Crumbs!

Picture our fellowship as a loaf of bread.

Would it be brown or white?

Wholemeal, granary, with large air holes or doughy and heavy?

I like to think of it as a seeded, nutty loaf, maybe with some malt and the odd sultana!

I can say this as a coeliac; the sort of loaf we don’t want to be is gluten free!

It is the gluten that holds bread together, if you’ve been at communion when we handed round gluten free bread you know it falls apart, turns into crumbs and is hard to swallow as it stays dry and separate.

A whole gluten free loaf is a rather brittle thing, so our fellowship loaf would be better with a bit of give, and able to hold together when dropped!

So, the gluten is an illustration of love, which helps us stick by each other when things get difficult, the masks come off and sometimes we are not so nice to be with.

We are one body, and love holds us all together.

That doesn’t mean we are all the same, in fact, it is how we love and appreciate our differences that make us so fascinating to others.

Nuts and seeds are both great nutritionally, especially together, and we are healthiest when we have a varied diet.

God has made us uniquely and put us together, and He knows what He is doing, so we will grow best when we co-operate with where we are and those we are with.

Decide which bit of the loaf you are, or feel God is growing you to be, but don’t look at others and copy them, be your own sultana!

Fill in the space

When God created humankind, I'm not convinced that he ever intended for communication between us to be any harder than, 'Hey Dad, how business?' 'What's on your mind, Dad?' 'Tell me about you, Dad.' 'I was thinking the other day, Dad...'

What d'you reckon?

Personally, I find my default setting when thinking of prayer is to panic, look back over the last week of my life, decide that it would be probably more agreeable for the Almighty to not hear from me given the state of my soul, and make a personal commitment to self to 'sort my life out' before Sunday church so that I can engage with 'the worship', whatever that means; my prayer life is reduced to firing off quick one-liners of generic christianese that don't really help anyone.

Feels a bit foolish to me.

Actually, I'd suggest that the Father is waiting, longing, even desperate, for us to drop such ridiculous methods and start behaving a little bit more like His CHILDREN.

I spend an awful lot of my time complaining to God, and frankly to anyone who will listen, that I'm not quite where I want to be 'with God.' The thing is, that's a completely human and downright idiotic way to go about this Christian business.

As I understand it, the Father gave everything, including His own son, so that I could be in relationship with him - that's filial, Father-son, closer than anything else sort of relationship by the way - so if I'm finding any space between us, you can bet large sums of money that it's because I made the space.

If I don't feel I'm 'doing well with God', best to start by telling Him that; it's called confession.

The space needs to be filled from our end.

May I suggest that it might look a bit like this:

'Hey Dad, how business?'

'What's on your mind, Dad?'

'Tell me about you, Dad.'

'I was thinking the other day, Dad...'

'Dad, I'm really struggling with this...'

'I love you, Father.'

Just a thought.

The Weeds

When I was young I never dreamt for one second that living in your own house would mean you have to do the gardening.

I guess it was my mum rather than nature itself that kept the lawn mown, the bushes in some kind of order and the grass cut.

Over the last year and a half I’ve learnt the toils of cutting back bushes and mowing the lawn (grass grows really quickly!).

However, I discovered no enemy is more arduous and longsuffering than weeds.

Weeds are phenomenal, they grow back again and again.

They don’t need planting.

They don’t need good weather.

They don’t need watering.

They don’t even need soil sometimes!

As I was spraying weed killer all over my weed infested flower bed I had a bit of a moment where I felt God spoke to me.

He said, ‘What are the weeds in your life?’

I thought about this a while and after tweeting a little note of how I declared ‘war’ on weeds, the words of Romans 5:3-5 came to mind.

‘…but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who he has given us.’

Sometimes it is the very weeds of our lives that God uses to bring about hope.

It might be a situation we have no power to change,

someone who persistently winds us up,

an addiction to something that causes us to stumble.

Whatever these weeds might be, God has called us to persevere through them.

Don’t run from them, face them, rejoice in them!

As we persevere and our character is refined, we see Jesus’ victory in these situation.

We see God intervening with situations,

we see love breaking through the hearts of those that wind us up,

we see freedom from addiction.

If we persevere and don’t give into the first suffering we encounter, hope springs up.

Hope in a God that acts.

Hope in a God that saves.

Hope in a God whose love conquers all.

The example of Noah

Genesis 9:9 says that 'Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God'.

The Bible is full of verses with threefold areas to focus on. Here three elements are something to aim for.

Firstly, Noah was a righteous man. When we are in God's family we bear His name and we long for what is on his heart. Righteousness is central to that. Seeking justice, fairness and all that is right is part of wanting to see His Kingdom come.

Secondly, he was blameless among the people of his time. So many Bible characters stood out in society for their contribution, their attitude, their integrity. Paul encourages us similarly in 1 Thessalonians 4: 11 & 12 to make it our ambitions to lead quiet lives, minding our own business (not busybodies or gossips) and working hard. By so doing our lives will win the respect of outsiders. We're to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the Lord. To be blameless among the people of our time.

And of course, thirdly, he walked with God. Noah and Enoch are listed as ones who walked with God. Moses talked with God as a man talks with a friend, face to face. We should seek to walk with God. Not ahead of Him, not away from Him, not too far behind Him, but with Him. Jesus saw what the Father was doing and then did that. So should we. We don't invite God to walk with us, and to grant what we want. We should seek His will and His kingdom, and get alongside Him in what He is doing.

So, as we start this new year make Noah your example. Desire righteousness, seek to be blameless among the people of our time, and walk with God.