I have small hands. It has always been so. They're hands inherited from the small hand side of the family. Dainty, not too stubby, one of my favourite bits of me. I drew my hands a few months ago - it was a reflective exercise in noticing. They didn't come out bad really, in all their lines and strategically placed moles that have always helped me distinguish my left from my right. They may be small, but they stretch far - that's playing the piano for you - they stretch almost to an octave and two notes, and so long as I don't play too long, I can sustain that position where the shape of my hands becomes more like a line for a while.
I have small hands. It has always been so. I can fit them inside a pringles tube and reach the crisp nectar at the bottom without having to break them as they pour out. Their smallness means I can't carry much, and so when you're sharing out sweets I inevitably miss out. I drop things - with fingers closed the surface area is not large enough to carry and with fingers open the things fall quickly through the gaps as my hands stretch wider and turn into that octave and nearly two notes reaching line.
I have small hands. It has always been so. And with the fear inducing news my hands feel even smaller. How can I carry the weight alongside and for those who I love and serve when right now it feels heavy, and the predictions declare "it's going to get heavier still, in fact, so heavy, that nobody's hands will be able to carry it"?
We have small hands. It has always been so. But thankfully there is one who has bigger, and His hands are sitting underneath our own, so close that sometimes they are indistinguishable from our own. And His hands hold yours and catch you before you fall. His hands take the weight of the crisis that is coming and promise to help carry the load you're carrying through. His hands are big enough to both stretch beyond the octave and to hold everything you carry easily, and everything that makes you say 'no more'.
We cannot know for sure how the next wallop in the cost of living crisis will hit us, and some will wonder if they can take anymore. It's not just going to disappear even if we try and bury our heads in the sand.... this we do know, though, his hands - they're big enough to hold it all. Examine them, see your name written on them, and see how He holds yours.... and then see how you might be the one to hold your hands in the same way under another's as they also face what is ahead.
"So do not fear, for I am with you, do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand" - Isaiah 41:10
It's a sad week this week. Not only is it the last week of my sabbatical, but it's the end of 37 years of Neighbours. A soap that is almost as old as me, it's been part of my life since I was smaller and has been a key part of my routine in ministry (for someone who works better in the morning but is not a morning person, 1.45pm is a good time for lunch).
Neighbours has everything you need in a soap - lots of different types of people, humour and tragedy, characters who could be your neighbours or your friends, a slight surrealism that reminds you occasionally that it is not actually real life (Bouncer's Dream is as surreal as some of mine) and an intricate weaving of storylines that would make you, on one hand, wonder if you want to ever live on Ramsay Street but on the other hand, be drawn in and buy one of the houses now for sale.
The Neighbours theme music was one of the first things I remember enjoying playing on my recorder at school. It's simplicity lends itself to an infant playing a recorder, and you can't go that wrong. It tells a perfect and simple story of how if you can get the right group of neighbours together, the right blend of neighbours, the right blend of people in your community, then you might become friends. That theme tune has brought itself to life in the last few weeks as old cast members have returned and they have told their story of their best bits of Ramsay Street.
The stories are of laughter and joy, of the characters that they lived alongside, of those that they miss and of those with whom relationships have broken. They tell the stories of coming to a peaceful place even though they have gone through difficult times, and how Ramsay Street will always be their home, not because of the location, but because of the people who are there. Alongside this, life continues, and brokenness still happens, people still change, people still argue, and the painful past bites when memories arise. Their lives are intertwined, in their now stories, in their past stories and in stories of connections they didn't know they had. The one thing that keeps them together is their collective story, even though they may have only been part of that story for a short while, their story matters. The perfect blend in the theme song is not about it all being pretty, but about the people who make up the story, it's a blend being changed and renewed time and time again.
Neighbours tells the story of a community searching for and finding home. It's a story of how we need each other, that life cannot be lived in isolation, however much easier that might seem. Alone time is lovely, but we need togetherness to become fully alive.
I'm reading a book at the moment called Seven Sacred Spaces. The author, George Lings, identifies the elements of Christian communities, which, with the right blend enable 'a richer expression of discipleship, mission and community'. One of these spaces is 'Cloister' - basically the corridors and the spaces of the monastery where nothing specific is usually planned to happen, but community encounters naturally occur. It's in these places that a lot of the relationship building and conversation happens. These are the joining places - the bits where dots are joined together and we can begin to make sense of the world. Giving time to make sure that encounter can happen in the cloister - that the community can just hang out together is key to making the community healthy.
I think that's what makes Neighbours what it is - it's not a series of rushing from one thing to another with the camera swinging between organised events (although they happen and are important) - it's a story full of encounters in the cloister spaces - Harold's Cafe, The Waterhole, the archway outside of Karl and Susan's, the strange little room in Toadie's house, at doorways and on walkways, by the swimming pool..... Those moments are significant in making the theme tune's perfect blend. If you bump into someone and stop to talk, even if only for a few seconds, you remind them that they matter, that they belong, and that they are welcome here..... and when someone feels at home, they let their barriers down and begin to grow. In Neighbours maybe feeling at home happens quickly, not just because it's a fictional soap, but because the joining places are there, and in those joining places they learn to become the perfect blend.
If we put spaces in place for chance encounters and semi-planned bumping into one another, it helps us learn to be community better and more beautifully. Lings ends the chapter on Cloister with this:
"Cloister has a socially challenging function. I suggest it speeds up the formation of honest community. Love, humility, generosity of spirit, good listening and mutual learning, reconciliation across genuine differences - wow, that would be a church community I'd be privileged to join! Cloister puts right in your face the need to grow in all these virtues and to fight the particular temptations to grumbling, bad-mouthing, sheer hatred, judgementalism and pride that can occur when we are with others"
Ramsay Street is not the perfect place to be, and neither are the places, the churches, the worshipping communities, in which we find home and space to grow in Jesus.... but, life amongst others, searching for Christ's blend in amongst the challenges of interacting with other human beings - it's a better, more fulfilling and more fruitful place to be than trying to walk the journey alone.
Some time ago, in the near distant past, not here, but there, I was let down - betrayed perhaps - the ground had shifted underneath my feet and the now, it felt rocky and uncertain.
I asked God how I was going to keep walking whilst I was hurting and unsure of what the consequences would be, and as I was reading, he distinctly led me to Ephesians 6 and the armour of God. Put on the shoes of the Gospel of Peace, he said.
It was in that moment that I realised the impact of those shoes. The language of the armour of God suggests war, but when the shoes you put on your feet are ones of peace its a different kind of endeavour that you are preparing for.
Imagine walking and leaving physical footprints of peace. If you're wearing peace shoes, surely that's what you do?
In my disappointment, frustration and anger, the action of putting those shoes on turned my angry stomp into a walk where I discovered wholeness again.
This is the Jesus way.
A Blessing for your Shoes
May your shoes, in your walking, create footprints of peace.
May their imprints speak gently of the one who restores.
As you stomp out your anger, may they find softer ground
As you walk off your frustration, may they help you find wholeness
As you walk without direction, may they take you to a safe place.
As you trip over the changing landscape, may they help you find your feet
And as you walk on beyond, may your footprints bring peace
to the people and the places you encounter on your way
image from https://pixabay.com/photos/shoes-used-worn-cloth-shoes-4059754/
I just looked in my diary and realised I came home a week earlier than I meant to. How did that happen?
I think that maybe I was ready. I think my internal diary shouted over my written diary and told me that home was where I needed to be. I considered avoiding the now red alert furnace in the south. I've loved being able to spend time with family and friends and to feel safe and free to be exactly who I am. I have spent a lot of time over the last two and a half months processing and considering and thinking and waiting and reading and talking...... and being deeply loved.
I've remembered how to laugh again, just laugh and not stop (that can be a problem, but it's a good problem!) and how good laughter is for us. I saw a photo of some of our church leaders in our new community kitchen garden (which is very exciting) and they were laughing and I wanted to be there to laugh with them.
May there be so much more laughter.
I've learnt how to completely rest and switch off. One of the best feelings at the beginning of my sabbatical was sitting down in my little retreat sanctuary and realising I had no demands on me. I could just be. I've struggled with retreating in the past because I haven't found that space, but now I've found it, I am hoping when I go through a season of demand, it won't be too hard to find again. I spent a lot of last week just being, sitting, reading, watching fish, and it was glorious.
May we all find the time and space to simply be.
I've been surrounded by people who know me well and have reminded me of who I am. I've been reminded many times that I am me and nobody else. I am the person who God created me to be. The minister that God calls me to be. I lead from who I am not who anybody thinks I am or expects me to be, and its in doing that I can be all I need to be. God chose me because he loves me and knows what is best for me. I am enough, and don't need to be something I am not. God chooses you because he loves you and he knows you better than even you do - he knows what he is doing.
May we all know that we are enough.
I've been climbing hills, both in real life (those cliffs on the south west path were steeper than I expected) and in my thinking. Someone said to me that the more you tackle the difficult hills, the quicker the recovery time afterwards and I found that to be true. I've had some difficult stuff to process, but I think I'm nearly there.
May we all have the courage to face the hills.
I've sat and asked myself the taxing questions and have had others do that for me. I've spent time with those who can pull even the most entangled stuff out of me and make it into something beautiful, bringing insight and wisdom so simply and straightforwardly into things I've not quite understood. I've discovered more of the kind of minister God is growing me to be.
May we all be blessed with those who will help us untangle ourselves.
I've known more of what I've always known, that God loves me with an everlasting love. If I can learn to love even a smidgen of how he loves, I'll be getting something right. I've been reminded to seek God's Kingdom first and that's where I will learn how to love more deeply.
May we all know God's everlasting love.
I've been reminded that home is where I am called, it's where I feel pulled to, and whilst for a while I've been pulled away, I wonder if now, as my internal diary shouts louder than the ink of the pen with which I'd written my schedule down the direction of the pull has found its centre again.
Sometimes you just know, you know....
Psalm 126 (The Message)
It seemed like a dream, too good to be true, when God returned Zion's exiles. We laughed, we sang, we couldn't believe our good fortune. We were the talk of the nations - "God was wonderful to them!". God was wonderful to us; we are one happy people.
And now, God, do it again - bring rains to our drought-stricken lives. So those who planted their crops in despair will shout "Yes!" at the harvest, so those who went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing"
Earlier this week I spent some time in Southwell, and wandered around the Minster Gardens. The gardens are beautiful and time and care has been put into making it a good experience to visit with different things to look at and explore and the most beautiful array of flowers. Towards the edge of the garden is a circle made up of wild flowers - you can walk down the middle of it where a circular bench is placed. Sitting on that bench you are surrounded by all the colour and activity that comes in what, I suppose, you might describe as a meadow of wild flowers.
There were poppies and cornflowers and daisies and pink flowers and yellow flowers and bees buzzing and the sounds of birds in the trees around. It's the kind of place where being still is the only option and it soothes the soul.
As I was sat there I was thinking about the verses in Matthew 6:25-34 that remind us not to be worried - like the birds who get on with the day as it is and the flowers that look beautiful and just grow like that. I'd had a dream the night before which had shaken me a bit and I'd woken up a little anxious - I was reminded of one of my daily readings which had included these verses, and as I looked at the flowers I wondered how considering them might actually help.
Life over the last few years has felt like a London public transport journey - the kind where the times all match up and you step from tram to train to tube without pausing for a breath. The uncertainties over what's ahead, over the changes in government, over the cost of living, over how much to use the car, over what is coming next..... they have been never ending..... and at times it has been difficult to imagine a time when the movement might stop.
Reflecting on those verses as I thought about the wildflowers I stopped at the place where the wildflowers stop. We so often read those verses as a whole, which is where they belong, attaching them to an encouragement to not worry or be anxious, but perhaps sometimes we just need to stop and stare before we move on.
Consider the lilies. Consider the flowers. Consider the wild flowers.
In the middle of that circle of meadow, everything felt right. That stillness, that time, just to bask in the beauty of the colours and listen to the sounds of the world simply being was a thin place where God's creation made everything well for now.
We don't need to wonder how considering the flowers might help, we just need to consider the flowers, because those flowers, in that moment, contain everything needed to mean the next words and verses can find a place to be at another time. In that moment, the song that the flowers sing is the only song we need to hear.
Consider the wild flowers - their petals, so neatly shaped and not quite but nearly uniform, their colours so vibrant, bringing diversity as they thrive alongside others so different themselves. Consider the wild flowers, so carefully made by God, intricate, resilient, delicate, full of life. Consider the wild flowers, who tell something of the effort and care God puts into you and your life. Consider the wild flowers, they have a beautiful story to tell.
Who is this person who stands in front of you? You try and read and make sense of them as you form your reply. They disagreed with you and challenged your thoughts and ideas and have raised up all sorts of feelings inside you and you don't know whether to laugh or cry or shout or walk away. They stand in front of you sharing words that divide in a space more public than you'd have liked.
Who is this person who stands in front of you and irritates you to the core with their very presence? They make you angry and you know they shouldn't but they talk and exhibit an identity you cannot identify with. They make choices that go against your moral code and your shackles are up because you don't understand or tolerate.
Who is this person who stands in front of you and talks of their own lives with no interest in yours or your thoughts on what they might do. They speak in a language you don't understand and can't engage with but want you to know what they mean. They appear to hate you and choose to confront you on every little thing without letting you speak.
Who is this person who stands in front of you find really difficult to manage to love? Why do they make you feel this way and why are they the way they are?
Who is this person who stands in front of you?
First and foremost a human, with a story, with a life of brokenness and pain. A person with tales of love and of joy, and of sorrow and of loss. A person with a voice who remembers moments where their voice was taken as someone else spoke for them without being asked.
It's someone who who might have seen something that you haven't noticed and before you shout back their presence is calling you to shift your eyes. If you look beyond your irritation there is something in this person that is good and that connects to you in surprising ways.
It's someone who has struggled coming to terms with their own identity and is hoping you might not struggle quite as much as they are as they share their story with you. They came to your space as a safe space because they had nowhere else to go. It's someone who is never really listened to and is hoping that you might be the one who hears.
It's someone who has thought carefully about their choices, who has studied and wrestled and found a settled place for themselves, and is hoping you might just sit with them for a while. Their story is far too difficult to tell and they need sanctuary in a place that feels further from home than far can be. They struggle to articulate themselves and know that it always comes out wrong (but its better than it used to be).
It's someone who doesn't know how to be loved, so your difficulties are theirs too, and you journey together. As they choose to learn how to react to and receive love, you choose to follow the rocky path of learning how to love.
It's a someone, a person, a human, a life, a reflection in a mirror, a story of shadow and of light.
It's someone who reminds you that you're so caught up in the struggle that you've forgotten how to choose love. You've forgotten the love languages of listening and of patience, of kindness and of pausing, of hearing, of being, of taking down of walls. They remind us that we can choose to live in the tension of difference and forget that our opinions only matter as much as theirs.
It's someone who is lovable just like you, with potential, just like you, worth listening to, just like you.
Just like you.
"So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them...... God saw all he had made, and it was very good" Genesis 1:27, 31a
Yesterday Steve Bray, the 'Stop Brexit Man' who has spent many days outside parliament protesting against Brexit and calling for the government (and the country) to reverse the decision had his equipment ceased and he could be prosecuted under the 'Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act' which was passed on Tuesday. This act introduces an offence of intentionally and recklessly causing a public nuisance. It's an attempt to try and stop the tactics of climate change protestors like Extinction Rebellion who have brought parts of London and the M25 to a standstill on a number of occasions.
Now I've seen Steve Bray protest, and yes he is noisy, I'll give you that, but he stands alongside other occasional and more regular protestors around Parliament Square, passionate about his campaign and wanting to be heard. One MP described her pleasure at his arrest and described his noisy protests as violent, but many others have stood by him, saying 'yes he is annoying, but it should be his right'.
Whatever we think about his cause and methods, the very public confiscation of his equipment and threat of persecution is disturbing, because it is a sign of what this bill could do. As humans in a free country we have a right to protest, it is enshrined in human rights law, however this bill says that if it is annoying or too noisy then it can be shut down, just like that. Carefully worded, the bill doesn't sound that bad, but many people are worried about what it might mean for our future right to protest.
As a Baptist, one of my core values is one of dissent. The Baptist Movement began under persecution - One of the founders of the General Baptists, Thomas Helwys was arrested and imprisoned because of his views and campaigning on the separation of church and state. Jesus was crucified by the religious and political powers of the day - his very existence challenging established religion and speaking of a power greater than the ruling Roman Empire. Inspired by this Baptists believe that neither the state or institutional church can dictate what to think or how to behave. Freedom is a key value and all should be able to participate in the political process.
When voices are silenced, their ability to take part in the political process is suppressed. We are in a situation, which is not new, but is swinging in a dangerous direction, where the voices of the elite, the Oxbridge educated, those with more money and resources than they know what do with, those with connections, those subscribing to divisive ideologies and who are actively challenging a convention of human rights that has been around for decades have the loudest voices in politics. Where the volume is turned down on protest, where fear of speaking out is filtering out into the nation, these voices can only get louder, and the voices of the majority will be silenced.
Protest has had a part to play in many great movements in history and continues to do so today. Silenced voices are heard when people choose to speak up. Solidarity with and freedom for the oppressed has been found because people have protested. Trade Unions, Votes for Women, the Civil Rights Movement in the US... more recent the Black Lives Matter movement and Climate change protestors have raised new voices in ongoing justice struggles. History shows that where people rise up, authorities crack down - the Peterloo Massacre, the imprisonment of suffragettes, Selma.
We might see the attempt to silence Steve Bray as an incident that will pass by and its only one man with one agenda, but the big question is what is to come ahead, and whose voice will be silenced next. As we see our government question our fundamental human rights on protesting, we cannot help but draw parallels with the loss of human rights of those who are destined to be on the next flight to Rwanda and we've got to ask where this is going to stop. The path ahead looks murky and dangerous. Where is our voice in that? What does walking in the way of Jesus look like down this road?
Jesus said this:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour" Luke 4:18-19
Image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/34976963870
"They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say when there is no peace" Jeremiah 6:14
This verse came up in the Northumbria Community Daily Readings today. It's nudged me, reminded me, raised up stuff inside me, agitated me, frustrated me, made me itch (although that could be forgetting to take an antihistimine). It reminded me of the empty sentiments we often use to make people feel better - like giving them a little stroke. The McDonalds of sentiments that satisfies for a moment (I'm not saying it's not good to use these sentiments - in fact, in the moment, often it's what you need to hear and an occasional McDonalds (or fast food momentary satisfaction equivalent) can make a difference).
Last night I came across a note I'd written in the middle of a particularly difficult pandemic time when I was struggling to get out of bed each day because I didn't know what I was going to face. It reads like the prophet Jeremiah - he was really fed up with the world around him - people weren't facing up to their problems and were making some very poor decisions and his writing is full of 'we can't carry on like this, something has got to change - you've got to start making some better decisions'. We've all had times like that, I am sure, and some people live most days with the every day dread of what is going to happen next, and these softly softly sentiments don't work, because in reality, they are not going to change anything and often aren't truthful, because things will only get better when we learn how to deal with and even live with the stuff that is making us hurt and groan - it's Ok not to be OK, but we can't sit in this place forever.
On the day of one of the biggest strikes for some time - a strike that most of us, although inconvenienced, understand and support, because we're at a loss of what to do about how the cost of living crisis and an economy that is falling apart for ordinary people - it's affecting us all. We are very much aware of how empty empty sentiments are. It's like when someone tells us to calm down when there is much to be agitated about - it just makes us angrier.
So what do we do with all of this? What do we do when the phrases that are meant to make us feel better don't make us feel better anymore because we know that, at least in the near future, it's only going to get more difficult?
I think we start by acknowledging that yes it is rubbish. When I was finding stuff particularly tough, people who walked with me and said 'yes, that is a really hard thing and I'm finding it hard too' made a difference. Being honest about our feelings, being vulnerable, being open.... it all makes a difference. Times ahead, times now, they will be and are difficult. For some of us it's a long road we've already been travelling. We can't always give people answers and solutions, but sitting in the rubbish together for a short while - it makes a difference. We can't stay there forever though.... so....
We can also encourage and help people on their way and let people do that with us without taking umbrage. Someone said to me the other week - 'you know what you've got to do, you just need to it'. It was very blunt, but perhaps I needed the bluntness. We can far too often label ourselves as a person who sits in the rubbish - but, although, you can find peace in a difficult place, it's still a difficult place. Finding your way out of that difficult place to a different place with new opportunities can be too painful to face because familiar feels easy. Jeremiah reminds us that just because we say things are OK it doesn't mean that they will be - sometimes we've got to do the things we don't want to do to discover what OK really means. We all need people around us who will encourage us to do that, who are truthful about where we need to go next and will help us on our way.
We can keep pointing to what we know to be true, not the 'it'll be OK', but the 'one day it will be glorious'. Jeremiah, whilst full of doom and gloom, is full of hope. His book is full of 'but God'. God is not a God of sitting in the rubbish, he is a God of restoration. The way things are are not the way things have to be, and whilst we acknowledge that there are some seasons of life that are ridiculous, we also know that there is a path that brings a deeper peace than the 'peace peace' equivalent of a fast food fix. It's the path that takes us on the long haul road to better. It's a path that takes us from sitting in the not OK to finding more than OK. It's an ancient path that has been there from the beginning of time. It's a path marked with a cross that is a symbol of deep love and shalom in all of its brokenness as Jesus was hung on it and changed the world. It's a path marked with suffering, but full of life. When you look at Jesus and hear his teaching, you see what a good - the best - way ahead looks like and what life could become.
We can't carry on like this, we've got to start making some better decisions. Our Government has got to start making better decisions. Our communities have got to start making some better decisions. We have to start making some better decisions. Saying 'there, there' isn't going to cut it - we need to seek a peace and a healing that lasts beyond tomorrow - in words, in action, in attitude and by choosing carefully who to follow.
Jeremiah reminds us of a better way....
"Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls" Jeremiah 6:16a
When you look in the mirror what do you see? Do you see what other people see? Are you the same but backwards? When you take a selfie is it the story of everything you are?
Probably not, because when you look in the mirror or take a selfie you frame it with everything you already think about yourself. The frame contains the words that stand out from what other people have told you in glowing letters. It contains both the words that have made you secure in your identity and the words that make you doubt who you are. The labels hang off the hooks you've put in the frame - successful, failing, beautiful, ugly, identified by your job, your relationship status, your emotions that day. The frame is self made with input from those around you and the marks it contains affect what you see.
I am quite enjoying taking photos from inside things, from beside things and through things, framing the way the object sees. It changes what you see, helping you to notice different spaces and shapes - shadows and edges that otherwise would not be there. By watching through a frame, it limits what you can see and it affects the way you see the objects that are in focus.
We can choose to frame anything - not through a hole in a fence but through our thoughts and ideas - and we can shift that frame as we see fit - get (in our opinion) the best or worst angle, showing the view in all its glory, or in all its lacking. Journalists do this all the time - the framing of good and bad people and politics is all relative to the writer's own choice of positioning.
When we frame others through the lens of our own ideas and experience, it changes the way we behave towards them and treat them. If we see someone as good or the same as us, we shift our frames to a place that remind us to listen to their story. What they say and do influences how we react. If we see someone as bad, in the same way, we shift our frames to a place that reminds us to be hostile or to walk away.
The person who might have rubbed you up on the wrong way once is forever someone to be cautious of.
The person who challenged you once on something you did is always someone whose behaviour you'll watch - just wait until they put a step wrong.
The person who has a different view point to you is always, in your frame, up for an argument.
The person from a different political party to you is always wrong, because that's what the frame says.
The person who dresses or looks funny is to be avoided just in case you become like them.
The person who has a different social status to you is someone to be helped but not someone who can help you.
The person you disagree with will be forever wrong, your frame only contains your right interpretation.
The person who you are speaking for doesn't need to speak because you are more articulate than they are.
The person who travelled across the sea in a dinghy is not a person like you and me, let us send them back across the sea, or fly them to a country they do not know and do not want to go to.
The person in the mirror who struggles to find their way.
How about if we consciously shift our frames?
How about we shift our frames from a place of fear and control to a place of embrace?
How about we shift our frames to see people as human first - made in the image of God, with beauty and potential for good. How about we see that people have the ability to change, surprise, bring joy.... be loved. How about we see possibilities rather than problem first, love rather than hatred, cooperation instead of animosity, promise instead of threat, blessing instead of condemnation....
Before our frame is fixed in a place of judgment, let us listen, let us wait, let us pause and take time to breathe. There is far more to who is in front of us than the labels we use to position the frame through which we see.
A prayer based on Psalm 139:23-24.....
"Search me oh God and know my heart (help me to see people as you do); test me and know my anxious thoughts (show me where my frame needs shifting). See if there is any offensive way in me (help me to not be so rigid that I don't see people's potential), and lead me in the way everlasting (with a community full of human beauty that includes those that my own prejudices and ideas try to cut out of the frame)."
Anyone who knows me knows I am not a gardener. I struggle to keep a houseplant alive never mind make a garden look beautiful. My peace lily flowered for the first time in a number of years this summer - not through me doing anything to it apart from put in a sink of water whilst I went away to make sure it got watered. I put a spider plant (a baby from my friend's very fertile spider plant which continues to fill her shed with more and more spider plants) outside after there were annoying little mites on it and it died in the storms. It's now started to grow into two spider plants. All I did was feed it some stale bread - well put it on the table around it for the birds and something happened. I grow weeds like I am an expert weed gardener and cultivate a favoured habitat for frogs in my grass. Cutting the grass makes me itchy and has started to give me headaches leaving me with no option but to lie down for the rest of the day. I occasionally have a burst of 'I'm going to do this' and plant new plants in a bed I have cleared a couple of times and if you look between the weeds you can see there is still a hope of something happening, perhaps, one day that won't be a wilderness. I'm not even bothered about sitting in the garden - I don't know whether it's because it's a mess or I'm just not bothered - although in the south in a sunny garden (if it wasn't for the healthy growing trees) I can see the attraction.
But sometimes I know I've got to do the jobs I don't want to do.
So today I decided to at least tackle the grass. I started by pulling out the giant weeds. I nearly pulled a muscle. I think they gave me a rash. Then I decided the sensible thing to do was to strim the grass. The strimmer started smoking (it clearly doesn't know it is bad for it). I unplugged it, gave up and sat down, defeated.
Two hours later I got a second wind and got my lawnmower out and hack-hoovered the grass. It's still a mess, there were moments when my lawnmower suggested it might want to take up smoking, the vicious sounds being made by trying to chop up the hiding small plastic balls, but it's shorter, and there is hope that the garden could become something more than the wilderness it was settling into.
Sometimes you've got to do the jobs you don't want to do. Like the gardening if you are not a gardener, or the cleaning of the drains, or disposing of excessive amounts of gravy (that for some reason makes me want to hurl), or facing a difficult situation where you wonder if the process is worth the end results. It would be great if, like on a computer game, you could just press a button and everything would be perfect, but that's not the reality of life.
We need to remember that facing those jobs we don't want to do but need doing is rarely a thankless task. The impact that we make may seem small, but once it's done, even if we can't see much achieved, it makes the next part of the journey possible, even if it means mowing the grass again to make it look better along the way, even if it itches and you need to lie down for a while afterwards.
Sometimes stuff in life is hard and presents you with jobs you don't want to do or face. That conversation you've been putting off, that change you need to make, that thing you need to stop or start that you don't want to even contemplate, it's very likely that facing it and the rashes it gives you on the way will be a small step on the way to making things better. It might mean developing your spirit of perseverance and resilience or learning new ways to be tactful and graceful or facing what feels like an endurance race, but when the job is done it's done, and you can begin to move on.
I don't know what to talk about anymore. Well I kind of do, but it's been a bit weird not having the events of the work days as a topic of conversation.
At the beginning of my sabbatical I went to a retreat centre where they specialise in exhausted ministers or ministers in crisis. I didn't fit the second category but I did fit the first. Arriving at a place where nobody was asking anything of me apart from to take care of myself and a small bedsit type room in the middle of beautiful countryside was the best thing I could have chosen to do at the beginning of my long pause. I was exhausted there was no doubt - I was carrying shopping baskets under my eyes the size of trolleys and my head was all full of stuff.
The place I stayed had a few rules, but not the ones you'd expect. You were not allowed to ask people what they do or where they are from. You had to talk about other stuff instead. The rule is designed to protect those for whom any mention of work or the place they live or theology even might trigger in them the thing that they are trying to find rest from. We were encouraged, if we met anyone, to talk about books or music or what we had seen that day. I actually hardly talked to anyone whilst I was there - the person working in reception who showed me around was the main conversation I had. I actually didn't really talk to anyone for about two weeks. I found it much easier than I expected..... and I just about managed to switch off.
But, then, once I began to see people again, my thoughts and words flew to what I do and what is happening at church whilst I am not there. At the beginning of the pandemic my life was only work - there was no opportunity for other kinds of fun - and so what I was doing became completely what defined me - and it has become a lot of what I have talked about as I sought to navigate the rocky road of covid with my church family. What I have been doing has been by main topic of conversation.... and as I have walked through the last month or so I've got quieter I think, because I haven't needed the words to explain who I am. Who I am is simply me. Who I am is simply who God made me to be ..... and I'm finding I am having to rediscover that.
God didn't make me as someone who never stops. He didn't make me as someone who wakes up every morning and worries about the day. He didn't make me as someone who is always thinking about the next thing. He didn't make me as someone who finds herself overthinking every thing she has said. He didn't make me as someone who needed to keep doing more and more to make something of myself, because he has already made something wonderful in me.
Our need to define ourselves by what we do means that we miss finding our identity in who we are - and who we are - I believe - is who God made us to be. He calls us to be faithful to his call, not the competing internal and external voices of the other demands in our lives, not in the way the person up the road ministers to their church or does their job, not in the way other people think we should be.
It is when we sit closer with God we find our identity.
As I rediscover my passions and joys in life (a lot of that is actually work - I am beginning to miss it, I'll have you know...) I'm rediscovering who I really am in God's eyes, and I'm finding more new and old, interesting and mundane, slightly bizarre (I've been reading about clandestine marriage in the 18th century - let me tell you all about it if you've got the time) and random things to talk about. I am learning about my passions, about what makes me tick, about how to find joy in the every day and how to appreciate the world around me better. I'm learning how to chat to God about life and not just about work again, and I'm rediscovering what it means to live fully as me.
Free doughnut? Yes please…. Well just sit here for a while and I’ll get you one….
There was a thing when I was at uni when you put an event on with the Christian Union (CU) that if you wanted people to come then you offered free doughnuts and people would just come. I remember a discussion about whether it was ethical to put up posters that said ‘free doughnuts’ without any sign it was a CU event - if you give someone doughnuts they’ll be happy to sit through a gospel presentation. (I’m not sure my CU did quite that kind of event - we were, I hope more up front about who we were). The whole thought of an underhand way of getting people to come and sit in a room and have beliefs thrown at them is a bit reminiscent of the timeshare ‘come to my party’ invites of the later 20th century - when you got there it turned into a ‘buy a bit of a curtain in this holiday home’ sales pitch and those who were not interested felt duped…. or being accosted by someone on New Street in Birmingham asking if I want to do a personality quiz (yes please I love quizzes) and inviting me in to a building to discover what Christian Science (or some other strange organisation) could do for me.
I’d almost forgotten about all of this until I went to visit the well dressings in a Derbyshire village. Well dressings are a traditional Derbyshire thing where community groups decorate wells - the origin is in giving thanks for the water. The designs are beautifully made from petals and the way in which they are made and the thought that goes into them is fascinating. Interested in their story and how they are made I was happy to see that there was a video on in the parish church about the well dressings. We’d missed the beginning but it was good to go in half way through.
The well dressings have a clear link to Christianity, given that over the years each well dressing in each village or town is generally blessed by the local clergy and are giving thanks to God for the water and that the themes of the well dressings are very often faith based - including Bible verses and stories and Biblical themes, and so you’d expect there to be some exploration around the Christian nature of the well dressings.
But what happened was not quite what I expected and threw me a bit, and took me back to the time of free doughnuts as a mask for some sort of 3 point clever talk around what makes up doughnuts and how that relates to Jesus and all of that (doughnuts have a hole and it’s a bit like the hole in our lives).
On going through the door, we were directed to specific seats by a man in a raincoat. There were two couples in the church. The film was made during 2021 and was talking about the well-dressings pre covid and the pictures of the number of people in the village were far removed from the few people around on that day. The film finished with a little bit of a description of the faith behind the well dressings and as I thought about getting up to find the light outside again the man in the raincoat got up to the front and threw at us a full on evangelistic message with accompanying powerpoint.
And you know what? Me, a Baptist minister, felt really uncomfortable. I just wanted to escape. There was nothing in what he said I disagreed with but it was the way he said it. It felt like it all was being forced on me.
On leaving we were offered (if we wanted to know more) a copy of John’s Gospel and a chat. I swiftly moved beyond the offer.
I’ve been chewing over why it made me feel so uncomfortable over the last few days. Why did I just want to escape?
I think it’s because I felt like I was manipulated into listening to something beyond what I asked for - the extra talk at the end wasn’t necessary - it took the whole thing a step beyond…. To leave it with the video and to hand out John’s gospels as we were leaving would have been just about enough. The style was old fashioned - we don’t sell time shares in that way anymore, and free doughnuts don’t come with conditions.
I don’t believe it was what Jesus did either - yes he preached, he talked, he told stories - he sent out his disciples to do the same, but they weren’t told to hide who they were until they had a captive audience, and they were told if people weren’t interested then to move on. He sat down with people at tables, he gave out invitations to follow, and accepted invitations into others spaces. He showed in word and action the good news he was and is and as he sat down with others and ate doughnuts (or something similar) he met them where they were at.
So I sit in tension - as I am pleased the message of Jesus has been shared with those who were in that church, I just wonder if it could have been done in a more gracious gentle way, and I wonder if an opportunity to love has been missed.
In the last week or so I've travelled north - first north of the river (I've discovered since moving to London that if you travel north of the river it's like you've travelled to a foreign land - it does take forever to get there....) and then north up the M1 to the places I feel most at home as I spend some time with my family. As I left the M25 after the forever drive round half of it and drove onto the M1 the clouds parted and the sun came out - the great escape from the south accompanied by a party in the skies.
My two trips north have involved two encounters with insects. Not the 'get in your hair, don't bite me, stop buzzing' types of insects, but big metal insects, formed and crafted into sculptures that sit above the landscape around. I'll start with the second because I want to talk more about the first.
Yesterday we went to a free exhibition at Chatsworth House (I've only ever been to the free things at Chatsworth) called The Radical Horizons: Art of Burning Man at Chatsworth. Large sculptures scatter the landscape outside of the main Chatsworth House - they look to celebrate creativity and collaboration as part of the exhibition which is formed of sculptures first exhibited as part of the burning man festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, US. They aim to bring the unique creativity and possibility of the festival to the landscape around Chatsworth.
One of the sculptures was le Attracta - about the embodiment of what one is attracted to. Rather than just being attracted to heat and light, the sculpture is designed so that the moths embrace fire - they become it rather than be consumed by it (I guess unlike like one of those moth catchers that fizzle them to smithereens they come alive in the fire). Unfortunately the fire part of the sculpture wasn't working or in action as we saw it yesterday, but the magnificence of the sculpture was clear and its design and concept was still fascinating without the fire. You could sit beneath the insects and participate in the attraction to the source of light and heat in the middle of the it.
The beautiful thing about these sculptures is that they just sit there in the middle of the grounds of the house. Sheep and lambs play on them, deer gather in a congregation not far away. I'd imagine at night there would be moths flying round the giant moths and the sculpture, even without the fire, might come alive. There is something in the concept of the moths becoming all that they are attracted to I quite like - the concept of being, of embracing and not being consumed - it's something I can buy into. However, when you experience a sculpture in a place like Chatsworth, there is a connection that you can never have, you can't completely embrace the story of the sculpture because of where it is - it's only here for a period of time and it it's there to visit, not to dwell.
The sculpture I saw north of the river was in the community garden in Bonny Downs in East Ham. I went to visit Bonny Downs Baptist Church to experience the work they are doing in that community through Bonny Downs Community Association and the way in which they embrace worship and discipleship within the intertwining of church and community - blurry church is the words we used - words I'm still chewing on, but the sculpture is part of that. I think it's a beetle..... (correct me if I'm wrong).
You might say that the sculpture has the same values as the one in Chatsworth. It's creative and it's beautiful. It doesn't light up (but it is near a fire pit). it's in the community garden which is part of the home of the church (where they meet for worship in the summer) and rather than set out to be simply a sculpture that points to something, it embodies all that it is made to represent. Made out of knives seized by the police in the local area, it is a physical embodiment of turning swords into ploughshares or death into life. You can hear their senior minister, Sally, tell its story here (I'd recommend you watch if you have time).
The beautiful thing about this sculpture is that it just sits there in the garden as part of garden life. Insects make their homes in it. There are no sheep or lambs or deer, but there are people and soon to be chickens and every day life is around. I love that it embodies the values of all the church and community association is called to be - transformational, peace makers, bringers of hope, justice fighters, changemakers, full of abundant love.....
What makes it so much different from the sculpture in Chatsworth is that the connection to where it is is clear. You can completely embrace the story of the sculpture - you can get up close and personal and if you are from that community or a community similar to it, you can see the embodiment of the values that burst out of it in those who came together to create it and tell its changemaking story.
That sculpture stands in the middle of the community garden where the church meets for worship, created as part of a community project of which the church led and were part of, that declares the good news that things can be transformed. From the values of the community, from the desire for common good, the gospel of Jesus Christ, who brings life in all its fulness sings out. There is hope, things can change, there is so much more. In its prophetic action, there is an ongoing legacy that speaks love abundantly and where new beginnings become possible. The good news is here in this neighbourhood.
We're not just visitors when it comes to embodying all the values of the gospel we are attracted to - the love and the hope and the grace and the justice, the mercy, the restoration, the transformation, the new life, but those values are something in which we are all called to embody in the places that we live and in the communities to which we are called to dwell.
"....they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore" - Isaiah 2:4
As I pause, I've been doing some deliberately slow reading, a chapter a day, read alongside a notebook and highlighter so I can pause and reflect when I need to and chew over what is said all day. It's the opposite to the way I normally read, which is fast and often, and I have wanted to read on at times but haven't. Reading this way has been (and generally is) a blessing.
The book I've just finished is "Altar in the World" by Barbara Brown Taylor. It's been a good and helpful read - much to agree with, and much to challenge. One chapter in particular really shook me and I couldn't deal with it, and I will be chewing it over for some time as I learn to find beauty in everything (see previous blogs).
Her final chapter is about blessings or benedictions. She suggests that these shouldn't just be saved for an ending of a service or a time with someone else, or for blessing a particular place or a person for a special time or moment but that saying blessings is a way of understanding and walking in the world in a different way. She suggests that as we are attentive to the world around then we might bless the things we see and it will change the way that we are able to live in the world, and it might help us to deal with some of the difficult stuff better.
Yesterday I forgot how long my staircase is and I kept running at the bottom and fell dramatically on my knees. In that moment all my anger I had been compartmentalising and hiding away came out and I then had to go and take it out on the grass and the weeds in my front garden. Perhaps in Taylor's world I might have found a calmer reaction in blessing the floor for breaking my fall.
Being a minister is so often a great privilege - you get to be with people in their celebrations and their sorrows, walking alongside them as they face whatever life faces. You are people's confidante, their wise voice, and the one they go to for blessings and prayer. Being a minister is also a great challenge - you are often the one people take out their frustrations on and who takes the responsibility for things that are going on, and whilst Jesus holds the strain, sometimes it can feel really heavy as you end up taking on the broken and the bruising in more ways than being a listening ear.
As I was thinking about what Taylor said about blessing in the context of the ups and downs of ministry, and that perhaps by blessing, it might help me deal with some of the unregulated emotions I felt as my knees hit the floor. So here it is (and you might be inspired to write your own!).
A Minister's Blessing
Blessed is our God - God knows all things, sees all things, and holds all things together.
Blessed is God the Father, who opens his arms for us to run into, and places us on his lap, listening to our day.
Blessed is God the Son, whose arms stretched out on the cross embrace us with love. As he lifts us up he puts us on steadier feet than we've ever had before.
Blessed is God the Spirit, whose arms are there even when we think they are not, giving us more than enough comfort and strength to carry on.
Blessed are those who we meet on the way....
Blessed are the ones who knock on the door and ask if everything is alright.
Blessed are the ones who run away when things aren't going their way.
Blessed are the ones who put their hands on your shoulder and remind you that there is good in the world.
Blessed are the ones who raise their voices above their own listening and silence your voice before your speaking began.
Blessed are the ones who seek to reconcile, who recognise the humanness in both you and in them.
Blessed are the ones who refuse to talk or listen because its your fault that everything in their life is wrong.
Blessed are the flowers on the doorstep givers and blessed are the scathing message senders.
Blessed are the facebook posters who bring joy and grace at the right moment in the day and blessed are the posters who make your friends bristle with rage and leap to your defence.
Blessed are those who have walked before you - the steady ship bringers, the chaos causers, the ones that people miss more than most, and the ones that people would rather forget.
Blessed are those who are walking behind you, the next road is already being built with hope.
And blessed are those who are here in the now, brought together as family and companions on the way in which God calls.
Let us walk, let us love, let us hope, let us thrive.
I've been walking a bit of the south west coast path - the weather has been on the whole, glorious - maybe too hot and sunny at times for walking, but I carried on anyway..... I'm now tired, peeling a bit from unexpected sunburn, and processing all I have experienced.
There was a point on the walk that I wasn't paying attention and followed the path that would have taken me down the cliff rather than across it, because, as often happens along that coast, there had been a landslide. Thankfully I realised my mistake before getting to the edge and I adjusted my walk to the path diversion, one of many path diversions on my route.
When you see the change caused by the landslides, you can't help but wonder what it would have been like before. The cliffs were bigger, the plants holding on in different way, the rocks sitting in different places, the beach easier to walk along perhaps. How far was the path away from the cliff edge before the landslide and where did it go?
Regular landslides have been changing the coastline since the coastline was formed. It's part of the make up of the Jurassic coast. It's one of the reasons why those are are interested keep on finding fossils that tell the stories of millions of years ago. It's in the landslides that new and old beautiful things are found and the might and strength of the earth proclaims the might and strength of God.
And the beauty of what is left, the changes and the things that have survived the landslides, mingling together, that is what brings about a sense of wonder and awe....
The word 'beauty' continues to sing to me as I keep on walking in this time of pause.
Over the last week or so I have been continuing to reflect on the beauty around, on the things that God has created and I've also been challenged to find beauty in the continuously changing situations we are living in and in my questioning and worn out self.
I've had the song 'Beautiful Things' by Gungor in me head for most of the last week or so. He sings this:
All this pain I wonder if I'll ever find my way I wonder if my life could really change, at all All this earth Could all that is lost ever be found? Could a garden come out from this ground, at all?
As we consider how everything has shifted in the last few years, and how it is continuing to shift, there is no doubt that we are grieving and many of us are in pain and we have questions. When fault lines develop in the earth that holds us, that rock us and our way of being to our very core - when these fault lines cause landslides to happen that change the landscape around - it's difficult to see how we might find our way out of places that are not particularly beautiful.
But, if the landslides of the Jurassic Coast can teach us anything is that even though there are landslides, there is still beauty to be found. We might need to wait for the ground to settle, for the new roots to be established, for the old stuff that is still there to find a new way into the light, but beauty will be found. We might need to hold the brokenness of the fault lines for a while, but what is lost and needs to be found will be discovered, and a new garden will grow.
After the chorus, the song goes on:
All around, Hope is springing up from this old ground Out of chaos life is being found, in you
The nature of a landslide is chaos. Where mathematical models can predict how it will fall, they can't fully tell where it will end up - a slight shift, a crack opening up in a previously thought to be strong place, can change it's size and direction completely. A tiny little stone added into the mix, a bird flying too close, a tree falling on the cliffs above, a wave in the sea below hitting a branch washed up three days ago can change everything. The landslide finds its own path before it settles. Yet in that landslide, there is hope of new beauty being revealed - new beauty already being found in the path of the earth as it falls.
There is still a huge amount to be hopeful for, even amongst the chaos around (not despite it - we mustn't forget that there is beauty even in chaos - that's one of the reasons the cliffs aren't strengthened to stop the landslides from happening - because the earth - God's earth - knows what it is doing, even if we do not). We see hope in the continued fight for justice, we see hope in the way that people love others, we see hope in the arrival of new life and in the voices that are like stars shining in the night sky that are punching holes in the darkness. We see hope in the plants that survived the fall, and the seeds scattered to grow in places they never belonged before. We see hope in the promise that Jesus makes when he promises life in all its fulness in John 10:10 and then in Revelation 21:5 where he says "Behold, I am making all things new".
The chorus and bridge say this:
Oh, you make beautiful things You make beautiful things out of the dust You make beautiful things You make beautiful things out of us
You make me new, You are making me new...
In the dust, in the settling landslide, in the faults of the earth that have diverted the path; in the waiting, in the confusion over the way ahead, in mine and your worries over our identity and place in it all.... in us.... there is a beauty already formed in the mind and hands of God, ready to be discovered.
May you know beauty both on the steady path and in the landslide
I took a huge amount of photos whilst I was walking. I've put them in a video (a very rough and ready video - you'd think I'd be better at this after 2+ years of 'video maker and editor' as an unexpected part of my job description) with the song 'Beautiful Things' as the backing track, if you want to have a look at what caught my eye and hear the song, here it (apologetically) is:
If you say that to me, my initial reaction will always be a big, loud "NO!". Cows scare me. Cows close to me freak me out (if there is not a wall in between). Cows on the move - well..... I've read stories of people being trampled to death by cows.
I have gone through fields of cows in the past. I navigate the danger by sticking as close to the opposite side of the field as possible or I have a friend or family member in between me and the cows. I go through the fields of cows because other people make me. I go through fields of cows because it is the only way through.... and I haven't died yet by cow trample. I'm still here to tell the tale.
But I'd rather take a diversion (or go home).
On my walk yesterday I headed through a footpath through a field when I noticed a whole herd stood round their hay feeding trough cage thing. I thought to myself "I've been through worse than this, I can do this". So I opened the gate and took a few steps. Then I looked to my right and saw everything I dread.
They weren't cows.
They were bulls.
And from what I know about bulls, they were likely not to live in such a herd for long so these bulls would be young and frisky and their behaviour would be erratic.
So, I decided not to risk it. I retraced my few steps and went back through the gate and took the road route instead.
We all have our limits.
In the pandemic years we've all had to face our fields full of whatever scares us most. The isolation, the fear of getting ill, the loneliness, the lack of physical contact, the worry about others behaviour, our mental health deteriorating, our jobs being uncertain, not seeing family members, losing those closest to us, everything we've know being taken away......
And we can all manage for a while, but..... we all have our limits.
Our limits are reached at the most unexpected times when our mind and eyes realise it's not just cows in the field (who we might manage), but it's bulls. The unexpected text message, the next piece of bad news, the nasty words from a nice persons mouth who you wouldn't ever dream they'd say something like that, being let down for the 27th time (the first 26 you could manage), stopping and not being able to move again as you're overwhelmed by it all....
I've had a number of pandemic moments where it has felt like there are bulls in the field and I've had to find another way (stopping has rarely been an option). I've learnt and am still learning my triggers that lead me to the brink of falling apart. I've learnt to say no more. I've learned when to stay in the field and when to leave for a while. I've walked away leaving others to deal with the field. I've learned some of my limits, and where I haven't, others have held me as my limits get broken.
One of the purposes of taking time out is to work through the stuff that has felt like going through a field of bulls because there has been no other way. My question in those fields has always been "when do I keep going and when do I give up, and if I'm to keep going, how do I find rest and sustenance on the way".
My calling is one of courage, so unlike a meeting with a real bull in a field, I will try to keep on keeping on, and so I've had to find that rest and that sustenance on the way.
Jesus said "come to me all you who have heavy burdens, and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light".
It's not that easy to understand when you're walking uphill through a field of bulls (I didn't mention there was a hill too). Perhaps it is in the outlook ahead - far ahead you know the exit to the field is there, so that hope of an ending is always a motivation.... but what about when you are in the thick of it?
In the thick of it - it's about seeking out goodness despite. It's knowing that what you are going to have to face can be faced because Jesus is with you. It's choosing to accept that this isn't the way things are meant to be and seeking out better ways within. It's about not expecting the worst and being justified when it happens, but expecting the best and learning to roll with it when you are disappointed. In every struggle there is always hope, in every lament there is always signs of restoration. The good news of Jesus tells this.
It's knowing that despite the threat of the bulls in the field, that there is hope. It looks promising, that when the climb through the field is done, there will be something better ahead. It also looks promising on the journey that even if it hurts, that even if you feel you can do more, face no more bulls, that there will be rest stops on the way, even if they don't look like the usual rest stops. The hope of rest is now, and the hope of rest is ongoing. The hope of rest is fulfilled on the journey as well as at the end.
We all have our limits, and where the only way through tests them as far as they can go because it seems like the only way through is through a field of bulls, Jesus promises to help you rest and keep on doing what you need to do too. It's OK to retrace your steps and find another way round..... and It's OK to sit down for a little while, even when the field ahead appears to be more challenging than you'd hope. Let Jesus take the strain.
