Abe's Babes

'Velvet Elvis' by Rob Bell

2008-02-29T01:32:00.000-08:00

It's a while back now since I read this book.

I know it’s an odd title.

In fact there are a lot of odd things about it.

It’s got an odd cover, since you can choose for yourself which cover you buy: it’s got an odd layout: and it’s got some odd ideas as well, I suppose.

At least they can strike you as odd to start with. Mainly because you haven’t thought of things that way before.

But, odd or not, you need to read this book!

Not because it’s fast becoming a sort of ‘cult classic’ (which it probably is).

But because it’s a healthy and necessary corrective to what you always thought (and maybe feared) the whole business of being a Christian is about. Wrongly.

Yes, ‘wrongly’.

Most of us (self included) have a whole load of mixed-up notions as to what it is to be a follower of Jesus. Faithfully inherited, strongly held, fiercely defended.

But which miss the point with a frightening lack of accuracy.

So Velvet Elvis is, as I say, a healthy and refreshing corrective –

“for those,” as the writer says, “who need a fresh take on Jesus and what it means to live the kind of life he teaches us to live.”

The writer. Yes. I should tell you a bit about him.

He’s a down-to-earth pastor of a church called Mars Hill, in Michigan.

Now, I’m always a little bit wary of folk who are the pastors of some megachurch.

By and large, all such sort of superpastors just depress me. At least, their success stories do.

However, despite the fact the church he founded numbers now a good few thousand folk, this guy’s safe.

Because Rob Bell went out the back and simply killed superpastor!

Yes! Read it all for yourself and see. Like he says –

“I meet so many people who have superwhatever rattling around in their head.

They have this person they’re convinced they are supposed to be, and their superwhatever is killing them. ..

You have to kill your superwhatever.

And you have to do it right now.

Because your superwhatever will rob you of today and tomorrow and the next day until you take it out back and end its life.

Go do it.

The book will be here when you get back.”

This is the only serious Christian book that’s ever made me laugh, I have to say. Out loud!

And the only one that’s ever made the serious stuff of following Jesus Christ seem quite so simple, clear and workable: and so much fun!

Buy it for yourself. Or borrow it. I really don’t mind, just get a hold of it somehow yourself.

Then read it. It won’t take long.

You’ll laugh a lot. And you’ll learn a lot as well.

And I think you’ll start to live life more the way it’s meant to be.

Hitting the heights!

2007-05-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

Scotland is full of some lovely mountains. Like Ben Lui, which I climbed for the first time the other day.

Described as 'the queen of the Scottish mountains', it's tucked away among the mountains and hills to the south of Tyndrum.

And for long enough I didn't even know that it existed!

See what I've been missing all my life! This mountain is something else: beautiful to look at, exhilerating to climb, and gloriously panoramic in the views that it affords you from its peak. Absolutely stunning. Not the sort of thing you'd want to miss!

And yet, as I say, for long enough I never knew such regal heights as these were there at all!

Which made me think how often and how easily we live our lives like that! Entirely unaware of what we could now be enjoying in the way our lives are lived: settling for a poorish second best, and missing out on all the soaring heights of that adventure which we're called to share with Christ.

But once I got to hear about this peak and heard the sort of comments that the people who had been there all were making, I knew that I'd be restless 'til I'd been there for myself. And so I packed my bag and headed off, intent upon my standing on those rugged, stately heights at last myself.

The story of my life! I do not want to live my life upon the lowlands of experience. I want to climb and reach the heights. I want the very best that's to be had!

You have to know the way, of course. So I did my background reading and I had my OS map and sure enough there was a well-worn track. Which is always re-assuring: it's good to know you're not going off at tangents on a dead-end sort of route!

The sheep have got the right idea, I guess: follow the ancient paths: go where the saints of old have gone before!

The track involves a fair old trek, I have to say! Some four or more long miles on up the glen before you ever reach the actual mountain at its base. Enough to put the person off who likes things always served up on a plate.

And so in life as well. The track to get you even to the starting point for climbing to the heights can often be a pretty long and winding sort of path: and maybe that's the reason why so many simply settle for the second best and end up with a 'lowlands' sort of life. It's too much work, too far to walk and takes just far too long before we're ever in position to begin to get up high.

But once you've reached the river which provides the sort of starting line for all the arduous climbing that's involved, you know that this, indeed, is where you'd always choose to be. The fresh and dancing waters of the mountain's central burn, spilling down with all their sparkling youthfulness to beckon you up high. Who needs a second invitation!

I sometimes think such mountain streams express so very graphically the clear, pure, vibrant, surging life that flows from real relationship with Christ - the rivers of the Spirit of our God, so ceaseless in their trail of potent grace, a ribbon of intoxicating life, the like of which is only found on high.

One taste of that and soon you think the way you've lived before was just so humdrum, mean and meagre that you had no life at all!

But you have to be fit to make it to the top. Ben Lui is big and it also gets steep - and merely good intentions will never be enough!

You need to be resolved, of course: I'm not saying that's not so. You've got to have that absolute commitment to be getting to the top - or else you're never going to make it all the way!

But you need to be fit as well: it's a tough, demanding climb and if you're not in training then, at best, you'll miss the pleasure of the climb - at worst you just won't make it to the top!

'Good things come to those who wait', the advert says. And mountain peaks like this are only reached by those who do the training and are fit.

'Disciplines' are, likewise, so very much bound up with our discipleship of Christ. There are no kind of 'cable cars' that take you, without effort, to the heights of that experience of life which is our heritage in Christ. You have somehow to get yourself in shape. You have to build your muscles and your stamina. You have to do the work.

The mountains peaks of full, abundant life are only reached by those who do the training. I guess we have to work at that some more.

But, no mistake, the effort's always worth it. It's like a different world up there! The colours are so stunning and the air is just so clear.

The deep blue sky; the bright, warm sun; the banks of sparkling snow which formed a sort of patchwork quilt of winter round this soaring burst of spring! Quite simply beautiful!

It made me proud, all over again, to be a Scot! To know this is my land: these lochs, these hills, these mountain peaks, this captivating view which, every way I looked, for miles and miles on end was all that I could see - this is my home, this land so full of blue and brittle beauty: this is where I belong: this is my land. It stirred my heart, I have to say!

And all around the history as well! Each glen with its own heritage of song, long centuries of fluctuating fortunes whose stories have been told, who knows, a thousand times and more.

I looked around for long enough (not just to catch my breath!) and wondered once again at just how rich is that inheritance I have. I looked around and thought - I wouldn't swap this grandeur for a single other place on planet earth!

And remember, for long enough I didn't even know that this was here! A frightening thought!

Just how much more of all the many riches God has given us in Christ am I still largely ignorant about?

Just how much more remains still mainly hidden from my soul?

Do I need Jesus?

2007-04-19T02:16:00.000-07:00

I wasn't really eavesdropping or anything. I just happened to be there and couldn't help over-hearing what the guy was saying.

"Do I need Jesus? "

He was in the church building, in fact up on the 'chancel area', right in front of the communion table. And he was on his knees. 'Troubled' is perhaps too strong a word to describe him, but he seemed perplexed and the pressure of it all was plainly getting to him.

He's one of the church leaders. I'll not name him because that wouldn't really be fair on Derek: after all, he didn't really realise that his words were being heard.

But I have to say it comes as a shock to hear one of your leaders tossing that sort of question around. I mean it's a pretty basic issue, you'd have thought.

Thankfully he reached the right conclusion! "Yes," he eventually affirmed. (I think he was really talking to himself, but maybe he was talking to the Lord: as I say, I don't think he was that aware of my being there and listening in).

"Yes, I do need Jesus!" he finally declared.

Well, my heart soared, I found myself smiling and couldn't help laughing.

This simple little cameo captured what the Holiday Club has been about. Derek does the puppets along with Phil. And the two of them are masters of their art.

Switching accents with consummate ease, from a 'Prince of Wales' impression to something straight from the Archers (and all manner of weird and wonderful male and female variants in between), and juggling any number of puppets with a racy, bible-based script, the two of them had the children riveted every morning. 130 children every day, eager, excited and full of boundless energy - and glued to their seats as they watched all the drama unfold through the lips of the puppets up front.

It takes a lot of practice of course. And that was what Derek had been doing when I caught him up there on the chancel area. Figuring out just which would be the puppets they'd be needing the next day.

"Do I need Jesus?" (Answer - Yes! Jesus tends to figure in the stories that they tell!)

That was the question the children faced as well. Day by day, in all the different facets of the Holiday Club, that was the issue each one of them explored.

There were days, indeed, this Person seemed so massive and the things he'd done so humbling that it left them little short of gob-smacked, awed and silenced.

In five short days these children got the picture: and who knows how many of their lives will have thereby been quite changed! Brilliant.

I guess it's always the question. Always the basic issue for us all.

40 days to change the world!

2007-03-01T01:52:00.000-08:00

I was down in York a week or two ago.

The churches there were launching their 40 Days of Prayer in the run-up to Easter - something we'd done here last year and .. well, things have hardly been the same since doing so.

Things happen when God's people pray - and we're doing it again ourselves this year: joining together in 40 days of concentrated prayer. And who knows what will happen next!

The message is obviously getting out. York is not that big a place, in truth (maybe 150,000 or so) - but nonetheless there were, I think, some 67 churches represented there that night. That's a lot of praying people. And the spirit of the evening was reflective of just that. An air of expectancy and a spirit of praise.

Something's going on these days.

Rolling in across our land, unseen perhaps by most, there is today a moving of the Spirit of the Lord: a wave of grace, the surging power of God, advancing up the shores of our society and breaking with a sparkling spray of latent opportunity and hope. Now's the time, indeed, for us to catch that wave of swelling grace by praying down the blessing of almighty God upon our land: even as the Lord himself, in turn, will catch the wave our praying in these days creates and ride across the nation in his power.

It was quite an occasion, down there in the city of York; and everything about it seemed to underline just why this simple exercise of praying all together over 40 days is really so significant.

It was held in the old Guildhall, a building dating back, I think, to 1450 or so.

History. The past. The heritage we have throughout our land. The place was simply dripping in that history. A reminder that to catch the wave, we build on all the labours and the praying which the former generations have put in.

And all sorts of people were there as well. The Lord Mayor. The Sheriff of York (which had me somehow thinking I was back in all those days of Robin Hood: but it wasn't really like that much at all, of course - although the Sheriff did advise me that one task he had to do was, every year, go round each pub and have a pint and check they weren't diluting all their beer: no wonder he was such a happy chap!).

And the man with the keys as well. Keys that dated back some five long centuries and more! Not the sort of thing you want to lose - but then, as he explained, the size they are, they're hardly going to slip down through some hole within your jacket or the like (and even if they did, you'd kind of notice straight away!).

The lock's the same today as that which first they used when all those centuries ago the Guildhall was being built: and so the keys remain the same.

A lesson there, for sure. The keys remain the same. Prayer remains the means by which the gates of God's great ancient hall of blessing are unlocked: the key to our releasing that great reservoir of grace and power today.

I was struck by one of the displays they had.

Many different churches and associated bodies had been busy putting up their colourful displays. Having a wander and finding myself at the end of the Hall, I assumed this was simply another display, put up to encourage our praying.

The display was comprised of three panels: and the thing that attracted attention was the one-word and bold-lettered headline that each of the panels declared.

Fire. Devastation. Revival.

What happens when we pray. I thought to myself what a clear and helpful reminder this was of the impact our praying will have. Uniting in prayer, as we're seeking to do, releases the fire. The Spirit of God is poured out. That's where it all begins.

And then there's devastation. Not quite in the league of a bull in a china shop - but not far off: the Spirit of God causes all sorts of havoc in churches whose life is so tidy and neat. Not perhaps exactly what we have in mind when asking for a little bit of growth within the church!

But that remains the panel that is stuck between the fire of God's great Spirit coming down upon his people as we pray, and true, sustained revival in the land.

Of course, when I got up close and read the blurb, I realised then I'd picked the thing up wrong! That panel there was not about our prayers at all. It was, instead, a note about procedures to be followed in the case of fire and then a potted history of the bombing of the Guidhall through the war.

But, hey, the headlines nonetheless were on the ball so far as prayer's concerned!

David Hill - he started it all!

Prayer calls down the fire of God, which issues in revival in a person's and a nation's life. That's why we're asked to pray for three specific people through the 40 days - intent upon 'revival' of some sort in each one of their lives.

And so it seemed to me a kind and striking providence of God that Sunday morning past, the first within the 40 Days of Prayer, we had three different people out the front professing faith..

As if God meant to underline to all of us that this is where the praying for our three specific people's meant to end. We pray. The fire of God's Spirit erupts from on high. The lives of ordinary people are disrupted and transformed. And men and women, young and old alike, are wonderfully revived!

But Sunday's 'three' were somehow, too, expressive of the ways in which God works in people's lives: and pointers, thus, to what should be priorities for us and lessons we should learn. Let me explain.

Marcus was the first to come out front (we did it alphabetically - by surname). A fine young man at the latter end of his teenage years.

And how did he come to faith? The Spirit of God simply came most powerfully upon him while he was walking one day down the street!

Absolutely nothing in the upbringing he'd received to lead him to this point. But out of the blue and quick as a flash the man was brought to life!

Startling! Amazing! The sovereign work of the living God. And we'd better not forget it!

Like God was simply saying to us all - I do this sort of thing! Whatever else may sometimes be involved in lives being revolutionised, the bottom line is always this - it's God who brings to life. He's able to do it, eager to do it, ready to do it. So ask him to do it!

And then there was Claire. Now Claire comes from a really lovely Christian home, a down-to-earth and vibrant Christian faith being very much the hallmark of her family life for what is now at least two generations back - and maybe more for all I know.

She had her ups and downs, of course. A Christian home can't ever give a guarantee your journey to a living faith will be somehow an easy and an automatic thing. No, she had to reach that point of faith herself.

But having such a family always helps! And so does having Christian friends, whose patience and encouragement makes Jesus real. Claire had those sort of friends as well, who talked and shared and helped her work things through until that faith was born in her as well.

Like God was keen to make it clear how central is the place the family has within his purposes of grace: and stress as well how crucial is the simple gift of friendship in the name of Christ.

Lemiya was the third to stand out front professing faith. She was different again.

She came for lunch one day. Dropped in, because she happened to be passing by. Soup and a roll was what she sought - but, hey, she ended with the Bread of life!

She hadn't a hint of any of that, of course, the day she first called in.

And hadn't a clue about Christ!

But back she came another day a few weeks later on. Why? Well, just because she'd liked the food and found that there'd been something in the friendship and the service that she'd known the first time round which made her wish for more.

And so began her search, that led in time to her being glad to welcome Jesus Christ into her heart and find in him a life she'd scarcely even dreamed was there to live.

And once again, it was as if the Lord himself was simply making clear to us the part that's played by working at 'environments' where people get a flavour of the life he longs to give.

The powerful work of the Spirit of God. The pivotal place of the Christian home. The personal touch with the coffee and chat.

It was just as if the Lord was saying to us - you've got to work at these. You want to see the fire and then revival in a nation's life? Well, this is how it happens: and this is where it starts.

With 40 Days of Prayer behind it all - who knows how much our world will be transformed!

One small step...

2007-01-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

My brother bought me an interesting book as a Christmas gift. Moondust.

In it Andew Smith explores the extraordinary experience shared by only 12 men in the whole of human history (three of whom have subsequently died) - that of standing and then walking on the surface of the moon.

It's fascinating stuff.

And right inside the cover is a simple, striking picture of those footprints in the lunar dust. A different-planet version of the feeling that you get when stepping out on virgin snow, the first to leave your mark.

It's quite a thought! The first abiding imprint to be left upon the surface of the moon by human feet. Ever.

"One small step for a man, but a giant leap for mankind".

These guys were explorers. Pioneers. Pushing the boundaries. Farmers of the future, who ploughed the ground far out beyond the frontiers of the present time, to open up fresh fields of human growth.

A million different twists and turns to get them there. A myriad different tasks and tests and trial runs before they even got them to the launching pad. A patient and painstaking sort of process with a careful, cautious, step-by-step approach across who knows how many years.

Who knows how many little steps there must have been to get them there - and then, of course, that one small step that in the end would matter most of all.

"One small step for a man, but a giant leap for mankind".

There are moments like that in all of our lives.

I don't mean getting togged up like the Michelin man and standing on the moon - since most of us couldn't afford the outfit let alone the entrance fee.

I mean moments when that one small step you take brings with it repercussions that are absolutely huge.

And you know it as you take it. Even though you maybe can't begin to see precisely what those repercussions are.

A moment when a corner is turned and when, in some small way, a little bit of history is made. A moment when the world that you inhabit will be changed somehow forever.

We, too, are explorers, we who follow Jesus Christ.

Living in the future tense and stepping out beyond the safe parameters the present has pegged out: pioneers of promises that God himself has made: persuaded that, however good our present state may be, there's more we're meant to know and to enjoy.

And so we journey out with Jesus Christ, living in that future tense and looking for a life which lies beyond the safe and stark horizons of our present world.

And in amongst that multitude of steps we day-by-day will take, there are those steps, which in themselves quite small, are nonetheless quite massive in their long-term implications for our world.

We took a step like that this week. Just one small step in many ways: but nonetheless a giant leap. Our version of that footprint on the surface of the moon - or that first symbolic planting of the flag.

The leaders here - we made a sort of New Year resolution, I suppose. A statement of intent: a marker for the coming days. A planting of that flag which said we're going to seek God's future now.

We made a simple decision and spelt it out in black and white -

Our over-riding aim will simply be to do what God has called us all to do - to go and make disciples in our day and generation:

our starting-point in living thus will be a concentration on the gifts that people have - not posts to fill, but ministries being exercised by playing to our strengths:

our call will be to underline to every single follower of Christ it is their God-appointed privilege, each one, to be themselves the bringers of good news.

Hardly rocket-science, of course!

And because it is no more than stating basics, it is, at best, just one small, fairly simple step.

But it's in the league of those small steps which prove to be a turning point, a giant leap which changes things forever. It readjusts our compass and it sets us on a slightly different course from that we've been pursuing down the years. It means we've left the launchpad and we're reaching for the skies.

We've launched the raft - to use a different picture - and we're set to sail the seas.

It crossed my mind it's rather like that moment in the movie Castaway, when Chuck, who's been marooned upon his island for so long, heads out upon the open sea.

He's done OK on his island, of course. It isn't where the guy had planned to be, for sure: but given time to settle in, it's not that bad.

There's sun and sea and food and fire: there aren't those tiresome telephones, there aren't those daily rush hour queues: life is a beach - and the beaches are clean and you've got them all to yourself. I mean, the place has got a few things to commend it, truth be told! You could do worse, by far.

So Chuck makes do, gets by, survives all right.

That's been the sort of life that we've been living as the followers of Christ. Removed from real involvement with the big, bad world out there. Living out a rather safe, and pretty much secluded sort of faith.

And getting by. We do not bad.

But deep within our hearts we've known, like Chuck himself, that this is not the way it's meant to be. This is not our destiny. This is more existence than a life.

Chuck builds a raft. The thing is fairly basic since he doesn't have a DIY department store on hand.

He only knows the raft must be both big enough and strong enough to breach the wall of ocean waves which breaks upon the island's hidden barrier reef.

And he's been upon this island now quite long enough to recognise the subtle shifts in where the wind is coming from: he knows the wind must move: he knows the wind must blow from one precise direction if the raft which he has built is ever going to get beyond those crashing waves of water on the reef: and he knows there is a moment when the weather pattern shifts.

The man is good to go. He's living in the future tense, prepared to stake his all upon a fragile, mobile, ocean-going home.

It's full of risk. His craft doesn't come with a ten-year guarantee. He has no map, no fuel, no back-up crewe. All he can do is get out on the seas and just trust that the wind will carry him on to a future he knows must be there.

Well, I won't spoil the movie by telling you more!

But that's where we're at and that's what we've done.

We've built our raft. The wind of the Spirit has started to blow. The moment has come. And we've launched ourselves out on the seas!

King's College Chapel

2006-11-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

I stood on holy ground the other day. The chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. It was stunning, simply stunning.

I’d heard about the place, for sure. Who hasn’t? I’ve seen the pictures, sometimes even watched the television broadcasts which are shown at Christmas time. And, yes, they’re always most impressive and create a sense of awe.

But I hadn’t ever been inside before: live, I mean – in person, instead of merely through the TV tubes. Until, that is, I had the chance last week.

The normal charge for adults is a cheap-at-the-price £4-50p: but I got in for free.

A circumstance, I have to say, which cheered the ingrained Scotsman in my psyche: and made the erstwhile preacher in me smile. To get to stand on holy ground for free! To get to go inside and savour all the splendours of this almost timeless place entirely free of charge! To get to be so warmly, keenly welcomed at the door and ushered in without a hint of payment on my part! Isn’t that good news?

Not because of who I was or anything I’d done. But simply on the basis of the guy I’m with. A student – and a son: relationship is everything, believe you me!

“You want to go inside?” he asked me, as his guided tour of Cambridge brought us right up to the threshold of the place.

Silly question! Of course I did!

But the question that he asked, I thought, that’s exactly it.

That’s the crucial question for us all – you want to go inside? That’s the crucial choice we all must make. To go inside. To get inside the chapel of the college of the King: to stand on holy ground: to sense first hand the stunning, soaring splendours in the worship of the Lord.

You’ve got to go inside!

It doesn’t do to take a stack of photos from across the well-kept lawns: it doesn’t do to walk your way around its ancient walls and gaze up past its towers to the sky. Yes, you’ll get good photos and you’ll find it all impressive and you’ll think that you were glad you got the chance to see it all.

But stuck there on the outside’s not the same. Nothing like. You’ll simply never get it, if you view it from the outside all the time.

You’ve got to go inside!

I’m painting a picture, you see: a picture of the followers of Christ: a picture of the ‘college’ of the King (we’re students, after all, learners who’re intent upon discovering how to live): and more than that, a picture of these learners in communion and relationship with God. The chapel of the college of the King.

And I repeat, you’ll simply never get it if you view it from the outside all the time.

I fear that’s what too many do. They’re camped outside. Full of admiration. Full of pious ‘cameras’ as it were, with photos labelled Me beside the Chapel to authenticate their claim to Christian faith. Enthusiastic patrons of a great medieval heritage.

But camped outside.

It’s safer on the outside, sure. You get to choose your vantage point – admiring from a distance, or the overwhelming grandeur closer in.

But stay outside (it doesn’t really matter that it’s far or near) – stay outside and all you ever get to be is an observer. You maybe Ooh! and Aah!, you maybe think Wow, this is something else!, but, hey, the bottom line is always this – you stay outside and all you ever get to be is an observer.

Well, let me say it clearly once for all. Knowing God is never a spectator sport. Never.

You want to know what following Christ is like? You’ve got to go inside. You want to know what meeting God can do within a person’s life? You’ve got to go inside.

You’ve got to get inside the Jesus story, you’ve got to enter in, be part of it – instead of merely sticking on the outside, admiring this great edifice of truth we call Good News.

You’ve got to go inside!

I did.

And two things in particular struck chords within my heart.

I discovered that the chapel of the college of the King is EPIC through and through. That’s the first thing.

It is an Experience in itself. Just being there. Just being on the inside. It’s an experience of the vastness and the beauty and the splendour and the greatness and the overpowering glory of the Lord. It is a hugely, almost wildly sensual sort of thing – the sense of size (it’s massive, absolutely massive), the sense of space (it’s high and long and wide and somehow pillarless as well – or so it seems), the sense of age (it was built some five or six long centuries ago), the sense of light (the sun shone through the towering stained glass windows all around and beamed in rainbow coloured brightness ‘til my soul was simply drenched in that effulgence from on high), the sense of music (the pure, fresh, echoing resonance which the lofty, vaulted ceilings sort of percolate right round the building brings the whispers of another world into the here and now – even in the silence: and the singing of the choristers must take you to an altogether different plane!). A total, all-engrossing, rapturous experience.

And every body there, in truth, Participants. You sit and stand and wander round: you look and pause and ponder all that’s going on: you turn and talk and take it in: you fall into reflective mode, and know that you’re being called to be reflective of the Lord in how you henceforth live your life: you find yourself exclaiming and you want to be proclaiming and you long to be reclaiming every moment of your life on earth for God. There simply isn’t scope for mere spectators in this place: each one becomes an integral participant in what is going on.

It’s well and truly Image-rich as well. The rich, resplendent windows with their elongated, stunning, stained-glass narrative of grace are a feast on which the eye of the beholder could be gorging for a lifetime – and then some. A sumptuous portrayal of the glories of eternal truths, a captivating, colour-filled, kaleidoscopic panoply the like of which I’ve never seen before. And all of that before I ever got to stand and view the massive Reubens masterpiece at the apex of the place. The Adoration of the Magi. How apt. That’s all I then desired to do: to bow, adore and let myself be steeped in all the splendour of that hour. As if I, too, had seen the King.

And somehow there, as well, a very real Connectedness. People. There were people there, a multitude of very different people, from the nations of the earth. And all of them connected and united and related in the wonder and the worship that they felt. The singing of the choristers expresses best of all the essence of this manifest ‘connectedness’. Their beauty-laden harmonies adorning simple melodies, reflecting that remarkable diversity which underlays the timeless, tireless unity of God and God’s creation, age on age. All of them involved, engaged and active in relation to the others all around.

EPIC. In every sense. The chapel of the college of the King: the worship of the followers of Christ today. It has to be, we have to make it EPIC in this way.

And the second thing to strike me?

Just five short words I noticed in the exhibition cloister up one side.

“Where the two worlds meet…” The exhibition spoke about the outlook that medieval people had upon their life: how they thought of the world above, the world of God and his heavens above – and this very earthy world below, the world of men and women in its down-to-earth mundaneness and its fallenness and sin.

And it spoke about the way medieval people were persuaded that the church of Jesus Christ was very much a place where these two worlds were joined.

The chapel of the college of the King. Where two worlds meet. Not just a point where that far-off medieval world impinges on the world that’s ours today. But, more staggering by far, the point where here and now we residents of earth, who struggle with the flawedness of this present, weary world, may nonetheless encounter all the glories, all the blessings of the world that is to come.

Where two worlds meet. Where God’s will is done, on earth as it is in heaven. Where God’s presence is known, on earth as it is in heaven. Where God’s power is seen, on earth as it is in heaven.

“Where the two worlds meet…” That said it all for me. That's the way it's meant to be. But, as I say, you’ve got to go inside!

Climb every mountain

2006-10-30T08:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve a friend called Hugh who climbs mountains.

Not quite for a living, though I think that was once a possibility: but very much as an integral part of his living. Wherever it may be, from the Himalayas to the Appalachians, show him a mountain and he has to get to the top.

In Scotland they’re called Munros. Mountains over 3,000 feet. Hardly big, on a global scale – I mean, that barely gets above the ankles of Mount Everest or K2: but big enough to represent a challenge of a sort.

There are about 285 of them in all and ‘bagging’ these Munros has grown to be, if not a craze, at least a sort of ‘fad’. The ‘holy grail’ for all such folk is ‘bagging’ every one of these Munros. There must be now some thousands who have bagged the lot – and, with some justification, tend to turn their bagging into bragging and recount the wild adventures that they’ve had in getting all the set.

Hugh doesn’t really ‘bag’ Munros. He devours them.

He was barely out of his teens when he first had bagged the lot. The third youngest person ever at the time, I think he said, to have been to the top of each of these peaks.

That was twenty five years ago (though he still looks not that much beyond those teenage years – there must be something healthy in a life that’s lived like that!). And now these twenty five years on he’s done it all again, a month or so ago. ‘Bagged’ the lot a second time.

Cause for celebration.

And where else to have that celebration than atop the final peak – Stob na Broige (don’t even try to pronounce it – just accept that’s what it’s called!). Stob na Broige is one of four Munros on an impressive ridge they call the Buachaille Etive Mor (no, that’s not an anagram, it’s the ridge’s name: it means, I think, ‘big herdsman of the Etive’ – which sounds a bit weak really, so I guess that’s why they go for the far more striking Gaelic name!).

This ridge stands guard at the eastern approach to the Pass of Glencoe: a part of the world that's simply dripping in some pretty vivid history – but as often as not is shrouded in mist and clouds and rain.

Well, not averse to celebrate, I said that I would meet him there and join the little party on the top. 2pm, Hugh said.

I left a little later than I’d planned and, never having climbed this ridge before, I figured I would try the route the handbooks recommended.

I went up the Coire na Tulaich – easier to say (by far) than it is to climb. It starts steep, gets steeper and by the end it feels like it’s almost vertical! But hey, I made it!

The clock was ticking down, though, and that climbing up the Coire was nothing more than access to the actual ridge itself. And the celebration peak that Hugh had chosen for the day was right out at the furthest end, a mere three peaks away! I mean, why could he not have gone for something closer for the celebration drinks?

Undaunted, though, I headed off along the ridge, an eerie sense of growing isolation as I didn’t see another soul. By 2pm I was still a good two peaks away and didn’t have a clue about how far I had to go. The rain was coming down, the mist was moving in, the forecast was for worse.

And here I was, alone. Alone, atop a ridge I’d never climbed before, soaked right through to well beneath my skin and unable now to see beyond perhaps a scary 30 feet, if that.

I had a choice. Press on and hope to find the designated peak and join the party late - and run the risk, of course, of maybe getting well and truly lost (a dodgy line to take when up on these impressive and most unforgiving mountains).

Or celebrate alone.

I opted for the latter course. I remembered what my Dad had from my youth been quick to stress – always give the mountains the respect that they deserve. I did.

I swallowed my pride - instead of my celebration dram. Discretion being the better part of valour and all that.

(That's Hugh and his son, by the way!)

Folly isn't faith. And though it's to the mountain peaks I'm called in following Christ, caution is as much a Christian grace as courage always is. Risk is always relative, I've learned: and it's not to be confused with any brazen recklessness.

Like Hugh, I'm a man who climbs mountains. Except, for me, it is in truth my life: it's what I'm called and paid to do. It's a long, hard slog to the top of the ridge and a long, hard slog to the peaks. I'm not allowed to settle for the low lands of the laissez-faire. I'm called to climb up high.

There are mountains to be climbed these days for those of us who follow Jesus Christ. And what I'm trying to do these days is struggle up these high, imposing corridors of change which take us to the ridges of renewal in the church's life.

It's way up there the action's taking place. It's wet, it's wild, it's dangerous. It's there the rains come down which feed the mighty rivers of the Holy Spirit's power. It's there the mists of God's mysterious glory start to swirl around our spirits 'til we almost lose our bearings in the grandeur of his majesty. It's way up there, I say, the action's taking place.

It's there we've got to be. And that means change. We've got to climb those Coires if we're going to hit the heights.

And I'm learning as the days go by it isn't simply courage that I need, but caution too. Courage in those steps of faith by which the choice is made to go for it, to countenance a way of being the church of Christ which seems to some too dangerous and hard: but caution in discerning that there comes a point where pressing proudly on may slowly, subtly change from being a faith that honours God to being a folly he disowns.

Respect, as my Dad (and some others!) would say.

Respect. But not fear. There's far too much at stake today to let ourselves be paralysed by fear. It's way up there the action's taking place and the parties on those high up peaks are more than worth the effort that's involved!

Even if I sometimes have to celebrate alone!

Going home

2006-09-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

I was in at the school again last week. In at the Royal High, speaking at a nine-o’clock assembly for the whole large crowd of third years in the school.

An unscheduled visit.

Unexpected deaths don’t stick to tidy schedules. A young lad just embarking on his third year at the school had died. Knocked off his bike as he did his early morning paper round.

A single, screeching second and the world turned upside down. For him, his Mum, his friends. For everyone involved. A day of desolation and despair.

So they asked me in to help his year group mourn. There are times when it’s far from easy being the chaplain to the school. What do you say at times like that? What can you do to help?

I figured that it’s maybe best to simply sit beside them in their grief: to share the screaming silence of their pain and their perplexity: to let my own tears fall and mingle with the steady, snuffling streams of broken-hearted weeping in the hall.

But that was not an option. Wheeled in with the figures of authority – the Rector and the year group Head – and stuck up on the stage. Some twenty feet at least away from any of the pupils in their serried ranks, a metre up above them – and that before I ever got to stand up on my feet and speak behind the safety and officialdom of microphone and desk.

It doesn’t take a genius in geometry to understand those measurements and angles of formality are hardly that conducive to a sympathetic sitting with these youngsters in their grief.

I spoke. That was why they’d asked me there. As if some words could somehow staunch the flow of grief that had been haemorrhaging from their hearts.

I didn’t mention Jesus even once. They didn’t need a lecture. They needed only love. I figured that it wasn’t any reference to him they’d need: just the experience. The sense of his presence, calming, caring, soothing, seething – sharing with them all the dreadful cauldron of emotions in their grief. Bringing help and hope.

That’s, I guess, the challenge in these days. ‘Jesus’ is for most of them no more than just a swear word at the soft end of their spectrum of profanities. To speak of him is easy – but abstruse. To bring him is the more demanding challenge – and the only thing that counts.

And then there was the funeral itself. Yesterday. How quickly all our dreams and all our futures turn to that word ‘yesterday’.

Again I wondered what on earth you say. How can you put in any words the truth we need to hear? What words can any mortal find, no matter how voluminous or fine, what words can any mortal find that help convey not truth so much as him who is himself the Truth?

I ended up by using words the boy himself had penned. A simple little story from his P3 days at school.

When frog was a tadpole he went for a walk to find spring; because he’d been told that spring was just around the corner.

He went to the woods – and did he find spring? No.

And so his simple saga carried on. He went here and there, all over the place: and every place he went, that simple, haunting question once again – did he find spring? No.

And then at last..

He went home. And what did he find? He found spring.

At home.

I said that like the tadpole in the story this boy wrote, it’s spring that all of us are looking for as well. And finding spring is really, as that P3 boy once wrote – finding spring is really coming home.

To help folk make that journey and to get them on that road – it’s that, I guess, I’m challenged now to do.

Harley Davidson's Mains ...

2006-08-31T13:08:00.000-07:00

Saturday 19th August 2006. Remember the date. A day we got some snapshots of the future.

Most snapshots recall the past. These revealed the future. Vivid, exciting, almost bizarre; some people even said ‘surreal’.

But the future. The shape of things to come. The colours and sounds of the way it’s going to be.

Some folk blinked and had to take a second look. Some folk had to pinch themselves. Some folk thought they must be dreaming.

And some folk maybe hoped that they were dreaming too! Because, please, I mean this was hardly what we’re used to here, not the way it’s always been.

I tell you, this was all a little bit confusing and a whole lot more disturbing for those tidy, blinkered minds that like the status quo.

Snapshots of the future. God’s future: the way it’s meant to be: the way it’s going to be. ‘You want to know just where I mean to take you as my church?’ the Lord enquires: ‘well, take a look at this!’

It was a ceilidh (I’ve got to ease you into this gently! And I know the very notion that the church might be a ceilidh is itself perhaps a stumbling block to some. But if it is – well, maybe you should simply shut your eyes and click the X and not read any more. It gets worse! Or better, depending who you are!)

It was a ceilidh we ran for the girls and the boys of the African Children’s Choir. Not just a stunning splash of colour, but a sometimes quite chaotic clash of cultures too: kilted Celts and eager, young, kaleidoscopic kids from far off lands, combining like the waters where two currents cross – a dancing mass of movement that was often one big mess!

Our jigs and reels may well be second nature at a gathering of the clans. But they haven’t much in common with your average tribal dance (except, of course, the rhythms of the music and the rolling, mirrored movements which ensue).

If you move your ceilidhs out beyond the confines of the clans .. well, it all gets rather messy. Enormous fun, a bag of laughs – but, let’s be clear, a mess!

Which is strange. Because it seems as if the God who brought such order to the thing we call the world is quite prepared, and even rather keen, himself to live with such a mess!

And it gets worse.

Or better – depending again how you feel about the picture of our future which God gives.

For the children arrived from the centre of town on the back of some big motorbikes.

Harley Davidson bikes: complete with their laid-back, stubbled riders, resplendent in their armour of the road. Loud, noisy bikes. The real thing.

Their engines revving and roaring, music thumping and pumping out sound: headlights blazing, horns sounding. I tell you, they arrived in some style!

A convoy of twenty or more, streaming down the Main Street of our quiet suburban life, then riding down the little, sloping lane towards the church. And tucked behind each leather-laden biker was a beaming, dark-skinned child.

And there they were, dismounted at last, these riders from a very different world, joking, smoking, all at home and quite at ease, the blackness of their leathers somehow blending with the darkness of the children’s skins to build a sort of bridge between two vastly different cultures which in any other place could simply not exist at all.

And the multi-coloured clothing of the children, in their turn, gently merging with the brightly coloured garments of their kilted Scottish hosts to weave a whole new tartan of their own.

A messy sort of shepherd’s pie of bikes and blokes and smiles and smoke and kilts and Celts and heather and leather and … well, you name it, it was all there.

A teeming mass of cultures, with a heady mix of very different gifts.

The bikers with their down-to-earth and hit-the-road-with-rubber style of goodness as they met some very basic needs and got these orphaned children on the road.

The locals with their warm and ready welcome, so hospitable and kind – with food and drink to satisfy the hunger and the thirst these people had and make it clear that what we see as being so much our spiritual home must always be, in every sense, an open house.

And the children with their stunning gift of song. They stood on the steps in the evening sun and smiled and sang. A blessing. They invoked in their song the blessing of God on the bikers who’d brought them thus far.

And these tough men, their leather kit bedecked with metal badges so suggestive of the hard and rocking culture whence they came, being touched and moved by music from a very different world that bathed them, head to foot, with sounds so soft and pure they’d melt the hardest heart.

No shuffling around of nervous feet. No knowing little glances to their pals. No hint of any yawning, bored disinterest. The bikers simply stood there. Silent. Transfixed. Gob-smacked.

Blessed.

A snapshot of the future. The way it’s meant to be.

Messy? Sure. For those who like things always neat and tidy this is not the place to be! But, if like God himself, you can revel in the mess this mix of cultures will involve – then stick around and strive to see these rich, prophetic snapshots being fulfilled! Join the party!

Did nothing, went nowhere

2006-08-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

We were chatting the other day about our respective summer holidays: unlike a Sunday sermon, my resume was short and to the point – I did nothing and went nowhere.

Four weeks of my life, summarised quite simply like that. Afterwards, when I thought of what I’d said, I started to worry.

I realised how easy it is to spend four weeks doing nothing: and, I have to say, how surprisingly enjoyable it actually is as well!

Then I started to figure that if, without any effort, you can spend four weeks of your life doing nothing and going nowhere, it may be just as easy to extend that out to four decades.

That’s a somewhat troubling line of thought! What have I been doing over the last four decades of my life? (For me, that’s since I started secondary education).

How would it feel to find you’ve spent the last forty years of your life effectively doing … well, nothing?

And where have I been going these last four decades? Just round and round in circles with the routines of a daily life I never really stop to think about at all? Just drifting in a dreamworld that I’ve filled with good intentions but have never made reality? Just running on the spot?

Scary, the ease with which a whole life might be frittered away. How easy and, worse still, how pleasantly enjoyable to do nothing and go nowhere!

But that, I’m starting to think, that seems to be the basic default setting on the hard-drive of my self-indulgent heart. Which is more than a little bit worrying!

Because it isn’t what I want at all. If life is one long ‘holy day’, I don’t want to reach its end and find my whole life summarised like that. I mean, what a fine one-liner that’ll be to have written on my tomb – He did nothing and went nowhere!

And yet, of course, while that briefly-stated summary of my four week summer break may be entirely accurate, it’s hardly the full story. I didn’t really do absolutely nothing.

It’s simply that the things I did don’t register at all on any sort of Richter scale of news: the little daily diary of my trivial pursuits can hardly have significance compared with all the headline-making players all around.

But yes, it wasn’t absolutely nothing that I did.

I married a son, for one thing: a son who might have died a year or two ago, but now is very much alive: and living his life with the girl whom he plainly adores.

Which meant a week or so of people, plans and partying ‘til all hours of the night. A healthy, fun reminder of the things that really matter in this life.

I pottered around in that patch of ground behind the house which, when I work hard on it, I sometimes feel I can rightly call a garden: a pleasant, restful sun-trap to relax in and enjoy. Conducive to reflection.

I read a good few books – and a few of them quite good as well! And the good ones took me places, as they do: secreting me away to other worlds, for days on end – shaping and then sharpening my perspective on this very factual world in which I live.

I climbed a mountain. Lochnagar. Strange to have a mountain called a loch! But the loch that gives the peak its name is quite a sight and the tumbling, white-streaked waterfall the other side was more than worth the sweat involved in getting there.

A sort of gentle training day for all that lies ahead. Mountain-sized adventures with some glories on the other side which, I have no doubt, I’ll really have to see to comprehend.

I even had a practice run of setting out, not knowing where it was that I would end.

A day beginning with worship in Perth, then on out into the highland hills, ambling, rambling through the glens – more drawn, I think in hindsight, than simply aimless drifting; drawn by some strange magnetism within, it seemed, until I found myself on Skye and the dark, compelling splendour of the jagged Cuillin mountain tops.

As if this was a taster for the lifestyle of such living which these coming days will bring. Going out to God knows where. Where the wind will take me. Reaching for and climbing up the hazard-laden heights of all those fresh horizons in my life.

I came back from there with a smile on my face and the dream of such living now pulsing afresh through all of my soul. Ready. Prepared. Eager for the action!

So it wasn’t really nothing that I did. And it wasn’t really nowhere that I went.

It’s just it sometimes seemed that way these last four weeks. And maybe that’s what these last four decades have been for me as well.

Simply getting me ready; making me prepared; giving me a hunger for the action which is now about to start.

Everybody's going surfing...?

2006-08-08T08:17:00.000-07:00

Newquay in August is the place to be – if you’re a surfer: or, I suppose, if you’re just up for a bit of fun. More than 200 surfers from all over the world descend on the place to take part in the championships there: and a whole load of others go along for the party as well!

Newquay isn’t Hawaii, of course – which is a big pity, in a lot of ways. But though the ‘tubes’ (a technical term – picture the massive wave curling over and, well, there’s your ‘tube’) are hardly what you’d find in its Pacific island counterpart, and are in fact mainly rather tame, there’s enough to offer surfing of a sort.

It’s really not a very complicated thing at all. To understand, I mean. It gets a little challenging when you try and do it yourself!

You hardly need to be a surfing buff to know that when the right wave comes, you’ve really got to take the plunge (in a manner of speaking – you’re already in the water, of course!) and ride it to the full. Good waves aren’t like Edinburgh buses that generally come in threes. Miss your wave and you could have a while to wait!

In other words, don’t miss your opportunities.

Even William Shakespeare understood that as a basic rule of thumb: and he was hardly into surfing (well, presumably not). The famous words he put into the mouth of Brutus (yes, the self-same Et tu, Brute? guy) in the play Julius Caesar make the point well (even if the language is a little flowery and long – and the context just a tad less kind and loving than we’d like) –

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Carpe Diem, as they used to say when Latin was the language people spoke (whenever that was!). Seize the day! Take your opportunities.

Who wants to live their life ‘in shallows and in miseries’ after all? I mean, do we really want to spend our days footering around in a safe and sad irrelevance? Why paddle in the knee-deep, frothy waves, already broken, as they trundle up the shore, when we could be further out and riding like a ruler of the seas out on the rolling, curving breaking of the ocean’s swell?

Surf the wave! Seize the day! Take your opportunities.

I’m sure that’s what the Lord is saying to us here in these auspicious days in which we live. God has been at work down through the years and year by year the swelling waves of his great Spirit’s work among us here have grown their own momentum as they’ve rolled right up the shoreline of our common life.

That tide of grace is reaching now its highest point, its flood. If ever we would launch out in pursuit of all that God would wish his church to be, if ever we would hoist the sails, embarking on adventure with the risen Christ and sharing in his shaping of the future of the world – then now’s the time.

These are days when the tide of God’s grace is at its flood. This is the day of opportunity: this is the year of grace: this is the wave to be riding.

So here’s a simple ‘surfer’s guide’ to what you need, if you would ‘seize the day’ and ride the waves and take the tide of grace when it is at its flood.

First, get yourself a wet-suit. Or a swimming costume of some sort. In other words, you’re going to have to get wet: you can’t do surfing without getting into the water. You must make a pretty basic choice. Are you just going to watch from the shoreline, as others step out and embark on adventure with God? Or are you going to get yourself into the water and be part of the adventure too? Get yourself a wet-suit. Be open to all that God is saying, all that God is purposing to do, all that God will give.

Second, cultivate vision. You need to be able to pick out in advance the wave that’s there to surf: to spot it coming maybe fifty or a hundred metres further out. You get the picture? We need to learn both to expect and then to recognise the voice and call of God: we need to learn to trace those subtle, rolling movements of the Spirit of the Lord and thus be in position when that wave is ripe to break – ready to ride when the wave arrives: ready to travel on the crest of the Spirit’s movement in our world: ready to go where God directs and journey where he takes us.

Third, be bold! There comes a point, obviously, when you’ve got to get onto your board. And, yes, there’s risk involved. The risk you’ve picked a wave that comes to nothing. The risk the wave will take you where you hadn’t planned to go. The risk you’ll lose your balance and go tumbling down the ‘tubes’. Sure, there’s risk involved. Embarrassment at failure, maybe bruises from the buffeting you’ll take. Jesus doesn’t call us to be masters on the seas of his adventure in this world: just learners. He calls us to follow and accepts there’ll be failure: that’s part of the learning curve: that’s part of the risk involved.There comes a point when we’ve got to get onto our board and ride with him the Spirit’s rolling waves. That point has come. That time is now. That wave is here.

Don’t let’s miss that opportunity!