Steps

Some time ago I was visiting another church.  The meeting was over and the night was dark for it was getting late.

"There's a woman out there with a child" said an elderly lady who had come back in after starting out for home."

On the steps of the church a woman had been sitting with her young child.  Invited in, we heard her story and prayed to the Lord for her and her family.  It was a story of tragedy, separation, lovelessness and despair.

But she had sat on the steps of a church.  There was no way of her knowing that a meeting had been taking place as, by the time she was there, everyone was in the meeting at the back of the buildings.  Yet she chose a church building over the nearby fast food places - all lit up and welcoming - or the Public House round the corner.  In her despair it had been something to her just to get to the steps of a place where God's people meet and sit there, crying.

It reminded me of the woman in the Gospel who touched the edge of Jesus' clothing. One of the worst mistakes a human being can make - but plenty of even religious people make it - is imagine that there is a lot of preparation required to receive God's response.

Sitting on the steps will do.

Path

On the face of it this is a very ordinary picture of a very ordinary scene.

A tree, some shadows, some grass and a path.

Yet for me this short path has almost as much significance as any place or person in my life.

It is, looked at one way, a very expensive piece of path.  At the time of the incident I am writing about I was working in the City of London in finance.  It is never possible to predict how life might have turned out in other scenarios but by an estimate I worked out a few years ago what happened on this path had already  cost me over £500,000.

Looked at another way it was a place that, for all it cost me, money couldn't buy.  For it was on this path - at or near the spot on this photograph - that God spoke to me so clearly that I left my work in finance and used such money as I had already saved to start paying for a Bible College Course to train to work full-time in Christian work.  Many people have longed for such a calling and never heard it.

Why, though, did I add up the financial cost of the path those years ago?  Because I was fed up with news of someone buying a second or third house when we haven't a first?  Or another new car slotting into the car park next to my ageing homage to the Ford dealer's service record?  No.

The reason I did my sums was to check out a belief I hold that God only speaks unequivocally (in clear visions or audibly) when He has something hugely life-changing to say.  For me that path was the place that utterly reshaped my life by cost and call and adding up the cost helped me to see that.  The call was not in the particular of a calling to a town, pastoral ministry, a country or whatever.  Instead it reflected the most fundamental calling of all - just as the Saviour called his first disciples to leave their nets (in my case net profits) and follow wherever He leads.

Want unmistakable guidance?  Pause a moment before you ask for the most expensive encounter you may ever have in this world!

Hope

Today marks the beginning of a new football season.

As chaplain to Wycombe Wanderers Football Club I have stood in the sunshine (they were running of course) on the first day back in training over a month ago. This week - a month of training and friendly matches later - everyone is geared up for the new season and full of hope.

Of the 24 teams in our league I have not seen anyone at or around the Club who thinks we can possibly end up lower than 5th.  I think we'll do better than that.

There's just a little problem.

Every one of the 46 league games will involve . . . an opposition!  Not once in those 46 games will the eleven other guys say, "Hey, we thought you'd come fifth or higher.  We'll let you win to help you."  All our hope is based on ourselves, and we haven't seen the opposition - not one of them - yet.  In this way, thousands of football fans start every season full of hope that quite quickly fades away.  Watch this space!

But back in the real world of the Bible there is a hope that cannot fade:

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

Simply put, the believer's hope is based on a defeated opposition, not a waiting opposition.  Jesus is risen.  Death and sin are defeated.  This is a hope that cannot be ambushed by the Other Side! 

Hands

For the first time in absolutely ages we sang Nun danket alle Gott - well, Catherine Winkworth's translation of it - this morning.

One reason I chose it was because I heard it introduced by a nationally famous worship leader recently. "With hearts, and hands - we've all got hands haven't we?" he raises his hands as in prayer -"and voices". Cue the band. Cue a congregation thinking Martin Rinkart might have been encouraging some expressive hand movements in worship.

This was so far off the mark as to warrant a redemption, I thought.  Most of the people around Pastor Martin at the time were using their hands to bury corpses . . .

How much richer the truth is!