Wearily upward

A funny thing happened to me recently.  I have always wondered about my IQ and how I measure up with the rest of humanity intelligence-wise.  So I took an accredited IQ test a couple of months ago.  It was surprisingly difficult.  Thinking about it, I don't know why it surprised me that an accredited IQ test was hard.  I can tell you that it wasn't because I thought I was smart enough to ace an IQ-test.  I do remember, however, coming away from that test feeling like the most dim-witted person alive.  True story. Fortunately I read Luke 10:21 soon after: " At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said,  ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do." (NIVUK) The word translated as 'wise' is sophon, which is where the word 'sophisticated' comes from.   {Sidenote: ...

This is an odd, unusual time for me.  It's a time of change. A lot of change.  It seems like the culmination of everything that happened in the past year. My wife gave birth to our son at the end of September, 2017.  Ten days later my boss, our vicar, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.  Dealing with that has been difficult, to say the least.  It was a strange mixture of happiness about the birth of our son and the death of a dear friend and mentor; a father-figure since my dad passed away in 2014.  It was especially tough around Christmas. The whole church was hurting.  And yet we kept on doing what we were doing as best we could.  By the grace of God. Some months later I went on a selection panel for possible ordination training in the CofE.  I wasn't accepted.  In fact, I missed the mark by not meeting 5 of 9 criteria.  This hurt a lot more than I would like to admit for two reasons: 1) It was the final step in a two and...

It was the day after a very successful Carol Service and I was sweeping up glitter from angels' wings and minced pie crumbs off the floor, so I started thinking about life and stuff.  As you do, of course... I share these thoughts with you now. I was thinking about the rest of the Christmas period and what was still to come.  There was still quite a bit of the floor to be swept, but I had the rest of the day, so I wasn't in a hurry.  Thinking about the time I had and what needed to be done, a question rose up from the depths like a methane bubble trapped in ice for centuries:  How much is expected of me and how much am I willing to do? I was really satisfied with myself for being so humble and willing to sweep the floor when I realised that I wasn't particularly willing to do much more than that.  What if the vicar came in, looked around and said: "Thanks!  Can you also clean the chairs, wipe down the windows, clear the bins in the kitchen, carry the ...

For those who read this and do not yet know, the Western Cape, South Africa, is going through a terrible drought at the moment.  Cape Town is especially vulnerable as "Day Zero" (the day when water levels are so low that water supply to suburban areas will be cut off) is less than two months away.  It really is a crisis influencing many.  People are scared, panicked. So yesterday I read an interesting headline to an article that a friend posted on Facebook.  It's about the famous farmer and evangelist, Angus Buchan, who apparently said that God is angry with the people of Cape Town and that it will rain when they repent.  Harsh.  My knee-jerk reaction was, of course, anger at these remarks.  How can a merciful God be angry with Cape Town?  How can a well-known and respected Christian evangelist make such claims?  Isn't it irresponsible of him to make statements like that?  Surely this isn't God's character at all!  Jesus said that...

I was stuck in traffic the other day.   A 12-mile round trip to pick up Madeleine (my daughter), that should have taken 60 minutes, took 2 hours.   It was frustrating to say the least, mainly because it was of my own doing. Traffic seemed pretty bad, so I decided to take a different route.   Big mistake.   Traffic was bad everywhere, so I basically sat in a line of cars on a route which can politely be described as the very long way round . This isn’t the first time I took the long way round to get where I wanted to be because of my own impatience.   Life sometimes gives us all, on different occasions, ‘traffic’ that slows us down, for whatever reason.   This isn’t always a bad thing either. Read Jeremiah 29:4-9.   Jeremiah sends this letter to the exiled Israelites taken away by Nebuchadnezzar.   There were some ‘prophets’ proclaiming that God will bring them back to Israel soon.   God says no, that’s not right.   Plant trees. ...

It really feels like the world's going down the drain; or going to hell in a handbasket as our American friends would very aptly describe it.   Violence, war, conflict, protests, sadness, isolation, genocide, injustice, illness, depression, oppression, hate, cruelty, fear, pain...   The list goes on...   And that's only within the church...   The rest of the world looks even worse. It seems to easy to lose hope in the face of current affairs.   Is there any way we can turn this around?   Are our opinions so vastly different that there is no conceivable way of reconciliation at all?   Is there no way we can ever stand together as human beings again? I'm pretty frustrated at the moment.   People annoy me.   I can totally see myself living on a farm somewhere remote, taking care of animals (sheep, most likely), drinking wine made from grapes of my own vineyard and working hard to provide for my immediate family...   Bliss...  ...

So I've made mistakes before.  The kind of mistakes that make me wince when the memories creep up on me in the stillness before sleep late at night.  Sometimes, it seems, the thought of forgiveness and redemption can drown out the self-reproach and allow me to drift off into a slumber.  Other times the wince seems to spread down from my face to my heart as feelings of guilt, iniquity and shame overwhelm me to the point of insomnia. We weren't made to live like this;  sluggishly carrying an eternal feeling of guilt around, like a heavy suitcase without wheels.  We also weren't made to leave that suitcase standing at the side of the road like a lonely commuter who just missed the bus.  It's part of our past, therefor it's part of us. Sometimes we don't realise we have this thing we carry around, like an awkward backpack with the straps broken, lost in the woods.  Often we don't even grasp that we've been carrying around our mistakes and shortcomings ...