon pinged out of bed and were scampering round the house pulling plugs. We’ve been burned too many times – or rather, our motherboard has, and our telephones. The situation could have soon deteriorated into farce of the Fawlty Towers variety, as we have some B&B guests in at the moment who might have been surprised to encounter either of us at that time of morning. You have to laugh.

Natural phenomena are a good reality check when we start to take ourselves and our anxieties too seriously. They remind us of our own smallness, our own insignificance and our own powerlessness. We may try to minimise our vulnerability to nature’s wrath but in the end there is really no escape. It’s still raining this morning, but I can see a break in the clouds. 

God uses all sorts of things to bring us back to himself, to break into our circularly selfish thought patterns and remind us of who he is, and who we are.  In a book in the Old Testament, Hosea, God promises that he will ‘lead Israel into the desert and speak tenderly to her there’. (Hosea 2:14) 

I’ve been led into that desert in the past. My life choices weren’t great, and eventually I found myself in a desert, where homesickness and loneliness were overwhelming. But in that desert, I finally heard God’s tender voice speaking to me. 

He may speak in a clap of thunder, or he may speak words into a quiet heart, but the truth is that God does speak, and his words are loving and tender, calling us home to him.

It’s amazing.