Postcard from home

Greetings! 

Nearing the end of a pleasant week of normality here. Weather is wonderful – bright sunshine every day after a drizzly time away last week. Much enjoying sitting down for most of the day – it makes a nice change. And what with everyone else being on holiday, the incoming workload is (thankfully) light.

Great variety of food here too – so far this week have enjoyed Chinese takeaway, IKEA meatballs and lots of vegetables.

Yesterday I visited a WWI exhibition by the lake on my lunch break which was really interesting, and I listened to some of my favourite music in my office. I’ve also had time to catch up with a few friends.

Back to a holiday next week – still, work has to end some time!

Wish you were here!

Much love,
Off the Rails

We’re all going on a summer holiday...

In my mind, summer always shines as a glorious time of holiday and of rest from work. I look forward to the summer months as a time of refreshment and more carefree living. Of course, now I’m resigned to the working adult life, this is not true at all – but this feeling remains, as a hangover from the ingrained patterns of the education system. And although I currently have a more relaxed workload over the summer, it is no longer automatically a time of complete rest – with a fixed allowance of annual leave, it’s not even possible.

However, summer sees teacher-friends off work and our wonderful weather at its kindest (perhaps), so I do my best to retain this glorious vision of the summer holidays. Already it is late July (how did that happen?) and I’ve got itchy feet...

First stop: a working holiday – a change is as good as a rest, right? – to this beautiful place, to help out at the thinkivp bookshops at the Keswick Convention:

I hope I never quite grow out of the summer holiday dream. There’s just something magical about travelling somewhere different, rebooting your system with a break from routine and gathering more tales of life.

Pick up the phone

Sometimes it can be hard to pick up the phone and call someone. You had a fight, or you’re worried they are too busy for you, or you just can’t find the right words to say.

It’s been said (or rather, sung) that “prayer is like a telephone”, and although this offers us privileged anytime access to our heavenly father, we often find that, as with our physical telephone, we are often hesitant to pick it up and dial. (Forgive me if today’s metaphor seems a bit over-simplified – I found this helpful.)

Here are some of the excuses we frequently use, with obvious reminders of why they are absurd:

1. We had a fight (aka, I’m too sinful).
You are a sinner. God is holy. This much has always been true. But Jesus died to cover you with his perfect righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). No fight is too big for God to forgive.

2. He’s probably busy.
Don’t get me wrong, God is busy, in the sense that he does a great deal. But, in ways that I will never quite grasp this side of eternity, he’s the best multi-tasker ever. He is never too busy to listen to his children.

3. He won’t want to listen to me.
God loves us as much as he loves Jesus (John 17:23). We are his dear children, and he is never too tired/busy/stressed/exasperated to listen to us. When we humbly approach him, he always hears what we have to say.

4. I doubt he’ll help me with this.
One of my favourite God-as-Father images in the Bible is this one from Matthew 7: “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” The Bible doesn’t say God will always give us whatever we want – for starters, we’re always wanting the wrong things – but he delights to give us good gifts, and he’s working for your good.

5. I can’t find the right words.
God made you, and he knows everything about you. He already knows what you’re going to say to him, and he loves to hear you say it. But don’t panic if words fail: Paul says the Spirit of God intercedes for us when we can’t find the words (Romans 8:26), which is pretty amazing in itself.

We really have a wonderful gift in prayer – what are we waiting for?

Left behind?

“It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.” – The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

“Carol Brown / just took a bus out of town / but I’m hoping that you’ll stick around” – Carol Brown by Flight of the Conchords

Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m happy with where I am in life (or at least apathetic about it, to look at it cynically), but it always shakes me up a little when those around me want to make big changes. For one thing, it can be sad to think the people I love are not where they want to be. I also do not particularly like change; I’m fairly happy to continue plodding on forwards, and I tend to assume others are too.

But there’s also a selfish feeling that comes into play when friends make life-altering decisions – one that’s rather uncomfortable to admit. It’s a voice that I squash to a whisper, and even then, generally only to myself. Don’t they care about me?

When another friend gets married, moves back home, or takes a job somewhere far away, my insecurities immediately make me question the value of that friendship. And it feels such an ugly thing to admit that it often remains unspoken, but the selfish core of me desperately wants to be reassured.

Deep down, I know that we all have different calls on our lives, and that other things – jobs, marriages, service, health, family – are calling them on. Even I have moved away from my original home – and not because I didn’t love the people there.

Perhaps these changes are meant to serve as a reminder to me not to get too comfortable with my life, and not to find my value solely in my relationships with those around me. My true identity is in Jesus Christ and the life he has won for me. He’s blessed me with wonderful friendships to enjoy, but it is ultimately in him that I have all I’ll ever need.

Squeaky clean

A few weeks ago, I made my first ever visit to the dental hygienist. An uncomfortable quarter of an hour in a dentist’s chair and thirty-one pounds later, I can’t honestly say I feel it was worth it.

You get scraped and flossed and polished, and sent home with squeaky clean teeth and instructions to maintain them. You must floss. You really must. And brush like this. Are you happy with the cosmetic appearance of your teeth?

But you still have to dutifully go back in six months’ time, or in a year (or four, if you’re anything like me). No matter how much you clean your teeth or how many products and methods you use, it is never enough. You can’t keep them clean to the dental hygienist’s standards.

Which is true of our lives in general too, of course. We can try to clean up our act, impose rules on our behaviour, really discipline ourselves – but we never truly win without Jesus. We certainly can’t reach God’s perfect standards on our own.

But in Jesus, God does more than scrape away the surface dirt and shine us up on the outside. He gives us a new heart and makes us clean on the inside.

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:25-27)

God purifies us and we are made righteous once and for all, although we are still works in progress. And we daily return to him, not to have him dust off the excess of our selfish behaviour, but to remember Christ’s perfectly clean sacrifice on our behalf, and to submit to him once again.

Signs of the times

After a period of not much writing, there are a couple of thoughts in the pipeline... In the meantime, here is a more pictorial post. I’ve always been a fan of signs, and taking them apart (metaphorically). Here are a few personal favourites from the collection.

The most arrogant car park I know (Manchester)

The simply ironic (Oxford)

The poor rosebush just wanted to get to the other side... (Marple)

The bizarrely juxtaposed (my office!)

The wonderful rhyming ‘resurrection stone’ (Hale Village)

The somewhat pointless? (Bristol)

The slightly disturbing (a British canalside waterpoint, where this could actually happen)

The plain lies! (another canal, somewhere in the South of England...)

A little something for everyone... (Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes in Diagon Alley)

Please let me know of any other classics you spot!

Time out

Do you ever get that feeling that you’re running on a treadmill and someone keeps increasing the speed and the gradient and you’re panicking and you can’t figure out how to slow down and if you stop you’ll fall and life will still race on around you…? 

Just keep running: life on a treadmill
(Image from www.idonedesign.com)

Life can get rather hectic sometimes, dashing from one activity to the next without a break, until suddenly you look up and realise four months have gone by and you’ve forgotten to do the cleaning and you haven’t seen that friend you promised you would… And you can’t remember the last time you paused for some reflection, prayer or to even open a Bible. 

But it’s ok. You can sort it all out. Next week. I mean, you’ve got at least three hours on Saturday after tennis and before dinner with the Joneses to do your laundry and phone your mum and read a Psalm. No problem. Except Saturday comes and you bump into someone on the way back from tennis and end up walking to town with them because you get chatting and you think you might as well go and pick up a few bits from the supermarket because you won’t have time next week anyway and there’s no milk in the fridge. So you end up slightly late for dinner but they don’t really mind and you can call your mum on the way back and do your washing overnight and pray while you’re drifting off to sleep. And then tomorrow you can try to find a time to meet up with that friend you still haven’t seen…

The life-treadmill can make you feel like you just need to keep running, because who knows what might go wrong when you take a break. But sometimes, it’s time to push the big red button, and just stop. Cancel the tennis. Leave the party early. Having plans to rest and to pray still counts as having plans – you’re busy, so you can say no when you need to. You might be the most efficient human ever (you’re probably not), but you can’t sort everything. You can’t. So just pause, and spend some time with the one who can.