Being there

Listen while I tell you a story. A boy is born into a chaotic family, substance dependent, desperately seeking pleasure to cover up the deep hurt of being purposeless, unvalued by the wider community. Unemployed of course: who would want to employ someone with that sort of background?

And the boy grows up: moments of hope at school turn to despair when the support needed to scale the barriers is not forthcoming. Instead he chooses the easy route - finding moments of fulfilment in achievements that most would see as wrong: the striking graffito, the successful crime, the rush of the escape from the pursuing police.

Yet into that life did come new hope when a friend of his became a Christian and a true church emerged in his community. Not (as in his neighbourhood) a building full of people who reside far away from where the boy lives, wasting their efforts to prevent the burial of the stinking carcass that they call a church, but which serves only to confuse the people of that area about who I really am. Instead a true fellowship of strugglers came together, finding support and encouragement as they faced the siren call of their previous lives. Did they always resist? Is that your measure - expecting perfection from those whose besetting sins are deeply socially unacceptable? And yet from these ways they found the crutches to carry on, whereas your crutches are not so socially disdained, and so you feel able to overlook them.

Behold I am calling more and more to serve my lambs in such hard places. But I am calling out new forms of ministry, ministry that reaches these in ways that the traditions of my body inhibit. I have called my church to all nations - do you think I will be satisfied with merely the respectable, the comfortable, the visibly shiny? I seek to vindicate my gospel by bringing new life to the outcast, the rejected, the marginalised. For in such you see MY power released - for there is little human hope for them as they wallow in the cess pit that is all that they know.

So when you consider the priorities of your church, consider that boy. Remember that fellowship that I raised up. Remember, and consider whether your choices truly reflect that with which I am concerned, or merely your own agenda, your own comfort: your own children or my children? Will you listen with me for the cries of the despairing - or tune your ears to the business that you have chosen for yourself.

Carry YOUR burden

You have heard it said: 'Come to me, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light'. Yet for many this is not the case - instead you find yourselves  struggling with burdens you do not find light, with yokes you do not find easy.

So what has gone wrong? They have chosen to carry things to which I am not calling them. They have rushed to respond to a need they rightly perceive to be of concern to me, but instead of asking me whether I am calling them to accept this burden, they have become entrapped in things to which I have not called them, for which they are not gifted. Is it any surprise that they end up overloaded, hurting, stressed and ineffectual?

For do not be deceived - that something is 'the caring thing to do' doesn't mean that it is the right thing for you to do at this time. When Jesus was earth, he only did 'what he saw the Father doing'. You are called to live after his model: will you seek to learn to listen to me, or will you be satisfied with gaining your affirmation from doing what the world says is the right thing.
 
[No particular context - and no art work behind it, although I did write it in the cafe at the Art Gallery]

Beauty pt2

Beauty is my gift to you - a reminder that I created the world good and I can be seen in moments of transcendence when beauty assails you. For you are in part spirit - did I not breathe into you - and so you respond to what is redolent of me.

And yet like all my gifts beauty can become a curse when it is pursued for its own sake. Such is the nature of pornography: the good that I have made entraps the viewer because they use it only for their own pleasure, and not as a gateway to look through to me. But such entrapment may occur in any fixation on what is good to the exclusion of me.

True fulfilment is only found in me - all else is "Vanity, vanity". But I have created my world for you to enjoy: do not be afraid of the good, only beware less the good becomes a gateway for the bad.

[I wrote this down soon after arriving at the art gallery, but having done so, I spotted

The Sirens and Ulysses

which shows Ulysses tied to the mast of his ship to avoid joining the unfortunates who have succumbed to the call of the sirens and as a result are destroyed because they only have eyes for their beauty  - see Wikipedia ]