I’m following the Lenten Pilgrimage – Journey to Jerusalem wiith Christian Aid during Lent. Hope it will inspire me.
I found an interesting page about Advent here
The Season of Advent – Anticipation and Hope
The last part of the page is a reflection on Advent and I liked it. It talks about the coming of Jesus bringing hope, and that it’s not “just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of pain and suffering”, but is “more about hope that human existence has meaning and possibility beyond our present experiences, a hope that the limits of our lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be.”
Read the whole article, by Dennis Bratcher here
My faith in God is unshakable it seems, but as for the rest of Christianity, I am just not so sure. I start to doubt if I am actually a Christian at all. I am confused. So what do I believe in, what is real to me?
God – my Papa. Ever since reading The Shack, I have called him/her Papa. It seems like a better name. God is a distant sounding name. Papa is a loving, familiar kind of name. I talk to Papa, mostly in my head, not out loud. I talk to him often. I like to talk to him when I settle down in bed for the night. I talk to him while rubbing the back of my children as I do our regular bed time routine – I ask him to bless them and keep them through the night. Papa is as real to me as anything. When I talk about him, however, I feel a little silly calling him Papa, so I’ll call him God for the rest of this! When big theological questions arise I get stuck though … why does suffering happen? why doesn’t God stop bad things from happening? why doesn’t he protect people? why does one person have a seemingly miraculous recovery from terrible illness, and the next person, just as “good”, dies a lingering painful death? Strangely though, despite not knowing the answers to these questions, I do not doubt God. But it does upset me that I can’t answer – I can’t help anyone’s pain by explaining it. I know God loves me, and loves each and every person. I also know death is part of life – no one can live forever – that’s just the way it is. So inevitably we will all die, in one way or another, so we can’t expect God to protect us from that, no matter how perfectly he loves us. And also, this life is not all there is, so death is not the end … I guess that is actually a new point in this list of beliefs …
So, a new paragraph! Death is not the end. I believe this. I don’t have a clue what happens after you die on earth though! One idea I have is that as you die you become some kind of spirit without body and become part of the universe somehow. Maybe you’re not consciously you any more, but you become part of what life is meant to be in a joyous, wonderful being, with God, and with everyone else.
Then we get on to difficult things now I have mentioned death. What about heaven and hell and all that … does God punish those who have done wrong in life by separating them? I don’t know. I don’t like the thought of it. None of us are perfect, so where do you draw the line between people who are mostly good and get to go to heaven, and those who are mostly bad and aren’t allowed in? would God really do that? Wouldn’t he see the grain of goodness in the most evil person, smaller than a speck of dust? Wouldn’t he see how their life has made them the way they are? Wouldn’t he love that person, flawed as they are, just as much as he loves me? So if I am saying I don’t believe in heaven and hell, where does that leave the mother who’s child has been brutally murdered … perhaps her comfort is that God will punish the person who did it, even if they get no punishment on earth? And maybe people would say what is the point of trying to be good if people who are bad get treated just the same as good? Where’s the justice in that?
So this draws us to the part where we bring Jesus into it. We have this whole question of do you need Jesus to get to God? Is Jesus the only way or just one of the ways? I feel like a terrible heretic for voicing these thoughts. Someone will come along and smite me just for thinking it. If you believe in heaven and hell, then it follows that we are all going to hell, as we all do wrong. In the traditional Christian message as I have heard many times, Jesus is the key. Without him we are all going to hell, but if we believe in him we won’t. But this makes me think – but Papa loves each and every one of us, with all our flaws – would he really reject us for not believing in Jesus? What about all the people of other religions who are faithful to their God and have the same basic values of loving eachother and loving God? Couldn’t their God and my God be the same? Who are we to say what God is or isn’t? I’m not saying I don’t believe in Jesus – I do – I believe he is God and human and he was sent to save us … but the method of saving is what I am not sure about. I’m not sure he came just to die – I think it was more about showing us how to live. I get all in a muddle now as I recall bible verses learnt as a child – “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (that is just my memory of the verse – it may not be exactly right). So is he saying he is the only way? Am I all wrong? If he is the only way, what about people who haven’t heard about it? What about people who think it just sounds a bit far-fetched and don’t listen? They aren’t deliberately rejecting it, but it just doesn’t reach into their souls. Would a loving God really reject them and doom them to eternal damnation!?
I’ll have to stop there, but may continue later … and I will now ponder on whether to hit publish or just keep this private!
I delved into my bible last night … and here is what I noted down:
Psalm 130:5
I pray to God—my life a prayer—
and wait for what he’ll say and do.
Jude 1:2
Relax, everything’s going to be all right; rest, everything’s coming together; open your hearts, love is on the way!
1 John 3:11, 16-17 4:7-12, 20-21
For this is the original message we heard: We should love each other.
This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
1 Peter 4:8-11
Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help.
Hebrews 13:1-2
Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them.
Matthew 25:42-43,45
I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.
I am reading a book by Jennifer Rees Larcombe. It’s called “Journey into God’s Heart – the true story of a life of faith“. It’s made me think about how much I am listening … and I don’t think I am. Not enough anyway. To God I mean. I talk away to him, all day, and when I am lying in bed, I snuggle down and talk to him about my day, about my concerns … mine mine mine. What about listening to what he wants to say to me? I really do want to hear … but I’m not sure how. Perhaps I should get my bible out a bit more often.
What is the point?
What is the point of me?
Why am I here?
What am I supposed to be doing?
Does anything I do actually matter anyway?
Do I achieve anything that matters?
What difference can I make?
Why bother even trying?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Psalm 8
3-4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?
Ecclesiastes 1:3-11
What’s there to show for a lifetime of work,
a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone?
One generation goes its way, the next one arrives,
but nothing changes—it’s business as usual for old planet earth.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down,
then does it again, and again—the same old round.
The wind blows south, the wind blows north.
Around and around and around it blows,
blowing this way, then that—the whirling, erratic wind.
All the rivers flow into the sea,
but the sea never fills up.
The rivers keep flowing to the same old place,
and then start all over and do it again.
Everything’s boring, utterly boring—
no one can find any meaning in it.
Boring to the eye,
boring to the ear.
What was will be again,
what happened will happen again.
There’s nothing new on this earth.
Year after year it’s the same old thing.
Does someone call out, “Hey, this is new”?
Don’t get excited—it’s the same old story.
Nobody remembers what happened yesterday.
And the things that will happen tomorrow?
Nobody’ll remember them either.
Don’t count on being remembered.
The words of Matthew 6:1-4 came to mind … here it is in the NIV, then the Message version.
NIV
Giving to the Needy
“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
The Message
The World Is Not a Stage
“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding. “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—’playactors’ I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.
Is a lot of what I do wrong? Is fundraising for charity dressed as the pink panther going against what Jesus told us to do? Is giving alternative gifts going against it too? Am I drawing attention to my “good works” by giving people cards saying how much I gave to charity on their behalf? Have I got it all wrong?!?
I am feeling a bit low and doubting myself right now …
Today is Fireworks Night (or Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night) in the UK. It’s one of those things you learn about at school with the little phrase “Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot”. I know the basics but I just looked it up on Wikipedia and went on a bit of web wander following links. Turns out the reason that there was a plot to blow up the King was all to do with religion 
Why is there so much of this in history?!
On the UK Parliament page about it, it says:
What exactly was the Gunpowder Plot?
The Gunpowder Plot is the name given to the conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605, which was discovered the night before. The origins of the plot remain unclear and it is doubtful that the truth will ever be known. Generations of historians accepted it was an attempt to re-establish the Catholic religion. Others, in more recent times, have suspected that the plot was the work of a group of agents-provocateurs, anxious to discredit the Jesuits and reinforce the ascendancy of the Protestant religion.
So whether the earlier or more recent historians got it right, it seems plain it was all about religion Elizabeth I was a protestant Queen and it seems that the Catholics hoped that the new King James would be more tolerant of their religion, but he wasn’t. Quite the opposite it seems as I read that he passed a law that imposed heavy fines on those who didn’t attend protestant church services. It’s so sad that religion causes so much anger and violence. Especially when the religion in question is supposed to be Christianity – following Jesus, who taught us to turn the other cheek! Why did the King have to make everyone follow the same religion as him? And as a Christian shouldn’t he have been trying to follow Jesus? Or were they really Christian at all? I think the issue was that the King or Queen was supposed to be “appointed by God”. Hmmmmm
If that is what Christianity is all about, I don’t want anything to do with it. If asked my religion these days I am more like to say “None, but I follow Jesus” than to call myself Christian.
As I walked in the woods
Scuffing my feet
I saw Sarayu in the falling dancing leaves
As I walked in the woods
Hearing the birds
I remembered Jesus’ love of even those little ones
As I walked in the woods
Where squirrels scampered
I felt the presence of God all around
In the quiet sacred spaces
All there is, is my soul & Papa’s love
Intertwined
Enveloped
Around me
In me
For ever and always
Even though I use computers all the time, I don’t fully understand how they work. Especially wireless! If I stop and think about it and try and get my head round how it is that I can read web pages and send emails while my laptop is not physically attached to anything is makes my head ache! I can just about get my head round little bits of data travelling down a wire to my computer (although even then I find it hard to understand how my computer can translate whatever it is coming down the wire into something I can look at) … but wireless?! How do those little bits of data pass through the air to my laptop?! Maybe someone will explain it to me one day and I’ll miraculously “get it” … but until then I just have to believe and trust that it does work and just get on with it. And generally that’s just what I do – I don’t think about exactly how it all works – it just does and I use it to get my work done or to enjoy the internet socially.
I was thinking this in the shower this morning (my usual spot for pondering) and it struck me that using wireless internet is like faith … I can’t understand the inner workings of how my relationship with God works but I believe and trust. And as with the wireless thing, generally speaking if you don’t think about it too much, you can just enjoy a relationship with God. It’s only when I start thinking and trying to understand stuff that it gets shakey. Why doesn’t God stop suffering? Is the story of creation literally true? etc etc. One day I will understand I hope, but right now as a limited human being it’s impossible to understand everything, and the important thing is to believe and trust and live in the present.
