The Daniel Blogs: Health and Safety

I kind of fell in to making lattes. I was supposed to be meeting someone in a coffee shop managed by a friend and staffed by volunteers but that meeting never happened and I suddenly found myself in one of would-be baristas instead. I got talking to one of them about an event he had been at with some of the Chaplaincy staff at his university, a kind of Q&A at which he had been particularly struck by one of the answers. One of the panel had been asked to share one piece of advice or wisdom with the students present and, after a little thought, had said, “You’re safe.”

One of the more remarkable incidents in the book of Daniel is when King Nebuchadnezzar decides that three of his Hebrew subjects had shown the kind of treasonous disobedience that merited death by incineration. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood accused in front of a huge blaze that had been stoked in their honour, sweat running down their faces, perhaps with their knees knocking. I wonder if Nebuchadnezzar’s eyes were drawn to those knees? Knees that had refused to give him what he wanted, that had refused to bend. Knees that dared to come before him now without a hint of the compacted dust and dirt which would have shown deference. Knees that had dared to suggest that there was a limit to his majesty and power.

Knees that would soon learn that knees that didn’t kneel didn’t stand a chance.

And while Nebuchadnezzar is perhaps looking at the knees that maybe knocked and the running sweat is possibly starting to make their eyes sting, one of them, or all three of them in unison, answered the question the King had hung in the heated air. "Your threat means nothing to us. If you throw us in the fire, the God we serve can rescue us from it and anything else you might cook up, O king. But even if he doesn't, it wouldn't make a bit of difference, O king. We still wouldn't serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up."

Such humility in the midst of such confidence. It’s a phenomenal statement. Confidence in the power of their God. Humility that would keep them for speaking for him, that would make clear to them the error of pretending to know what he might do at any given moment. Humility and confidence which would see them choose painful death over bowing to a different master. In this statement I think we see something of the safe insecurity which marks the life Jesus offers with his promises of abundance and his warnings of suffering.

God may well choose to reward actions of faith as he seems to do for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. After his run in with a den of lions, Daniel says he was saved because ultimately he was considered “blameless”. But God does not promise this. What he does actually promise us is that things are going to be hard. That life is going to be unfair. That when we follow him we might suffer because some people won’t understand what we are doing and others might even hate us for it. When we leave Daniel and company, things have gone pretty well, lots of rescues and lots of promotions have come their way. But they would never see freedom, they would never go home again. Even when we follow faithfully and closely and even though he is in control, God does not promise us safety in this world. Shane Claiborne’s Mum says, “I have come to see that we Christians are not called to safety, but we are promised that God will be with us when we are in danger. And there is no better place to be than in the hand of God.” Allow me to quote someone quoting someone -

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his Cost of Discipleship, reconciles these seemingly contradictory notions–the security of relationship with God and the insecurity of life in a fallen world–by appealing to Christian paradox:

The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus).

So are we safe or not? Yes. But no. No. But yes. Jesus says, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart for I have overcome the world!” We are in no danger but we should never think that means we’ll be safe! Like Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, we need to have faith in the sovereign God who is control. It will not always be easy and the road we will be asked to walk may not always be safe. God himself is not safe! In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis includes this exchange between Lucy and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about Aslan the Lion:

Lucy: Is he safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.

Mrs. Beaver: That you will, dearie, and make no mistake, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.

Lucy: Then he isn't safe.

Mr. Beaver: Safe? Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.

The Daniel Blogs: Celebrity...and being like eveything else...

My friend Ben and I were asked to speak at a youth group weekend and we decided to begin our little series by talking about Esther and Jonah and Daniel and in doing so tried to learn lessons about not separating ourselves from the world around us but not becoming just like everybody else either. Jonah was our example of someone who thought he was better than those around him and so we talked about how important it was that we have more humility and indeed self-awareness than that. It is really important that we are IN the world, that we don’t distance ourselves so much from it that when it looks for us we are no-where to be found. And because you're kidding yourself if you don't think that that is exactly where and who you are.

Esther was our example of someone who had managed to blend in to the background. Before she took the brave decision of ‘coming out’ as a Hebrew no-one, not even her husband the King, seemed to have any idea that she was a Jew. While we are IN the world we should ask for the grace not to become OF the world. Not to fall for the charms of the world and think that all the stuff that it offers is actually worth having. We are no use to the world if, when it does come looking, it discovers that we are just like everyone and everything else. And we are settling for something less than we might enjoy.

And then we got ourselves to Daniel, the hero of the piece, who managed to find that coveted third way and actually keep his feet upon it.

I had decided that I wasn’t really going to get in to this here because most of what I was excited about and challenged by from that particular line of thinking I have already covered in some of the other Daniel Blogs. But then I saw the videos I have embedded below. I have long been amused by the significance Christians can place on the discovery that a celebrity shares their faith. It seems to give a hit of vindication and validation, perhaps another angle of the kind of sense which sees people buy celebrity endorsed products. When running an entertainments website for students, some friends and I organised a competition the prize of which was some merchandise given to us by the British dance act Basement Jaxx. Noticing that one of the group’s members had written “God Bless” before scrawling her signature on a poster we decided to try and start a rumour that the band were all Christians just because we enjoyed people’s reactions. But surely the giant elephant in the room would tell us, if only it could talk, that the whole notion of celebrity is just utterly ridiculous when considered in the context of the Upside Down Kingdom of God.

In the actual videos some of the pictures that have been chosen of the female celebrities sit beside their words like odd shoes. I’m not commenting on the actual people in these videos, on what they do, on what they believe or anything else. Indeed some of the quotes are pretty interesting, others profound. It’s simply the notion of Christian celebrity and the photograph choices made by the person behind the editing that at times almost sees me burst out laughing with incredulity (Please see the last frame!). Choices which seem to be rooted in the logic of sex-sells advertising. If they are beautiful, scantily clad even, and they say it, well, I guess you really MUST be worth it.

"Who'll be the salt if the salt should lose its flavour? Work a miracle in my heart."

Claiborne at Esquire

Shane Claiborne was asked to write a letter for the readers of Esquire Magazine.

As usual he has some words that need hearing...

"The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination."

Read More!

The Daniel Blogs: What's Unfair

I continue with another entry inspired by some talks I did on Daniel. Even though Daniel himself doesn't get much of a look in this time round...this is where my wonderings took me...

Somehow the weight was taken off when the young man’s friend offered the eulogy, when we sang his favourite songs and when the Pastor quoted from the scriptures. As long as someone kept giving life to stories and flashing photographs of a life lived...as long as he was still in the room...things almost seemed okay. But then the talking stopped. The music stopped. And the life sized coffin was wheeled past us and away. We stood because that is the respectful thing to do when people leave. There was a pause and what felt more like reality than the hope that was felt just moments before seemed to re-establish itself. It made the air feel thicker and the sudden pressure made your eyes water.

In Psalm 139 David writes, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” God and the comfort he brings surrounded David. Even death wouldn’t see him escape God’s loving presence.

Job had something different to say.

Christian types always seem to look down on gambling, or friendly wagers as you might explain them when talking to your mother, particularly when they involve the Prince of Darkness. That doughnut you want so badly usually seems to be retailing at soul-sized value when Lucifer is around. But when it came to Job, God made an exception. He does the unspeakable.

He makes a deal with the Devil.

In a story which shows the value God seems to place on our keeping faith in him, he allows Satan to pull the rug from under Job’s life. Everything is taken away from him. Not even the lives of his family are spared. It won’t come as a surprise that Job doesn’t see things in quite the same way as David. Far from feeling surrounded by the love and protection of God, Job laments, “Behold, I go forwards, but he is not there, and backwards, but I do not perceive him.”

A character in Coupland’s “Hey, Nostradamus!” toys with the similarities of "God is now here"/"God is no-where". Which is closer to our daily experience? When everyone stops talking. When the music stops playing. When people start to stand, respectfully.

Job comes to mind when I think of Daniel being thrown to the lions. Their only crime was faithful discipleship. Did Daniel respond like Job or did he show the kind of unwavering faithfulness and confidence that so defines his story? Did he question the unfairness? Did he rage and weep when no-one was looking? We don’t know. We do know that things were worked out for Daniel. He was pulled out of the pit the following morning and pointed to his innocence as the reason. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are being threatened with what we tell our children was a ‘fiery furnace’, the alliteration seeming to give it a fluffy fun quality deemed fit for such an audience (maybe that’s just me), they explain that they are confident that God has the power to save them but are humble enough to conclude that they have no idea whether he will choose to or not. In their case and in the case of Daniel it appears that he chose life. In Job’s case no such intervention was forthcoming.

That the Bible promises such persecution for those that love the light in a world of shadows is true but that does little to explain the inescapable unfairness of this world. It wasn’t persecution that led to the death of the young man I have already mentioned before his thirtieth birthday, nor his brother before his twentieth nor their sister before her first. The fragility we were left with when our world fell seems to ensure random breakages time and time and time again. And that smacks of an unfairness so bitter and can induce a fear so palpable that it defies explanation.

The Bible tells us that one reason why our causes for complaint should be directed at an unfair life and not an unfair God, would be that we deserve nothing from him to begin with. We have been graced with our very lives and even more than that, a relationship with our Maker that should have been far beyond our imperfect grasp. And yet when tragedy snaffles out life before it could stretch its legs or when burdens become insufferably heavy, we still look to the heavens with angry questions on our lips. We still scream unfairness. Because we are told that this Father is the kind that cuddles his children and takes them on fishing trips and slips chocolate in to their hands when their mother is not looking. The birds of the air have everything they need for a life of fulfilment and they are not loved anywhere nearly as deeply as us. We scream unfairness because while we know the fiery furnace is a reality of life we know there is a power that really could reduce it to fluffy fun if it deemed fit.

Towards the end of Job’s story God finally speaks, his voice echoing dramatically out of a whirlwind, and what does he say? Frederick Buechner puts it like this. “God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kinds of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a clam...God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself.” Job’s questions dry up when he realises the majesty of who he is addressing. Awe was inspired and the resulting humility forced the acceptance of something humanity has never willingly acknowledged – not when we tried to build a tower that would allow us to touch the heavens, not when we created a means of unleashing nuclear hell upon our enemies, not when we seek medically afforded immortality and not when we scratch each others eyes out arguing about the means and purpose of time’s beginning – we cannot know or understand everything.

A lot seems to hinge on the way in which God has chosen to redeem his wayward creation, a choice we are told speaks volumes about his character. His has yet to be the way of the vengeful conqueror - he sent a baby not a battalion. I think of the young man's father and the children he has watched die and I think of God watching his own son die. I wonder. Phillip Yancey writes this: “The cross that held Jesus’ body, naked and marked with scars, exposed all the violence and injustice of this world. At once, the Cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love. No –one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment – God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side.”

While I have seen tragedy break in the world around me I would say that I have yet to experience its sudden destruction within my own personal world. When I think about if and when I do, fear and hope mingle in a way that feels like panic. I hope that my belief in the ‘other side’ will be enough, or will be deepened enough, for me to make it through. I fear that I will simply collapse or even wish to curse God and die.

A Place to Belong

A snapshot of what Children of the Nations is all about. Images and words from all of the places that COTN works (Little hint-if it looks green it's probably Sierra Leone). My friend Alice takes my breath away every time. Be inspired!

COTN - A Place to Belong from Children of the Nations on Vimeo.

Tick. Tick. Tick. BOOM!!

Was there a bomb in your city today?

Think to yourself what would happen in your city if someone set off a bomb.

It’s one in the morning. People are asleep. People are coming home from a night out. People are watching late night TV. People are blogging. It’s one in the morning... It’s your city... BANG!

An explosion.

What would the aftermath be like? What would the press have to say? What would you have to think? Maybe no-one was hurt. Maybe lucky escapes were enjoyed. But this is your city. And someone just bombed it.

Think about your reaction. What would you feel? Fear? Panic? Anger? Hatred?

Last week this is exactly what happened in my city, Belfast. A small military base relatively close to my house was the target of what is called a ‘device’, close enough for me to hear the explosion. No-one was injured but the threat was real.

How did I react? I finished whatever I was doing on my computer and went to bed. Was it the talk of the town? Nope. Belfast is one of the places in the world where a bomb can go off and life can go on as normal.

Though I’m from Northern Ireland I am somewhat of a blow-in to Belfast itself, moving to the city just 8 years ago and living in other places since then, but everyone in Northern Ireland of at least my age and above grew up with both bomb scares that amounted to nothing and real carnage that changed lives forever. Some of the effects of this history on our society can be seen in our reaction to its present echoes.

I can only imagine the panic a bomb scare would instil in some places in the world. In Northern Ireland we became so used to them that to use the word blasé would be almost to understate. A friend tells the story of being instructed to look for an ‘incendiary device’, a fire bomb, in the shopping complex where she worked at the time, her clueless and unprotected hands riffling through cupboards and drawers with no idea what such a device would look like. When I was a kid all the families of protestant ministers in the area of Ireland where my family lived were threatened with bomb attacks. We smiled and joked around as we checked under the car for bombs before we travelled anywhere. I have come back to a Northern Ireland which is being actively threatened by a tiny minority of its population, a group which seems incapable of the peace the majority is enjoying. It’s a sad step backwards but you have to be paying attention to notice.

Unfortunately sometimes real tragedy lurks amongst the scare tactics. While I was away there were some shootings - two soldiers and a police officer were killed. Some rioting followed and concern was widespread. People feared a return to the kind of violence the past had put them through. The scale of the tragedy Northern Ireland has seen takes a toll on a society. I guess that, like drug addicts, we required bigger and bigger hits over time. So bomb blasts that injure none, controlled explosions, localised rioting, bomb scares...you’re going to have to do better than that my friend.

In the film, ‘A Mighty Heart’, the wife of a kidnapped journalist says that though it may appear that the terrorists had ‘won’ they had not, because they had failed to terrorise her. It is a powerful moment in a crushing film. When I think about Northern Ireland I do see this defiance. The refusal to be terrorised. The determination that life has to continue. The concern which followed the murders of this year led to defiant protests, with thousands of people standing in silence in front of City Hall. In silence they screamed, “We will not go back, we will not be terrorised.”

But I see something else too. I see a society that has been so scared, so terrorised in fact, that there is a numbness. Most of us are so tired that we cannot summon the energy required to beat our chests, our pulpits or our drums, the energy required by emotion. Genuine tragedy will force this from us. But what falls shorts of that will not. Instead we just continue. We plod along. We ignore what can be ignored. And we laugh at ourselves. We laugh about looking for bombs under our cars, we joke about our divisions and we smile knowingly at one another. I remember standing on the roof of my church with a group of Americans as a riot unfurled on a nearby street below. Petrol bombs were being thrown at the police and buses in the area had been hi-jacked and set alight. Some of our visitors were understandably shook up but those of us from Belfast smiled and joked. We knew the ‘rules’, this wasn’t our first riot, we knew we were in no danger. And there is a pride in knowing what we know. I saw the same dark humour and sensed the same kind of pride in Sierra Leone. We are not the same as other people. We have seen a thing or two.

The War on Terror has always been an interesting idea from the stance of an Irishman. That those who painted themselves as our great protectors hailed from the same land as those who had helped finance the war in our own for so many years was not lost on us.* Nor was the irony of a booklet issued by the British Government to every household in the UK, explaining what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. Thirty years too late where I come from but thanks for the thought. Clearly the Irish were just supposed to know already. But at what point would we say that terror had triumphed? That the war was on the way to being lost? When have we in actual fact been terrorised?

I want to suggest two different answers. When that terror is palpable. When we spend our time afraid, looking over our shoulders, and when that fear affects the decisions that we make. The threat level is orange so we shouldn’t travel today. This was the case in Northern Ireland during the troubles when people were searched going in to shops, when the city centre would close down by six and when people would simply not travel through certain places. But there is a second suggestion. An indicator which lingers in Northern Ireland even though the fear has all but gone. When life under threat wears us down so that we stop paying attention when we can manage to, when we stop being outraged and when we laugh to stop ourselves. The reaction strikes as perfectly natural self preservation but it is one forced by terror.

This is one of the tragedies of Northern Ireland. We have seen too many video nasties to be moved by what others would see as horror.

It’s one in the morning. My city is under attack. And I would like my innocence back.

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*The role of America in the ‘Troubles’ is not an uncomplicated one. Visas were given to Irish Republicans to go on fund raising drives amongst wealthy Irish Americans, visas that lent credibility and money that did buy guns and explosives. At the same time the American administrations of people like Bill Clinton played an incredibly valuable role in bringing our various political factions close enough together (adjoining rooms if not the same room) for the ballot box to finally win the battle for hearts and minds it had been waging with the blast bomb.

You shouldn't be here...

Allow me to recommend a website - The Burnside Writers Collective. It has been a really pleasant on-line find for me and so I pass it on to you...

Of the stuff that's on the front page today, I really liked this article.

"I've been realizing lately that most of our important decisions are not between right and wrong, but rather a prioritizing of values... I'm not arguing that there is no such thing as right and wrong, just that most of our life decisions are not nearly so straight forward."

The Daniel Blogs: Temptation and what we really want

As the story of the first chapter in Daniel begins to unfold it is interesting to see what Daniel accepts and what he rejects in his new home. He agrees to learn the language and study the literature of Babylon and he agrees to have his name changed, but he makes a stand when it comes to the issue of eating food from the King’s table. In the culture of the time to share a meal was to commit oneself to friendship and if you did so with the King in such a way you were accepting an obligation of loyalty to him. Daniel was therefore rejecting a symbol of dependence on King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel was committed to living a life which acknowledged Yahweh alone as Master, as Sovereign, as King, as Father. And so he refused to eat Nebuchadnezzar’s food. Such was Daniel’s commitment that when his first attempt to get a more simple diet fails he tries again. Asking once and being denied would perhaps have been enough for most in such dangerous circumstances. Disrespecting the King by rejecting his food could have seen Daniel killed. But Daniel shows that he wasn’t simply trying to follow the rules, this wasn’t about legalism for him, rather he was seeking to live a faithful life. It was about his relationship with God, the condition of his heart.

When we think about temptation I think that this is an amazing lesson. Daniel didn’t give up and say, “Well, no one could say that we didn’t try.” He didn’t say that because he wasn’t interested in doing God’s will for the sake of doing it, he HAD to do God’s will because he wanted it, he craved it, he had internalised it. It was part of who he was. So often we know what the right thing to do is and yet we choose the wrong thing because, in the moment, in that second of temptation, we want the thing we are tempted by more than we want to follow God. It is as simple as that. We chose what we wanted most. I have done that many times and I am ashamed of my foolishness. Because I KNOW that God’s way is the best way and I have seen that to be true - I have experienced it on many occasions. And yet in the moment of temptation I forget or don’t want to remember. I am fooled in to thinking that the world’s way is better.

Shane Claiborne says, “Christians are not people who are no longer tempted but people who have seen enough of God to be able to resist the kingdom of this world. Our eyes have caught a glimpse of the Promised Land, and it is so dazzling that we can no longer settle for what the empire has to offer.” I think that this is great and it is true. I have seen MORE than the world can offer. I have seen God give me back one hundred fold all that I have put before him. I have enjoyed the warm embrace of my heavenly Father and YET, AND YET I cannot say what Claiborne makes sound so simple, I cannot in good faith sit here and type, “I am tempted but I am able to resist the kingdom of this world.” Sometimes I can, when I look to God for strength. But a lot of the time I fail and I sin and I hate myself for it. I mourn my sinful nature. In his song Vertigo Bono says, “My soul cannot be bought but my mind can wander” and I feel a connection to that idea. In a verse I draw encouragement from Paul explains some of what is going on here by referring to the battle we wage with our fallen flesh. In Romans 7 v 19 and 20 he writes, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me.” This reality forces us to the foot of the cross where we can only look to the grace of the sovereign God.

Part of this is a matter of trust. I have to believe that God’s way is the best way. I have to trust that the abundant life which he offers to those who follow him is really abundant and that it is real. We have to trust in God. Because the thing about sin is that it often offers a quick hit, it offers something which seems really nice and it usually offers it right now. And sometimes what God offers isn’t about right now. It is bigger and better but maybe it is also later. So we have to trust that God is going to deliver. If I say to you that I have a cake for you, a really special one that I have baked myself. And you can have it and enjoy it tomorrow, but ONLY if you DO NOT eat the cookie that your other friend will offer you right after you’ve finished reading this blog. The only way that you are going to say no to that little tasty morsel of a cookie is if you trust in two things – you gotta trust that I am telling you the truth, that the cake exists, and you gotta trust that I know how to bake, that the cake is going to be sweeter than the cookie. Just like Daniel, if we are going to follow God, we have to trust that his way is the best way. It makes sense then that C.S. Lewis sees pride at the heart of our weakness for sin. Pride tells us that we can go our own way, that the path we will hack out for ourselves will see us reach a better destination, quicker. We think we know better, that our cookies are where it's at. And so we rebel.

Like all things this trust will grow the more we learn to love God. When Jesus is asked about what the greatest commandment in the bible is he says two things. He says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind” and he adds a number two. “Love your neighbour as yourself.” He says that all the other teaching hangs on those two. We must start with love and the rest follows. When we make mistakes, determining to be more disciplined in future will get us nowhere if we don’t tend to the relationship. Because it’s only when we love God more than we love ourselves and the world around us that we will choose him in that moment of temptation. It’s like the difference between learning French for a test and learning French because you met a beautiful French girl or boy and you’ve fallen head over heels for them. The way you learn that language, the way you follow its rules, how much you care about pronouncing it right, is going to be completely different depending on what it is that is motivating you. We are to love God as Father, yes, but Jesus describes himself as the Bridegroom, the Church as his Bride. As Phillip Yancey suggests, “God desires not the clinging, helpless love of a child who has no choice, but the mature, freely given love of a lover.” When I lived in Derryvolgie, Steve Stockman would often say, “What we need to do is LOVE God and then do what we like.” Because when you truly love God what you want to do will be in line with what God loves. So we spend time with him, we speak with him, we live life with him. As lovers do.

Daniel chose God’s way and stepped out in faith, as he would time and time again in his story, trusting that his Father would be there with him, for him, when he needed him. He sets up a test with this servant – simple food, ten days, bet you we’ll be as healthy as anyone. And God was there, right there with him, not only ensuring that after those ten days Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all looked great but ensuring that Daniel would find favour with those whose help he needed. And when they came to be tested by King Nebuchadnezzar after their training was over, they didn’t just look great but Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were found to have more understanding, more wisdom than any of the other supposedly wise men of the kingdom. In a way that reminds me of God’s promise to give us a hundred fold more brothers and sisters in Mark, Daniel and his friends were said to have ten times more wisdom than the wisest in the kingdom. As Proverbs declares, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Following God and resisting temptation is easily typed about. If it was a matter of knowing right from wrong it would be a much simpler enterprise. But it's not about what you know, it's about what you want. Choice after choice is made based on what it is that we really want and those choices build on each other and who we are becomes the sum of their parts. Do we really want to follow the Father? If we do, how deeply we fall in love must exceed how deeply we fall in to temptation. We must trust that we are loved back by one who is both willing and capable of offering us the best there is. And when we realise that yet again we have cheapened ourselves by following after the things of our cookie cutter world, when we have settled for less when more was offered, when we are left broken hearted by our own infidelity, we look again to the Father who promises to keep picking us up and dusting us off and the Lover whose love is big enough for the both of us.

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"I can resist everything except temptation" - Oscar Wilde

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Anyone for a cookie?

Glory in the Highest

At the urging of my mother I watched William Crowley’s ‘Losing My Religion’ documentary and the bit that caused me to hit pause on BBC iPlayer and double click on Microsoft Word was when an astronomy buff suggested that the Genesis idea of this colossal universe being made for our benefit didn’t make any sense. I guess some might respond that this man’s disbelief stems from his failure to understand how much God loves him. But Ben knows different. Why might the universe be as huge and vast as telescopes and space missions have shown us? It shows us the vast greatness of the God who created it, like a work of art shows the skill and creative talent of its artist.

It’s all about the glory of God.

The stars show God’s love for us because we are able to enjoy them and because they point us to their sculptor. But to think of the universe as being all about humanity, all for our benefit, is to miss a point. It is to miss the fact that it is all about God. When Crawley suggests that the language with which this man talks about the galaxies and constellations he wonders at through this telescope sounds religious in tone, he responds neatly, “It is enthusiastic language. I am extremely impressed by the extreme scale and majesty of it all but I don’t have to evoke a God to explain it.” I have yet to be shown an explanation of time’s beginning without someone to spark the fires into life that made any sense to me rationally or took any less ‘faith’ to believe in than Genesis. For me the night sky has always reached out with its wonder and underlined the signature in the corner. Because it’s all about the glory of God.

The Daniel Blogs: Control

In verse two of Daniel chapter one, we read about the vessels that were taken from the temple and desecrated by being placed in the house of Nebuchadnezzar’s own god. One of the lessons about God’s sovereignty that we can learn from the story of Daniel is that God does not NEED us. So often people think they need to fight God’s battles for him. I often think that when I listen to Christians on the radio shouting about some moral issue or another. They talk as if God needs defending. As if the state of ‘moral decline’ in their country all depends on them putting forward a convincing argument and talking louder than everyone else. Reflecting on God’s sovereignty should not lead us in to inaction, “Oh well if God can do it all I will just sit down and be quiet”, but it should give us a more healthy perspective of where we fit in to things. God often chooses to use us but we shouldn’t get too carried away with how needed we are. What we see in Daniel with these sacred objects so desecrated by Nebuchadnezzar is an example of God acting alone. He doesn’t need Daniel and his boys fighting his battles for him, storming or picketing King Neb’s temple, phoning Stephen Nolan or going on hunger strike. When Nebuchadnezzar’s son, Belshazzar fails to learn from his father’s mistakes and adds insult to injury by using these vessels at a party, God writes his death sentence on the wall. Everyone is answerable to God. God raises rulers and he puts them down. He is the only one in control.

I think a lot of us try and avoid that reality. We so want to have that control and so many of us seem to float through life thinking that in fact we do have it. This is particularly true perhaps of people who live in Europe and America, the Western World. Because when we have control then we will be safe. And maybe above all things we wish for safety. So we must have control. And we have in fact learned that when we work together and when we work hard and when we study hard and when we are creative and when we let the market lead us, we can actually “control” an awful lot. We can control metal and steel and chemicals and viruses and bacteria and radio waves and electricity and we can control the atoms and electrons that it is all made of. It is not like that in other parts of the world. People in Sierra Leone are under far less of an illusion about the control they have over their lives...something they have learned too often under tragic circumstances. When there is a disaster, when a hurricane comes out of nowhere or a disease suddenly takes hold, we are really shaken because suddenly we realise that we aren’t in control.

A friend of mine recently got sick. One moment she was fine and then suddenly I was in an ICU waiting room in the middle of the night. I couldn’t believe it – I had been living in a country where diarrhoea is one of the biggest killers but I had been under the illusion that in the ‘West’ we had all these diseases cracked – we had antibiotics for everything. But we don’t. The fear that strikes when we realise that our grip on life is an illusion is incredible and spreads like one of the epidemics that tend to unveil our trusted smoke and mirrors. But in what direction does that fear compel us? At a youth fellowship weekend I was asked to speak at recently one of the girls told me that she had been sent home from school for a week because she coughed in class and looked a bit under the weather, the fear being that she might have swine flu. That is the direction we take. We set up check points and we racially profile and we spray things and we lock things down and we use hand sanitizer and we stop our kids playing in the street and we DO more and more things in an attempt to reassure ourselves that the control we had lost can be regained. That things might have BEEN out of control but the measures WE have put in place have restored the situation. We are back in control. Until the next time.

We are not in control. We need to look to our Father who is sovereign. One of my favourite songs which my little brothers and sisters in the COTN children’s village in Sierra Leone sing has the line – “What man cannot do for me my God has done.” This line carries a lot of weight when sung by children who have been lifted up from the street, from misery, from slavery, from fear, from sickness, from war, from CHAOS and been given health, an education, a home, a family, life, love. Do they still struggle? Of course. Do they get sad? Of course. Are they sometimes afraid? Of course. Find me the person who is none of these things. But many of them trust in a God who is good and good all the time. A God who loves them and will love them all the time. A God who is in control and will always be in control, though we may not understand the dynamics of that control and how it is exercised in the context of free will and our fallen world. In Chronicles we read of a King called Jehosephat and we see him pray a great prayer when surrounded by enemies – “Lord, I do not know what to do so I look to you.” That is the direction we should head when all seems spinning out of control. When we do we might just hear the words so often repeated when the people we read about in the Bible have an encounter with the divine or the angelic, “Do not be afraid.”

Catching the Hem

You don't get to talk theology with my friend Ben at the moment and not hear something about the glory of God. This is what is all about and Ben will happily tell you so, with a laugh and lot of gesturing.

When we were kids we had to memorize stuff from the Shorter Catechism for Sunday School, a requirement which I didn't exactly warm to. After one Sunday School exam I asked my father, who as pastor was deemed the authority and therefore appointed chief executioner, why he had insisted on asking me so many questions when I so clearly didn't know any of the answers. His response was that he thought I would, surely, get one right eventually. He had overestimated my commitment to the Catechism. But there was one question I would have gotten right had he asked me. One Catechism (is that how the individual question/answer couplets are referred to?) I have never forgotten because it is so short and has a kind of rhythm to it. And it is probably as important as it gets. Which makes it nice that I remember it.

"What is man's chief end?"

What is the meaning of life? I remember having a conversation with a friend a while back who was staggered that "the Church" had formulated an answer to that eternal question. It is quite remarkable when you think of it. Particularly when you bear in mind that what they came up with is so short...and has a kind of rhythm to it...

"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Ben is bringing everything back to this idea of giving God glory at the minute and as we sat and had coffee this evening he did so again, commenting on John Piper's suggestion that we switch the wording up a little bit so that it reads - "to glorify God BY enjoying him forever." We talked about that for a bit and we talked about the Church for a bit and we talked about philosophy and faith and scepticism and confession and religion and Nobel prizes and Brian McLaren and the Pope and nuclear war and worship and doubt and the Bible and Star Wars...for a little bit.

One thought struck us both as being pretty cool about this whole notion of our lives giving glory to God...

What glory it gives to God that he can change your world, turning it inside out and spinning it upside down, with the merest of glimpses at who he is. The blurry snapshot that is the best we are capable of catching or comprehending.

In 1 Corinthians Paul writes, "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face." What we see is not even close to what is. All is dim. We can make out the shape but not the detail. We get the idea but not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We are watching on scratchy, black and white VHS not blu ray with surround sound.

But God is such that even in the gloom of our comprehension, he transforms. The tiny fraction that we are able to understand is life changing. What that says about the magnitude of the majesty of God demands glory beyond our wildest imagingings.

He makes all things new even though touching the hem of his garment is the best that we can do.

The Daniel Blogs: Faith

I have found myself speaking about Daniel at a few different events and services so am going to try to put together the sum of those parts in a series of posts...

Before I left Ireland to go to Africa one of the things I was particularly saddened by was that I was leaving my family behind. I have been amazingly blessed with a family which loves me and is loved by me. And I was so sad to be leaving them. A verse I drew comfort from and took quite literally is found at the end of the story of the rich young ruler in Mark. Jesus has just had an encounter with someone who did not realise that if he gave his whole life to God that he would be given his whole life back. Jesus is thinking about this in Mark 10 v 29 when he says, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” In Africa this verse was lived out as I found new brothers and sisters and mothers. Another home. A bigger family. You may have noticed that father’s aren’t repeated in the list of the hundred fold. Some commentators believe that this is an intentional omission. They suggest that Jesus was making a statement to a culture where father’s held all the authority and did all the providing. Jesus was saying that only God is worthy to be seen as our true Father, the Provider, the Authority, the King. Only God is sovereign.

When we meet Daniel he has been captured by invaders and dragged off to a foreign kingdom. He has found himself at one of the climactic points in Jewish history when, by failing to follow their creator God, Yahweh, they are being driven in to exile. God’s instrument in the destruction of Jerusalem was King Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon. One of the themes of the book of Daniel is that God is in control, that he is sovereign. Daniel knew this and so he knew that he owed God his allegiance. And because he knew that God was sovereign, and therefore in control, he had faith that although everything looked chaotic it was in reality far from it. The first clue that the whirlwind Daniel found himself in was not a chaotic one is found right at the start of the story when we find out that Nebuchadnezzar was only able to take control of Jerusalem because it was delivered by God.

One thing that may have helped Daniel hold on to the truth of God’s sovereignty was his memory of the words of Jeremiah - he may even have been there when he said them. We read about it in Jeremiah 25 v 11 - “This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” Daniel knew that this was deserved. In chapter 9 we actually see Daniel praying to God and he acknowledges that justice was being done to the Hebrews. In verse 14 he continues, “Therefore the Lord has kept ready his calamity and has brought it upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice.” But Daniel was not without hope. Because he would also have known what Jeremiah said in verse 12 of Chapter 25. “Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste.”

The Bible has similar messages of caution and hope for us. Caution about the hatred that the world might throw at us - promises of persecution like in the passage from Mark I started this post with. Hope in the Kingdom that has come and of the Kingdom that is coming - promises of life in all its abundance. Might these spark the kind of faith we see in Daniel who, when he prays to the Father in verses 18 and 19 of Daniel 9, prays with passion and faith and hope: “O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name”?

What is amazing about Daniel is that he believed that God was in control and that he would, as Paul writes in Romans, “work all things together for good”, without knowing the end of the story. Think about that for a while. Think about what it must have been like for Daniel to be taken away from Jerusalem, where God dwelt, and brought in to the heart of his enemy’s kingdom. Without knowing the end of the story. I was talking to my Grandfather some time ago about his service in World War Two and he was explaining to me that while the battle of Stalingrad waged in Russia, he was in Iraq. If the Germans had defeated the Russians in that battle the oil fields of Iraq would have soon been a target and he would have found himself on another front line. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about what it must have been like to not know the end of that story. For someone like me who was not alive then, or even during the Cold War, it is quite an amazing thought. What must that have been like – not knowing the ending? Phillip Yancey writes that, “Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. ... Trusting in God’s ultimate goodness, a goodness that exists outside of time, a goodness that time has not yet caught up with.”

What Daniel did was hold on to his faith in God and believe that he was there even when he maybe couldn’t see him. Because even though the Bible tells us that God is always with us it is not always easy to feel him. Psalms 139 v 7 is often quoted to encourage us about God’s omnipresence: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” But in Chapter 23 v 8 Job, who is going through a time of dreadful suffering says, “Behold, I go forwards, but he is not there, and backwards, but I do not perceive him.” Faith is about trusting that God is with us even when we can’t see him. It is about trusting him even though we don’t know the details of the ends of our stories. Daniel’s is a story full of faith.

Inglourious Gorno: An essay of sorts on violence and the movies

SPOILER WARNING - There are some spoilers in here so if you are yet to see either Inglourious Basterds, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Funny Games then you might want to think twice about reading on.

Empire magazine gave the film Saw, four stars out of a possible five, and said of the second instalment, “Morally dubious it may be, but this gory melange of torture, terror and darkly humorous depravity appeals to the sick puppy within us all.” It says a great deal about us and just how sick that puppy is that Saw VI is scheduled for release on 23rd October. Saw is perhaps the flag bearer for a group of films which showcase what has been called torture-porn or gorno. Eli Roth is one of the directors who have brought this kind of stuff to the multiplex with the movies Cabin Fever and Hostel. In its unfavourable review of Hostel II Empire explains the sub-genre like this - “Gratuitous, guts-out, rooted in ’70s exploitation, gorno digs its fears out of lingering pain, voyeuristic camerawork, unblinking edits and a soft spot for novelty mutilations.” Business is booming too with Hostel making $20 million dollars in its opening weekend and the Saw franchise having taken hundreds of millions worldwide. Hostel III is in the works and decisions have already been made to make a Saw VII.

My friend Fraser likes to ask conversation sparking questions and one that accompanied us on a recent car journey was about film and the extreme. How much can we, should we take? How much gorno should we consume? And might over-indulgence be hurting our souls?

I love story and film and like to think that I’m an open-minded kind of guy who has sympathies with the idea that if you haven’t seen it you can’t really comment on it. And I like to comment. So when something comes along with a lot of buzz and hype, my interest gets perked to see what the fuss is all about. That’s perhaps what you call being duped by the marketing but I am going to try and pass it off as evidence of an insatiably curious mind...and see if anybody is fooled. These are the excuses I will give for having seen Saw, Hostel and half of Cabin Fever. I hasten to add that I watched them on TV - that I didn’t pay money to see death depicted on screen makes me feel better about myself for no rational reason.

Even the barely observant will notice that I just made an excuse for watching these films. Why do I feel the need? First of all, they are poor films. I did watch Saw to the end to see how it would all finish up but was amazed by how thin the plot for Hostel was. Thankfully Eli Roth does show some mercy by only keeping the thing going for 90 minutes. It has been suggested that torture-porn can be seen as exposing the horrors of the Guantanamo/Extraordinary Rendition world we live in but I find that pretty unconvincing. I think this is core to my feelings about violence in film – Is it saying something? Is there a purpose? Is there a story? Or is this all just gratuitous? In the absence of such qualities these films just become an excuse to watch ugliness. Subjective stuff? You betcha.

In support of showing the reality behind the gunshot wound or the decapitation or the scalping let me make one point. Like the insipid pop which markets consequence-free ‘zig a zig ah’ sex, the big blockbusters consistently fail to show the bloody results of violent acts in an effort to have their action-filled cake but also eat their PG13 sized opening weekends. They are like A Team episodes where BA will riddle the bad guys’ car with bullets ensuring that it flies up in the air and rolls down a ravine of some sort...only for the driver and his passenger to crawl out with barely a scratch and grunt, “You okay?” Jett Loe of The Film Talk, making particular reference to the Transformers films says, “Those films are like pollution.” If we want to watch violent action on our screens we should be prepared to see it in all its horrible reality. That doesn’t necessarily get us to graphic gore but it should see death and destruction less casually dished out. Otherwise we are telling potentially dangerous lies. One reaction would be to say that there is enough violence in the world without having it in movies so we should just tell other stories. My response is that film is an important way of dealing with, making sense of and telling the truth about the world in which we live. Removing the violence from our stories would limit them to sugary escapism and removing the blood from our violence fails to take its consequences seriously. But when that horror is what we are being entertained by we have to ask big questions of ourselves.

The second reason I think I need a reason (or two), and what we need to think about if we are saying that graphic violence might be legitimised by meaning, is whether the level of violence in these particular films is such that...well...it is almost by definition gratuitous. It could never be necessary/positive/good to show these things, could it? The Passion of the Christ is a useful example to throw up given the violence that was put on display in what was hailed as a ‘Christian’ film – violence that was the point, violence that was the message. Was it justified? Did it have a place? To think about these questions I am going to discuss two films I have seen recently – Inglourious Basterds and Funny Games. A lot of on-line reading has helped me make sense of my thoughts on these two films and you will see me draw on the words of others to express them. I found two websites particularly helpful – The Film Talk and The House Next Door.

Quentin Tarantino is something of a polarizing figure and the two ways in which people view Inglourious Basterds, his latest film ostensibly about a group of Jewish-American soldiers fighting guerrilla style behind enemy lines, are perhaps examples of the two wider perspectives from which his work is viewed. Either Inglourious Basterds is about wish fulfilment, about how cool it would be to kill Nazis and how cool it is to watch them die, what Eli Roth, who stars in the film, calls “kosher porn”, OR it asks the following questions of its audience – Is revenge actually a brutal business regardless of your motive? And are you actually enjoying watching these characters get so graphically executed? In one scene, Tarantino juxtaposes a cinema full of Nazis manically laughing at a film featuring the seemingly endless killing of allied soldiers by a German sniper (Tellingly or coincidentally directed by Eli Roth) with the cinema you, the audience, are sitting in when people start laughing at the violence that is then unleashed. He is certainly not saying that executing figures of Nazi evil as happens on screen is comparable to their crime of genocide but is he showing that there is a moral cost to vengeance? Is he asking questions about the enjoyment we get from watching such events unfold? Does Tarantino have something to say about violence in film or does he just think it’s cool? And if his graphic violence says something does that legitimise his use of it? Or not?

Lt. Aldo Raine: We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. The German will be sickened by us, the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us.

The same questions of meaning are brought up when Jeffrey Bellamy and Ed Howard discuss his first film as a director, Reservoir Dogs. Of the three way shootout in that movie Howard says, “This is the dead end that the image of the movie tough guy inevitably leads to, and those Tarantino characters who cannot escape such cinematic touchstones, who cannot imagine a life beyond their genre stereotypes, inevitably wind up dead.” But, echoing many others, Bellamy responds by completely disagreeing, “Not at all. Instead, I believe that QT thinks the three-way shootout is cool, and so he wants to do one, and that's that.” Does he have something to say or is it all about Tarantino’s definition of cool? This song is cool. That director was cool. This situation is cool. This actor is cool. This violence is cool.

Gareth Higgins of The Film Talk (And Northern Ireland!) thinks Tarantino is making a statement with Inglourious Basterds about the innate tastelessness of cinematic depictions of war. But how could this be what Tarantino, of all people, is suggesting? He was executive producer on Hostel. He helped write the script. He made Kill Bill! He had Vincent Vega shoot Marvin IN THE FACE by accident in Pulp Fiction because he thought it would be funny! This kind of scene is the reason why another reviewer, Matt Zoller Seitz (admittedly before the release of Inglourious Basterds) wrote that, “Tarantino has no feelings about violence at all, apart from appreciating its usefulness in jazzing people up or getting a character from Point A to Point B. ... I don’t think he understands the weight of violence, the long-term ramifications of it, otherwise he wouldn’t make it so graphic and so lightweight at the same time.” It would certainly be difficult to watch Tarantino’s films and suggest that he didn’t think that there was a lot of fun to be had from violence. So Howard seems to be stating the obvious when he suggests that Inglourious Basterds, “represents Tarantino really embracing his contradictions”.

My thought is that Tarantino is saying that violence has a cost, that vengeance and ‘victory’ is a messy, bloody business but, when it comes to the ethics of the voyeur, these issues about the enjoyment we draw from watching the violent, I think he is less making statements and more playing with questions. He is serious about these questions and he wants his audience to seriously consider them. But I don’t think he offers a fixed answer of his own. Howard seems to get it bang on for me when he writes, “I think this is part of what Tarantino's after, getting his audience to a point where they're not sure what to feel.”

So if we suggest that Tarantino has some things to say and some question to ask - is the gore necessary and therefore legitimised? Well, in a sense it is necessary, yes. Because of the way in which Tarantino wants to ask us the question. Because he wants to catch us in a laugh or with a flicker of torture-porn ‘yee-haw, we’s a killin’ Nat-zis!’ excitement in our bellies. He wants to ask us the question when we are up to our elbows in cookie jar. For Higgins, there is more too. He says, “By making this violence so absurd it makes the cruelty of the Nazis seem crueller than ever before and it makes war itself seem messier.”

And so to Funny Games...a real emotional wringer of a film where we see an upper middle class family have their home invaded and their lives brutally torn apart.

Paul: You can see it in the movie right?
Peter: Of course.
Paul: Well then she's as real as reality because you can see it too. Right?
Peter: Bullshit.
Paul: Why?

With this exchange in his movie Funny Games, I wonder if Michael Haneke is making us complicit in the crimes we watch perpetrated by his two well dressed young psychos, Peter and Paul. By paying our, probably exorbitant ticket price, we have on some level given the two intruders a license to torture, terrify and kill. We are allowing this to happen, we paid for it to happen. Why do we want to watch this? There are many, many differences between Haneke and Tarantino as filmmakers, with Tarantino probably being exactly the kind of director Haneke’s Funny Games sermon is targeted at, and though the questions they pose with these films are arguably similar, their approach could scarcely be more different.

Crucial to our discussion regarding what it is necessary to see, is Haneke’s refusal to show much in the way of gore at all. His violent acts are supreme in their cruelty but they take place out of shot. It is the reaction of his characters’, the anguished victims not the disaffected perpetrators, which convey the barbarity of what has taken place. Nor does he allow for any kind of cathartic, vengeful actions, perhaps suggesting that that is the way of our world (that evil rarely reaps the whirlwind) or maybe simply refusing to grant us what he knows we want. As if to underline his point, the one moment of revenge/justice is the only graphic violence we really see but as suddenly as we were granted it, it is taken away from us again. Both directors flip things around on us, show us what we were not expecting and ask us why it is that we enjoy this kind of thing but Tarantino would never, as Howard puts it, “assume a Michael Haneke-style moralist position and castigate his audience for enjoying the film”. Tarantino wants us to enjoy his film but perhaps be a little uncomfortable with that enjoyment, Haneke wants to make us suffer. Tarantino is asking the questions, Haneke is making the statements.

Interestingly the marketing for both films suggested that they would be exciting, thrilling and shocking – with Tarantino calling Basterds, a “rip-roaring adventure”, a “Move back in time, away from a depiction of the victimisation of the war”. Now, if you are going to get an audience for your questions this is probably the way to go about it and because the studio is gasping for the audience’s cash this is how they will always want to go about it. But this seemingly inevitable approach to marketing means, particularly in the case of Tarantino’s film, that you are probably making it even easier for people to completely miss the point. They will buy in to this idea of so called Jewish wish fulfilment, enjoy the thrills and see it as kosher porn. Throughout the writing of this post I have been reminded of a scene from yet another movie, Jarhead. A packed room full of marines are watching the Ride of the Valkries scene from Apocalypse Now, a scene about the madness of war in a movie about the madness of war, and yet the marines are cheering and howling and punching the air with their fists, enjoying the explosions and baying for Vietcong blood. When you take the approach of condemning, or in the case of Tarantino questioning, the enjoyment of graphic violence in film by showing graphic violence you may just find yourself entertaining people, your questions lost in the adrenaline rush of gunshots. You are, after all, to paraphrase an on-line reviewer called Anton Bitel, assailing what you also embody.

Anna: Why don't you just kill us?
Peter: [smiling] You shouldn't forget the importance of entertainment.

Violence has a place in cinema and there will be times when this will require a sticker somewhere on the box to warn of scenes of a graphic nature. When that violence is thoughtfully used by a director intending to say something or question something I think it can be, not just legitimate, but important. It is when violence is trivialised or glorified that we find ourselves in dangerous places. I wonder if the reason, both what is intended and what is understood, behind the violence is more significant than the levels of actual gore. But directors tempted to push the boundaries need to show maturity about how they choose to tell their stories and make their cases. And when violence is being used to examine its own use particular caution is needed. Dangling us off the side of the cliff to show us how close we are to falling off is probably not all that effective – we’re getting used to the view from the edge by now so you’re at risk of doing nothing more than leaving us closer to the drop.

Lt. Aldo Raine: Actually, Werner, we're all tickled to hear you say that. Frankly, watchin' Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies.

Grace like Rain

I have been meaning to write about rain and time and Sierra Leone but my friend Laura has beaten me to it.


I don't think I would have said it much simpler or better.


Have a read here.




The picture is of Musu during a rain storm at our Children's Home in Banta...and that's her school uniform on her head...

Musu is originally from Liberia but one tragedy after another saw her end up in Sierra Leone with nobody to care for her. She is as wonderful as she looks.

Suburban Wilderness

Colorado Springs, a sprawling suburbia at the eastern feet of the staggering Rocky Mountains strikes as an image of a modern America which has robbed itself of community by worshipping privacy, space and the automobile. And yet, with a paradox which also rings true in a country which plays home to the incredibly relational, generous and visionary people that I have met in kitchens, overseas, on public transport and spread over the pages of paperbacks, it is a place where, for a short time, I found real community, love, grace, inspiration, support, reality and the stuff of a broken humanity all too often hidden from view by the space between us.

As I left Africa I revisited a thought which had been important to me as I left Ireland. God does not change. He is the same everywhere and so the One who has always proved to be reliable would and will continue to be so, no matter where I find myself. The richness of his person and the reach of his influence would not diminish. I thought about that as I lamented leaving a place where I had been inspired almost every day by a story or a child or an event or a landscape. I was struck by the subtle difference between two thoughts:

1 - "You have changed my life" A phrase so often repeated by departing visitors to our children. Massah you have changed who I am. Mary you have ensured that I will never be the same. Phillo you have altered me. Samuel you have made an indelible mark on my heart.

2 - "God has used you to change my life" A phrase less commonly uttered though perhaps implied. Ngardy, by introducing me to you God has inspired me to a different life. Angie, through our relationship God has called me to a changed way of being. Musu, God has used you to get to my core and go to work.

The difference is subtle but utter. Because if my children were the ones who affected a change in my life, that influence would lessen with every day we spend apart. But if that difference was instigated by an omnipresent Father who works through the people, things and situations around us, then the process does not have to ease off. There is no ending. There is just a journey. Because no destination has been reached and what was important was not left behind.

At a conference in America recently some of the great minds of American Christendom were asked to sum up the Christian experience in one word. This is kind of a futile exercise given the complexity of the experience to be described but it is food for thought at the very least and the word that they came up with was 'Wilderness'. It is a great word to suggest, albeit limited in the way that any single word must be, with a big problem being that it fails to speak to the 'abundance' of a life with God. What is sums up perfectly however is this reality - we are sojourners who have trouble in a world we are in but not of, stumbling in the darkness of our journey home with a fragment of the light. The Son of Man has no-where to lay his head. The journey continues.

In Colorado God made it clear that he has a whole lot more to show me and many more questions to pose. I feel like I have always been someone who is comfortable with the questions which drift around our heads and our hearts, whether acknowledged or not. Indeed I can quickly be uncomfortable in the midst of people with too many answers. Colorado was a place of true fellowship, a word which the church has reduced to mean pot luck dinners, cinema trips and 'fun' of a shallower type, but which here looked liked people sharing the brokenness of their souls, the depth of their questions and the loneliness of their wilderness. Sharing and laughing and rejoicing and encouraging and crying together in a way which the Church has always had the capacity to do. It was the Church with its masks torn off and what was underneath was painfully beautiful. Being a part of that for a few days has left me with a dull ache for all that we could be.