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Paris, je t’aime

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I lived for a while in the south of France, and a little piece of my heart will always belong to that country. Paris is the city of my dreams, I hope to live there some day, and I wish I could be there now, doing something, anything to help, to soothe the broken, to ease the pain, to bring light and hope into the darkness and fear.

But I’m not there, I’m here. And while I may feel ineffectual, I believe in One who is bigger than the powers of darkness, stronger than the mightiest army and more loving than anyone could imagine. It is Him who brings comfort and hope, and I trust Him to be working in how we respond to the darkness we see.

And it is true, that we live in dark times, times of fear and anger and pain. Times of uncertainty – how to react in the face of such atrocities, how to protect those we love and show compassion to those in need. The attacks in Paris this weekend have brought the reality of the situation in the Middle East so much closer to home for us and have given us just a brief glimpse of the horror that millions are living through, dying in, fleeing from.

In these times, I believe we need two things: compassion, and hope.

We need compassion to share the sufferings of those who are hurting, and not just the people like us. We need to recognise that we are part of a global community (whether we like it or not) and we need to work together – to feed the hungry, house the homeless, rescue the captives.

And we need to have hope – that good will conquer evil (even if it takes a while), that love is stronger than hate, that light always dispels darkness.

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L’Eternel est mon berger

Je ne manquerai de rien

Il me fait reposer dans des verts pâturages

Il me dirige près des eaux paisibles

Il restaure mon âme

Il me conduit dans les sentiers de la justice

A cause de son nom

Quand je marche dans la vallée de l’ombre de la mort

Je ne crains aucun mal

Car tu es avec moi

Ta houlette et ton bâton me rassurent

Tu dresses devant mou une table

En face de mes adversaires

Tu oins d’huile ma tête

Et ma coupe déborde

Oui, le bonheur et la grâce m’accompagneront

Tous les jours de ma vie

Et j’habiterai dans la maison de l’Eternel

Jusqu’à la fin de mes jours

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Confession: I am a selfish blogger

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Last week one of my favourite bloggers, Jon Acuff, wrote about a lesson it took him 13 years to learn about blogging. It was this:

‘Your platform isn’t for you. It’s not yours. Your name might be on it. It might be your smiling headshot that folks see each day on your blog or your twitter profile, but the platform is not for you. It’s for other people. Readers, friends, family members, this is why we blog. Not to get, but to give.’

So this is why I feel I must apologise, dear Reader. I am a selfish blogger, and a selfish writer. I don’t think about who might be reading what I write. In fact, I generally assume no one is reading. It takes me by surprise when someone likes or comments on a post, or tells me they like something I wrote. I do enjoy getting new followers, but it also always makes me feel slightly guilty that I don’t post more often.

Again, I apologise, dear Reader. At the start of the summer I promised I would post more often, once I’d recovered from essay writing exertions. But the posts never quite materialised. I found that I needed more time than I thought to rest after the busy academic year, and never quite found the headspace for lots of writing.

But here’s the thing. I have to disagree with Jon Acuff (sorry! I think you’re awesome, but sorry). For some people, writing a blog is about their platform, their self-promotion, their face on other people’s computer screens or tablets.

But that’s never been my focus, that’s never been why I write. I’m not really bothered by how many followers, or page views I have. Don’t get me wrong (or stop reading!) I love that you, dear Reader, have found your way to my little corner of the internet, I’d love for you to stick around, and I hope that my words bless and inspire you.

But, if I’m honest, and I always try to be, I’m writing for me. I always have done. I think I’ve said before that writing is one of the main ways I process the world. It helps me to understand what I am living. I also love wordcraft – playing around with words and phrases, constructing sentences. My blog is where I practice writing, learning and honing my craft. Please don’t be offended, I love that you are here, but this is for me.

So for this reason, I am not going to make any more promises. I am not going to try to boost my follower count by posting more frequently, regularly, or consistently. I’m not going to let myself feel guilty if I don’t post anything for a few weeks. I’m not going to try to pre-write posts any more, so I can post on schedule even when I don’t feel like writing (because, to be honest, those posts never seem to connect with you, dear Reader, as well as the spur of the moment ones anyway). I’m not going to force myself to try to write when I don’t feel like it, because at the moment, that is not what I need from myself.

I love writing, and I want to enjoy it. I never want this blog to feel like it’s a chore, because my writing will suffer, and I know you will notice, dear Reader.

So please, stick around and bear with me, if you enjoy what I write. Because I know that when I am writing from the heart it does resonate with people. And thank-you, dear Reader, for sticking with me thus far. Writing my blog blesses me, and I hope reading it might bless you too.

Book review

Book Review: Me, Myself and Bob by Phil Vischer

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I bought this book for my brother for Christmas several years ago. He’s a filmmaker with a background in animation who had always enjoyed VeggieTales, so I thought he’s be interested in the story behind it. Unfortunately, he was travelling a lot at the time and the book languished on his bookshelf for a while. Then I thought – if he isn’t going to read it, I will! So it ended up on my bookshelf for a while… But I’m a firm believer that books come to us at the time we need them most. Knowing we would be visiting my brother last week, I decided to take the book with me to read, so I could pass it on to him when I was done. I’m really glad I did.

I grew up with VeggieTales. I remember the excitement each time a new video came out. I remember as a teenager helping with the kids club at church, how we would insist on VeggieTales every time a video week was suggested. I loved the stories, the songs, and the characters. I had no idea, even until reading this book now, what had been going on behind the scenes.

The book takes a little while to get going. Vischer’s style of writing is more suited to scripts or picture books for children than to non-fiction for adults (something he admits to himself). But it is engaging. The first hundred pages or so included a lot of technical information that I didn’t really understand, but which my brother would find fascinating I’m sure… but once he gets to the story of producing the first couple of videos, the book picks up pace.

I couldn’t put the book down all through the rapid growth of Vicsher’s company, Big Idea, trying to fit the timeline of the book to my memories of the videos coming out. Vischer hints throughout at what is to come, trying to emphasise where he went wrong with the business to show what lead to its collapse. I would have been very sad had the book ended there, but this was not the story of a company making videos starring vegetables – it is the story of one man’s relationship with God.

After outlining what he learned about business through his successes and failures with Big Idea, Vischer gets to the heart of the matter. What ultimately went wrong was that Vischer was so focused on his dream that he lost sight of God, the dream-giver. The last couple of chapters of the book are so powerful, as Vischer comes to terms with God not saving his company, his dream, because He wanted to save him, the man, the relationship. Vischer draws parallels between his story and characters from the Bible and from literature, as he learns that God wants to be the most important thing in our lives, and we may have to sacrifice our dreams for that. One passage really jumped out at me:

‘As this truth sunk in, I found myself facing a God I had never heard about in Sunday School – a God who, it appeared, wanted me to let go of my dreams. But why? Why would God want us to let go of our dreams? Because anything I am unwilling to let go of is an idol, and I am in sin. The more I thought about my intense drive to build Big Idea and change the world, the more I realized I had let my “good work” become an idol that defined me. Rather than finding my identity in my relationship with God, I was finding it in my drive to do “good work”.’

I found this last part of the book really challenging, as I know I am prone to this. It can become all too easy to focus so much on the work that we are doing for God that we lose sight of God Himself. And He never wants that. This was a timely reminder for me, as I head into the second year of my theology course, that my focus always needs to be on my relationship with God not on my studies, or my future, or my dreams. I need Him more than I need any of those things. And I think this may be something that I’ve lost sight of over the last couple of years, may be why I have struggled to write this summer. I got too busy, too distracted and forgot to meet with God everyday.

It is okay to have dreams, to have plans. But I know now I need to hold onto them loosely, but cling onto God tightly. Time with Him is fuel for everything He calls me to do, and if I lose sight of Him, I risk losing everything. But if I focus on Him, He will give me everything I need.

As I came to the end of the book, a song from my childhood (not even a VeggieTales song!) came into me head. It is based on a couple of verses from Matthew 6:

‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God

And His righteousness

And all these things will be added unto you

Allelu, Alleluia.’

(P.S. the book has now been returned to my brother, with a few heavy hints that he should read it soon)

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Leaving a Legacy

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I went to a funeral last week, of someone I had known all my life, a good friend of my parents, who had died unexpectedly a few weeks ago.

I find funerals strange occasions. There is such a mix of emotions, especially when the mourned and mourners are Christians. There is a sudden hole in your life that you know nothing will be able to fill, but you have to keep going. Yet there is always that knowledge, that hope, that you cling to that you will see that person again, and that they are in a much better place.

As I was a few stages removed from the family of the deceased, due to the distance that time and space brings, my grief on this occasion was secondary – I felt compassion for their sadness over their loss, and it brought back memories of when I lost grandparents, and created imaginings of how I would feel at the loss of my parents. I also seem to automatically cry when I see others in tears.

My own sentiment, and I hope you’ll not think me callous, was one of celebration of a life lived well. Testament to this was the number squeezed into the tiny church hall, overflowing into the lobby where there was a video link. The stories of remembrance were full of humour and light, memories of a man with a generous heart and ready wit, who always knew how many days it was until Christmas.

We sung some of his favourite hymns, which mostly had references to being received into glory, and I could imagine him gleefully running to join the cloud of witnesses, being reunited with his relatives, and smiling down on us and giggling at the irony of what we were singing.

The service got me thinking about legacy – what do we leave behind us when we go? Hearing the testimony of this man’s life – how he came to faith through the love and wisdom of his grandfather and in turn passed this onto his own grandchildren; how his strong work ethic and sense of humour made him a shining light in his workplace – I could see the fruits of his years of faithfulness to Christ and the beauty of that legacy. I thought about those, including this gentle-man, who have had an impact on my life and wondered: what trace am I leaving on the lives of those around me?

In the last year or so I have become more aware of my own mortality. I would not say I am afraid of death or believe that it is coming soon for me, I have just been struck by the realisation that people my age and younger can die just as easily as those who are getting on in years (there’s a cheery thought!) I am more conscious of not wasting time, and of focusing on all I want to achieve in life. I am also driving more carefully!

I want my life to be positive. I want to make a difference to others. I don’t need a big stage or a large following, but I do want to be faithful to what I have been called to do. I want to make the most of the gifts I have been given and the opportunities set out in front of me.

I felt God’s whisper as I listened to the funeral service. He has given me words, and my words will be my legacy. My words will remain long after I have gone. This is a great encouragement to me as I sit down to write and is also a reminder to be prayerful in my writing – whether in this blog, in my poetry or in my novelistic ambitions – to seek God’s purposes in the word-craft, in the stories I am trying to tell.

But it meant more than just writing to me. Like most people, I speak everyday. I talk to people, and they listen (usually). I converse with colleagues, have deep chats with friends, I instant message people all over the world. Those words have an impact too. Most of it may be forgetten, but some of the words we speak, positive and negative, leave our mouths and go straight to people’s hearts.

In the Bible, James compares the tongue to a fire that can burn down a whole forest. He says it is like the rudder of a ship, that can turn it and direct its route. I have done a bit of sailing in the past, and I know that if you let go of the tiller, the rudder turns the boat into the wind and you are at the mercy of the weather. We need to watch what we say, because our words have potential to heal or to hurt, every single time we open our mouths.

I hope I remember these lessons I’m learning along the way. I am determined to be more careful with my words – both written and spoken. I pray that I may leave as positive a legacy as that of the man we said farewell to this week.

And it is 116 days until Christmas.

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The hard road to achieving your dreams

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I skipped church again this morning. Some Sundays I feel that the last thing this introvert needs is small-talk with a load of people I barely know, which, even though I’ve been at my church for close to a year now, still seems to be the case, especially in the holidays. But that is not what this post is about.

I knew that even if I wasn’t going to church I needed to get my soul straight. Recently I have been struck with a strange lethargy, an inability to do anything remotely useful (by my own definition), almost a numb tiredness at times. I’d been feeling this way definitely since coming back from youth camp but probably before that too. Really, since handing in my last essay of the term, it felt like part of my brain had gone into standby mode, like I wasn’t able to reflect or process anything correctly. In part it was the adjustment to suddenly having a lot of free time again after a really busy academic year. And I knew that I needed to rest and recover from that busy time, but I didn’t even feel like I was resting successfully.

So this morning I stopped, and did something that I should have done a while ago. I picked up my too-long-neglected journal and I started to write. I wrote, I prayed, I tried to understand where this feeling of disconnect from myself was coming from.

I realised quite a few things…

First, that I was already worrying about next term and beyond – would I have enough money for the course fees? Would I cope with the workload? Would I be able to do all the things I want to next summer? Do I need to start thinking about my dissertation? etc etc etc. I know, and have been repeatedly been telling myself, that God is holding all this future stuff and that I need to trust Him, but that message hadn’t made it’s way to my heart quite yet, where the worries were starting to set up shop. So this morning I started to let them go, one by one, again. I know I will have to keep on doing this, regularly. Trust is one of my chosen words for the year, and I need to start acting like it…

Secondly, I acknowledged that I was feeling stuck. So many of my friends are getting engaged, getting married, having children, getting their own places… etc… Last year I chose to move back home and give up full time work to take up my course. It was the right decision (still is) but at times it feels like a massive step backwards. It has required sacrifices. And that is something we don’t think about when we decide to pursue a dream – choosing one thing means sacrificing every other choice. Even when you know you are making the right choice, it is often painful to let go of the others. I have given up independence, savings, free time, a social life, even some of my hobbies, in order to devote time to my studies. I love my course, and I’m doing well at it, but I need to let myself grieve for the opportunities I’ve had to miss out on to pursue my dream. And I need to remind myself that I’m in this for the long haul, but that it will be so worth it.

A year ago, I came up with five goals for the next five years:

  • get a Masters in theology
  • finish the first draft of a novel
  • move back out from my parents
  • find a job I really care about
  • meet the man of my dreams

(you can read the whole story here)

The problem is, part of me feels like I’m no closer to 4 out of 5 of my goals. Yes, I am a third of the way through the Masters (and when I wrote the list I hadn’t even been accepted onto the course), but I was struggling to see any development in the other areas. And with two more years of the Masters to go, I was finding it hard to see when I would be able to work on the others.

But… but… but…

These are FIVE YEAR GOALS! So what if years 1-3 are focused on goal 1? That still leaves two years for the others!

Sometimes one of our dreams has to take priority over the others, and that’s okay.

And when I really thought about it, I started to see how working towards goal 1 is helping in some ways towards the others – through writing essays my research, planning and editing skills have all improved, and the quality of my writing is better, which will massively help with eventually writing my novel. And the Masters will open doors for me into jobs which engage my interests and convictions. (And I do love the job I have right now!)

Again, when I stopped to think about it, it all came back to trust. A year ago I told God what I wanted to achieve in the next five years. And I have to keep giving those goals back to Him, seeking His will and trusting that because He gave me the desires of my heart, He will help me realise them.

I also remembered this morning what the ultimate goal of my life is, one that I have been sadly neglecting recently: to know God and make Him known. All my dreams, plans, and goals amount to nothing when I lose focus on that, but by seeking Him first, I will achieve the things He has called me to do.

One last thought: Sometimes I feel I am not coping with life. I have heard people say in the past: “God never gives you more than you can handle” but that is not true. God often, intentionally, gives us more than we can handle so that we recognise how much we need Him to help us handle it.

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Youth camp revelations 

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I was helping on a youth camp last week – and it was amazing and exhausting. I had a bit of an emotional rollercoaster week for all sorts of reasons that I’m not going to go into just yet, and I still have loads to process from the week. But for now I want to give you some of the top things I learnt from the week.

1) God’s plans are amazingly beautiful and intricate and we need to stop second guessing them (and Him). A year ago I went for a youth work job at a church where I had previously done some training. This was my dream job, and the timing seemed so perfect, I was sure it was God’s plan for me to get it. But I didn’t. Last week a friend who has been working with that church was helping out on youth camp. She is now engaged to the guy who got the job, and they wouldn’t have met if I had got it. A year on I can see how that job wasn’t the right into for me at that time, and how happy I am with my life right now… God is good, y’all.

2) It is so easy for each of us to be a different person in different situations, and we don’t even realise it sometimes. Last week I got a little frustrated with some of the young people who were so switched on and engaged in sessions, and seemed very spiritually mature beyond their years, but would go outside and be airheaded bimbo girls or laddish show-offy boys and forget everything they just said or did or learned. Part of this is just teenagers finding out who they are, but I think we all do it, we compartmentalise our lives and put on masks to be different people when we need to be. Can I ask that we drop the act, work out who we are and be that person the whole time? Be authentically ourselves? (Me included)

3) Never, ever, ever, underestimate young people. They are awesome. Our speaker, my good friend Neil, decided to pick as his topic for last week the book of Revelation. The whole book. In a week. And the kids kept pace. Sure they won’t have taken it all in but they definitely took it seriously and appreciated that we were willing to challenge them. Sometimes young people are referred to as the church of the future, but they aren’t. They are the church of today and until we really understand that we will keep wondering why they want to leave.

There is so much more I could say but, as I said, I need to do more processing. I am so thankful for the honour it has been to serve on youth camps for so many years and see the fruit of that investment in people’s lives.

Bible, Psalms

Trusting in times of lamentation

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Psalm 13

After a fairly substantial interlude, I’m returning this week to my series of reflections on the Psalms, picking up where I left off with Psalm 13.

This is a psalm is a psalm of lament. These are some of my favourite psalms because they are so real and raw and honest. One thing I notice about this one, as with so many others, it has the instruction at the start ‘to the choirmaster’ – implying it was to be used in Israel’s times of corporate worship. I often forget when I’m reading the Psalms that many of them were not simply written as personal prayers. Some of these passages are so full of pain and even anger at God, and they weren’t secret, but instead were public expressions of grief, confusion and doubt. I don’t know much about ancient Hebrew worship services, but I find it encouraging and challenging that they could be so honest in community. It’s something that I wish we would be more comfortable with in our churches today, but maybe it’s just not very British?!

In this Psalm, David feels like God has forgotten him. He is full of sorrow – in today’s terms we would probably say he is depressed – and he feels defeated, as if his enemies are crowing over him. He is asking God to give him new hope because he feels hopeless. But he remembers that God has blessed him in the past, and so he knows he can trust in God. He is confident that he will be restored and that he will be able to praise God joyfully again in the future.

Sometimes, for us too, it can feel like God is far away, that our plans are failing while others are succeeding, like evil is winning in the world. When this happens, we need to remember that God is both Good (Yahweh – LORD) and Great (Elohim – God). He can always bring new hope to us, as we remember all that He has done in the past – both for us individually but also as witnessed by others in the Bible or in the testimonies of people we know. This encourages us to keep trusting Him for the future.

When I read the psalms of lament, it reminds me that I need to be real with God. To open up about my hurts, my fears and my struggles and to hand them over to Him. When the world seems so messed up, I need to cry out to God. When He seems far away, that is when I need to cling on hardest to my faith and keep trusting in His goodness and greatness.

Theology

A Glimpse of the Future?

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I recently read the novel Flashforward, which was made into a TV show a few years ago that was cancelled after one season and ended on a massive cliff hanger… I read the book because I had enjoyed the show, but other than the basic concept and a couple of character names, the book bore little resemblance to the show and, sadly, did not live up to expectation. It is very rare for me to say this, but the show was better than the book it was based on…

Anyway, this blog isn’t really about the show or the book – it’s about the idea. The concept of the novel is that for two minutes, unexpectedly, the entire population of Earth blacks out and their consciousness is transported twenty-one years and six months into the future, where they experience two minutes as their future selves.

When they return to the present, they have a lot of questions – what caused the phenomenon? Should they try to repeat it? And, most importantly, is the future they saw fixed, or can it be changed?

Although the book was a disappointment, it did get me thinking – if I had the opportunity to see my future, would I take it? Do I want to know what will happen to me a few years down the line – and would I try to change it if I knew?

I generally have an overactive imagination, and spend a lot of idle moments thinking about where I’d like to live, how and where I might meet the man of my dreams, what schools would I send my hypothetical children to, what job I want when I finish my course… But while I enjoy the speculation, I like the openness of my future right now. I like that I have options, and that I don’t know what is coming. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it would be nice to know for certain that I will get married, and what his name might be so that I can pay attention when he comes along… but at the same time I know I’m better off not knowing.

In Matthew 6v25-34, Jesus tells the crowds not to worry about the future, because there will be enough to worry about when it comes along. He’s talking specifically about provision – comforting us that God knows what we need and will provide it, so we don’t need to fret. But I think it applies more generally. The present is all we really have, because we don’t know what is around the corner. So we’re wasting our time if we stress ourselves out over the details of our futures. I don’t think this means that we shouldn’t make plans at all, rather that we shouldn’t be so obsessed with the future that we miss out on enjoying the here and now.

Not knowing the future also gives us hope. One of the characters in the book is convinced that the future is set, and there is nothing he can do to change it, and it starts to have a negative impact on the choices he makes in the present. As Christians it is often a comfort to us to know that God has plans for our future, and I believe that He does, but they are not strict and immovable. God has also given us free will, which allows us to involve ourselves in His plans, rather than have them dictated to us. Yes He guides us, and He has an ultimate plan for creation, but He will not force us into doing things. At the same time, He is always working behind the scenes to bring about His will.

Does that sound like a contradiction? It kind of is… God’s omniscience regarding the future is something I’ve really been struggling to get my head around in the past year… And I don’t think I’m any closer, but I’m happy to live in the contradiction of a God who knows the future yet gives me free will to determine how mine will pan out.

When life gets messy, we can have hope that the future will be better, different. We can also trust that God is looking after us, directing our steps (Proverbs 16v9), and working for our good (Romans 8v28).

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More words coming soon… I really promise…

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so I know what I said… That when I finished my essay and my course was done for the summer I would have more time to write etc etc etc but what I’ve found is I’ve needed a bit of time of not writing to give my brain a rest. Also, Wimbledon is on and that is such a pleasant distraction and has really been helping me unwind…

But I do have a few things ticking over in my brain and I just need to sit down and write them out. And I plan on doing it soon. I can’t go very long without writing. I need to write regularly in order to function. It’s how I process life – even if what I’m writing bears little resemblance to what is happening around me. It’s the process of taking a jumbled bundle of thoughts in my head and making them into something that other people can understand. I feel better just for these few short paragraphs.

So bear with a little longer and new stuff will be appearing here soon 🙂

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Happy Birthday mayibethemoon!

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mayibethemoon is one year old today! Yay!

Unfortunately I have an essay due on Monday and loads still to write, so no celebrating for me this weekend…

But once the essay is handed in, I get a break from my course until the autumn, so I’m hoping to have more time for writing for fun over the summer and should be able to post a bit more frequently 🙂

Until then, thank you all for reading and sharing over the last year. Here’s to many more years of poetry and reflection.