Wood ... or just Trees?

A few years ago I visited a tiny cottage in rural Lincolnshire that had been preserved as nearly as possible in the same state as it's last occupant had left it when she'd died in the 1970s or ’80s.  In a chest in the bedroom, I spotted a small item that I recognised.  The curator observed, 'I don't expect you know what that is,' and was quite surprised when I told him, 'It's a promise box!'  

For the benefit of the many of whom he thought I was one, let me explain that this little box was about five inches by four, and not more than two inches high.  It was made of either stiff card or thin wood, and was covered by paper bearing a tiny floral pattern reminiscent of the wallpaper of the early 20th century.  The slightly tapered lid could be removed to reveal lots of little scrolls; each one bore a verse of scripture that announced one of God’s many promises to mankind.  They were a source of reassurance of our Lord’s presence and provision, particularly in times of sorrow or hardship.  These boxes can still be obtained in many different forms, but their heyday was about 100 years ago; often they would be a parting gift for a sweetheart left behind when her young man went off to war.

In that context, the young man's thoughts would be focused on the girl's fidelity, and the box might be a tangible reminder of him.  It might inspire her to trust that he would return.  Trust is, too, a feature in our own twenty-first century lives.  We hear much these days about recycling, a topic that quickly broadens out to include abandoning the use of fossil fuels, organic farming, and everything that is ‘green’.  God has provided all that this world needs for the good of man – if only we could trust Him for that, and follow His guidance in organising its proper use.  To that end, one of the aims of conservation or recycling is to ensure that the provided resources are available to people who would otherwise be without.

Another parallel with the simple idea of the promise box is the fact that much of the world’s news is of an alarming nature, and it is easy to worry about our own safety.  I read some while ago that “worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but gets you nowhere”.  I'm inclined to think that, whether we are fearful for safety or resources, it’s all a matter of perception, like the illustration of the glass that is either half full or half empty.  We need to be reassured that we can trust in God for the blessings that He has promised.

Let me finish with yet another illustration.  Those promise boxes were but one example of the versatility of wood.  Look around: do you see the wood, with its great potential … or simply trees?

Pushing the Envelope

In what is termed by some a post-Christian world, we are confronted on every side by pride, hypocrisy, and a lack of concern about anything hinting at God.  We see around us all kinds of publicly-accepted sin and idolatry, exhibited by people who have no idea that that’s what it is.  In the face of this, it’s easy for us to become tongue-tied; to feel we cannot respond, and to believe it impossible to turn the tide and bring God back into our world.

We are in great need of rescue from the destructive effects of these fears.  A number of Bible passages that have come my way recently have some bearing on this thorny problem.  If pushed to provide a simple summary of their message I think I would say, “Try to see the big picture.” One by one, they are these. 

Isaiah’s prophecies brought comfort to those enduring exile in Babylon; but his message wasn’t just for the exiles, or indeed just for all of the Israelites, but for the whole world.  “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is. 49:6-7).   Simeon recognised this promise as being fulfilled in Jesus (Luke 2:30-32).

Zechariah was part of the first wave of Israelites to return to Jerusalem after the exile.  Their aim was to rebuild the city.  In one of his visions Zechariah saw a man with a plumb-line about to measure the city in order to assess the materials required to rebuild the walls.  But an angel delivered a message from God for the man, that Jerusalem would be a city without walls.  God said that He would be the fire wall, as well as the glory within the city; there would be no need for walls (Zech. 2:1-5).  In succeeding chapters the scene becomes far broader; God speaks of bringing people in from across the world (8:6-8), and suddenly there are things far more important than merely the walls of one city.

By the time of Jesus, the Jews were once more hidebound by tradition, rules and religious habits.  The Pharisees were outraged at one of His healing miracles.  This woman had suffered for eighteen years, ran their logic; why was there any need for her to be healed just then, on the Sabbath?    Jesus’ concern overruled any man-made rules.  He simply saw her need, and reacted in love (Luke 13:10-17).

And finally, I offer you Romans 12:17-19, where Paul encourages us not to be petty in our thinking.  Rather than reacting in our limited strength to something that offends us, we are encouraged to be at peace, and leave it to God to take appropriate action.

When we are confronted by the world’s standards, and wonder how to react, we have a clear instruction in the final verse of that chapter, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (12:21).  We can also find encouragement in Jesus’ own words, “take heart - I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Great Expectations

Perry Stephens is a great young violinist.  In fact, he’s hopeful of a place in the National Children’s Orchestra.  But it wasn’t always so.  He practised faithfully, and had obvious talent but, despite his abilities, he showed no great enthusiasm for his weekly lessons, which took place during the school lunch hour, with a visiting teacher.  When the first term’s report arrived, his father read “Perry’s attention to this subject bears no relation to what I am convinced he can do – if only he would apply himself.”  He knew the time had come to step in.

Faced with the report, Perry said quite simply, “Yes, I like playing, but I’ve got such a useless teacher.”  Knowing the teacher’s excellent reputation, his father was surprised by this comment, and asked for more detail.  “It’s true,” said Perry, “even the other teachers think so.  They say ‘here’s Perry’s pathetic music teacher.’”  Light dawned and, suppressing a smile, his father took Perry aside with a large dictionary.  Once Perry understood that ‘peripatetic’ was a state of employment, and had nothing to do with the teacher’s ability, there was no holding him back.

How often do we make the mistake of setting our sights too low?  How often do we aim for a target far lower than we’re capable of?  The same short-sightedness can be observed in our prayers.  We often assume that our loving Heavenly Father is unwilling to grant what we want, because of our sinfulness.  We fail to take account of our Salvation, won by Jesus on the Cross.  That is an affront to the love that God has for us, but even worse, we insult His power when we under-estimate what He is able to give us.  These are mistakes that can be based on the strength of the most flimsy and unreliable evidence.  Remember that Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matt. 7:7-8).

Perry was fine once he had confidence in his teacher.  We’ll be fine too, if we can only find the confidence in God's love.  Once we do, we can be totally open and honest in our prayers.  We can tell our Lord absolutely everything: our hopes, our fears, our most intimate and secret desires.  And we can be certain that our confidences are secure, and that our prayers will be answered.

More about Words

Realising what a waste it is that many of the books on my shelves have never been read, I’ve started reading a few pages at breakfast time.  The other day I found a paragraph that followed on neatly from something I wrote recently about care in our use of words.  ‘Medieval Gentlewoman’ by ffiona Swabey is based on the life of a Suffolk heiress, Alice de Bryene (c.1360-1435), and this particular passage runs as follows:

“The gossip was an important figure in the later Middle Ages, from the word godsib (sibling) or godparent, denoting the spiritual affinity of the baptised and their sponsors.  More significantly a gossip was a woman who attended a close friend when she was in labour and often assisted at the birth.  Such women were part of the informal domestic webs of information and power, passing on their wisdom and experience with little respect for hierarchy, though at the same time they adhered to traditional and conservative concepts and their opinions must often have been prejudiced.  Many of their ‘old wives’ tales’ consisted of practical advice on sex, rearing animals, horticulture, cures and the interpretation of dreams and omens.  Predictably, ‘women’s tongues’ were usually conceived as being divisive, the ready butt of medieval misogyny, though it was not until the mid-sixteenth century that the gossip became a pejorative figure.”

Considering this development in the meaning and use of the word, I wasn’t surprised to find that my on-line Bible offers no mention of ‘gossip’ in the King James translation.  Its modern equivalent, however, lists eight occurrences.  Four of these are from Proverbs, notably ​​​​​​ “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down into the person’s innermost being.” (Prov. 18:8), and there is only one from the New Testament, where St Paul gives voice to his misgivings about the infant church in Corinth maintaining their standards of behaviour in his absence (2Cor. 12:20).  The King James version uses ‘whisperings’ for ‘gossip’ here, and for its purveyor in Proverbs, ‘talebearer’.

Both of these help us to distinguish between the virtuous ‘godsib’ of centuries past and the less worthy practices to which the word was later applied.  Those of us who have reached mature years may remember being told as children that ‘all whispers tell lies,’ or having the spreading of malicious falsehoods about our playmates being described as ‘telling tales’.  We don’t have to dig very deeply to find a Biblical source for many of the wise sayings of the older generation.

So what might these observations tell us today?  Firstly, I suggest, we should view changes in church and society in a balanced way, accepting with approval the benefits they bring, while not forgetting the good aspects of what has been replaced.  Secondly, when condemning tittle-tattle from the standpoint of virtue, we should also remember, and spare a thought of thanks and praise for siblings and friends – our own and those of others around us – as sources of comfort, encouragement and hope.

Ducks

“Two ducks in front of a duck,” said my father, “two ducks behind a duck, and a duck in the middle.  How many ducks?”  That little conundrum from nearly fifty years ago is as puzzling now as it was then.  The answer is, of course, three: but in order to fit, the ducks have to be swimming in a straight line.  To quote a favourite phrase of one of my former bosses, “all the ducks have to be in a row”.

It was to have been a farewell meal.  My friend had been planning to move to another part of the country, but now she explained that her plans had rather fallen apart.  She had a new job lined up, but suddenly her new employer wanted her to start in two weeks time instead of a month, in other words before she could make all the arrangements to move house.  Initially, she had difficulty finding a tenant for her flat, and then, when a likely occupant did arrive on her doorstep, he insisted on being able to move in within a week, which wouldn’t give her solicitor time to draw up a contract, let alone allow her to find and secure a new home some distance away.

In effect, my friend faced the daunting prospect of withdrawing from her new job, staying put for the time being, and starting the whole process again from scratch.  It was probably not over-helpful for me to recite to her, “You didn’t have all your ducks in a row.”  “My ducks,” she replied ruefully, “seem to be swimming all over the place!”

Life seems to be like that for some of us, doesn’t it?  I call it the 'polythene bag syndrome': you flatten one corner, only to discover that the air has formed an annoying bubble somewhere else.  No sooner do we get one bit of life sorted out, than something else goes wrong, or urgently distracts us from what we feel we ought to be doing.  There never seems to be a point where we can say that all is as it should be, and life can be lived ‘properly’.  What’s wrong, then?  Is life not meant to run smoothly? – or do we simply try to cram more into it than it is designed to accommodate?  I suspect that we see someone else’s achievement and think we can do the same, without appreciating the sacrifices he or she has had to make to get there; the problems that are being dealt with behind the scenes.  We think we can have the same success, and combine it with all of our existing interests, not realising that these other things don’t clutter the life of our idol.

Perhaps it would help if we were to focus on the most important things, and let everything else just fall into place.  The writer to Hebrews advised ‘fix your thoughts on Jesus’ (Heb. 3:1); and in the Gospel we find Jesus himself teaching us to seek first the Kingdom of God (Matt. 6:33), and everything else would be given to us.  Or, as the Ned Miller song of the 1960’s almost put it, “Give [God] your love and all of your life, and do what you do do well.”

The Power of Words

 ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’

attrib. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1803-1873

The words that a pen writes or that a mouth speaks are indeed powerful, but they are a gift from God.  As with all gifts, they bring with them responsibility in their use: St James, for example, charges us to be careful what we say (Jas. 3:1-6).  We should choose our words wisely, lest we cause offence or do unintended damage.

In the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ Jesus develops the thinking behind the Ten Commandments, and at Matt. 5:34-37 we find a comment about ‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain (Ex. 20:7)’.  Jesus warns us against making extravagant undertakings and sealing them by invoking God’s name.  If we do so, we have to keep those promises – if they prove to be things we can’t manage, the result is that we are guilty of sin.  It’s far safer, Jesus advises, not to make oaths at all, but simply say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Sometimes we say things because we’ve always done so, without appreciating exactly what they mean.  The origin of an expression can be lost behind the frequency and thoughtlessness of its use.  How often, I wonder, does an atheist take leave of someone by saying ‘goodbye’?  Does he really hope that God (in whom he doesn’t believe) will be with his friend? 

The meaning of words can change over the course of time, too.  Few churches nowadays use the sixteenth century phrases of the Apostles’ Creed, and express belief in a God who will come to judge the ‘quick and the dead’.  To us, ‘quick’ means swift in motion, fleet of foot, or perhaps capable of prompt reactions.  When it was first translated into English, ‘quick’ was simply the opposite to ‘dead’, and many people now prefer to replace it in this context by ‘living’.  I must mention too the dramatic increase in ‘issues’ these days.  Far from being confined to something that comes out, like blood or a magazine, today’s ‘issues’ seem to have extinguished ‘matters’, ‘topics’, ‘factors’, ‘contentions’, ‘difficulties ‘and, most of all, ‘problems’.  Have people just become too lazy to be specific about what it is they’re discussing?

I was at a Christian gathering earlier this year where someone told a story of conversion to faith, saying, ‘... and then he got saved.’  It grated at the time, and after a little thought I realised why.  It was the same form of words that would be used of a shopping expedition: ‘he got cereal and then he got butter and milk.’  The implication was that the man had done this himself, in his own power; to any non-believer present it would have suggested that this was actually something that a man could achieve for himself.  A better expression would have been ‘he was saved,’ correctly allowing credit elsewhere for the fact of his salvation. 

As the football season begins, I recall an apocryphal graffito that adorned a ‘Jesus Saves’ sign: ‘... but Satan nets the rebound!’  We must always be aware of the rebounds, those times where the Evil One is only too ready to take advantage of our mistakes.  So let’s resolve now to ‘engage brain before opening mouth’; remember that ‘CARELESS talk costs lives souls’

Not all Sea and Sunshine

Some years ago I worked for a short while for a Christian travel business.  It was an enjoyable time, and one thing I remember from the experience is the frequent use of what was said to be the only Biblical reference to holidays: “Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’” (Mark 6:31, NIV).  Although it’s not in line with what most people these days would consider a holiday, this verse was commonly used when selling retreats at centres that offered a ‘contemplative experience’.

It confirms a need that each of us has from time to time to get away from the busy-ness of our lives, and to make time for refreshment.  We should re-align ourselves regularly with the natural world, listen afresh to God’s word and tune in again to His will in our lives.  Until recently, I had given this no further thought than that, but come with me now to St Mark’s gospel, and let’s re-visit this verse.

 

The disciples had been sent out two by two to preach repentance and to cast out demons (5:7-11).  The narrative is interrupted by the news of the death of John the Baptist, and then we hear of them coming back, filled with excitement, to report their experiences to Jesus.  No doubt there were achievements they wanted to share, but also problems they had encountered, uncertainties upon which they sought guidance.  But the crowds followed them all wherever they went, and it was difficult to get a word in edgeways, let alone some serious quiet time with their Lord.  So there was a definite need to get away by themselves.  It was only for a moment, though, because they were spotted leaving, chased around the lake, and the next thing we read is the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand (6:35-44).

What does this tell us about holidays, then?  I suggest that the primary lesson is that their aim shouldn’t be to do nothing.  Secondly, there is a question in my mind about who holidays are for: the disciples saw Jesus teaching the crowds (as usual!) instead of spending time with them and, perhaps in frustration, wanted to send them away.  Jesus, however, calls them to a responsibility of care: ‘You give them something to eat’ (6:37).  Perhaps there is wisdom in the old saying ‘a change is as good as a rest’.  Maybe instead of thinking only of pleasing ourselves when we have a break from normal life, we should also consider ways in which we might enrich the life of other(s).  Who knows? – that might be even more enjoyable!