Psalms in Lent: Psalm 3 Asleep?

For our Lenten readings as a church we are reflecting on one of the Psalms each day.  

The reflective question from Psalm 3 is, 'What is happening spiritually when I am asleep?'

Psalm 3 is a battle-type Psalm but in the midst of enemies, David anticipates a good sleep 'because the Lord sustains me'. (He wasn't always enjoying good sleep in the psalms, but that's for another day (night?)).

A person's waking faith (say, two thirds of their life) sustains them in their sleep (one third).  After all, a sleeping atheist is actively believing as much as a sleeping Christian; a sleeping Hindu has the same non-theological thoughts as a sleeping Christian - and so on.  For anyone who thinks that our relationship with God depends on what we do - or on what we are actively believing - there is a third of our life that testifies it is down to Him, not us.

Health and (much less) Safety

In a famous section of the Chronicles of Narnia Lucy asks Mr Beaver about Aslan. 

"Is.. is he a man?" asked Lucy.

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he.. quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and make no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver, "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Erwin McManus might have been reading that before the following interaction with his young son, who had just returned from a week at a Christian children’s camp;

He writes, ‘Unfortunately, since it was a Christian camp and they didn't tell ghost stories, because we don't believe in ghosts; they told demon and Satan stories instead. And so when Aaron got home, he was terrified.

"Dad, don't turn off the light!" he said before going to bed. "No, Daddy, could you stay here with me? Daddy, I'm afraid. They told all these stories about demons."

And I wanted to say, "They're not real."

He goes, "Daddy, Daddy, would you pray for me that I would be safe?" I could feel it. I could feel warm-blanket Christianity beginning to wrap around him, a life of safety, safety, safety.

I said, "Aaron, I will not pray for you to be safe. I will pray that God will make you dangerous, so dangerous that demons will flee when you enter the room."

And he goes, "All right. But pray I would be really, really dangerous, Daddy."’

Beset, as we are, by a culture of risk removal and social diffidence it is time to break free with the Lion!  The Lion said, ‘Take up your cross and follow me”.  And his followers were said to be “Turning the world upside down”.   Try risk assessing those statements!

Our buildings and activities can be made safe, but our faith can never be.

A soul-warming end to the football season

Nathan Jones, manager of Luton, talks about his faith.

Wedding Words

Yesterday we went to a wedding.  Thanks Matt and Martha!!

A friend said to us today, "Was it a Wedding you went to or was it an Anniversary?".  I understood their point: Usually the only time people our age go to weddingy things it is to take part - or for someone on their second or third attempt.  One of the blessings of Christian ministry is having young people who know you!

What strikes me these days is the radical nature of the words of Christian marriage in our society.  In a way I mourn the loss of social Christianity but in another way I love the thought that the simple words that once resounded every Saturday in every Parish Church now seem more Corbynite-radical than the Government's newly invented Same Sex Marriage idea.

Better than that, although the ideas of prayer and blessing, of hymns and Bible readings seem radical because they are, well, quite religious in a secularised culture the really radical bit isn't religious at all:

to have and to hold

from this day forward;

for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health,

to love and to cherish,

till death us do part.

When I write isn't religious at all I am both right and wrong.  Such promises as above can be made - are made - by rabid atheists or ruminating agnostics.  However they are dying out with the dying interest in Church weddings.  Sometimes they are not replaced by anything much (in my experience) but a flowery insistence of lifelong dotage or mutual self-fulfilment.  Here's an example:

I am proud to take you as my husband/wife. For all the time we have been together, there has always been the kind of mutual understanding which is only shared when there is true love. You have helped me triumph over challenges presented, encouraged my personal growth and boosted my self-esteem.

You have helped me become the person I am today, and with your help, I will be a better person tomorrow than I was yesterday.

Like the arrival of the Humanist funeral there is a refreshing honesty about these vows.  They more accurately reflect what most people mostly mean.  Perhaps they represent the most that can be really expected without the help of the Lord and the example of Calvary.

Disaster's Song

 November 22nd 1873.  A November night in the Atlantic gives us a great hymn from an awful family disaster couples with a deep faith.

 

 

Losing when winning

Home from holiday!

Among many visits we visited a house that had a plate in the bedroom just like the one below.  It had been owned by a successful businessman who had lost his faith (having previously intended to be a priest) - he then lost his house to the National Trust but that was a smaller loss according to the plate. 

It reminded me of the British Olympic Gold Medalist Triple Jumper Jonathan Edwards who I had just seen talking on television about his own loss of faith.  He found virtue in the thought that his faith had really helped him to win the Gold Medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - "It was where I was at the time - it's not where I am now" - 'it does seem incredibly improbable there is a God'.

Ah well - better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Or maybe not.

We shouldn’t need to keep talking about why we ought to turn from deeds that bring death and why we ought to have faith in God. And we shouldn’t need to keep teaching about baptisms or about the laying on of hands or about people being raised from death and the future judgment. Let’s grow up, if God is willing.  But what about people who turn away after they have already seen the light and have received the gift from heaven and have shared in the Holy Spirit? What about those who turn away after they have received the good message of God and the powers of the future world? There is no way to bring them back. What they are doing is the same as nailing the Son of God to a cross and insulting him in public! [Hebrews 6, CEV]

Touch Wood

My daughter and I were sitting in the University Lecture Theatre.  Very impressive it was too.  And perhaps just as impressive were the credentials of the Professor who was explaining to us the course my daughter might be taking next year.

As the Professor explained the various ologies that were the components of competence and their necessity in the whole scheme of human understanding it seemed profoundly unlikely that faith and belief would figure at any point.  Especially the Professor's own faith and belief. 

He was explaining something important about the course and the success it had enjoyed.  And then he said, "Touch wood".  Now more than once on visits to Church members and adherents I have had the bizarre experience of the visited saying, "touch wood" and on one memorable occasion at a hospital bedside reaching out to the conveniently near bedside cabinet to do so.  This, I felt, beggered the question as to whether there was any point in praying to our supposed Creator regarding the illness when touching the bedside cabinet presumably warded off the spirits that, according to folklore, lived there with possible malevolent intentions to spoil the party.

Had the Professor simply said, "Touch wood" I probably would scarcely have noticed.  However at the moment he said it he was stranded at the front of the large hall, far away from anything to touch save himself and the remote control with which he controlled the projected display.  Well, that's OK - it's just an expression, isn't it?

The stranded Professor turned aside and headed to the desk on which his projector stood. - it was the nearest piece of furniture and he touched it.  This took but seconds yet walking several paces mid-speech made it noticeable.  However, on touching the desk a new problem emerged for him.  The desk was not made of wood.  Nor even the pseudo-wood of the bedside cabinet my hospital patient in earlier years resorted to.  It was metal!  Since when did any self-respecting nature spirit reside in a metal desktop?  Now the Professor had temporarily stopped talking, his whole (substantial) mental faculty devoted to the pursuit of wood.

Thankfully for us all the front row of the lecture theatre had a long counter made out of something passing for wood and a few seconds and another walk later he had finally touched wood and we were able to resume the information about pursuing a science degree.

I doubt there has ever been the remotest value in touching wood to placate the spiritual nasties.  Even if there was, there hasn't been ever since Jesus, er, nailed that victory for us on his very own wood. 

Literally AVD

Great regret has been expressed regarding Nick Clegg, our Deputy Prime Minister, who said in a keynote speech last weekend,

It makes people so incredibly angry when you are getting up early in the morning, working really hard to try and do the right thing for your family and for your community, you are paying your taxes and then you see people literally in a different galaxy who are paying extraordinarily low rates of tax.

If these people are literally in a different galaxy they are not, of course, liable for UK tax of any sort. Literally none. This is the kind of linguistic torture that many a public speaker (Guilty, m'Lud) inflicts on words.  Someone colourfully described it as AVD - Adjectival Vomiting Disease! 

Literally, for Nick, meant nothing of the sort.  In fact it means the opposite - metaphorically in a different galaxy, perhaps.

For all who claim to be Bible believers the word 'literally' is a heavily significant one.  The problem is that it is a word that serves us less well than we think.  For example,

"Do you believe there was a literal Good Samaritan?" is a fairly irrelevant question, though sometimes asked, compared to the more sobering, "Do you literally do what Jesus taught his hearer to do?"

Huge controversy surrounds the question, "Are the days in Genesis chapter 1 literal 24 hour days?" yet this is hardly a question at all.  Richard Dawkins, for example, believes that they are.  It's just that he inconveniently thinks that they are wrong.  Literal interpretation is not the same thing as faith.  Others believe that they are literal days in a piece of poetry.  Others believe they are not literal 24 hour days but believe they describe literal eras of creating.  Others believe that there were indeed seven 24 hour days but then have to wrestle with how the Word that spoke life to the dead in a moment took a whole 24 literal hours to create (or how the other 23+ hours did not constitute literal rest (which belongs to day seven)).  All of which is to say that literally is literally one of the more difficult words and concepts.

There are places where it is THE word however;

¹ Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain ³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them— yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹ Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.' [1 Corinthians 15] 

The Apostle is not vomiting adjectives; he is listing evidences.  It would reveal so much less if he had written that Jesus was literally risen from the dead.  Instead he shows how this must have happened, how we can know it happened, why it happened and why it matters.  Without a risen Saviour everything else about being human is ultimately useless.  Literally.

But is it true?

But in Church last night we reflected that Hebrews tells us that By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

By faith.

Before God blew with his wind the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving! (Exodus 14:15 NLT) And with that step of faith, God (who it is impossible to please without faith) blew.

A song for a day with two funerals

Mathematics

Nothing like a nice simple picture, eh?

Except that there is a plus on the left and none on the right.

In between there is an equals sign, but plainly that is wrong.  On the left there is a mathematical symbol as well as two carrots.  The three pictures don't equal the two pictures.  Unless you look mathematically.

This is helpful in studying the relationship between Natural Science and Religion.

The carrots are genetic, physical and observable but mathematics never has been and never can be.

The argument that all that is real and true must be sensorially perceived would mean that belief in a creator God who is invisible cannot be real.  Nor can mathematics.

So, if you find a mathematical sum that is real and true in the picture take heart.  There might be Someone else true too, Someone who lies behind all carrots!  Or possibly you just see some pixelian pictures of carrots and symbols that don't add up.

That way a lot of things won't add up either . . .

Haiti

The earthquake in Haiti makes Christians think.  Mostly it makes us think, 'How can we help?'.  For some, young in the faith, it rocks their confidence that God is Love.  That is not easily answered on a blog but a big clue comes from the Biblical statement that the greatest demonstration of God's love to disobedient human beings was not a new baby, a wonderful meal, a fine climate or the end of a great war.  It was a crucifixion.

Earthquakes are not easy, either, for people who oppose faith.  The people of Haiti might be feeling very angry with their Creator just now.    Better, though, to be a bewildered believer than to think of oneself as a self-contained blip among billions of others on an accidental fabric of meaningless history where incidental earthquakes take tens of thousands of other blips, including your family, out early.

If you click on to the Disasters Emergency Committee website you find that almost every charity there owes its existence to people of Faith.  As it happens several of them, including ActionAid and Help the Aged, owe their existence in some measure to one man!  CJC's legacy is helping Haiti 30 years after his own death.

Emma

In his well-researched account of Charles Darwin's faith (or increasing lack of faith) Nick Spencer pulls out a fascinating sentence from a letter written to Charles by his wife-to-be Emma.

May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, and which if true are likely to be above our comprehension.

As Easter approaches it seems to state the obvious that if we apply only reason and experiment we will never discover the wonder of the Easter message. Studying biological processes reveals only that dead means dead. No amount of evolutionary speculation can anticipate the human DNA becoming God-in-flesh. Consequently, that God incarnate died for my sins and came back to life is, frankly, unprojectable from the laboratory.


Walking past or standing at a place of burial I don't need a scientific experiment to tell me that the odds are stacked against a return to bodily life. So, to return to Emma's wise warning to her future husband, we are without hope if there is nowhere we can look above the laboratory.

On my travels in Scandinavia I was at first bewildered by several pews in the style above. It looked more like an intimate railway carriage than a church seating plan! All became clear when I attended a service in such a church. The pulpit was halfway along the side wall. Thus the pews in the front section had their back to the pulpit. When later in the liturgy the preacher entered the pulpit to preach, the half of the congregation in the front pews turn round by moving to sit on the opposite pew while the sermon is preached, thus facing the pulpit after all!

Though Emma Darwin was hardly an orthodox believer, she at least perceived the need to turn round to understand some things that will only be revealed by a higher Word. Easter week is supremely a time to stop facing the way I came into this world, and face the way that listens to what God's word is wonderfully revealing.

Ted

Dr.Ted Herbert, Vice-Principal of the International Christian College in Glasgow, speaking at his home church a few days before his death and just a few weeks after suddenly being diagnosed with cancer.



Master, You only are immortal, the creator and maker of all:
and we are mortal, formed from the dust of the earth,
and unto earth shall we return.
For so you ordained when you created me, saying:
'Dust you are and to dust you shall return.'
All of us go down to the dust,
yet weeping at the grave, we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

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/