The challenge of a word

My new favourite word is  σπλαγχνίζομαι. 

It's Greek. splangkh-nid'-zom-ahee or something like that...... I love the way it sounds.

When Jesus has pity or compassion on people that's the word that is often used (like in Mark 9:41). It means being "moved as to ones bowels" - the bowels were thought to be the seat of your love or pity. 

It has come up in all three of my lectures this week and I got excited each time..... 

It made me think though..... when we see someone hurting, when we see injustice are we moved like this? Or are we so used to it that we brush it off, feel a moment of compassion, but then move on.....?

On being 18

I have this theory that after you pass the age of 18 you still feel like you are 18. Your body might not feel like you are 18, you probably know a bit more and have more life experience but there is something inside that makes you feel like you are 18. I have tested this theory out (like a good statistician) by surveying at least two other people of different ages and they still feel like they are 18 too. We are the same people, yet different.


Yesterday I met up with people I lived with or close to in my final year of university. We have all grown up (a bit), there were added partners and children, but, for all intents and purposes we all felt the same as we were when we lived in close proximity. We still had those years of our lives in common and to be honest, despite all we had been through, we hadn't changed that much.


So often I feel like I am only pretending to be grown up. I still make decisions about pensions and insurance and the future and am amazed at myself for being so very grown up despite having made these decisions by myself since I was at least, well, 18. 


When you are 18 you are at the beginning of adult life. You begin to make decisions that are life changing. Perhaps that is why that age sticks with us. We realise that those decisions never stop, that life changing decisions happen all the time and we still feel as overwhelmed as that first time we stepped into the world of grown ups.


We talked in church today about making the decision to know more of Christ. The decision to know more needs to be made again and again. The thing about Christ is that there is so much more to know, so much more to experience. We can know in our heads that Jesus died for us. We can know in our hearts that Jesus died for us. I want to know Christ, however, through the whole of my being (not just my head or heart) and to do that I continue to seek him, continue to spend time with him and continue to live out my life in him. 


I'm overwhelmed by the greatness of God each time that I choose to follow Christ.


(I have just realised that it was 18 years ago this month that I was baptised......)

Embracing Strangeness

One of my new favourite programmes is Call the Midwife. It deals with all sorts of emotions, from joy to sadness, frustration to contentment. It recognises the reality of life and is not afraid to confront all sorts of difficult issues. The nuns live in a way that is gracious and real. They accept people for who they are and love them just the way they are even if they disagree with how they live. They know the history of the people they are working with and they are not afraid to say what they think, often changing the way they look at things when they have heard of people's experiences.


When we live alongside people, when we are parts of communities we have to deal with all sorts of things. We might not think the way someone does something is right. We might prefer some people to others. Some people might be simply annoying. We might stand on the edge and feel like we are too different to everyone else to properly take part....


I've always been a people watcher. I like to stand at the side of the room and watch what others do, listen to what they are saying, seeing how they interact.... Partly because I am quiet, but partly because I like to see the bigger picture. 


To see the real bigger picture though, there are times when I have to jump in and be part of the community rather than standing watching on the edge. Only then do I feel the community - the joys, sadness, frustration and contentment. 


"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him" Romans 12:1 (The Message)


God places us in community. We embrace it because of God, bizarre things and all. Then we deal with the hard stuff by walking alongside one another (even if as we walk alongside one another we discover we are going to end up in different places).

The Room of Hidden Things

I have just spent the afternoon with two fantastic people clearing out the vestry/office/room of hidden things* at church. It is amazing how much stuff is accumulated in such a small room. Things that people don't want to make a decision about throwing away, things with sentimental value, things that were useful at some time but we couldn't remember when. When there is no sense of ownership over a room nobody takes responsibility for what it contains. 


I've been reading with interest the posts on Beyond 400 - 40 Baptist Voices discussing the future of the Baptist Union. Today's post from Beth Allison http://www.beyond400.net/blogger/listings/beth-allison asks the question 'Why am I Baptist?'. Some people might think I am Baptist because I was born this way. Perhaps that has something to do with it! However, one of the reasons that I am still Baptist is because of the commitment to the local church. Baptists are governed by their own church members. The church members will make the decisions on anything the church does. The church becomes a local church for local people (in a good way, not a scary village pub way). The church members feel a sense of ownership - they are the church where, under God's guidance, they are involved in decision making where it matters deeply to them about what happens next. Sometimes this can cause problems when we disagree, but a community of believers who are truly following God can move forward together. The members take responsibility for what happens next. 


I think that the problem we have in discussing the future of the Baptist Union is that ordinary people in ordinary churches don't always see the bigger picture. We forget about the wider union because we cannot see past our own churches that we are committed to. 


As the Union seeks to clear out its room of hidden things so that where God is taking us becomes more evident, the Baptist churches who are part of the union need to do so too. As part of a movement we can walk with one another and support one another but to do that we need to get rid of some of the baggage we are carrying, some of the stuff that sits around waiting for someone to claim it and look at one another, appreciate the diversity and step out in faith. The problem with independence is that when things are going well we forget that we are part of a movement that is bigger than us. Those churches who have hidden the Baptist Union in their room of hidden things perhaps need to go and find it, understand it and explore the things that are made possible by being part of a wider movement, not just for themselves but for other churches around them.


It makes me sad when I hear of churches in the same town who won't speak to one another. It makes me even sadder when I hear of Baptist Churches in the same town who don't speak to one another. If people don't make an effort to speak to their neighbours how can they grasp the bigger picture? 


I love being Baptist, and as a Baptist I look to Christ in all that I do. 






*room of hidden things - Harry Potter hides his spell book in here in one of the books, it's full of stuff people have wanted to put in a safe place.

Fear of unknown buses

Since sliding down the hill into Ramsbottom on Saturday afternoon I seriously considered catching the bus to college today. I researched on the internet, worked out how the tickets worked, found the times. When it came to it though, did I catch the bus? 


Well..... no. I'd rather reverse my car off my snowy drive, doing a little bit of shunting as it got stuck and drive to college.


All because I am scared of unknown buses. I've never had a problem with buses before. I've never got lost on a bus (I have got lost in my car). I've never waited for a bus that hasn't come. Buses are, as far as I am aware, reasonably reliable.


When we are dealing with risks, when we are facing change, we need to look at the challenges with a sense of perspective. By focusing on the worry caused by the little things we miss the excitement of the bigger picture. 


Matthew 6:28-34 says that we do not need to worry about the little things. We don't need to worry about what we are wearing or about what we are going to eat or which bus we are going to catch; we can do something about that. God knows we have these needs and will help us to deal with them. We need to be concerned more about God's purpose for our lives. That's the bigger picture. That's the bigger plan. 


So next time I say I'm going to catch the bus I might just do it. Fears are there to be got over and worked through, not to hold us back.

The Silence Problem

Today at college we thought about the value of silence in our prayer lives. The trouble is that I am not very good at silence. I would be one of the members of the audience who during John Cage's 4'33 is making the music. I'd be shuffling, whispering to my neighbour, opening sweets, moving my chair, clicking my pen (don't you hate it when people do that?). Any silence in my house is interrupted by television or music or the world of facebook or twitter (although silent in sound they are noisy in the way they demand time). 

We watched 15 minutes of a three hour video of a silent monastery (thank goodness we didn't watch more!). I was surprised at the way the idea of the life in the monastery attracted people in my class. They were attracted by the rhythmic life, the space just to be with God, the monastery as a place to run away to and the slow pace of life. To be honest, I couldn't see the appeal of all that because I was distracted by the lack of colour in the surroundings, whether the language in the book one of the monks was reading was in Hebrew and the monk, who when the bell was going for lunch, walked really slowly (seemingly not to notice that the bell wouldn't stop until he got there - I wanted to shout at him!).

Perhaps though, there is some value in silence. I got some magnetic scrabble letters for Christmas that sit on top of my fridge. One frantic day a few weeks ago I wrote 'Be Still and Know that I am God' with the letters. It's still there and these words from Psalm 46 remind me that sometimes I need to stop, even if just for a few seconds, remember that God is there and make space to be still in his presence. 

Could that be what real silence is about?