Skips

Our neighbour has just rented a skip. A dumpster in American. He’s using his self-isolation, his wife tells us, to clear the attic. When he asked her if she wanted to keep anything from the attic, she shook her head. ‘If I’ve not missed it for the twenty or thirty years it’s been there, I don’t need it.’

The ramifications of enforced home time are wide. De-cluttering is a good thing. Throwing it all into a skip? I don’t know what he has in his attic, but I hope that if it still has a life in it that would benefit someone else, he will save it for the charity shops when they open again.

It would be nice, I was thinking, if we could rent a skip in which we could throw all our sins, all our memories of things done by or to us which crowd and shadow our thinking and stunt our spiritual growth.

But of course, we don’t need to rent one. Jesus has provided that skip. He invites us to confess our sins – which he forgives and forgets. He invites us to forgive those who have sinned against us. Gone. He hung on the cross to win us the freedom to hang out with him forever.

It’s so hard to really take this in. It’s easy to confess a sin, receive his forgiveness, and then stew in a guilt he doesn’t want us to have. It’s easy to forgive someone else and yet still rehearse the hurt in my head. As I prepare to walk through Holy Week with Jesus in a different way this year, one of my prayers will be to really accept his forgiveness, so that spiritually, I can stretch out into an airy, open space and grow, no longer shaded and cramped by what God has forgiven and forgotten.

It is finished

The jealous men sold their hated little brother to passing slave-traders and lied to their father that he’d been killed by wild animals.

Years later, they found themselves begging for food in a neighbouring country. To their horror, they discovered the man with the power of life or death over them was none other than this ‘little brother’, Joseph.

Joseph reassured them. Though he struggled and wept, God enabled him to forgive them. God showed him that although his brothers meant to harm him, God turned a truly terrible thing round and used it to bless many.

Mhairi was criminally assaulted by a man with power seventeen years ago. He probably didn’t start, or stop, with her. The assault shrouded her life for years until now.

Last night she released the music video to Sadie Jemmett’s new song, Don’t Silence Me, in which she and other women who have been used and abused throw off the shroud of shame and walk free. I’ve shared the link on my FB page so hope all can find it as I’m not very good at social media.

Mhairi hasn’t named the perpetrator, preferring to pursue forgiveness. Not easy, but in Jesus, possible. I don’t say that lightly.

But, what was meant to harm, God has turned to good, a blessing for many. Redemption. Freedom.

As Jesus said from the Cross, ‘It is finished’.

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.

More than two bits of wood

The cross is more than two pieces of wood bound together.

I’ve been praying a few prayers for a long time, persevering, hoping, trying to expect answers. Sometimes it’s easy to believe for answers. Sometimes it’s hard.

I read about the woman whose stretched out hand caught hold of Jesus’ robe from the back, releasing power for healing to flow from him to her. Jesus said it was her faith that healed her, and I feel confused. Is my faith inadequate then? How do I build it up so the power can flow unimpeded?

I clutched a palm-sized cross in my hands, asking Jesus to speak to me in words or pictures which I could clearly understand. Instantly I was aware of the cross I was clutching. On it was the word Faith.

The cross is more than a silent symbol. It shouts, ‘I love you!’ from the Trinity to me, to you, to the world.

I know that for a fact. Nobody would have done what Jesus did unless he were completely and utterly in love. 

Do I believe that? Yes. 100%. So, then, whatever his answer to my prayer, whether it is a pulse of power or a peaceful silence, it is a loving answer, and in it are green shoots of new life. 

My level of expectation has risen. As has Jesus.