NSB News

After Christmas

The Christmas decorations have come down. The last of the excess food has been eaten or otherwise disposed of. The house suddenly looks big and empty and all trace of the Christmas guests has disappeared.

It was all over so quickly.

So what was that all about?

Christmas is the big event of the winter. It gets the children excited, it pulls the family together, all the shops get decked out and even the streets are lit up for the occasion. But if it doesn’t make any lasting change, then it’s worthless.

Sometimes, the results of Christmas are good. We need those free days off after the slog through November and December. The rest does us good. The presents and the celebrations make us feel good about people. It enhances our relationships. Lots of children feel the benefit of Christmas generosity and many charities record a peak in giving at that time of year. We all need that sort of break/celebration to keep us going through the rest of the year.

Sometimes the results of Christmas do not feel so good. Divorce lawyers have learnt to expect record numbers of people asking to start divorce proceedings just after Christmas. Being cooped up with relatives for days on end can exacerbate the difficulties in family relationships, rather than help, if we’re not careful. Bank balances suffer as a result of the pressure to give ever bigger and better presents. (How anyone can find either the money or the incentive to visit the January sales is beyond my understanding!)

So was it good or bad for us? Are we any different now, in 2008, because of Christmas 2007? We might all have different answers to that question but we are certainly better off because the real Christmas happened. Jesus came. As we work through the months that follow Christmas, we follow His life. We see how He grew up, just like we do, in a family, in a normal town, with a trade to occupy His waking hours… and a love for us that is greater than we can understand.

It’s Jesus who really changes things. Christmas was worth celebrating for that reason and all the other things that went along with it were mostly good too.

And now?

Now we learn to live with Jesus. Let’s make this a year to grow and to discover more of Him.

Liz

Murder Mystery Evening

We had a wonderful fun-filled evening On Saturday, September 29th. We were presented with  'Murder Mystery' set in Count Gladyurher's castle in Transylvania. As you can imagine, the plot took all sorts of twists and turns and we were introduced to whole bunch of pretty unsavoury characters before the mystery was finally solved.

Here's what the cast looked like:

What Does God Look Like?

‘What does God look like?’

It was a reasonable question. We had asked the children to provide us with questions, questions that they genuinely wanted answered, questions that would tax the creaky adult brains. They rose to the occasion wonderfully and had us scratching our heads, searching for answers that made some sense.

They had us investigating the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. We tried to get our heads around how the world was made, where the dinosaurs fitted in and all that. They wanted to know all about Heaven. All too often, we had to admit that, whilst we might have some inkling of an answer, there was a lot more that we didn’t know than what we did know. They also wanted to know about God Himself.

That was reasonable. It was reasonable to ask and reasonable that they should expect us to know the answer. After all, many of the adults present in the room that day had spent years and years as Christians. Between us, we had notched up several centuries of faithful discipleship and adherence to the Christian faith. So we should know what we’re talking about – right? A reasonable assumption, but we realised that we didn’t know how to express even the most basic things about God.

So, what does He look like?

One person offered a picture of a man with brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes and a beard. (The beard seems to be important. When we were gathering up words to describe God earlier in the summer, one person offered the adjective ‘hairy’.) Another person offered the picture of Jesus: ‘If you want to know what God’s like, look at Jesus,’ was a much-repeated adage when I was young. Someone else remembered that God created people in His own image, so suggested that God was like us. What is the truth?

I guess that none of them was wrong. Jesus said, ‘If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.’ (John 14:9) Jesus would have been brown skinned, with brown hair and eyes and a beard. But was He really talking about the colour of His skin? I doubt it. I suspect that the question of what God looks like runs a lot deeper than just physical appearance. He could probably make Himself visible in any form He chose – as yet another person that day suggested – but His nature would remain the same. The important question, the real meaning of what the children wanted to know that Sunday, was ‘What is God like?’

The reality of the only answer that matters struck me later… with a shudder of fear. It’s true – God is like us. At least, God can only be understood by others as far as they see Him in us, which is not quite the same, I know, but the effect is the same. For all our centuries of Christian experience, it is reasonable for them to expect to find God within our lives. Even though the evidence for the nature of God is all around and therefore, as the Bible says, we are ‘without excuse’ (Romans 1:20) for our ignorance in this area, we really only take notice and we really only take it in, when we see the nature of God in other people. We want to see God living and breathing in human skin. We want to see people transformed by His power from confusion to peace, from bitterness to loving generosity. Then we’ll know what God is like.

So why did the children have to ask? Was it because they weren’t seeing God clearly enough in the adults around them that day? Are we failing to communicate the most important truths of life to the people who rely on us the most? My shudder felt reasonable to me that day.

Liz

of High Mountains and Dark Valleys

I can still feel the exhilaration. I felt as if I were standing on top of the world. I could look in all directions and see the world falling away from me until the horizon, so far away that it was faded by the slight mist in the atmosphere, merged gently into the sky.

I may have climbed only to the top of

Snowdon

but, as a child still, I had had to walk hard to get there and the view was worth it all. I have been on other heights since but none of them quite carried the excitement of that first great view of the world beneath my feet – a real mountain-top experience!

I’ve been in dark, dull valleys too, not all of them geographical. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that the mountain is still there. Such is human nature!

We’ve just celebrated Pentecost. That was definitely a mountain-top experience for all the first disciples who were involved in that wonderful day: the sound of a roaring wind that came, apparently, from nowhere; flaming tongues of what looked like fire, resting on each head; everyone getting excited enough to let God just take control of their tongues…

Then, only a little while later, they were feeling the heat of persecution and they must have been wondering what God was up to.

Why is life so unpredictable? Why can’t we just stay on an ‘even keel’?

I suspect that we would learn very little of God that way. If we always knew what to expect, we would soon get into the habit of leaning on our own understanding, doing what we did before and avoiding putting our trust in the all-powerful God. In fact, we that’s exactly what we try to do most of the time! Then, the unexpected things of life – especially the valleys that have a habit of appearing from behind hidden corners – pop up. They remind us that we are kidding ourselves – even in the good times – when we think that we don’t need God. We are human and that means that we need God: all the time!

A song came to my attention for the first time recently. It’s called ‘God on the Mountain’ and its chorus includes these words:

The God of the mountain

is still God in the valley…

And the God in the good times

is still God in the bad times.

The God of the day

is still God in the night.

We talk of faith when we’re up on the mountain,

but talk comes easy when life’s at its best;

but in the valley of trials and temptations,

that’s when faith is really put to the test.

I would add that the God of Pentecost is still God in the prison cell; and the God of Easter is the God who hung and died on Good Friday; the God who rejoices with us in our great family celebrations is still God at the funerals. He is God and that means that everything is in His hands. We don’t have to understand it to believe it – God’s in control and He’s the only One worth trusting.

Liz

A Weekend Away

I lay on a comfortable bed. The warm sunshine was streaming through the window above me. There was a sense of peace and quiet joy…

..but it was 5 o’clock in the morning and Archibold the head rooster was praising God as only roosters can.

Spending a weekend away with a large part of our church family is always a great privilege; being able to spend it in a beautiful part of God’s creation made it really special.

The Jonas Centre is situated in North Yorkshire, on the edge of a little village called Redmire and just a few miles away from

Aysgarth

Falls

. The hills roll away in all directions and the grass is startlingly green. The area seems to be run by the rabbits – hundreds of them. I even saw the unusual sight of a rabbit chasing off a stoat, so I guess even they have to recognise who is in charge there. The two donkeys are on permanent loan from the local donkey rescue service. They had been maltreated and now they are seeing out their days in peace and comfort. It was a joy to see them rolling in the dust and kicking up their hooves like a couple of exuberant teenagers.

More than that though, was the joy that came from seeing the children play together without squabbling. There was the honour of re-learning the joy of praising God without embarrassment – again, learnt from the children, as they enjoyed the actions to a song so much that we had to sing it all through again. We continued to praise God for the wonder of His creation. We thanked Him for putting us together and letting us get to know each other better.

We investigated the ‘Path to Inner Peace’ and discovered that we are God’s children and just knowing that gives us a security that leads to peace in a way that few other things can. We learnt that we have to be ready to obey our loving Father if we are truly to enjoy all His benefits. We started to understand how wonderful it is to really trust Him and to know His strength, carrying us through all that life tries to throw at us.

Then it was football on the field with rounders and skipping and juggling thrown in for a bonus. There were walks into the village, with the added attraction of afternoon tea and home-made cakes when we got there. There were goats to be fed and ducks to be laughed at. There was lasagne and sticky toffee pudding. And, at the end of the day, when the fresh air had sapped us of all but the barest amount of energy and even Archibold had fallen silent, there was a darkness that fell over the site. A darkness such as you never see in the town. We had to find our way back to our cabins and caravans without being able to see our feet nor the ground upon which they trod.

In that darkness there was a glory, a lesson in trust and a challenge to the spirit: to take hold of what we knew was there but couldn’t be seen. As the next morning dawned, the glory was evident again. It was Sunday and we were conscious that, as we worshipped, so the rest of the family was joining us in worship too, albeit that we were separated by the miles between Redmire and North Shields. Then there was lunch to be shared and goodbyes to be said and we vowed to go back again next year.

Thank you, everyone, for being part of the family –

Liz

Easter

Easter is such a special time!

Hot cross buns, daffodils, egg hunts, warm, sunny days, and lots of chocolate! Can it get any better than that? Well, yes. The best bits for me are always the times when we remember what Easter is really all about. I love the opportunities we have for working through the story. We don’t do this at any other time of the year; not even Christmas provides such a concentrated period of reflection.

From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, there are 8 days in which we can concentrate on 8 days of Jesus’ life. Both Sundays give very good reasons for us to join in the celebrations, so the whole period is introduced and concluded in praise – that’s surely how any period of time should be! But the two occasions are very different in character.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus was feted as the great King. We reflect that in our services but I suspect that we never quite get it right. When Jesus entered

Jerusalem

, the city erupted in a frenzy of excitement that we see today only when a pop star or top sports team come to town. Then He caused uproar in the temple courts, which I bet the crowd loved.

On Easter Sunday, the celebrations were much more muted. The news of Jesus’ resurrection leaked out to ones and twos and they found it hard to believe. As each one became convinced that Jesus really was alive, they hurried to tell someone else. Again, I suspect that our celebrations fail to quite catch that mood. We make it a day of the highest praise. The gradual discovery of the truth can’t work, because we already know. That’s not a problem but it’s a pity that we also miss the mark on the other aspect of Easter Sunday – we don’t hurry to tell others.

In between those two Sundays are the most difficult days of Jesus’ life for us to recall and celebrate. There are many Christians who find that they cannot attend Good Friday celebrations because it’s too upsetting. There are many who prefer not to concentrate on the scene in the

Garden

of

Gethsemane

when Jesus struggled with the reality of his death, looming in front of Him. But these are also wonderful days. These are days of victory, when Jesus fought and won. They are difficult times to remember but we know the end of the story and that makes all the difference.

The great American preacher, teacher and theologian, Tony Campolo once preached a sermon in his home church about Good Friday. Every time he described some awful aspect of the day he would say, ‘It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!’ By the end of his sermon, whenever he said, ‘It’s Friday..’ the congregation would shout back, ‘But Sunday’s coming!’

That’s why we can call Friday ‘Good’ – we know that Sunday’s coming. Just as all that difficult week was bordered around with praise and celebration, so should our lives be – we are Sunday people, not Friday people, because we know how the story unfolds.

Easter bonnets, daffodils, chocolate eggs…? Bring them on! Let’s celebrate!

Liz

Unexpected Visitors

Imagine a small house – a little starter two-up two-down. Imagine the little family that lives there – Dad, Mum, baby, maybe another one on the way (it’s hard to tell just yet). It’s all very ordinary. The furniture is basic and cheap – a lot of it home-made, which isn’t surprising really because Dad’s pretty clever with his hands.

He’s out – he’s got work with his uncle round the corner, filling in as a general handyman and builder. She’s home, seeing to the baby. It’s late afternoon and the first stars are just beginning to appear. He’ll soon be back.

There’s a knock at the door – an older man, not frail, dressed simply but in a foreign manner, Persian perhaps, not Roman, that’s for sure.

‘Greetings, Lady. My master politely wishes to enquire as to when your child was born.’

A strange request expressed in a strange accent, but nicely said. She put her head around the door and looked for the ‘master’. She saw a small group of men, mostly of middle age, well dressed, foreign, some sitting, some standing, they were beginning to cause a stir in the narrow streets.

Looking Back

I was taken by surprise. I’m used to being greeted with, ‘So, how long have you been here now?’ or ‘Have you been doing this long?’ or similar. This man wanted to go further back.

I was in the hospital and I had gone to visit a patient soon after admission. His first words to me were: ‘Ah, the minister has come to see me! How long have you been in the faith?’ It made me stop in my tracks. I had to do some quick calculations before I answered, ‘forty five years.’ He chuckled, ‘I beat you! I’m not telling you my age,’ he said, ‘but I was a child when I met Jesus and it was more than forty five years ago.’

We had a wonderful conversation after that and it left me marvelling at the goodness of God.

It was just over forty five years ago, when I took an extended walk in our garden. (I was small at the time and garden seemed to be very large.) I was thinking. I had gone to church since before I could remember; attended Sunday School since I was (just) big enough to climb the stairs to the room where the Beginners met; absorbed Bible stories and other godly truths from my mother’s knee as I learnt to talk. Now I was thinking – was it really true? After sitting in the garden at length, I moved into my room. This required a quiet space.

Did God make everything? Someone had to make it, I reasoned. After all, it was clear that the universe was on a degenerative path and that one day it would end. If there is to be an end, there must have been a beginning and something or someone must have caused that beginning. Furthermore, at the beginning of all things, there must have been someone or something that was eternal, that had no beginning and therefore no end. So went my childhood reasoning. There may have been another explanation but I couldn’t think of one right then and the idea of a creator God made sense.

Furthermore, it was clear that all was not well in the world. If God had taken all that trouble to make this world, I guessed, He would at least care about how we were getting on. That He would send Jesus to make things right again also made sense: that’s the sort of thing a caring, loving God who wanted us to love Him, would do.

After that, I realised I had to make a decision. If all that was true, I couldn’t just acknowledge it and do nothing. The only sensible course of action was to ask Jesus to take my life. So I went downstairs and spoke to my mother, saying that I had decided to become a Christian. She was peeling potatoes in the kitchen. We spoke together and agreed that we should pray there and then. So we knelt on the kitchen floor, by the bowl full of potato peelings, and I asked Jesus to be my Saviour.

I met with Jesus that day. I knew He would be with me always. Living with Jesus was just the way things were after that. I learnt to love the Bible. I got involved in every area of church life. I got my school friends involved too. I experienced God’s power in my life. When I had been married a couple of years, He healed me and brought me back from the brink of death.

So I can barely imagine what He would have felt (betrayed, misunderstood, rejected?) when I started to doubt His very existence. It was the maths that brought me back: that’s a long story that involves a fair amount of arrogance and stupidity on my part and a lot of patience and cleverness on the Lord’s part. It demonstrates that He can use anything to reach out to us.

In all that time, He hasn’t let me down. So, as I approached that’s patient’s bedside, forty five years of God’s faithfulness, mixed in with forty five years of my doubts, worries, failings and stumblings towards faith, flashed before my eyes. Even though that man is far from well, we both agreed that God is good, that the journey is worth it and whatever He has planned for us next, we want it.

Next time I raise a communion glass, my private toast will be, ‘To the next forty five years!’

Liz

Sheep, Shearing and Shepherds

Maisie stood where she had stood all morning – at the south west corner of the field, where the rise in the ground enabled her to watch the people who passed by in the street below.

            ‘You look deep in thought,’ said Daisy, as she ambled up to her friend. The two of them stood together on the rise in the ground, just watching the people below. Daisy knew that that she only had to wait. They may be slow in coming sometimes but Maisie could astound her with her pearls of wisdom.

            ‘They’re all so heavy!’ Maisie said, at last.

Daisy had to agree that many of the people they had been watching were a little overweight but she didn’t think that was really what Maisie was talking about. She waited a little longer and then when it seemed that nothing else was going to be offered, she decided to push the conversation along a bit.

            ‘We’re all a bit heavy,’ she volunteered, ‘It’s that time of year. I’ll be glad to get this winter coat off and feel the sun on my back again. That’s probably all it is.’

            ‘No, no, I don’t mean that.’ Maisie was getting animated now and Daisy could see that all the results of the morning’s thinking would tumble out now without any need for her to do more than concentrate hard and not miss anything important. ‘Some of them are wearing coats but that’s just to keep out the cold. They don’t have to wear their woollies if they don’t want to – they’re different to us, you see. I mean they’re dragging themselves along as if they were all carrying lots of heavy bags.’

            ‘Baa, baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!’ Daisy forgot her resolve to stay quiet and concentrate for a moment but Maisie’s withering look stopped her before she could launch into the second verse.

            ‘They’re not sheep – more’s the pity!’

            ‘Sorry. You were saying?’

            ‘You can’t see the bags but you can see it in the way they walk. Something’s dragging them down – like they’re heavy. I’ve been trying to work it out and I think I’ve got it: I think they must have lost their shepherd.’

            ‘That doesn’t make sense. Everyone has a shepherd.’

            ‘I don’t think they do. Look, stand here and watch for a minute.’

They watched. The people continued to haul themselves up and down the road. They certainly looked weighed down. They looked like they didn’t know why they were there either: as if they had no-one to give them direction, no-one to carry their loads for them and no-one to tell them where to find the best water and the sweetest pasture. Maisie was right. There was no shepherd.

            ‘I think he’s carrying his mother’s bags,’ said Daisy, all of a sudden, as she stared at a rather stressed young man in a stiff, grey suit.

            ‘I think she’s carrying the same bags she’s had since she was very little,’ added Maisie, her eyes brimming with tears as she saw the sorrow and the sense of failure weighing down the bags of a dowdy middle-aged woman on the far side of the road. The bags were as good as visible now to the two friends, as they stood on the rise in the corner of the field, and their comments flowed thick and fast.

            ‘She’s dragging all that shame and it doesn’t even belong to her!’

            ‘He’s ready to crumble underneath all that guilt – it’s just one secret on top of another!’

            ‘Why do you think they want to carry all that stuff?’

In the distance, they heard a shrill whistle.

‘Time to move on!’ they both said together. Side by side, they trotted over to the far side of the field, joining the other sheep in the flock, as the shepherd got them all together ready for the move into the next pasture.

Maisie and Daisy took a good look at the shepherd, as he walked on steadily beside them. He knew where he was going and all they had to do was to go where he went. He gave them their food and their drink and he looked after them when they were feeling weak. Why didn’t the people have a shepherd?

Then they approached another road and they saw some other people. Daisy and Maisie stopped in their tracks. Here were some people who had a shepherd – they must have! They had no heavy bags; they knew where they were going; they helped each other and they looked as if they were being helped along by someone else.

‘Look, you were wrong,’ said Daisy. ‘They have got a shepherd. I guess the others just haven’t been sheared yet!’

And with the puzzle solved, the two wise old ewes put all curiosity about those silly human beings aside and set their minds to the really important task of finding the thickest, juciest clover in the new pasture.

Psalm 23

On Holiday

There are certain advantages to growing older. One of those advantages is that one’s children also grow older! That means that there comes a time when parents can go on holiday at a time that suits them, rather than when the school holidays are in full swing. We are enjoying that season of our life now.

Consequently, Sean and I decided that, this year, we would go away for our main holiday in May. The plans are that we will dip into parts of both Canada and the USA. In particular, we’ll start by spending some days around Niagara, especially on the Canadian side. I’m looking forward to that. I’ve never seen a waterfall of anything like the size and power of Niagara. I love watching water anyway but this is not just another bit of water –  I expect to be impressed!

After that, we’ll have a few miles to drive, in order to spend time in Georgia. There, Sean has business to do and we have friends to catch up with. May in the Deep South can be hot and humid but it can be beautiful also, with the trees heavy with broad, deep green leaves and the mocking birds playing in the grass.

After that, there’ll be more driving and a few days in Washington to see sights of a more man-made nature. I’m not too sure what to expect there. Will we be impressed? Probably not as much as when the roaring waters of Niagara are drowning out every other sensation. Will we appreciate the beauty of the memorials and the other set pieces of architecture? Probably not as much as when we spy a graceful squirrel running up and down the trunk of one of those huge magnolia trees.

However hard humanity tries, there is no way we can ever match God’s creation. God’s artistic portfolio is not only larger, grander and more extensive than all that human efforts have ever produced. It is also more detailed, more varied and more imaginative than any body of work that we could ever create.

God has made us in his image. We share His pleasure in the act of creation, every time we create a piece of writing, a knitted item, a tasty meal, a musical composition, or even a well constructed shelf. Just being able to make something gives us pleasure, because it gives God pleasure. It is also very satisfying to fix or solve something. Look at the collective hours we spend completing crossword puzzles or trying to tweak the computer/car/musical instrument into peak effectiveness. We watch a ‘who-dunnit’ for the pleasure of trying to solve the mystery before it is all revealed. We dream about being the one who will find the cure for cancer/AIDS/malaria. God made us in His image.

We love to create and we love to fix what is broken. God is the ultimate Creator and He is also the ultimate Fixer – the theological word is ‘Saviour’.

I’m looking forward to some time away. It will be a holiday from all the routine things that normally rule life. It will be a holiday from responsibility. It won’t be a holiday from God. In fact, I rather think that He may be more evident than usual because sometimes we need to stand back from the trivia of normality to see the glory that underpins everything.

I’m looking forward to being back in time for Pentecost – see you then!

Liz