The Long Walk Home

Good to hear the sound of a man having lots of fun with a cool band and singing the songs of a folk genius. It must be great to get to this point in your career and be so at ease with your audience and music loves that you can get away with having lots of fun with something you are passionate about. Whatever your expectations of the Boss man, blow them away, he still has the best voice, sings the songs of the oppressed and carries off the old American folk tradition in style.

Amidst the sorrows of the way
Lord Jesus, teach my soul to pray
Let me taste Thy special grace
And run to Christ, my hiding place

You know the vileness of my heart
So prone to act the rebel’s part
And when You veil Your lovely face
How can I find a hiding place

How unstable is my heart
Sometimes I take the tempter’s part
And slight the tokens of Thy grace
And seem to want no hiding place

Lord, guide my wandering feet
Draw me to Thy mercy seat
I’ve nought to trust but sovereign grace
Thou only art my hiding place

Hiding place, hiding place

Things I thought, and things others thought, whilst in the Yorkshire Dales:
1) Whenever God compares us to stuff in the Bible he uses really weak frail images. We are like sheep, who are very stupid as we discovered as we tramped through many fields of the silly creatures. We are like grass, which is small and fragile and frankly withers away. We are dust. Puff and we’re gone. Sensing the theme? When God compares himself to stuff, so our little brains can grasp a little corner of what he is like, He gets to be solid BIG things. Rocks, mountains, a shepherd a refuge, a fortress, a green pine tree (prizes if you can find that in the Bible, it is there.) All images of strength and permanence. You’d think he was trying to tell us something eh.
2) Apparently I’m really easy to insult (this was explained to me as a very good thing and may explain the comments that follow), have a weird nose and an arrogant walk (quite pleased with that one as I’ve never ever been called arrogant before).
3) Meandering around the dales for a week with 3 other friends, climbing over dry stone walls, walking through fields of sheep and sitting on hillocks eating sandwiches makes you feel like you are in an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, a not unpleasant feeling. (unlike watching an episode of…)
4) It’s not possible to go to Wenselydale without saying at regular intervals, “More cheese Gromit”, in a fake Northern accent.
5) Visiting a local fish and chip van that arrives at the village green every Thursday night at 8.30pm is lots of fun, and slightly surreal.
6) Asking for a cappuccino in a Yorkshire pub is probably a bit stupid. (see no 1 again)
7) Laughing until you hurt is a good way to spend a week.
8) Neighbours is SO much better now Susan has returned. But Karl is a little bit too needy and desperate.
9) Grace is really the only thing that will get us home. And oh do I need it. I am very sinful. Thankfully where sin increases, grace increases too.
10)If for this life only we have hope we are to be pited… A lot. This living God’s way is really dumb if it’s only for this life. After all why shouldn’t I do what I want to do right now? But that’s not the point. There is a maker, there is a book that describes who we are and why we are here. And heaven is real. Something I must repeat twice daily so it sinks into my small brain (see no 1 again)

After three weeks of being unaware of the day or time I return to the world of time, routine, a place where I live permanently and a underused bed. I’ve been in the Yorkshire Dales, Cambridge, London, Guildford, Brighton, London and back to Brighton again in 48 hours (I did stay in the Dales for a week before leaving, I’m not that insane… really). It’s a feeling akin to jet lag as I adjust to the land of Hove Actually. Boring details aside, thoughts, musings on life and amusing pictures will follow soon. As, no doubt, will work, life, church, knitting and all the rest of the stuff that makes up normal life. Enough, I’m going to enjoy bed and the last day of holiday on the other side of some good sleep. I’ll leave you with this thought from the Dales.

Dead men don’t come back to life. Or do they? Sunday has come. The tomb is empty. The world has been changed forever. “Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered.” This is reality. If this did not happen, if only for this life we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied more than everyone. But Christ has indeed risen. Blazing the trail into eternity ahead of us. Meaning that we have hope, we have eternal life, we have power to live right now.

One day we who hope in Christ will meet him face to face. The whole world has been changed and transformed. This is our story, this is our song. Go, live it out, live and breath in the reality of the risen Christ. go and sing out to the world around for which He died. Go dance for joy for once you were lost but now you have been found, once you were dead but now you have been made alive. Dance, sing, exult, jump up and down because the dawn has come.