The old rugged cross

The old rugged cross. Jesus hung on an ugly tree and suffered the worst execution men could dream up. And yet, through that act of ugliness and brutality emerged beauty and redemption and life everlasting.

What was unspeakably horrible, in the hands of our loving heavenly Father, became a touchstone with the divine, a doorway through which we can enter into that precious, amazing relationship which the Trinity longed for. 

This has been a week of shocking terror, a week in which sin broke through in all its despicability. My mind cannot fathom how God will redeem what was lost, but I believe it is exactly what he will do as we cry out to him.

As Tony preached this morning, God loved the world so much he gave his only, beloved son. He wanted to rescue us from the power of darkness, and the light of the world has broken through. 

May the fragrance of Jesus remind us of his love and may his light transform our despair and fill us with hope as we trust in him.

Wireless On

Panic Over

Technology often beats me. But this morning I’ve had a small success.

In the midst of checking emails on my laptop, I got a message saying that the wireless function had been turned off and I could no longer connect to the internet!

Now that is not the sort of message I enjoy getting. I immediately think of texting one of my sons and crying out, “Help!” But they’re all at work and I don’t want them to think I’m just hopeless. 

After investigating various things on the computer’s control centre and not seeing what I was looking for (like a simple ‘wireless ... on or off?’ button), I examined the outside of the laptop itself and what do you know? At the front there is a simple switch labelled Wireless – on / off. There it was. I obviously had bumped it as I shifted the laptop, and thought I was up the creek without a connection.

It’s easy to disconnect ourselves from our maker, too. Any number of things cause us to accidentally turn off our awareness and expectation that we can hear from God himself, personally. Doubts. Disappointments. Bitterness. Anger. Fear. Busyness. Disinterestedness. Guilt. Sin.

We shift our viewpoint imperceptibly and have made the switch from keeping an open mind and heart ready to receive what God wants to say to us today, to having spiritual earplugs in and the switch turned off.

And yet in this age in which we live, many people seek advice from the position of the stars in the sky, the tarot cards, crystals or whatever. So it isn’t as if everyone’s become very rational and denied their inner intuition and spiritual dimension. Why the deafness to God?

I wonder if it’s due to a wrong understanding of who God is. We have majored on the wrath and judgment of God and I think many folk just think of him as a divine statistician eager to keep a record of our wrongs and make us pay. But that’s not the God, Father of Jesus Christ, worshiped by Christians. The Bible says God is love, and that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. God is not keeping a tally of our sins. Confess them to him and his forgiveness is instant and it blots out the record, and you can start again with a clean sheet.

God is love. He doesn’t want anyone to be separated from him. He wants everyone to be part of his family. Jesus invites us into the intricate relationship of the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit makes our entry into that divine dance possible. 

Complicated and yet oh so simple. Just turn on your spiritual wireless and let him encourage you himself, assure you of his grace and give you his peace.

Turbulence

The wind is living up to its March-reputation today. It is whining and howling round the house, slamming doors and rattling windows and being a general pain. 

I don’t like the wind. 

It seems relentless as it blows. It can come in wild bursts or blow steady and strong. Don’t like either. It can break off branches, or pick up debris and fling it into your face or onto your head. For contact lens wearers, the dust is a menace. 

It can bring down telephone wires and disconnect communication channels. Someone in our area has been waiting for 6 weeks for the company to re-connect him after the last big blow.

It’s the unpredictability I hate, and the fact that I can see few redeeming features to its activity. Oh I know globally it does the whole weather thing, but here, in my garden, it does nothing but tear down and spoil things.

Every morning I pray that the Lord will enable me to handle all that comes my way, a surprise or expected, with grace and love, trusting that he has allowed it to touch me for some reason. Today I have felt blown about in more ways than just by the wind outside. 

Nothing horrendous, but lots of medium-sized niggles. Anxieties about family. Concern for health. That wearing back pain. Mistakes and criticisms. Work to be done which I had intended to do this morning, but my day has been hijacked and it will not get seen to today. 

Through my mind has just flashed a song which was popular in prayer groups when I was first born again. ‘Wind, wind, blow on me....set me free...the blessed Holy Spirit.’ How I loved that chorus. I loved singing, ‘wind, wind, blow on me’! Funny, when my feelings for the wind are not so positive.

The Holy Spirit is likened to the wind. Unpredictable. Blows where he will. Can’t be pinned down. 

Some Christians don’t really ‘do’ the Holy Spirit. His activity was for the early church, they may say. Now we have the Bible we don’t need his constant intervention and activity. To my mind, experience, and the way I read the Bible, they are turning away from an important aspect of God.

I wonder if this aversion to the Holy Spirit is like mine to the physical wind. Folk like to be in control. They don’t like something to happen in church (or anywhere else perhaps) which wasn’t allocated a time-slot for, which doesn’t seem quite normal, which has no explanation and may feel like it has no end. 

The thing about the Holy Spirit is he is God, an integral part of the trinity, and as such, he is love and nothing will happen which he hasn’t allowed. The wind of the Spirit may seem wild and out of control, but it isn’t. Out of our control, perhaps; not outside of God’s.

And neither is the wind blowing outside my door. So off I go to walk Dusty again...

Grafted in

I’m looking at some beautiful roses from our garden.

They grow up one stem and then divide into three or four small blooms, and are the most delicate shade of peachy white. Just gorgeous.

Well, I brought this one stem in yesterday and as I looked at it, I noticed the stump from where I had dead-headed an earlier bloom. It got me to thinking about the Trinity, and me. The Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is such a hard concept to understand. Three in one – how does that work exactly? Recently I read someone comparing the relationship within the Trinity as an intimate dance, into which the Godhead is seeking to draw each of us in. I love that image. 

But back to the stump. We’re also told that we have been grafted in, and that if we don’t bear fruit, we will be cut off. That stump makes me think of being cut off, but given my thoughts during the last few days about abiding in Jesus rather than being required to be rushing around doing stuff all the time, I don’t feel daunted, just reminded, challenged, to abide.

It looks beautiful to abide. Just look at those roses. 

The sun is out and I’m working in the garden today, but while I am working there, I am abiding. I see evidence of the creativity of the Lord everywhere, and as I pluck and eat a warm raspberry, or dig up clumps of irises, I praise him.

Thank God that I’ve been grafted in.