Longing - reflection on advent

Longing eyes

Hi everyone. I have put a YOUTUBE clip at the bottom of this entry that I'd love you to watch - but here's why.

Advent is a season of longing. It's a time of the year for me, as a follower of Jesus, to think about the promises of God and His work in my life - and His assurances to me. It is also a period when I can reflect on all that has gone on in my own journey with God and allow space and time for reflection, repentance and renewal.

This morning, I stood in the midst of the frost and the cold and simply remembered. Beneath the surface of the cold, hard ground around me, life remained strong and hidden. The plants and trees around me have shed their leaves, casting off the garments of last summer and focussing their energies and strength on deepening their roots and sucking up the energy and nutrients they need from the earth. Advent is like that for me, I think. What of last year has to be discarded? What words and actions need to be allowed to whiter and fall away, like leaves falling lifeless from the branches of trees? What can I learn from last year - what nutrients do I need to soak into my life so that I might be more effective in my service of Christ - and perhaps most importantly, I can become more like Him? Old attitudes and assumptions that need to be changed - areas of my theology that need to grow more, reach out more, broaden? I am now convinced that if my theology has not changed then I have not grown.

But advent is also a season of longing - yearning. It's a time for me when, full of hope and expectation of God I allow the deep longing of my spirit to reach out to God in a new way. I am not talking about the kind of longing that we often think of as 'normal'. This isn't like the 'longing' for a holiday or the 'longing' to have something new in my home, or a strong desire to do something for the first time, or visit the theatre or have a meal in a certain restaurant. No - I mean much more than that. I'm talking about the longing, the deep-seated yearning that knows deep within that there is more of God to see and understand and experience. It's like a thirst in the desert, or the desperation for air you feel when you have been swimming under water for too long. A deep, primal ache for more of life, more of reality, more of God to be known and felt and encountered. I have had enough of theologies that box God into cerebral cells or confine him to purely emotional cul-de-sacs. I don't want a relationship with God that looks disdaingly on experience. Nor do I want a theology that is driven by emotion and feelings and treats thinking and reflection like some kind of nasty virus that best belongs in the hankerchief of humanism and philosophy. It is not so much that I simply 'want' God - I think each Advent brings me to a deeper realisation that without Him, I cannot live.

My longing is for life beyond existence, for depth beyond veneer, for hope beyond circumstances and for a spirituality that goes way beyond superficial platitudes or confessions or liturgies or choruses or tongue-speaking. My yearning is for a fresh revelation of the God in whose hands my very breath is. I want to stand on a cold morning, with the frost carresing the ground and the cold air invading my lungs and I want to be able to put my head back and close my eyes and know beyond knowing that the reality of the presence and power of God is every bit as real as the air I breathe and the ground I stand on. I want my faith to deepen and grow and my intimacy to be more intimate. I want my commitment to good works to extend beyond obligation and my engagement in worship to reach into the darkest recesses of my mind and heart and experience and shed new light on dark corners. I want my prayers to flow out of a heart that yearns to give God more praise and a more central place in my heart. I want to pull down altars that have been built where only God's throne should sit. I want my circumstances to be submitted to my faith that God is real, His presence is here and his commitment to me never changes. I want advent to be a time when the deep-seated cry of desperation inside me is released with emotion and power and intensity and is allowed to break through all the 'stuff' that so often keeps it in its place. I want the cry 'I love you Lord' to be from the very core of my being and I want it to fracture my fortitude, shatter my self-centredness and break my beligerence. I want advent to be a time of risk-taking, dangerous faith when I see again that God can do anything, anywhere with anyone. I want advent to help me see the cloud the size of a man's hand in my life and the lives of my friends that reminds me that God has not finished with me or with them yet.  I want advent to be a fresh dawning of hope, a new and dazzling day for the Kingdom, a pulling down of the powers of darkness and continual firework of faith. I want advent to set the tinsel ablaze with a passion for holiness, I want it to invade unhelpful divides between the 'secular' and 'sacred'. I want it to upset my applecart, to push me into the centre of the will of God and drag me, even if it is kicking and screaming, away from my comfort and into a place of absolute dependence on God. I want to go further, reach deeper, understand more, experience more genuinely, reflect more clearly, the grace and wonder and majesty of God. I want to sing 'O Come, O Come, Emmanue' not just with my voice, but with my whole life and heart and soul and spirit. I want to run into an ocean of God and swim in Him, completely dependent upon His grace and power and love. I don't care what people think. I don't care who mocks me. I want to close my ears to the conservative critics who tell me I to hold things in balance. I don't want to be 'reserved'! I don't want to hold anything back. I don't want to be polite about my love for God. I want to surrender more, to give more, to love more deeply, to rejoice more fully, to praise more passionately, to live more outrageously for Him.

Joel Houston captures it in 'I'll stand' - enjoy

You stood before creation

Forever within Your hand

You spoke all life into motion

My soul now to stand

You stood before my failure

And carried the cross for my shame

My sin weighed upon Your shoulders

My soul now to stand

So what can I say

And what can I do

But offer this heart O God

Completely to You

So I'll walk upon salvation

Your Spirit alive in me

My life to declare Your promise

My soul now to stand

So what can I say

And what can I do

But offer this heart O God

Completely to You

So I'll stand

With arms high and heart abandoned

In awe of the One who gave it all

I'll stand

My soul Lord to You surrendered

All I am is Yours

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/0-YUU-MRjw4&hl=en_GB&fs=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca&border=1

Knowing Him

Evening everyone,

What a stormy, troublesome day here in Hampshire! The study got soaked, the wind is howling outside as I write (it is 10:pm) and apparently there is more bad weather yet to come our way - so hunker down, it's going to be a rough night! Continuing to improve today and even got to eat some spicy food tonight - doctors had said I should stay away from it until I felt better as it could affect my throat. So enjoyed a mild Indian curry tonight.

Anyway - whilst sitting in my study working, today I was glancing round all my books - commentaries, bibles, reference books, testimonies, biographies and all the rest. I have around 4000 of them on shelves, in boxes and stored away - and something hit me.

Every book I have read about Jesus helps me - but it doesn't fully satisfy the yearning deep down inside of me to know Him more. None of them deals completely and adequately with the longing to be more like Him, to catch the 'scent' of His presence a little more fully. None deal with the paradoxes and the contrasts and the nuances and the beauty in Him well enough. No book ever could. He's human and divine and yet the mystery continues to deepen, the waters still not clear - the wonder still not plumbed. He is tender and gentle, yet violently uncompromising. He can make a child feel safe on His knee, but His enemies shake before Him. He is the benchmark by which all people are judged, yet He is meek and servant-hearted. He said the strongest things about sin I have ever heard - yet He spoke to sinners with a gentleness and tenderness that dispels fear. He says that I have to give Him everything - but He gave me everything first. He is the most approachable attractive and winsome Person ever to have walked the earth - yet for all my knowing I only know Him a little. His authority is unquestionable - yet He rejects power completely and never used it to control. His friends loved Him and He was on party guest lists, yet He is a man of incredible sorrow and pain. He raises friends from the dead - then He dies Himself. He has more power than anyone else - yet He won't force open the door of my heart - instead waiting to be asked. He could demand my love, yet He asks me to give it to Him freely. He'll let me reject Him rather than squash my humanity, yet He gives up everything for me simply to have the choice.  He died two thousand years ago - yet lives in the here and now and has the full and utter allegiance of heart. I have spent twenty years with Him as my best friend - and today I realised again that I have so much more to learn about Him - and so many more opportunities to grow and fall deeper in love with this Carpenter. He has more facets than the greatest diamond, more depth that the deepest ocean, more intensity than a thousand suns - and yet He held me in His arms today and reminded me that He loves me - and always will. 

So my prayer for each of us today is that we will pursue the One who pursues us - and that we will never be satisfied until a bright and glorious morning when we hear a trumpet, see the clouds part, and the hairs on the back of our necks stand on end, as we catch a glimpse of those we love, then find our attention drawn to One who makes life worth living and we finally are able to say, 'I know You'.

God bless

Soul nourishing solitiude

Hello everyone! I trust you are all well. I am doing very well and continuing to improve. Now able to speak - although I can't raise my voice in anyway and there is still little or no power in it. I went to a music practise in The Chapel this evening and was able to play my clarinet and saxophone. It was fantastic! A single note can express a thousand words and it was just soo special to be able to lose myself in the music. I may have been limited in the words I spoke - but boy, did I feel a release in playing and praising God.

I think I have overdone it yesterday and today, though. So will be careful tomorrow Feeling tired and drawn tonight, but was really encouraged by a card I received from a friend today - MNB! What a blessing.

I have my appointment for my test results and to discuss what happens next - Thursday 19th November at 10:45. But I have real peace about the outcome, as you know and am looking forward to seeing the consultant and asking when I can start public speaking again. My prayer would be that I can talk using a good mic in December, but I will absolutely follow their advice and guidance.

The wonder of solitude.

Don't you feel a tug, a yearning to sink down into the silence and solitude of God? Don't you long for something more? Doesn't every breath crave a deeper, fuller exposure to His presence? It is the discipline of solitude that will open the door.

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, Page 134.

Those of you who know me well will know that there has always been a very strong contemplative part to my spirituality. I've been committed to spiritual disciplines such as meditation, simplicity and times of solitude for years. Lectio Divina, an ancient form of prayer, has been part of my daily practise for over twenty years and Celtic spirituality and practises are very important to me. I think that is one of the reasons that I have really enjoyed this extended time of silence and prayer and solitude. Rather than being a time I have feared, it has honestly been a time I have enjoyed and cherished. Think of it like getting the chance to spend some quality time with your very best friend, doing the things that you really enjoy, and you will begin to get the sense of how this time has felt for me. Physically painful and in many ways uncertain, yet at the same time intimate and special and wonderful and warm and strong. I've felt like I have been taking a walk in the autumn leaves, kicking them with my father. Again, if you know me, you will understand how powerful that metaphor is.  In the garden and grounds around where I live there are hundreds of trees and at the moment there are literally thousands of leaves on the ground - despite my friend Freda's best efforts to clear them! Almost every day I walk round the grounds here and spend time with God - just kicking leaves. I did it today - and it was great. I felt like a tiny little boy being watched by a very big, very strong, very interested Father. Today I just spent a little while running around the grounds and kicking leaves - literally! If someone had walked in they would have thought I was a bit off the wall (no funny comments please) but I have never really been overly concerned what people think about my relationship with God. At one point, it was so intense that I was convinced that there actually was someone behind me watching me and laughing. I stopped and thought about turning round - but decided not to. The feeling was so intimate, so special, so personal that Ifelt like I didn't need to turn round, like to do so would be to rob this very special moment of faith and intimacy of its faith element by needing to see Someone whom I knew to be there anyway. God watched me kicking leaves today - because He always does. Today wasn't a special day, I was just in the place where I felt Him more today - and we all need those moments.

Mylene Klass.

I don't know if any of you have been watching the Children in Need specials about celebrities travelling round the world in 80 days? Last night's programme featured John Barrowman and Mylene Klass. They stopped off in Arizona and spent some time with people who thought they channelled aliens! One of the things they did was some meditation, to try and 'make contact'. Of course they didn't and both Mylene Klass and Barrowman chatted about it afterwards. But Klass was moved by the fact that these people took time to stop, to listen and to focus their thoughts and centre themselves. She said she had NEVER done that before - she'd never taken time to stop, to be alone with her thoughts and her feelings. She'd never allowed herself the luxury of solitude and stopping. So today I prayed that for each of you - that you would discover some space and power in solitude.

Father,

Thank you for solitude. Help us today to find mini-retreats that last a second, or a minute or an hour. In the midst of commuter trains, at office desks, in busy business meetings and with children screaming for their dinner, help us to discover a different beat and to live in the music of a different melody. Help Your people to avoid the temptation of filling every moment with 'doing' because the fear of 'being' makes them hide from You. Loosen the grip of the demand of the moment, replace the tyranny of the urgent with the beckoning of the important. With threatening letters on their desks, negative voices in their heads and harsh hands reaching to grab their peace, provide a moment of solitude.

Give Your people a glimpse of the warmth of aloneness with You. Help them to remember that the absence of others never equates to Your departure. When spouses have become distant, friends are far away and help seems impossible, remind them that in the silence and the solitude Your Spirit rests. God, in whose hand our very breath is, let solitude become a rod of strength for Your people today. Strip away the props and the facades and the unnecessariness of things and ego and stuff and demands and replace them with a solid, stake-in-the-ground assurance that Your are watching us.

Help us not to try and hide from You. when we stitch clothes together with fig leaves of pride and power and control, call out our names in the heat of the day. Let us hear the words that penetrate beyond our excuses and calendars - call out to us in the moments of our hiddeness - Malcolm, where are you? And give us the grace to respond. Take away the wrong fruit - blackberries included - just for a moment and enable us to bear fruit that will last.

Thank you that there is so much more of You to know, to experience and to discover than we can ever begin to understand. Take Your people on a journey to a new place, a deeper place - where the leaves on the ground become a playground for us. Let leaves of regret become tokens of redemption. Let the autumn colours of unfulfilled hopes become the ochres of a fresh new dawn.

As we stand knee high in leaves, alone with You in the silence, give us the grace to know that in that moment You are standing right behind us, with Your eyes twinkling with love and a smile on Your face because You love us and take joy in us. And give us the faith to stop - and not feel the need to look behind, but instead the complete assurance that You are where you have always been - and we do not need to prove it because we never need to prove You. You have proven Your love for us by an empty tree and an empty grave - we need nothing more.

Amen

The rest we take between two deep breaths

Hello Everyone,

Wow! Thanks so much for the encouraging emails and texts and other messages you guys have been sending - such a blessing to know so many people are willing to take the time to send an emal or an SMS or a card and stuff - bless you all.

I got two very special things today. One was a letter from my mum! She NEVER writes - because she is getting older and struggling with writing and things like that. I was so touched and really, really appreciated her sending me a letter. The other was a beautiful card from Debbie (my wife for those of you who don't know!) which has a quote on the front from Etty Hillesum. It says:

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two breaths.

Dandelion_blowing_in_wind_1

How great is that! We so often rush through things and miss the beauty and the wonder of the moment God gives us. Buddhists call it the ability to 'be present in the moment'. Christians talk about centred-living or simplicity. Whatever we call it, it is the ability to really be present, to listen and feel and see and hear and experience the sheer and unadulterated truth of the moment in which we find ourselves. I've tried to do that today and in doing so have prayed the same thing for each of you. This morning, I lay awake from around 3am - 6am. At first I thought it was just because I was sore and couldn't sleep, then I realised it might be because God wanted me to do something with that time - to listen to him, to rest in the darkness of my room and be physically and spiritually still. So I decided to use an Ignatian spiritual discipline and simply pray the Jesus prayer in my head and heart. Over and over again, I simply mentioned the name of Jesus - and each time I felt myself sinking more and more into God's glorious love and grace.

The darkness became a blanket of safety and security and peace. The warmth of Debbie next to me became a tangible reminder of the promise of God's warmth and presence and love. The scent of my pillow began to remind me of the sweetness and intimacy with which God has wooed and loved me through the years. I heard the children getting up and down in the night, or one of my sons talking in his sleep and they reminded me of my dependency on God - for every breath, every thought, every second of my life. I heard the noise of deer in the car park outside and was reminded that God has set my feet on high places. I heard owls calling to one another and remembered that even in the watches of the night the Holy Spirit speaks and carresses and loves God's people. I started to pray for each of you - asking our Father to caress you through the challenges and concerns of today. I prayed that each moment of stillness today would become a moment of holiness - a thin place for you. I asked God to take the challenges and the strains and the difficulties of this day and wrap them in his soft and gentle love so that you might feel the impact of today - but not be hurt by it. Instead, I prayed that you would sense Him in your footsteps, feel Him in your shadow, hear him in the laughter or the cries around you. I prayed that whatever you did, you would know the unsurpassed pleasure of the God who loves us enough to hold us - and ocassionally let us fall, so that we might become stronger and clearer and deeper in our love for Him.

Then I got the card and the letter! How amazing is that? God is so much aware of all that we face and all that we need. I knew that these days of silence would be moments of blessing - but I had no idea just how much He wanted to renew my intimacy and connection with Him. He doesn't need to do that - He doesn't need me! Yet He chooses to draw me in, to protect and nurture and strengthen me - wow!

Wrote this prayer for you all today - God bless.

Father,

There are people I love today who will face unchartered waters.

Be the hand that holds their vessels strong and safe in the midst of crashing waves and howling winds.

Be the light that safely guides them through this storm. Like a North Star shining through the clouds, let the light of Your love and grace shine through the clouds that try to hide Your presence. Pierce the darkness of despair, the fog of fear and the haze of hopelessness. Shine Your light onto the paths in front of Your peoples' feet - guiding each step toward Your path, Your way, Your safety.

Be the breeze that blows upon Your people today Lord. A breeze that blows away the cobwebs of regret and scatters the drizzle of despair. Let Your breath whisper to Your people through the singing of a bird and the chatter of children.

May they hear words of hope and strength, words that remind them of a brighter and clearer tomorrow. As the storms cease and the waves subside, be the quiet lapping at their boat.

Let their vision be clearer.

Let the storm have cleared the skies to leave new visions and vistas for Your people to see.

Let the waves give way to a fresher, brighter and bigger horizon than they ever thought possible.

In the quiet after the storm may Your people see you once again - in their boat, where You have always been.

May Your presence and Your gaze drive away lingering anxieties and fear and may they hear you whisper their name - as only a Father can whisper the name of their child.

As You whipser their name, in that one word let them know that You understand and care and love them enough to never, ever walk away.

Remind them that is always enough that You are there - and that You will never be any where else.

Amen

Do not be afraid