Bible

On the lookout

~ cultivatingandcreating ~ Leave a comment

I spent some time this past week with my three young nephews. One of the things I love about hanging out with small people is their fresh take on the world. They see things for the first time and are excited to share them with you.

They see possibility in the ordinary.

You may see a plastic disposable salad bowl ready for recycling – they see a boat ready for the paddling pool. All it needs is a mast fashioned out of a twig and a sail made from this handy leaf and… voila! You see a ramshackle old ruin of a building, broken down and covered in foliage – they see a castle and a place full of adventures. You see a tree, they see a climbing frame, you see a bit of old wire fence, they see….well they aren’t quite sure yet, but it could be something!

They live their lives on the lookout, seeing possibility everywhere. They show us something new in the oh so familiar.

080

I’m glad of their refreshing viewpoint. I need to be reminded, in my impressive grown up world of adulting every day, that I actually don’t know everything and even what has been familiar for years can be revealed to me in a new and powerful way.

I’ve been a Christian for around thirty years and in all that time my NIV Bible has been my trusty sidekick. I love the familiarity of certain passages, the language it uses and that I can find my way around easily. But all of that familiarity breeds, well not exactly contempt, but a certain comfort and complacency which means that I can scan over powerful and challenging words without taking any notice whatsoever. For this reason I decided to find a fresh pair of eyes and have been reading my way through the New Testament in The Message – and it has been a revelation.

I have found treasure in the most familiar places.

Sometimes just a new turn of phrase helps us to see something we’ve looked at all our lives in a fresh and wonderful way. Take, for example, the way in which Joseph of Arimathea is described in Mark 15.

He was one who lived expectantly, on the lookout for the kingdom of God.

That stopped me in my tracks. What an epitaph! Do I live expectantly? Am I on the lookout for the kingdom of God? Or do I spend my days giving my Creator a nod in the morning and then fail to see his hands at work all over my oh so familiar life?

I began to wonder what it would look like to live expectantly, and what I would see if I spent each day on the lookout for the kingdom? Would I perhaps see possibility in the ordinary? Would I find treasure in familiar places? Would you?

Perhaps that situation I have written off as impossible can be viewed from a new perspective. Maybe that relationship you thought was beyond repair becomes injected with fresh hope. The streets you walk along every day start tingling with potential. The Spirit starts nudging you closer to what has been overlooked for too long. He whispers to you of what the kingdom might look like here.

Come and see. Look under here. New shoots are growing. Will you water them, nurture them, plant them out into the light?

See this? The thing you discarded as useless, past its best? Here’s what I want to do with it. Will you give me your hands to make it happen?

Remember that person you met yesterday? Encourage them today. They need to hear kind words. It will transform their day and have far-reaching consequences you will never see.

The kingdom is here, hidden in plain sight. Can you see it?

Imagine what could happen if we each lived expectantly, what kingdom treasure would be uncovered if we looked for it each day?

I don’t know what I’ll find, but I’m excited to start looking.

Pay Attention

~ cultivatingandcreating ~ 1 Comment

Just before the turn of the year I wrote about how I was asking God to speak into this year ahead and if there was anything he wanted to say to me as I entered 2016. Among a couple of other things, the words I received were Pay Attention! And in true God-style, he then set about backing up that message in other places in my life.

Shortly after the New Year began, I read this quote by Lysa TerKeurst which stopped me in my tracks:

“We want big direction signs from God – God just wants us to pay attention.”

For the last few years, my husband and I have had some fairly major, ongoing prayer requests concerning big future life stuff and difficult circumstances. What I’ve come to realise is, when you’re in that place of having huge imposing situations dominate your prayer life, and your eyes are always on the horizon of what you’re praying to come into being, you can so easily take your eyes off today and what God would have you do in the now.

The truth is, I don’t know if I have tomorrow, let alone next week or next year. None of us do. We have been gifted today, crammed full of moments when God wants to speak to us, use us, show us things about himself, ourselves and the wonderful world around us. But if our eyes are always gazing into the distance, our prayers always asking about the things that are not yet, we miss the opportunities that God has set before us each and every day.

God had clearly already been trying to get my attention about this even before I had this revelation in December. A few weeks ago I found a piece of paper that I had tucked away in a Bible or a diary, as a prompt and reminder to myself for each day. Can you guess what it said?

“Father show me your priorities for what I should do today. Spirit prompt me to leave things undone so that I can pay attention to the things you want me to do.”

So it seems that I am someone who regularly takes their eye off the ball and needs many reminders about the same message before it really starts to sink in! In fact only this morning, I read these words from the gospel of Matthew in the Message translation:

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Message received (pardon the pun).

Listening-Ear

It makes me wonder about how much I might have missed. How many times have I been so focussed on things I cannot change that I’ve missed the thing right in front of me where I could have made a difference? How many times has God tried to say to me, “That thing you’re praying about for three months times, I’ve got it covered – but there’s something I’d like you to do today.” How many times have I been so busy talking to God about the concerns of my heart that I haven’t kept quiet long enough to hear the concerns of his?

 

For someone who is a future-thinker, day-dreamer and a bit of an internal processor, my mind can so easily be anywhere but the here and now. But the here and now is where God has placed me. In this home, this community, this workplace and surrounded by these family members, friends, neighbours and colleagues. He has given me today, rich in Kingdom potential and possibility, if I choose to pay attention and see it.

There are still big prayer requests in my life, and of course I’m going to keep talking to God about them, but I’m more determined than ever to trust him with tomorrow so that I can pay attention to today.

Away in a Manger

~ cultivatingandcreating ~ 2 Comments

This is a reflection that I have written for Tearfund Scotland’s resource Safe Refuge at Christmas . It includes some beautiful films, prayer ideas and ways to give to the Middle East Appeal.

LEB_2015a_DXC_R

 

A mother’s instinct, the same throughout the centuries – to protect her child.

To give him the best that she can.

How did Mary feel, laying her precious one in the rough wood of a cattle manger?

No extended family for comfort, support or advice.

“No room here. Nor here. You’ll have to move on. Try over there.”

As she gazed at her son sleeping in the hay, did she whisper an apology to him; that she had hoped for something different?

When Joseph told her of his dream, and urged her to gather the child and come quickly, what fears filled her heart?

The stars in the bright sky shone as they fled across borders into foreign lands, looking over their shoulders, wondering when they would see home again.

This Son of God, born into the most humble of circumstances.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

A father’s instinct, the same throughout the centuries – to protect his child.

To give him the best he can.

How did Abdullah Kurdi feel, watching his young sons sleep in war torn Damascus?

As they fled to Turkey with no extended family for comfort, support or advice.

Trying to find a way to support his family.

“No room here. Nor here. You’ll have to move on. Try over there.”

As he gazed at little Aylan, sleeping in a makeshift bed, did he whisper an apology to him; that he had hoped for something different?

When he told his wife to gather the children and together they boarded a boat for Greece, what fears filled his heart?

The stars in the bright sky shone as they tried to flee across borders and oceans, looking over their shoulders, wondering when they would see home again. Hoping they might reach land again.

These children of God, born into the most humble and difficult of circumstances.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

You had nowhere to lay your head Lord, and neither did they.

Neither do so many.

Be near them, Lord Jesus, we ask you to stay close by them.

Bless all the dear children in thy tender care, and grant that we might do the same.

 

Safe Refuge at Christmas

Unfailing Kindness

~ cultivatingandcreating ~ 6 Comments

I hate camping. I mean really hate it. With a passion.

My husband loves it and is always trying to convince me to go. I grew up going on camping holidays, but they were always in the south of France, where there’s generally sunshine and proper facilities. Camping in Scotland can be quite a different experience.

Rain.

Midges.

Rain.

Wellies.

More midges, more rain.

Putting on said wellies in the middle of the night to walk 200 metres to the toilet.

No thank you.

And then there’s the airbed. No matter how well you inflate them before going to bed, inevitably by 4am part of your body is lying on the cold hard ground and you are very uncomfortable. Eventually your chilly state of discomfort leads you to need the toilet – on go the wellies again and so commences the long walk to the bathroom.

Bear Grylls I am most definitely not.

Life is hard enough without camping.

Sometimes the things that we put our trust in begin to deflate. Jobs, family, church, friends, possessions, position – all can change, let us down or be taken away, and as a result leave us wondering in the middle of the night why we’re suddenly lying on cold, hard ground. The cushion that had seemed so reliable has gone and life has become considerably more uncomfortable.

What do we do when life begins to sink? Where do we find the means to lift ourselves again?

The Bible talks about kind words being like honey, “sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” (Proverbs 16 v 24 NLT) Can words really do all that?

I had a conversation with a friend this week who was asking how my husband and I are doing in the midst of our ongoing season of uncertainty. This friend has been consistent in his care and kindness, but played to his gender stereotype by bemoaning the fact that his mere words were not satisfactory and what he really wanted to do was fix the situation for us. Not being able to do so led him to believe that his kind words were a poor substitute.

I quickly put him right.

You see lying on the cold hard ground of difficult circumstances eventually takes its toll. You can put up with it for a while, but eventually you start to ache. At those times what we need are friends to come around us and breathe words of kindness into our deflated life. To lift us off the ground, even for a few moments, with their care and attention. To ease the strain in our bodies that has come from carrying too much stress for too many days. Lift the burden from our weary shoulders so that we can stand tall again. I know that the kind words of many people over these last couple of years have been a tonic that my soul could not have done without.

The power of kindness, of kind words, is hugely under-rated.

There have been several documented examples over the past few years of strangers pausing to ask someone ‘are you alright?’, and that one question, that one moment of kindness has stopped a person from taking their life. They didn’t physically pull them back from the brink, but their kindness had a power all of its own – transformational, life-giving.

I whole-heartedly believe that kind words are not some empty, token gesture but that they have strength, a steely core that can pack the best kind of punch.

confetti quote

Every single day each one of us has at our disposal a rich bank of words. Words that can be used to breathe life and hope, bring joy and laughter. Words can offer care and kindness, compassion and empathy. Words can change how someone feels about themselves or their circumstances.

Words are entirely free. They cost us nothing.

Words that we can choose to leave unsaid.

This world can be a tough place to walk through at times. Why would we leave kind words unsaid?

Will you join me in committing to kindness? Let’s throw it around like confetti? Let’s dare to say kind things to strangers as well as friends. We may never know if our kind words have made any sort of difference, but who cares? The world needs all of the kind words it can get.

Let us never fail to speak kindness.