iGod

Easter is not just for the religious type

A local vicar and pastor stood by the side of the road holding up a sign that said, "The End is Near! Turn yourself around now before it's too late!"

"Leave us alone, you religious nuts!" yelled a driver as he sped by. Then from around the bend they heard a big splash.

"Do you think," said one clergy to the other, "we should just put up a sign that says, 'bridge down' instead?"

I have heard people say that they are not the religious type, insinuating that, perhaps, I am.  As if I came out of my mother’s womb clutching an open Bible with a full-robed choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus by the bedside. I mean who sets out in life to be religious?

For some strange reason though a few atheist writers recently, such as Alain De Botton and Richard Holloway, find “religion” attractive. In fact, the former writer has gone so far to try and set out a religious life for non-believers. Then there is AC Grayling who has even written a bible for the atheist.

Someone once wrote, “To be is to be connected. And to be connected is to be plugged in.” The Bible states that we are all “made in the image of God”. These are both big, big statements and this is a small, small brain here that reflects upon them. Yet, life is a big experience and so I think it deserves a little of our time to dwell on the big stuff once in a while, don’t you?  And it is also okay not to have a conclusive answer in two minutes. Some things are meant to be pondered over a lifetime. Maybe even over eternity.

I guess for many people though “religion” in the UK stands for a shrinking minority of church-goers who hate gay people, resent women and despise those who have abortions, but anyone with a bit of savvy will know that this not quite the case but, of course, it makes a convenient headline.

However, personally speaking, if my faith does come across as judgmental, intolerant and exclusive, it bothers me and the finger needs to be pointed firmly back at my face.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Sadly, I think at times he is right. I have met many non-Christians whose conduct is better people than Christians. Religion in itself does not make anyone a better person - Christian or atheist. But, of course, choosing to follow Jesus is not principally about ethics, it has to do with an awe-inspiring divine-human relationship.

Shortly our local churches will be celebrating Easter, a time we celebrate new life in Christ through his resurrection, but maybe we could see as the time when Jesus Christ, the son of God, came as the non-religious type for the non-religious type to draw all people to himself into a real, relevant and restored relationship with God the Father.

I truly believe the message of salvation is still as powerful and pertinent as it was 2,000 years ago, because you see Jesus’ death happened in a secular setting, not in a private religious community. It was not really a religious event at all. It happened in the city of one of the busiest and most important trading outposts of the Roman Empire.

On Good Friday we remember how Jesus, isolated and with a minority following, gave his life in a divine act of love for the majority, regardless of belief or faith. Now, I am not wanting to impose my position on anyone, but I do want to put it out there to our community.

We are all free to accept or reject, but let me leave you with this last thought: did Jesus really die just to make us religious? It just doesn’t stack up for me.

Maybe see you at Stour Valley Vineyard Church 10.30 am on Easter Sunday at the Delphi Centre.

Happy Easter!

ASD

Too busy to read this? All the more reason.

This last week I just had to get things fixed.

Life was becoming stressful. My laptop was not synching with my other devices, so it meant that when I put a date in my diary it would go missing or not carry over properly.

I knew things had gone desperately wrong when I realised that I had to be in three places at one time.

So having had tinkered around on my laptop for long enough and reading various geeky online conversations, I booked an appointment to see a Technician in the Genius Bar at my nearest Apple Store. This is fancy language for saying an “in-store IT guy who knows a lot more than me”, as much as it pains me to say I hasten to add.

Looking at my diary on different devices, he asked which one was my master diary. “Haven’t a clue”, came my muffled reply.

After much clicking and sighing, he awe-inspiringly managed to bring all my various calendars together in one place. Towards the end he look up and said, “You sure have an active calendar!” Which was euphemistic for saying ,”Sheesh! I wouldn’t want your life, mate!”

We have entered the period that the Church calls Lent. It is traditionally a 40-day period when Christians spiritually prepare for Easter. It mirrors the time that Jesus spent in the Wilderness without food and water being tempted by the Devil. Christians often use the 40-day opportunity to abstain from something as part of their spiritual discipline to keep prayerfully engaged throughout the time.

It gives space to reflect on our part in Christ’s death. A time of year when we focus our thoughts on our human fragility and remember that we are “dust.” As the first book of the Bible says, “From dust we were made and from dust we shall return. We remember our capacity to be selfish, cruel and weak. And we remember that despite humanity’s great achievements, we are fragile, vulnerable human beings.

Creating time and space to reflect isn’t easy. Just recently I have begun to re-read a book called Too Busy Not to Pray. I have been waiting patiently for a sequel, To Busy to Read Too Busy Not to Pray, but alas still not forthcoming.

Prayer, he says, is an unnatural activity. We are forced to learn from an early age the rules of self-reliance and struggle to achieve self-sufficiency.  It is the complete opposite to all that we are ingrained to think and do. Therefore, making time to pray doesn’t come easily.

So what does prayer do?

Well, that’s a big question, but one of the things is achieves is a sacred space in our busy day that allows God to speak to us and we to communicate with him. It also gives us the gift of de-cluttering the mind with unimportant things that vie continuously for our attention like a demanding child.

If we take the possibility of prayer seriously the busyness of our lives may just start to improve also our emotional health. (Actually, medical research has proved this to be the case.) It will start to help us prioritise our values.

There is an old hymn by Emily May Grimes Crawford, which has the moving words: “Speak, Lord, in the stillness while I wait on Thee.  Hushed my heart, to listen in expectancy".

Where is your stillness to be found? Do you need to slow down and cool off on a few things? Because if you discover an IT techie telling you that you have a very “active diary” a reflective prayer life might just help to save you.

 

ASD

Keep Calm and Enjoy Christmas

(My article reproduced from Community News.)

I remember sitting in a church a few years and hearing a vicar talk about how Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill, and how we needed to find space to just be.

As a young parent I thought, “Yeh, right!”

In all honesty, I strained to hear how the talk finished as one daughter almost caused an international incident by stealing another child’s Buzz Lightyear, while the other threw a habdab because I asked to her give back an elderly lady’s walking stick. Peace in heaven maybe, but peace on earth was stretching it.

In the midst of a busy conference recently I came across a flavour of tea called Moment of Calm. Although not quite tempted to have a cup, it did remind me of those unavoidable ubiquitous Keep Calm and Carry On posters and mugs, which seem to be everywhere like a cheap suit. Originally a wartime poster produced by the British government in 1939, it now has its own parodies such as: Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake and Now Panic and Freak Out. Calmness is something we are seeking everywhere.

I wonder, though, if it possible to have a true moment of calm this Christmas?

When I think of having a calm Christmas myself the familiar Austrian carol Silent Night, Holy Night by Franz Xaver Gruber comes to mind.

What makes the hymn special for me is that it is said to have been sung simultaneously in French, English and German by troops in the trenches during the famous Christmas truce of 1914. It was one of the few carols that soldiers on both sides of the front line knew.

It was estimated that on that Christmas Eve around 100,000 troops ceased fighting and instead, quite bizarrely, shouted Happy Christmas to each other before eventually going over the top to exchange, not gunfire, but presents. There was even a friendly game of football.

I suspect Silent Night has never had a less holy setting, but it was sung where hope in a saviour of the world was needed most. I am sure it was also sung with gusto. It was a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the bloodiest and needless wars in modern history.

It tells me that if there can be calm in the midst of the Great War then, perhaps, aiming for some of our own peace and calm this Christmas is not beyond our reach.

We will, of course, be remembering our troops this year who will be far away from home, but for ourselves let me ask: where will we look for our calm? Will it be in a tea bag or somewhere a little more soulful like Church?

There are a number of local churches who have planned Christmas services where I know a time of peace on earth will be on offer (see Church Services on page 4).

But if you do have noisy excitable kids, like ours, you’re very welcome to bring them to our hour-long Christmas Eve Family Carols service at 7pm in the Delphi Centre. Why not come early for free mince pies and mulled wine? It’s usually a lot fun and just the thing after you’ve done all your shopping and preparations. We’d love to see you. We’ll even promise to sing Silent Night, Holy Night too.

Meanwhile, may I wish you a happy Christmas on behalf of all of us at Stour Valley Vineyard Church.

ASD

Life Version 2.0

(My article reproduced from Community News)

I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I love it when it makes my life easier, but absolutely hate it when it interferes with my routine and it becomes the master, not the servant.

Quite unabashed, I have been an Apple Mac user ever since my second year at ‘vicar factory’ back in the early 90s. Before then I kindly borrowed someone’s Toshiba Portable MS DOS computer, which in truth wasn’t that portable. Not only was it heavy and left dents in my knees, but the battery life was shorter than a queue to the Crazy Paving Appreciation Society’s Annual Lecture.

Nowadays, alongside my lighter laptop, I also have my mobile or should I say ‘smart phone’, but as I discovered recently this has not been without its problems.

I attempted to upgrade my phone software to the latest whizzy-whiz, faster, better-than-ever-before version. Also known as iOS 5. In truth, I was not unhappy with how things were before, but the thought of something better and free, well…it was simply an offer I couldn’t refuse.

So on a quiet weeknight I hit the download button to let technology do its best. Unfortunately it decided to do its worst. With a big gasp I watched my entire set of emails, calendars and contacts disappear before my eyes. (And, no, my emails weren’t backed up!) If ever there was a time to find a grown man crying in a corner it was then. The promise of a better-connected life had let me down.

It has made me think how we can often put a lot of blind faith in things that are not necessarily proven, but given enough hype can accept anything as truth. We want to believe that something will make our lives better.

It is natural to want to upgrade the standard of our lives. We can look at the current version and think, “This just sucks! Maybe something has to stopped functioning in our life or we see something in someone else’s and want what they have.

The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple said famously in a university plenary speech:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

The immensely successful and talented Steve Jobs recognised his products were not ultimately enough in them self. That is quite something, isn’t it?

Life has a spiritual profundity that modern science still struggles with any integrity to make redundant. There remains this longing in us all to be known, loved and accepted for who we are, not for what we have achieved. Many Christian commentators have called this a God-shaped hole wanting to be filled by himself through his Son Jesus Christ.

If the promises of God are true and Jesus is who he says he is, it requires a full upgrade to a new way of seeing and experiencing life. The old version will never do.

St Augustine, the early church father said rather wryly:

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: ‘Come to me all you that labour and are heavy burdened.’” [quoting Jesus]

Is God’s Life Version any better than the modern alternatives around?

I give the last word to Paul the low-tec Apostle who said this about the great iPriest, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

ASD

Wasting time

A little while ago I was in my study when our youngest daughter came in to tell me rather excitedly that she was about to go off for her first ever sleepover at a friend's house. She had meticulously packed her little pink bag with wheels the night before in anticipation. It was a monumental day in her small uncomplicated life and so subsequently was almost beside herself with anticipation - but I was busy. very busy, doing very important pastor-like things.

Every few minutes or so she would come in and tell me she was about to go. I said I would be there in a minute to see her off. She must have been down about five times to get my attention. It was beginning to get irritating as I was in the middle of my deepest thoughts and it wasn't as simple as just leaving my desk. 

After a while, I noticed the silence. Then it happened, the awful deadening sound of nothing hit me. My heart quickly began to race. I jumped up from my chair and rushed into the hallway and saw that her carefully packed overnight bag by the front door had gone. The family car in the drive had gone too. I was devastated. I felt like the worst father in the whole entire world that had ever been born or will ever be born. My heart broke with shame. That thing to me that was so important just two minutes ago now seemed of no importance whatsoever.

In the Bible there is a famous passage to be found in the book of Ecclesiastes where the writer, King Solomon, wrote that 'there is a time for everything, a season for every activity... A time to laugh, a time to cry.... a time to live and a time to die.'

There is nothing like a missed opportunity to help prioritise what is important to us.

What was so important to me was only important to me, no-one else, not least to my beautiful seven-year-old daughter. I wondered if you have ever had that similar experience. You realise you have spent your time and efforts on the wrong thing and found out too late to do much about it.

Time, I believe, is a gift from God, as is life itself. Every second, every minute, every hour, day, year, is as precious to someone else as it is to you. How we spend time with another person is just as important as the time we spend on a task.

Jesus was often accused by the great and so-called good around him of wasting his time on people who did not matter to society. They thought he should be using his time as a rabbi better doing more religious things. Instead he chose to mix with people such as prostitutes, employees on the take and the social outcasts.

So if Jesus Christ was willing to waste his precious time on seemingly insignificant people and things when he had only three years to do his work, then maybe we can all reflect whether our time can have greater purpose too.

What can seem like a waste of time may actually turn out to be worth more than gold. It may not produce anything tangible, build anything, make us money or get a job, but something special might just start to happen.

When my daughter came home the next day she rushed into to see me with the biggest of hugs and smiles as she told me all about her 'late night'.  I put everything down to listen and asked her questions. I then told her in a hushed tone, sitting her on my knee, that I loved her. She put her hand over my mouth, rolled her beautiful green eyes at me and sighed in a very grown up matter-of-fact way, 'Oh Da-ad, I know you do. And I love you too.' 

'There is a time for everything'.

ASD

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Would you swim the English Channel? Would you audition for X Factor? Solve world hunger? Wouldn’t it be great if we were guaranteed success in everything we touched?

Coming down from Mount Olympus, I wonder if a fear of failure stops us from going forward in life. Maybe there is a fear of failing in marriage because our parents divorced.  Maybe getting an education because we fear we will not have the commitment to see it through. We can end up counting the cost of failure more and totally miss the joy of trying.

When I was at school in the sixth form seven of us decided to cycle to North Wales to raise money for a Mountain activity centre in Snowdonia. For some dumb and inexplicable reason we choose to go in the February half term when it was bitterly cold and snowing. Considering that I had never cycled more than five miles in my life, you could say a cycle ride of 180 miles over three days was a risky strategy. Well, we made it and the local newspaper ran the headline “The Magnificent Seven.” Though I seem to remember in the film that only three of them made it. Anyway, moving on.

Life doesn’t give us any certainty, but certainly there is hope. In our church there is no stigma attached to failure. We come as we are. We come as failures being restored.

We have just come through Easter when the Church remembers the great sacrifice that Jesus made for us by dying on a rough wooden Roman cross. The Easter story tells us Jesus took our guilt and shame and substituted himself for us. We acknowledge that we can’t save ourselves from ourselves. It has to have divine involvement.

It’s amazing to think that the first pope of Rome, Peter, did not see himself as infallible, but a miserable failure before his reinstatement by Jesus.

He was one of Jesus’ closest friends, but when the tough got going he ended up denying Jesus three times to save his bacon. Not great qualifications for becoming the Pontiff of Rome you might think. Peter knew he had done wrong against God (sin) but received forgiveness from the only one that ultimately really matters. Furthermore, he was then trusted by Jesus to start the Church, which today sees a third of the world population following Jesus. Not a bad result for a failure.

So perhaps the question is not what would you do if you could not fail, but what will you do when you do? Contrary to some held beliefs, an authentic life in Christ does not live with continued guilt and shame, but allows us to come and be accepted for who we are, being set free and given new hope for a fail-safe future. Now you have to admit that is pretty cool.

ASD

Another boring routine post? Far from it.

Someone told me recently that since they had retired they had seen themselves lose their weekend. I had wondered if it was a reference to perhaps them getting a part-time weekend retirement job, but actually it was a little more mundane than that.

Since they had stopped working their Saturdays and Sundays seemed like any other day of the week. Each day felt pretty much like any other.

It is easy for many of us to complain about our Mondays to Fridays and live for the weekend. We can go even so far as to say that the daily work routine gets boring. We wake up, have the same cereal, leave home the same time to go and do the same old job. Of course, some people feel absolutely secure with routine and hate any thought of change and I respect that.

Yet here is the funny thing, these days we hear a lot about stress and burnout in a way that probably perplexes our parents and grandparents. Not saying that it is not real. Far from it. We may attribute it to working too many hours, long travel time, an intensive job, demanding boss and not enough time to ourselves. But there can be just as much stress from life not turning out as we would like, living with unfilled ambition and dreams.

We can have an idealised view of what our life should be. We can fall into that thing called entitlement, which is when we feel we deserve happiness or success due to our hard work or something we have achieved.

I remember a highly paid worker telling me that he deserved his big bonus because he did long hours, but I told him that I knew people in the catering business who did equally as long hours if not more, but on much less pay. It is all a matter of perspective. He argued, of course, that he carried the weight of responsibility.

Life has to do with a lot of conditioning of what we think it owes us. It has to do with maybe wrong expectations, especially when life does not go to plan and, indeed, goes backwards, not forwards. We find ourselves getting worn out, low and dissatisfied with our daily routine. It can even make us physically and emotionally ill.

So here is how I deal with it. Some days I just need to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other and stop going by my feelings. I look to find contentment and joy not in success-bound situations, but in the simple things. I remind myself to stop trying to look for recognition from my peers or parents or comparing myself with someone my age and background. I stop myself from saying I wish it was Saturday and look forward to getting the most out of today.

Contrary to what some may think, biblical Christianity has never promoted a routine-free life or even a successful life. Actually, quite the opposite. The Christian life is full of daily disciplines where God is to be found often in the seemingly mundane everyday experience of life. In fact, as one theologian has said, “Ritual is a reminder of God’s continued faithfulness.” The Bible says in the Psalms, “His love endures for ever.” Elsewhere Jesus says, “He who endures to the end will be saved.”

It all seems to point to the simple underlying fact that God knows we are going to find life tough at times and just plain hard work, but we do not toil under a hot sun alone. He is as faithful to us as the days are long.

Through those dry difficult periods I have found the rain does come and the seasons often change with it. It is at these times that I realise that my worth is not found in what I do or achieve with my week, but who I am in my relationship with a faithful loving God over a lifetime. Have a good day.

ASD