Christmas

Yes, Christmas can be celebrated in the 21st century!

Iceland

Celebrating a 50th birthday in December isn't easy in England. In Australia it must be easy, but England in winter is no place for hot air balloon rides or garden parties. So I decided to go deeper into the dark with a week in Iceland!

From the moment I was nearly blown from the airline terminal onto the bus this was going to be a wild week. But whether I was bathing in an outdoor geothermally-heated jacuzzi in the dark at 10:30 in the morning, listening to children singing Icelandic Lutheran carols in Hallgrimmskirkja or watching wild horses grazing on a volcanic bog this was an amazing life experience.

Not only was it a fantastic experience of a great country; it also meant that as I stood outside Waterstone's Bookshop in Wycombe with folk from church singing carols this morning what would previously have felt quite cold, dark and wet felt relatively tropical!

I especially like the picture below, which was snapped at 12:38pm at Grindavik on the south coast. If that sun doesn't get up soon it will be going down again before it starts!

Poppy Joy

Take a look at this profound blog. Poppy Joy didn't live long in this world but she's made an impact. And you can only feel humbled by the faith of her Mum and Dad.

http://poppyjoy.blogspot.com/

Stunning

Just sometimes you have to praise God for technology. Here is a stunning Norwegian choir singing in a Dutch church (St Jan's Gouda) in English a song written by an American!

It's my daughter's favourite, and she has good taste!

William

Here’s a Bible verse for a new academic year...

But [Paul and Barnabas in Iconium] found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country. [Acts 14:6]

“Eh?”, I hear you mutter.

William was studying hard and very successfully at a time when very many people were casting doubt on the Bible. As a historian he, like them had no real time for its reliability, believing it to be the enthusiastic writings of religious wishful thinkers.

After being awarded prizes as the Best Student at university he devoted himself to the study and research that he loved so much. He had many setbacks - illnesses laid him low, one piece of research prepared over ten years was entirely lost and had to be completely rewritten (and he wasn’t using a computer!). He learned Greek and Latin in astonishing detail so that he could pursue the study of Roman and Greek culture and he delved into previously uncharted studies of these cultures, particularly in what today we call Turkey.

Such was the detail of his archaeological research that he found Luke, in writing Acts 14:6 (above), was not strictly accurate. Iconium (from which Paul was fleeing) was also in Lycaonia so Luke had been mistaken to wite 'to the Lycaonian cities of...' - Paul was in that district already.

It was a minor point to the rest of us, but William Ramsay’s research had proved, he thought, more accurate than Luke's.

Until he found out that Luke was right. Studying more deeply still, he found that Iconium had changed districts and Luke’s history was exactly right. And so it was that Acts 14:6 became William’s transformational text. If Luke was so accurate about Lycaonian geography William thought he must have been right about more important things. William Ramsay set about reading the scriptures as truth rather than fiction. He went on to fiercely defend the truth of the Bible.

Learning is not the enemy of the truth when it is honestly and open-mindedly pursued.

Summer

August.

‘The cloakroom pegs are empty now and locked the classroom door’;

so begins Philip Larkins’ poem The School in August.

When school stops, it really stops. Yet when church activities stop (as they do in August in the UK), the greater purpose that they serve continues - it just continues in a different way. Look at this section from a wonderful old Celtic prayer-poem, attributed (possibly correctly in this case) to Columba;

At times kneeling to beloved Heaven

At times psalm singing;

At times contemplating the King of Heaven

Holy the chief;

At times at work without compulsion

This would be delightful.

At times plucking duilisc from the rocks

At times at fishing;

At times giving food to the poor;

At times in a carcair:

The poem pictures a life devoted to God in which formal worship is offered at times to the Chief of Heaven. But there are also times to pluck duilisc. Columba, in common with all Celtic saints, knew that God would not be neglected by taking time to enjoy his handiwork. Thus we imagine the breezy summer Atlantic shoreline and a man in a habit plucking juicy seaweed (duilisc) from the rocks just because he can, and it’s free, and God is there.

Duilisc washes in on the tides from June to September; you won’t get to pluck any in January even if you can stand upright on the windswept, gloomy, wave-lashed shore. Get plucking because there are also times in a carcair. We don’t know exactly what carcair meant in Columba's mind. A carcair was a prison - it may have meant the enclosed hermitage or imprisonment by hostile communities. But either way it was a loss of freedom that the seaweed-plucker enjoys!

We are wise to remember how, a little further inland, the Lord said in his greatest discourse, ‘Consider the lilies of the field how they grow’. He credited us with the intelligence to realise that such consideration would only happen by taking the opportunity while it blooms and the carcair, or in his case the cross, belongs to a time yet to be.

Shame

‘Shame’ is a strange word that means the same thing in two opposite ways. Usually when we say, "It’s a shame" the word means something very mild. It might even be a joke, as when someone celebrates a birthday with a zero in… "Such a shame!", we quip.

On the other hand, shame can be a very serious word. ‘It is shameful’ is not a light statement at all. "I feel shame", would hardly ever be less than the confession of a deeply-felt disgrace. It was in this second serious sense that the godly Joseph Alleyne used the word. He regularly rose at daybreak to pray. No shame there we might think, but his wife wrote of him,

‘He would be much troubled if he heard smiths or other craftsmen at their trades before he was at communion with God; saying to me often, "How this noise shames me. Doesn’t my Master deserve more than theirs?"’

I have always felt that prayer lethargy was a bit of a shame (first sense). I have felt myself moving toward viewing it more as a real shame - in Joseph Alleyne’s sense.