Easter Eggs

The Lindt Easter egg looks beautiful. Wrapped in gold foil, nestled above small red Lindor eggs, a moulded plastic cover holds all in place inside an outer cardboard wrap. (This isn’t going to be a rant about the environmental impact of all our Easter egg packaging, though it does make my heart sag…)

The egg looks lovely. I know it will taste delicious, from past experience. But until I open the box, extract the packaging and unwrap the egg, and actually bite into it … it’s all theory, memory, probability.

The cross does not look lovely. It’s an instrument of torture of the most cruel and barbaric kind. But the man who hung there … Jesus, who triumphed over death and rose from the grave … he is beautiful. I can look at the story, and see how beautiful his love and grace and mercy are, but unless I engage with him, unless I enter into the intimate relationship he invites me into, unless I confess that he is Lord … it’s all theory. A nice story, but one without impact on my life.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. Better even than the Lindt Easter egg.

Best Christmas Ever

‘I want it to be the best Christmas ever!’ the lady enthused, planning her seasonal purchases. 

The best Christmas ever. In a material world, that distils into a pile of presents under the tree, a loaded drinks cabinet and a fridge stuffed with all the delicacies. Perhaps for some it includes parties, amongst colleagues or club-members, often characterised by excess consumption of one sort or another. 

The truth is, the best Christmas ever has already been. It must have been the first Christmas, as a perfect deity was incarnated as a helpless baby and began the slow trudge towards the cross. For each of us, it must be the time that perfect man/perfect God was born into each of our hearts and took his place on the throne of our lives.

The best Christmas ever started with relationship: the Father bending down and kissing a twisted world with a loving kiss in the shape of his Son Jesus. The best Christmas every year involves relationship: families coming together to play and laugh, reminisce and wipe away the odd tear. Friends meeting up to share time. Those who, through no merit of their own, find themselves with treasure, reach out to share it with those with none. Those who, again with no merit, find themselves with time, reach out to share that with those who have no-one. 

All of us trudging through this weary world, taking time out from the frenzied preparations to sit with Jesus, refreshing and renewing that relationship, lifting him high in our praises and high in our lives. 

Jesus is the reason. Jesus is the relationship. Jesus is the Lord.

He has given us everything for the best Christmas ever.

Walking each other home again

A phrase which has resonated with me now for the last several months continues to yield rich blessings. As I ironed this afternoon, I thought of the meaning of home. I have understood the phrase to equate home with heaven, and today I mulled over Jesus’ template prayer for God’s kingdom to come to earth. His kingdom is our home. I believe we get a taste of heaven now, every day, encountering the kingdom in each other and different situations and hopefully bringing it into situations we encounter.

Walking each other home, then, happens all the time, when we enable others to enter in, even for just a moment. When we carry the peace of Christ into a frayed situation. When we live out our relationship with Jesus in the minutiae of our days. 

Home happens in relationships. Home is not necessarily a place. ‘Home is where I hang my hat’ is an old phrase I remember from somewhere. I have often said that I would make my home wherever Don is. So our real home is more than a place, it is in Jesus. 

I first encountered the possibility of a relationship with Jesus in the fervent singing of choruses expressing love to Jesus, sung by believers who inhabited their Lord. I still often find my home in Jesus in the congregated worship of Jesus with other believers.

Walking each other into Jesus. What better description can there be of life?

To Do or not To Do

My eyes pinged open this morning, earlier than they should have for a Saturday. Things on my mind. Things that need doing. Am I just moving slower these days, or is the To Do List getting longer?

After breakfast I wrote another To Do list which, though incomplete, still has 25 things on it. Leapt up and cleaned out the fridge, ditching the out-of-date jams and so on. Then I headed for the prayer alcove.

I can almost imagine God’s glee as he waited for me to discover what the reading was for this morning in the plan I follow. The irony of it all. The clarity of the message to Me. It was the story of the two sisters, Mary and Martha. Martha probably had 25 things on her To Do list too, and maybe Mary did as well, but Mary had abandoned her list and plunked down at Jesus’ feet, where she was hanging on to his every word. Martha, meanwhile, was seething with resentment that she was left to get on with all the work while her sister lounged with the honoured guest.

No problem seeing who I was being this morning, so I spent a few minutes there, also sitting at Jesus’ feet, soaking in his presence, telling him I love him. 

Sometimes, especially during hard times when we are under pressure and anxious, it is very tempting to focus totally on ‘doing’. It distracts us from that which worries us. It makes us feel like we can do something right, that we can make a positive difference in our little corner.

‘Being’ is so much healthier, though. God calls us to be in relationship with him. He longs for us to sit with him, without agenda, just in companionship and love. He invites us to sit in silence and listen. He has the words of eternal life, and they are light and life to the heavy heart.

It’s nearly bedtime now and only three things have come off the list. But meantime I enjoyed a BBQ with family. I am often a victim of the tyranny of the to-do list. There is something that feels virtuous in ticking off the tasks. But more virtuous, and of infinite more value, is the time I spend nurturing relationship – first with God through Jesus, then with others. Somehow, in God’s economy, that nurtures my own soul.

I’ll keep working through the To Do List, mainly so I don’t forget to do some of the things which have been awaiting attention. But I will resist letting it rule my life. I will do it in my own time, choosing to use it as an aide memoire and not allowing it to drive my life.

On Being a Gramma

Love is what we’re all about.

Relationship is the key to life. It starts with the Trinity and the amazing love entanglement that is. Then we are invited into it – incredible.

I have the amazing privilege of being a Gramma. I have one precious granddaughter (so far ...) and I cannot understand the tendency of other men and women of my age to choose random names for their grandchildren to call them. To me, it is so amazing to be a Gramma. I want to celebrate our relationship and am delighted to be known as wee Flick’s gramma.

Jesus taught his disciples to call the Father Abba, Daddy. An intimate, loving name signifying a close bond, a loving relationship – incredible when we are talking about the Creator of the world. If he doesn’t mind being called Abba by me, his most imperfect daughter ... not only doesn’t mind but positively wants to be known as Abba, to be known by me and you ... Wow. 

I had the joy yesterday of spending a few hours with my wee Flick. What a delight she is – scrunching up her nose, turning her head on its side, enjoying endless games of peek a boo, finding her voice and new ways to twist and turn and hold her wee body. She seems to wake up smiling and chatting and ready to go into a new portion of the day – 

She doesn’t have to do anything in particular to earn my love. From the moment she was born my heart was engaged with that wee soul. I wasn’t prepared for the feelings I would have – different from the intense love bond with my own four children, but just as deep and everlasting. 

We don’t have to do anything in particular for our Abba to love us. He just does. And he just wants us to enjoy exploring our relationship in Jesus with him – experimenting with how to grow and develop spiritually. We can’t get it wrong, even when we apparently fall on our faces. 

Whatever we do, Abba loves us. Whatever Flick does, Gramma loves her.

Relationship and Faith

I read an article the other day by an atheist who has a problem with the concept of faith-based schools and feels that the government in the UK is too quick to assume that ‘people of faith’ are generally more socially responsible than people without faith. He made the assertion that faith is a leap in the dark.

Of course plenty of people claim that, but it’s had me thinking. All relationships include some measure of trust and faith. Or should I say, all good relationships. All marriages should. When I met my husband I didn’t know everything there was to know about him, but I trusted what I saw and I ‘took a leap of faith’. But the leap of faith was based on the relationship which we had nurtured and developed.

The same holds true for my faith in God. It is not a leap in the dark but is based on relationship, the experience of encountering God at a deep spiritual level and receiving a deep peace that what I was encountering was true and good and real.

It isn’t a great idea to base faith on hearsay or legend. But the historicity of Jesus is documented more than the historicity of many other historical figures we accept as having lived. Grappling with his words in the Bible introduces a new depth to the knowing about Jesus, and enables one to know Jesus. 

My faith is based on my relationship. The more time I spend engaged in nurturing that relationship, the stronger my faith is.