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Does Anybody Care About Sallu, Son of Meshullam?

Posted: March 16, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: acceptance, belonging, Bible, identity, Nehemiah

How often do you read things in the Bible and you wonder why they’re there?

For instance I’ve been preaching through the Old Testament book of Nehemiah at church each Sunday and this morning I got to Nehemiah chapter 11 and 12. These chapters contain a long list of names. What’s the point?

I got to think about why information like this should have been preserved for thousands of years.

Nehemiah had led a process of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and this involved rebuilding a community. When it was all over a lottery was held to determine who should get to live in the newly rebuilt city. One out of every 10 people would get to make the move.

The list of names of the families who would get to live in the city tells me that there was a great deal of order and organisation in the process, which emphasises how important the move was, and how significant each person was to God. It also said to me that at the heart of this significant event in Nehemiah’s time, was the sense of belonging.

Each name that was mentioned in that long, boring list, was important to God, and each person was connected to a family and had a place in their society. As they moved into the city each person, male and female, young and old, had a deep sense that they were returning home to where they belong.

Through Jesus, we too can have that deep sense of belonging … of knowing that our identity, our acceptance, our place in the world is important to God and that through him everything else starts to make sense. I can’t get over how deep Jesus love for me is that he would be prepared to give his life for me. And that in itself assures me that I belong.

So are the long lists of names that we read in the Bible just a boring inclusion in a piece of ancient historical literature? I think they show that throughout history God’s heart is focussed on individuals and that you and I are just as significant and valuable in God’s eyes as Sallu son of Meshullam back in 450BC.

Why We Upset Loved Ones

Posted: March 9, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: abuse, Love, relationships, transference

A friend, Steve Wickham has written this blog and I thought it was worth sharing with you. Thanks Steve.

There are times when we upset, the one we truly love,
Times when we wonder, why we push and shove,
For their love is ours, and it’s not to be abused.
When we hurt those closest to us,
We really do betray an intimate kind of trust,
And they reel against it in a state that is confused.
Then we understand it’s something within us that’s unreconciled,
We may challenge ourselves where we are defiled,
When we have corrected ourselves, then we may be excused.

***

Transference may sound like a fancy psychological phenomena, but it really is very simple. We may upset those closest to us, because we can get away with it. But it is also because we don’t recognise some of the underlying issues behind our words and actions.

As an example of this, having recently snapped at my wife, I explored what I had just been thinking about. I wasn’t upset with her, or with what she was communicating, I had just been interrupted, and I’d only then been thinking about something quite sombre. She wasn’t to know this, of course. She would have no idea that something else completely unrelated was, for that moment, bothering me. She just happened to be in the firing line.

That is how we upset people – those we love – more often than not.

We may not even recognise that it is issues and concerns and anxieties that are just below the surface. We therefore transfer our fear, disappointment, and worry onto the other person, when they have no idea what perplexes us.

This is no excuse for us, of course. But it is something to be acutely aware of. We need to nurture an awareness from within us of what we just said and why we just said it. We need to explore these situations in order to root out the real reason for problematic communication. If we don’t do this, the one we love has to bear unjust treatment by someone that supposedly loves them. If we believe in the concept of love, we will believe in reconciliation, and we will take the steps to reconcile any problematic communication via apology.

***

We hurt those closest to us because we can get away with it, and because they are there when we face emotional issues. We are usually not angry toward them, personally, but we will transfer our emotions onto them if we are not aware. Awareness – of what exactly it is that upsets us; and taking responsibility – is the key.

Diamond’s Are A Girl’s Best Friend

Posted: March 2, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: diamonds, forgiveness, Jesus, Sonshine fm 98.5

I was at the museum one day with my grandson, and while he was more interested in the dinosaur, I found an interesting display about diamonds.

Everyone loves diamonds. According to the song by Carol Channing back in 1949, diamonds are a girl’s best friend and James Bond in 1971 said diamonds are forever. They’re pretty popular and most people are attracted to a piece of jewellery that contains a diamond.

And it’s interesting that we are often attracted to colourful diamonds, but that was the bit of information I particularly noticed at the museum display. You see the purest diamonds are clear, but the colour in diamonds is created by chemical impurities or structural defects.

The Hope Diamond

The Hope Diamond is often described as the most valuable diamond in the world. It is deep blue in colour and is worth up to 250million dollars US. So the colour certainly doesn’t reduce its value, but what makes the difference is the way it is cut and prepared for display.

Now that got me thinking because we often see impurities as being something ugly and unattractive. And of course they are, and when I think about myself I know that any impurities or defects in my life contribute to me being unlikeable.

When the Bible tells us that all the good things we do are like filthy rags, it’s pointing out that the defects in our life – the Bible calls that sin – have the effect of separating us from God.

So how do we fix this problem?

When someone sits down to produce a high quality piece of jewellery they will spend a long time cutting and polishing the diamond and preparing it, so that when you finally get to wear it, it looks perfect.

People come up and notice the diamond and comment on its beauty, to the point that although the colour was caused by impurities, now the diamond is presented as something very beautiful.

When we give all our impurities to Jesus he can take us and cut off all the sharp edges, and design something absolutely beautiful.

The funny thing is that even when we come to Jesus and give him all our impurities and we are assured of being forgiven through what he has done for us when he died on the cross, the defects are still there.

We still seem to make a mess of our life and often get frustrated because things don’t work out the way we would like them. You see, the beautiful colours in the diamond are always there as a reminder of the impurities and defects that were in the original stone. They haven’t been removed but the jeweller has created something beautiful out of that rough stone.

The effect of our sin often stays with us as a reminder, not of what we have done wrong, but how creative the master jeweller has been in dealing with our sin and creating an opportunity for us to grow.

It’s a reminder that no matter how hard we tried, we were never able to solve the sin problem, but through the grace of God we are no longer condemned by it.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. I’m glad that Jesus is my best friend and that he’s making changes in my life. Jesus can be your best friend too.

This post was the transcript of a message you can hear on Sonshine fm 98.5 on Sunday mornings.

Welcoming Strangers

Posted: February 23, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Christianity, Church, Following Jesus, High Wycombe, Sonshine fm, Welcoming Strangers

As much as I’d love you, my dear reader, to be at church on Sunday morning, I know it’s not always possible. If that’s the case I would encourage you to listen to JD on Sonshine fm, and guess what? You may hear me. I’ve recorded six three-minute messages that will be played on Sonshine fm on Sunday mornings. Here’s one of them:

Lady Di at Sandstone, Western Australia

Wedge Tailed Eagles feeding off the carcasses of kangaroos were the main feature of a trip I had some time ago between Leinster and Mt Magnet in the Mid West region of WA. So it proved to be a welcome change when we came across the tiny township of Sandstone. There was a mass of white roses along the wide main street and this contrasted with the red dirt and immediately announced that there was something different about this place.

For a period of six years from 1907 Sandstone had a population of 6,000 to 8,000 people. It had four hotels, four butchers, many cafes, stores and business houses, as well as a staffed police station and two banks. During this boom period, in July 1910 the railway came to the town, however by 1919 only 200 people remained. The population has continued to dwindle.

As we drove slowly through the deserted streets we spotted someone waving to us and heard a voice call out, “come and have a cup of tea”. It turned out that Lady Di, as she is affectionately known, has lived in Sandstone for 12 years and three days a week runs a sausage sizzle in the park, cooking up her own recipe of herbs and spices to provide a hearty welcome for the visitors who pass by on a regular basis.

So a cup of coffee and a chat with Lady Di was a welcome relief from the long, hot drive and gave us a picture of a community that was struggling to survive, but was welcoming of strangers, and keen to make its contribution to the wider community of travellers.

Communities that look after their own, are wonderful, but communities that welcome strangers and contribute to the lives of those outside have an element that is unforgettable.

There’s been plenty of criticism of the church over the years, and some of that criticism is warranted. But from the first century when the church first came into being, the idea of welcoming strangers was always at its heart. The church was not intended to just be another country club, or a secret society where only those who could recognise the password could enter.

Jesus ate with the people who nobody else wanted to mix with. He identified with those who were outcasts, the people with disabilities, the people whose behaviours made them unacceptable in a “good” society.

Every community needs a Lady Di who is prepared to put up with the heat and flies to offer a welcome to outsiders, but I think all of us need to have that sort of commitment to reach out beyond ourselves to welcome strangers.

If you’re not a part of a local church I’d encourage you to find one that welcomes strangers, a church that offers you the opportunity to grow to be more like Jesus yourself. A community where you can receive the support and help you need for your own spiritual and emotional growth, but where you can become a person who reaches out to others with the love of Jesus.

The Gift of a Word

Posted: February 16, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, blessing, gift, Noongar

This week I met with a Noongar elder to share the details of a forthcoming book that, in part, will chronicle our shared stories. Myrtle Yarran and I talked about a time more than 70 years ago when her father and mine first met at the little wheatbelt railway siding of Badjaling. Here’s what I read to her:

It had been a tiring day for Bob Mead. He had been fox hunting all day and was walking along a dusty road towards his home at Badjaling. Foxes were an introduced species, and they caused a lot of trouble to the farmers who worked in the area, so Bob found some satisfaction in proving his hunting skills and at the same time collecting a small payment from the white farmers who hired him. The Nyungar people were barely recognised by the farmers, but they were considered useful when it came to getting rid of pests like foxes.

As he made his way to Badjaling, with a bundle of fox carcasses dragging behind him, Bob spotted the new school teacher. He was a young man, only twenty-one years of age, but already going bald at the front. They chatted for a while about the fox hunting expedition, then, with a twinkle in his eye the Nyungar elder said: “Mr Douglas, say ngangk!” The young Irishman had been told that the Badjaling people only spoke English; this was his first realisation that while English was used widely, there was something about these people that he had yet to learn.

His first attempt at repeating the word Bob had asked him to say wasn’t too successful, so Bob called over his seven-year-old son Aubrey, one of the thirty-eight children who attended the tiny corrugated iron school now in the hands of this young teacher. Aubrey screwed up his nose and said, “ngangk.” The teacher screwed up his nose and tried again to repeat the word.

“When you can say that word, I’ll teach you another one,” Bob said. “Ngangk is our Nyungar word for mother, and it’s also the word for the sun in the sky because the sun is the mother of us all.” Wilf Douglas had received his first lesson in both the Nyungar language and traditional Nyungar beliefs.

When my Dad received the gift of that first word from Myrtle’s Dad, few people had ever written the Noongar language. He took that gift with appreciation and over many years wrote down and described the language, giving it back to the custodians of that language in a format that would help preserve it forever.

Each day we receive gifts from the people around us – a kind word, a shared story, an expression of concern or love. When someone shares a word, don’t brush it off or disregard what was said. Receive it as a gift. These are blessings that represent something of the person who has made the gift, but they are not gifts for us to hold for ourselves. As we receive them we have a responsibility to consider how we can return them with an added blessing.

It’s Facebook BC450

Posted: February 9, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Facebook, gossip, Nehemiah

I think I’ve come across one of the earliest examples of social media. Nehemiah was a governor in Persia when he asked permission to return to his cultural home of Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. He was doing pretty well, but there was a small group of men who were opposed to what he was doing and were trying to distract him.

It sounds like Facebook BC450 when Sanballat and Geshem sent out an unsealed letter making all sorts of accusations against Nehemiah. Being unsealed meant that as the letter was passed along, anyone who wanted could read it and spread the news they read.

The letter commenced with the words: It is reported among the nations and Geshem says it is true – two phrases that are repeated regularly in the 21st century:

“It is reported among the nations” – or more commonly, “everybody is saying it” and “Geshem says it is true”, more commonly paraphrased “If it’s on Facebook then it must be true.”

Gossip may have been around for the last 2500 years or more but it’s taken on a fresh form in the world of social media. At church this morning I talked about this and prayed that we fix our eyes on Jesus and allow Jesus to guard our ears, control our fingers, direct our tongue, and protect our mind.

“With” – A good read for the new year

Posted: January 19, 2014 in Uncategorized
Tags: Book Review, Church, God, Jesus, Skye Jethani

… Many come into Christian faith with great expectations. They have heard stories of jubilation and salvation, of the power to overcome this world and experience the divine in expressible ways. But once inside the ancient halls of Christianity many are disappointed. Where is the light, where is the illumination? Our hearts seek God and the goodness, beauty, justice and peace we’ve been told he provides, but he often remains hidden behind the shadow cast by an evil world …”

With these words, Skye Jethani launches a brilliant discussion about what has hindered real communion with God, making use of the prepositions, under, over, from, for and with. My holiday reading has included “With – Reimagining the Way You Relate to God”.

Jethani talks about four forms of religion that he describes as variations of fear and control, life under God, life over God, life from God and life for God, then introduces a different vision: Life with God. In each of the first four areas, we seek to use God to achieve some other goal.

Life over God uses God as the source of rational principles or laws and ultimately breeds atheism, but Jethani says many Christians practice a faith that has little room or need for God. Life over God seeks control by discovering how the world works and then directly implementing the right principles.

Life under God views God as a capricious deity who must be appeased to gain blessings and avoid punishment. Life Under God tries to manipulate God through obedience to secure blessings and avoid calamity. This requires a list of rules and rituals which, if we follow, will result in God’s approval. Jethani describes this as potent mix of pagan superstition and biblical morality.

Life from God allows us to have our desires granted and is evidenced in the way we try to make God like us, assigning him our personalities, our values, and our biases. Those who follow the Life from God approach are primarily focussed on achieving their own happiness. This is evident in our current consumer thinking and the way consumerism has entered the church environment. Jethani talks about this type of God as a divine butler, a comic therapist, a holy vending machine.

Life for God uses him and his mission to gain a sense of direction and purpose. For many people the mission of the church has become the most important thing in life, so their whole purpose in life is working for God and doing things for him. This often leads to spiritual burn-out as people come to a place where they find all their work is not achieving any deep sense of satisfaction.

So Jethani comes to his proposal that we should be looking towards a Life With God. For many people, Life With God is difficult to find because people who have tried to live over, under, from and for God, have no reference point from which to start. They cannot imagine what Life With God looks like. Life With God is so far beyond our imagination that it must be revealed to us.

Jethani goes on to say that Jesus Christ came to shine a light onto a truth about the cosmos previously hidden from our sight. The Life With God posture is predicated on the view that relationship is at the core of the cosmos: God the Father with God the Son with God the Holy Spirit. And so we should not be surprised to discover that when God desired to restore his broken relationship with people, he sent his Son to dwell with us.

This was an excellent read for the start of the new year. I heartily recommend it.

Happy New Year

Posted: December 30, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: A Better Way, change, followers of Jesus, New Year

Here’s a sensational video and a thought for the new year from Ephesians 4: You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds;and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

They Won’t Expect This!

Here’s a beautiful video out of New Zealand, that tells the Christmas story from the point of view of children. You’ll love it. I played it at church yesterday and it was a great introduction to my talk about the unexpected visit of the angels to the shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem, announcing the birth of Jesus.

Video — Posted: December 22, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: Christmas

What’s in a Name?

Posted: December 16, 2013 in Uncategorized
Tags: Christmas, Jesus, John the Baptist

Sometimes people choose their baby’s names because it keeps up a family tradition, sometimes because they know someone else of that name, or perhaps it’s just because it’s a name that sounds good.

It’s not too often in the 21st century that people choose names because of their meaning. I looked up the meaning of my name. Robert apparently means “bright fame”, but those two words don’t seem to go together, after all, it’s not a sentence and the words don’t describe anything, so I think naming me Robert had more to do with family history than the meaning of the name.

Prior to the birth of Jesus another baby was born, and his parents called him John. Now that’s a name that has some meaning. At the time of his birth, John meant the Lord is Merciful, or Gracious Gift of God.

There was a bit of a dispute at the time because everyone thought that the baby should be named after his father – don’t you love the way everyone’s got an opinion! But John’s father, Zechariah, had been told by an angel that his baby was to be called John, and Zechariah had the insight to know that John was going to be the person who would prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.

It’s interesting to me that Jesus didn’t just appear on the scene unannounced, but that his cousin, John, was born before him, with the role of preparing the way. As we prepare for Christmas; buying presents, decorating the Christmas tree, and buying the ham, it’s worth remembering that Jesus didn’t come without preparation, and his arrival was not unexpected.