DISCIPLINED READING

I am currently reading “The Great Omission” by Dallas Willard, as part of my morning devotions.

Willard’s “thing” is discipleship and the spiritual disciplines, and he has become an important influence upon many believers who are searching for something deeper than just “doing church”.

The spiritual disciplines include such things as prayer, fasting (which in our culture should also include “technology fasting”, e.g., turning off the mobile and not blogging!), Sabbath keeping, solitude and generosity.

And, of course, reading is also a spiritual discipline. One of Rick Warren’s stock phrases is, “Leaders are readers!” I know people in leadership positions who do not read, but the lack of this discipline shows itself just as an absence of the other disciplines will always leave us exposed at some point.

Without discipline we inevitably end up shallow, and shallowness is opposed to grace.

Willard writes: “Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort. And it is well-directed, decisive, and sustained effort that is the key to the keys of the Kingdom and to the life of restful power in ministry and life that those keys open to us.”

BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS PART 2

To a previous entry on writing Ant commented: “What other authors would you endorse due to not only their substance, but their style as well? And as a fellow good newfrontiers boy, would I be accurate in assuming Charles Haddon Spurgeon may be included in this list!?”

The really good writers are really good readers, which often means that the best writers are internal processors rather than big-platform conference speakers. I actually think it is very difficult to be both an outstanding speaker/preacher and a great author. Words work differently written down than they do spoken. For example, John Piper is an excellent author, but sometimes his rhetorical flourishes which work so well in his preaching don’t quite come off on the page. To my shame I am not as familiar with Spurgeon as I should be but I think the same applies to him. Spurgeon is at his best when he is funny, which he often is!

Conversely, one author I really enjoy is Eugene Peterson. Peterson is of course best known for his “Message” translation of the bible, but he has authored many books and generally these are fantastic. I often read him as part of my morning devotions as I find his writing very grounding as well as beautiful – therapeutic really. I have been reading “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places” with two friends, and it is simply brilliant, soul-nourishing stuff. But a friend who took an audio correspondence course with Peterson said his lectures were pretty turgid.

So I’d rather listen to Piper and read Peterson.

Yancey is another very literate writer, like Peterson. Both are big Dostoevsky fans.

Of course, if a writer writes beautifully it is possible to be beguiled by their writing and not necessarily alert to their theology. This is almost as much of a problem as not being able to read good theology because it is written in too ugly a fashion! I sometimes think this is the case with NT Wright. His writing is so skilful – and his arguments so dense – that often it is difficult to stand back from it and work out exactly what ones response to it should be.

There are currently some young American authors writing very beautifully on spiritual matters. Lauren Winner’s “Real Sex” is superb, and Don Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz” is one of the best written books I have ever read.

For those authors who do not write in English it is not only the genius of the author that counts but the brilliance of the translator. Augustine’s “Confessions” as translated by Henry Chadwick is a book every Christian should read.

Finally, it is not only “Christian” books that I endorse. I would far rather read a good “secular” book than a bad “Christian” one – and tend not to think in terms of “Christian” and “secular” anyway. For example, I have just finished “Utopian Dreams” by Tobias Jones, and would commend it to anyone – believer or not.

ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET?

Lots of people keep asking if Grace and I know where we are moving to. At the moment the answer is still "not quite", but all the people we need to speak to are back from holiday this week, so we should be able to start moving things along.

As soon as things are clearer I will give an update on this blog.

Your prayers are appreciated!

SALES RESISTANCE

"I work very hard, but never have any money. Every choice I make seems stupid as soon as I’ve made it. I have a chronic case of consumer melancholia: objects which, when they’re on the shelf, promise to remedy problems of self-worth turn out to be, well, just objects. I spend hundreds of pounds a year on books I never read, on clothes I never wear. I’ve spent years believing that retail is the way out of existential angst. I make wrong choices, stupid purchases, but at least there’s always another purchase around the corner to remedy everything (for a price). That’s what I love about retail: its so forgiving. It always lets me back. I haven’t yet worked out why, if there’s so much choice, we’re all wearing the same logos, all bringing home the same Ikea lampshades. The pushchair (now called an ‘integrated transport system’) my nephew in Parma uses is exactly the same as the one I bought in Bristol. We delight in diversity, whilst actually becoming production-line consumers."

From "Utopian Dreams" by Tobias Jones

"We live in a time when technologies and ideas (often the same thing) are adopted in response not to need but to advertising, salesmanship, and fashion. Salesmen and saleswomen now hover about us as persistently as angels, intent on “doing us good” according to instructions set forth by persons educated at great public expense in the arts of greed and prevarication. These salespeople are now with most of us, apparently, even in our dreams."

From "Sex, Economy, Freedom & Liberty" by Wendell Berry

BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS

It is one of my personal bug-bears that theology should be beautifully written, as well as expressing beautiful concepts. The sheer ugliness of much contemporary ‘Christian’ writing – especially, it has to be said, much evangelical writing – is deeply off-putting. My favourite authors are able not only to make me think, but to enjoy the process of thinking.

Over the past couple of days I have been reading “The Holy Spirit in the Life of Jesus” by Raniero Cantalamassa. Cantalamassa was the papal preacher to Pope John Paul II’s pontifical household, and so not from the church tradition from which I would normally drink. But he writes beautifully, and profoundly. I enjoyed the imagery of this sentence:

"As the rain, in its season, falls abundantly from the sky, collecting in the rocky recesses of the mountains until it finds an outlet and becomes a spring gushing continuously night and day, summer and winter, so the Spirit that came down and collected entirely in Jesus during his earthly life, on the cross found an outlet, a wound, and became a fountain gushing to eternal life in the Church."

REFLECTIONS

Yesterday I asked my mother whether she was on Facebook. Her response was curt – "No! Its terribly narcissistic, like people writing blogs!"

"I have a blog."

"I know!"

That’s me told then...

Anyway, that got me thinking. It has often occurred to me that one of the profound differences between our generation and any previous one is the amount of time that we spend staring at our faces. Every home has several mirrors, with a quality of reflection that would have been simply unattainable until modern industrial processes. And as well as purpose-designed mirrors we are surrounded by reflective surfaces that didn’t exist 50 or 100 years ago – everything from windows to mobile phone screens. And then there is digital photography. Built into my computer (MacBook!) is a camera so – if I wished – I could be truly narcissistic and stare at an onscreen image of myself while blogging.

This familiarity with our own faces must have a profound impact upon how we view everything else in the world. How different would it be to live in an age when the only way we could see our face was reflected in water – like Narcissus himself – or in a piece of polished brass?

Knowing what we look like doesn’t seem to have made us any happier, just increasingly obsessed with image.

The Apostle James tells us: “Anyone who listens to the word and does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”

There is not much chance today that we will forget what we look like – we are reminded every step of the way. It is much easier to listen but not do.

James goes on: “But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.”

Which to me could be paraphrased: “Better to be a disciple than a Narcissus – even if you do blog.”

RUNNING INTO TREES 3

A couple of years back, in our church magazine, we published an interview with Margaret Raisey, one of our older members. I was looking through some old stuff the other day and came across the interview again. It is worth reproducing here as an example of someone who has for decades safely navigated her way through the trees:

Margaret was born in Edinburgh in 1924 into a loving Christian home, the eldest of three daughters, and became a Christian herself at a Girl Guides camp in the Borders when she was 17. Sadly both parents died a few years later. Her first visit to England was not until 1947 when she attended a conference about the Rwandan Revival at Matlock, and it was at this time that Margaret was baptised in the Spirit.

As England was obviously a place to discover good things Margaret came on holiday to London later in 1947 and while there found out about another conference taking place at Hildenborough Hall. At this conference Margaret met a young student from London Bible College, Ernest Raisey, who decided there and then that Margaret was the girl he was going to marry! Nine months later Ernest visited Margaret in Edinburgh to propose and they married in 1950. As Ernest was in London and Margaret was training as a nurse in Edinburgh the couple were only able to meet five times in those three years. Each week Margaret made a three minute phone call to Ernest, which was all that she could afford – no text messaging in those days!

Margaret and Ernest both had a desire to become missionaries in China but God led them along a different path and in 1962 Ernest became pastor of Elmstead Lane Baptist Church. Ernest knew God’s blessing upon his ministry and the church grew and many people were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Tragically, in 1972 Ernest died of a heart attack, leaving Margaret with two sons and three daughters (the youngest only four-years-old), no house and no money – but “just the Lord”. We read in Isaiah that the Lord looks after the widow and fatherless and a fund was started in Ernest’s name into which money poured from home and abroad. Within eighteen months Margaret was able to buy outright a lovely four bedroom house near the church building. Every time there was a bill to pay Margaret found that God would supply the money she needed.

In 1986 Margaret moved to Worthing and was invited to go to Hong Kong to smuggle bibles into China. This she did in 1989, at last fulfilling something of the dream she and Ernest had shared all those years before. However, when Margaret flew back from Shanghai to Hong Kong she was greeted with the terrible news that her oldest son Grant had died of a heart attack after playing a game of rugby. This was a dreadful blow for Margaret, but she says that every sadness she has known has drawn her closer to the Lord. In 1996 Margaret moved to Chislehurst in order to be nearer the family, and she now has sixteen grandchildren!

One of Margaret’s favourite expressions is “knee drill” and many of us have known the results of her faithful prayer. Years ago Ernest saw a picture of “fires of revival” over the houses of Chislehurst and the Mottingham estate. Margaret has always kept this picture in her heart. For over forty years this has been Margaret’s prayer and longing, and it motivates her still.

RUNNING INTO TREES 2

I read this proverb today:

“A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.” (Proverbs 22:3)

Don’t run into trees!

But that doesn’t mean stop running.

A few verses later it says:

“The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside!’ or, ‘I will be murdered in the streets!’” (Proverbs 22:13)

If there really is a lion, don’t run into its jaws, but don’t make up lame excuses for doing nothing.

There has to be a balance between courage and discretion which cancels out stupidity and laziness. Getting that balance right isn't as straightforward as you might think...

RUNNING INTO TREES

Yesterday afternoon I was out on my normal run route, and ran into a tree. This isn’t a normal part of my normal run, but some abnormal wind had blown a tree over a path and I didn’t duck low enough to avoid a branch.

This seemed to me to be something of a metaphor for life.

Normally we jog along our normal routes, at our normal pace and normal things happen. But every so often we find ourselves running into a tree that isn’t normally there.

Running into trees is painful.

Pain is designed to teach us, and, if we are wise, next time we will keep our eyes open and duck or swerve or step-over the tree that lies in our path. Most of all, we won’t let the trees stop us from going where we are meant to be going.

I think this is part of what Jesus meant when he said “No-one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Looking back is a sure way to hit some trees…