Mulled Vine

The battery ran out on my IPOD so I had an hour or so of solitude this morning on the train, staring vacantly out the window or trying to guess the profession of the two laptop-wielders sitting next to me. Two consultant types that oozed successfulness and excessive self-confidence.

Anyway, let me not drift.

I mulled this morning whether God’s universe is like a stereogram. For those of you who don’t know what a stereogram is, they were all the rage some years back – its a picture that looks random but isn’t if you look at it in a particular way. The one above apparently is a shark.

I say apparently because I have always been rubbish at these. I stare, squint, grunt, pretend I’m not looking, etc. all to no avail. To me it looks like a random collection of dots.

I think God’s universe is like a stereogram.

Some people, the “Seers”, look at the universe and see Him everywhere. My wife is a Seer: very little is just plain old random or coincidence; everything is infused with meaning and purpose. Others, like me, look at the same universe and think “random”. We Randoms generally think that the Seers are stupid, deluded, or at best with the Faeries, whilst the Seers can’t understand why the Randoms can’t see what is plainly there to be seen.

There is a lot about Christianity that is rational, in fact its unusual as a religion in that respect. But there are some fundamental elements that cannot be grasped by reason. That’s where you need to be a Seer not a Random.

This is my prayer today for me, and you, if like me you’re a bit hung up on the dots.

I have stammered as long as I can remember. Its not a lot of fun really, mostly because people quite often take you for an idiot, but also because stammerers are quite often sensitive souls who take this very much to heart and it destroys their self-image.

Meeting God at the tender and very confused age of 20 was a subdued affair without any thunderbolts or overwhelming emotions, but it brought two new things into my life. One was a God who loved me, two was the possibility that He might heal me from this affliction.

Accepting God’s love when your self-image is low is not a trivial thing. It takes time. I remember my dear wife saying to me once: “God loves you”, to which I responded “So what? He loves everyone – that doesn’t make me special!” But over the years, and with general growing up, comes the realisation that I’m ok. I explained righteousness to my Sunday school kids as follows: Righteousness is when you get to heaven, warts and all, and God puts His arm around and says “You’re alright!” I love this picture. And if someone up there comes to ask me about what I’ve done, I’ll be able to point to Jesus and say “See Him!” and go on my way.

The other thing about being a Christian is the very real possibility of healing. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, despite much prayer by me and others, sometimes even with elders and oil, the healing has not materialised. I have many rationalisations, but deep, deep down my soul looks to the Gospels, sees the possibilities, and cries “Why not, Lord?”

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca, ‘ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. (Matthew 5:22)

See, I know this, but there’s this guy at work to whom the term fool is very apt. I could go on about he sits at his desk all day, does little or no work, sends flowery irrelevant emails that noone can understand to all, how he gets all defensive when questioned. All this when he should be ensuring that our project gets delivered properly to the client. Aaarrghhh! See what you’ve done!?!

[Deep breaths, breathing in the peace of God, breathing out the anger, breathing in...]

I try to be nice, courteous, direct, reasonable, all to no avail. The guy is a muppet and he just infuriates me.

I think I’ll use “muppet” – no danger of the fires of hell in that right?

Or I could pray for him and heap burning coals into his head(Romans 12:20) instead?

My wife and I have been through a tough few years because of her various illnesses and I must confess to being quite worn out by it all. Lately I’ve sought to draw near to God again but in the past I’ve generally been very angry at Him, not so much because He let it happen, but because my feeble prayers have availed nought. I thought, if this Christianity lark is real, why does it most of the time feel like there is no God, like things just happen randomly, without any meaning, and prayers return unanswered?

I look at my darling wife going through hell, struggling to function normally, to be a mum, a wife, with few friends who are able deal with her situation, with a church that is full of sympathetic tuts but no real love, and I want to cry and scream at the same time.

Then I look at the way her suffering has caused me to grow from a selfish oaf to something resembling a servant, how wonderfully kind our children are, how it has made her so completely reliant on her Lord, how close we are as a family, how we have made some true friends, and I see some glimmer of meaning in it all.

I don’t get the gravy train gospelites who promise financial prosperity for belief in God. The Gospel is about longer lasting treasures, and sometimes getting them is going to hurt like hell. That’s the way it is.

A man was spending a night at the home of a family with which he was good friends.

As there was little space in the house, he was asked to share a bed with the youngest son. He was just getting settled in bed, when suddenly the young lad jumped out of bed and kneeled down next to it. The man thought, he’s saying his bedtime prayers, and thinking it best to be a good example, got out of bed on his side to do the same.

The lad looked curiously at him and said: “What are you doing?”

“Same as you,” the man replied.

“Better not”, said the boy, “or Mom will be very cross with you – there isn’t a potty on that side.”

A friend of mine’s mum passed away recently and since I’ve not lost anybody very close before I didn’t really know what to say. He’s a Christian so of course we express our sorrow and offer to pray for God’s comfort and peace at this “difficult time” and other such appropriate things, but I don’t really go in for saying appropriate things just because its the done thing. I like to be as real as possible and whilst I’m sure these phrases were genuine in the mouth of the first person who said them, to me they sound a bit trite.

Nonetheless I did say I would pray for God’s comfort and peace, that God would put His arm around my friend, and offered the slight consolation that because his mum was with Jesus the separation would only be temporary.

The funeral is today and my heart really goes out to my friend at what must be a very dark time.

What do you think the biggest threat to the Church in the UK is? I reckon its neither Atheism, nor Pluralism, nor Islam, but APATHY. Its a nasty disease that is harder to fight because it offers no tangible target. Its a bit like walking in sludge – it just soaks up your effort and eventually drags you down.

But what is surprising is that the apathy is not just external to the Church. Measure the percentage of church members who pitch up regularly to prayer meetings. I bet its less than 10%. The Church in the UK appears lukewarm, ineffective, dying, apathetic. We offer a confused, diluted Gospel that lacks power to contend with the dogmatic assertions of Atheism and Islam, and we are too frightened to suggest in our pluralistic society that we have THE TRUTH lest we cause offense.

“In the late 1800’s there was a great evangelist named Gypsy Smith. He had traveled the world twice, preaching in every Continent, in many countries. Wherever he preached, revival broke out. One day a delegation of people from a certain community came to Gipsy and said, “We so desperately want to see revival in our area. It’s so dry and dead. What can we do to see revival?” Gipsy said, “I’ll tell you exactly how it will come about. You go home. Lock yourself in your bedroom. Take a piece of chalk. Put a circle on the floor of your bedroom. Kneel in that circle and pray fervently and brokenly that God will start revival in that circle.”

I have accepted a job offer and hope to start May 5th. It was a very tough decision because it wasn’t quite what I was looking for, a case of is the bird in the hand better than two that are perhaps hiding in the bush? I prayed for wisdom and then made my decision. I did briefly consider praying and then flipping a coin similarly to what the disciples did when they selected Matthias but didn’t have enough confidence in the theology to do it.

Times are hard in the financial sector. My old company laid off another 100 people and I’ve heard rumblings of other companies in London doing similar things because of the credit crunch, so its a good time to have a job, imperfect or otherwise.

Thanks for your prayers.

P.S. My pointless has a particularly good post at the moment.