The Long Walk Home

Here’s a top 5 list of things I want to write/think about soon. In no particular order.

1.Brokenness. The theme of our lives and yet we still act as though we are not broken, can do everything and more and get confused when we can’t. The sheer relief of knowing that all we need to be is broken. God is good at making beauty out of broken bits of clay.

2. The body of Christ. How does that work? Why aren’t we content in our role in the body? Why have we drifted so far into individualism that any sense of us not having to be everything for the people we meet has got lost along the way? What difference does being part of the body make?

3. The greatness of my friend John.

4. Playing in a band. Music is the soul of my being. The shiny new bongos I own.

5. Turns out I only have 4, ah well.

Any requests? It occurs to me, and has been revealed to me that a few people read this, so you secret readers, now is your time to comment. What should flow next from the mind of this cynical idealist? (and how pompus is that statement?)

Yes, I know, photo’s make for lazy updates. But sometimes the sky outside my room looks so pretty I want to share it with someone, so here you are. The sky last night from my room.

This week is slipping away, in a doing lots kind of a way, all good things but they leave little time for recording of deep thinking. However deep thinking will return after Friday when I get back from time away with my lovely Team. Until then. Tuesday night in our house is knitting night. And here’s a picture to prove it. We knit and drink red wine. I think it’s a perfect combination. And no, photos of me knitting are currently unavailable for publication.

Yesterday I went to the tate modern with a friend, we saw boxes. Lots of white Boxes

They were kind of interesting and you can find out more here
I’m not entirely sure what they were all about but there was something profound about walking around in a cartoonesque city with lots of impressions of boxes, expressing the space those boxes have taken up in our lives. The ghosts of what has been. The intrigue of what once might have dwelt in those spaces.

I was sitting in the 24/7 prayer room in Brighton today listening to the Vision (check it out here if you’ve never come across it). It’s an insanely passionate piece of writing and gets to me every time. Because the call is to be that passionate for God in this life. The call is to be that sold out for Jesus, to take utterly seriously the call that to live is Christ and to die is Gain. Check out Philippians 3 if you need more convincing. But the remembrance of that seems so elusive at times, the difference between all I want to be and the reality of who I am seems quite vast. The tug of a comfortable sofa is still strong.

But there is still hope. Because we have a creator who is utterly committed to not giving up on his creation. A creator who we can know. A maker who loves those he made. A maker who wants us to know for sure the height, depth and breadth of that love. A maker who is more committed to getting us out of our comfy sofas than we are. A maker who can really, actually, truely transform those who belong to Him. Who can humble our hard proud hearts, who knows the depths of the blackness in our hearts and still wants to look us in the eye and draw us into his presence. One who will hold us close on that final day, when we really become undone as we see how things really are, and one who will welcome us home.

I want to live for that day. I want to count all things as rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. I want to know Him better. I want to love him more. I want to live as though dead to this world and all the sparkly shiny things that draw my gaze away from the Light of the world. I want to drink from the water that never runs dry, I want to eat from the bread that fully satisfies. I want to be free of the stuff that holds me to this earth. I want to live here deeply and richly in the moment knowing that each moment here is echoing in eternity. I want to enjoy, embrace, delight in each beautiful moment of this amazingly rich life and I want to let that make me long for the place where each moment is deeper and more richer before.

But sometimes I don’t want all that. And in those times when the darkness seems closer than I care to notice, when the path seems more treacherous than ever, I manage to whisper, I want to want these things. Somewhere deep within there is a light that will never go out, no matter how much it flickers and gutters. And that’s the best light of all because it is not dependant on my desires and wants being in the right place, but in the one who has set His light in my soul. Who has given me a new spirit and a new heart. And who is gradually moving in, making his home in me. Until one day I get home.

Micah 7
“But as for me I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Saviour, my God will hear me.
Do not gloat over me my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light.”

Philippians 3
“But our citizenship is in Heaven”