Tag: Faith

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A Song A Month

A Song A Month For February 2016: Light Has Come

I’m really pleased today to release the video blog for February’s A Song A Month, ‘Light Has Come’.

Most of you reading this will know that I’m a disabled person. I try not to bang on about it all the time, but being disabled is part of me, it’s not something I can easily avoid, and so instead I try and embrace it, without making a fuss.

Years ago now, I did a Disability Studies Masters by Distance Learning from the University of Leeds. One of the key people on the course, Colin Barnes, challenged me to write songs about my experience of disability. ‘We need more protest songs’, he said. I always fought shy of writing about disability, mostly because I didn’t feel I had the language to write about it well in a song. I haven’t wanted to be a protest songwriter. I’m no Martyn Joseph.

Over the last few years though, perhaps as I get older and some of the idealism of youth wears off, I’ve found myself finding the UK a harder and harder place to live as a disabled person. I personally am a very fortunate man. I have a family, a wife who I love and who loves me. I have a faith which sustains me, and I feel like I’m able to make a contribution to my community, and to society, in a variety of ways. The fact remains though that I am in physical pain of one sort or another all of every day (like a lot of people, a lot of whom have it worse than me) and more than this, mentally and emotionally, I face challenges and hurdles to overcome many times daily, because I use a wheelchair and am disabled. It’s hard to explain or quantify. It’s simply how it is. I hate being disabled. Much as I’m supposed to be well-adjusted to it all, I wish I wasn’t.

But I know full well that my life isn’t as hard as it is for a great many other people, whether they are disabled people, or whether they experience other things in life which marginalise them and make them part of minority groups they never asked to be in. I truly believe that, as people of social conscience, Christian or not, we are called to be prophetic, whether we’re off faith or not. I believe we’re called to stand and hold one another to account for how we treat each other, whether we are ‘successful’, functionally well, impaired, old, young, or anything else. It saddens me to sense a corporate, societal, hardening of heart towards people with disabilities. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps I’m entirely mistaken, but that’s my sense.

February’s A Song A Month is a humble offering, inviting us to see that there is a better way to live, a better way to treat one another, to treat ourselves. A Light Has Come.

Thanks once again to Pete Thorn for playing on this song, and his help with the video.

Download the lyrics to Light Has Come by clicking here

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February 2016

February 27th 2016: Hebrews 4:1-13

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

I’ve often wondered about what kind of mood the writer of Hebrews was in when this letter was written. There’s just a sense to it of negativity and worry that I don’t perceive in a lot of the rest of the New Testament. Everything is cautious, tempered, careful. And so I wonder, how does how we are feeling about things change how we talk about God? ‘Salvation’  looks very different when things are going well, I suggest, compared to  what it looks like when everything we are is threatened, even though ‘being saved’ and what that entails actually remains the same. We have an unchanging God, but our perspectives, our language, our experiences, these must change. For them to stay the same is, potentially at least, to deny that the ‘living and active’ element of his word, and his Word, Jesus. We can’t be made new, transformed by each encounter with the Spirit, and yet simultaneously remain the same. This is not feasible. Similarly, it seems to me that one of the main points of a life of faith is to be open to the Spirit’s prodding to the broadening of horizons and thoughts, so that we able to see and acknowledge more of God, his glory, and share it with those around us.

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February 26th 2016: Hebrews 3:7-19

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

‘Today if you hear his voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’

I wonder, are you someone who hears God speak audibly to you? Some people say it happens to them all the time. To my knowledge, it’s happened to me only once in my life, but that once was a life-altering experience I may write about here another time. God speaks in a variety of ways: audibly, through scripture, through other people, quite often, it seems to me, through people who make no claim at all to follow his way, but speak through them he definitely does anyway.

So, we could hear God’s voice often, if we are ready for it. Are we ready for it? Are we expecting him to speak? What if it’s in a way that we’ve not experienced before? Will we be open to hearing, listening and responding? It can feel so unlikely, at points in our lives, that God might speak, that when he does, we’ve already decided the way we want to go. For whatever reason, sometimes seemingly for very good reasons, our hearts have hardened. We’ve stopped recognising that we need God. We’ve stopped acknowledging him. He’s been relegated to a part of our lives we go to when it suits us, and instead we exist in our own kind of regal splendour, making our own decisions, living just as we want to. Sometimes we might do good. Sometimes we might do right, but things are decidedly out of order.

God is speaking to us. Are we listening?

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February 2016

February 25th 2016: Hebrews 3:1-6

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

‘the builder of a house has more honour than the house itself’

It’s good when things are doing ‘right’ in Church isn’t it? You know what I mean. We’ve all been here. We’ve all been the people saying these things. Traditions upheld, prayers prayed in the right way, in the right order, with the right language, tone, sense of decorum. It’s always been done this way. Let’s keep the show on the road shall we?

Or perhaps you have been like me in thinking along these lines: the house [Church] will fall apart if it, its teachings, its heritage, are not maintained, honoured, cherished. How quickly, even in thinking that by holding on to heritage, teachings, history handed down through generations that we honour God, do we enter the realm of risk of elevating our Churches, our callings, our thoughts (I say this to myself) over God himself. God builds the house. Unless he builds it, the labourers, us, labour in vain. All the things we hold to as of crucial importance may well be crucially important, but God is the one who’s name is the name we are to honour and praise. He is the one who is worthy of it. The Church is the body. We are to love it, help it to grow ever more into the likeness of Christ, always seeking to honour God most highly of all.

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February 2016

February 20th 2016: Galatians 6

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

‘If anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a sprit of gentleness’

This verse hits me between the eyes. I like justice. I like things done the right way, in an ordered fashion. When I don’t do things in the right way, in an ordered fashion (as has happened for most of my aware and responsible life it seems to me) I enjoy telling myself off at great length, denying all the things God wants to give me to myself and generally being miserable. For some reason I think it suits me and I deserve it.

As a Church leader, I struggle to balance the liking I have for things being done what I consider to be the right way, with being gracious, merciful and, like Jesus, abounding in steadfast love. When we’re wronged, or when our Church, our poor, our weak, our nation, are wronged, there’s a temptation to do anything but ‘restore such a one [wrongdoer] in a spirit of gentleness. We want redress. Sometimes wanting redress spills over into wanting revenge, but ‘vengeance is mine, says the Lord’ is an extremely useful touchstone to remember to hold on to.

Paul’s talking about the process of restoring a transgressor in to a Church family or fellowship here, but I think it is safe to apply the principle to other areas of our lives and work. Throughout society, there is so much corruption, so much injustice, as pockets are lined, cronies are helped and capitalism works in favour of the winners, the corporations and those in positions of authority. We can and we must, in line with Scripture, protest prophetically about this. A society is, I think, partly at least judged on how it supports its weakest or poorest members. We are not all supposed to be rich or to ‘succeed’ but there is enough for all of us. That not all of us have enough is a scandal for which history should judge us.

There are particular people, institutions and ideologies that are responsible for the inequalities in our society at present. That it seems like they don’t seek to equalise things, but instead seek to further inequality (not in word, but in deed) is, again, a scandal. So what are we to do? My temptation is to stridently stand against things, to cry out against injustie, to seek an uprising even. Perhaps at some moments those are the right responses. All the same, I’m tempered with this one verse today. These people, these institutions, these ideologies even, that make me so angry are also in need of mercy, grace, generosity, love. To show those things, at the same time as seeking justice for all, is what a Christian truly should consider their calling.

And so, through it all, I am undone and find myself once again in need of the mercy which can only be found at the foot of the cross.

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February 2016

February 19th 2016: Galatians 5:16-26

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

‘If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.’

I’ve known for a long time what the fruit (singular) of the Spirit is, as contained in today’s passage. It’s another of those elements of Scripture that gets drummed in to you as you grow up in Church and are encouraged towards maturity in faith. It can be used as a measure of ‘how you’re doing’,or something used to hold you accountable. These can be great, loving, generous, kind and so on, or can be used as instruments of judgement, either by others against us, or for us against ourselves. If we’re not showing enough patience, kindness, gentleness and so on, we can make ourselves think that we don’t have enough of the Spirit, that God is disappointed with us, or even that the Spirit has given up on us and left. We can be convinced that this is entirely justified. It is highly possible to enter in to a cycle of transactional faith and failure where we welocme God in to our lives, then fail and fall, let him down, lose him and then the whole thing starts again. Some of our pastoral care structures can actually exacerbate this. I’m convinced that, actually, some of us prefer this highly emotive way of doing faith. It gives us something to focus on (our failings) and makes it more about us than it is about God.

But, the fruit of the Spirit is the Spirit’s fruit. It is the Spirit’s to give, to nurture and to see to fruition. We live in partnership with God because he invites us in to that place, but the Spirit can give its fruit to whosoever it wishes, at whatever time it wishes. All of us, if we’re honest and self-aware, should have no trouble coming up with reasons why God should not bless us, but that’s the point of the gospel. According to our standards, no-one should be loved by God, but by his, everyone is. So don’t let the disappointments of life distract you. God is continuing to plan seeds in your life that will grow in to full bloom.

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February 2016

February 18th 2016: Galatians 5:2-15

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

‘…but through love become slaves to one another.’

It’s a big challenge this one. I’ve been wondering recently, how much of a sacrifice for the sake of the Church I’m part of leading is enough? Would it be where I live? The hours I put in? The parts of my life which shrink to accommodate it? The songs I lead? The things I teach on and the things I don’t?

And then a sentence like this one pops up.

We’re not called to relationship with God and one another for anything other than to serve one another. I am to serve the people I lead, as I seek to serve God, giving back to him from the abundance that he gives to me. That, as they say, is the whole ball game.

Not to say I don’t have to look after myself. Members of Emmanuel have been telling me for quite some time now that I need to look after myself, take care of myself, but I am also called, by Love, to do the sacrificial things, the difficult things, the frustrating things, as well as the joyful, the life-giving and the exciting things, that best serve my community, as the transforming power of the Spirit works in me, just as it does in others.

 

 

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February 2016

January 17th 2016: Galatians 4:21-5:1

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

I’m not very good at memorizing passages or phrases from Scripture. I don’t know why. It’s just never worked for me. One of the few I have managed to commit to memory though is contained in today’s reading. The trouble is, it’s all very well saying to myself over and over again ‘it’s for freedom that Christ has set us/me free’, but if I’m actually not willing or able to accept that freedom, then I am the one who loses out. So, here it is, I’m not a slave to sin anymore. Jesus took the consequences of sin on himself. They are not mine to carry any longer.

I’m someone who cares a lot about justice, about doing the right thing, about having the right thing done to me. I very often don’t manage to hit the mark. This causes me a lot of problems. I worry endlessly about problems I have caused for others too. Often I worry about permutations of problems that may well not even exist. I don’t think I should be allowed to live in freedom, at the same time as I spend a large amount of life trying to convince myself and others that this is exactly what I have, because of Jesus, not because of me. It is exhausting.

There are a great many days, a very great many, when I feel far from free. I’d almost rather I be enslaved, this seems fair to me (I mean this in a spiritual sense). I know this is wrong and contra to the life and teachings of Jesus, but there we are. The gospel is such foolishness, even to me, someone who is being ‘saved’. It is unfair. It is so much more than any of us deserve, but there’s the ever-present worry of becoming complacent or too comfortable with the whole deal that we don’t acknowledge the sheer wonder, grace and abundant generosity of it all. I am not better. I am not superior. I am freed, by Jesus, to be a voice, and an activisit, in freeing others by pointing them to him and extending his invitation to life and love.

What do you think?

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February 2016

February 16th 2016: Galatians 4:8-20

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

There’s a beauty in today’s reading in the passion Paul expresses. How could people who have come to realise that they are known by God decide to turn back and live another way? He seems to feel the sadness and disappointment of the discovery that this has happened truly deeply. His admonishments could seem strident, even arrogant (a concern I often have with Paul’s letters), but then I realise, yet again, that Paul is a follower of Jesus who is working out what it means to give his life for that cause. Like many of us, he thinks he knows the best way to follow Jesus and his way. Paul has the added sense of authority and responsibility which comes from claiming apostleship (through his conversion). I sometimes wonder if, somewhere buried within all his rhetoric is the worry that he isn’t actually sure how all this will turn out.

And then, just when I’ve reached the height of arrogance, I remember myself. I’m constantly perplexed at myself, at why I say that I love and follow Jesus and then do anything except those things. I very often wish those who I lead in Church would listen to me and my wisdom. If they did that they’d be fine. I know they would. It might turn out that way sometimes, but if it did it would be because God was using me to support, challenge and encourage, not because I was any more or less special than anyone else. Is that how Paul felt as he travelled and ministered? I wonder.

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February 2016

February 15th 2016: Galatians 3:23-4:7

You can follow today’s passage by clicking on this sentence.

As I read this passage today and therefore write these few brief thoughts, I have to confess, the idea of the Spirit crying ‘Abba, Father!’ from my heart to God feels a bit unlikely. But isn’t that the point and one of the most beautiful aspects of what Paul is saying here? If we base the success of our lives of faith (or our lives in general) on how feel, how our thoughts have developed or progressed over a period time, the perspective we now view them from, we run the risk of finding ourselves in a constant state of confusion and flux. I’ll be the first to admit that there’s very little about which I am certain at the present time. However, the concept that the Spirit dwells in the hearts of the baptised and acknowledges God, whatever the weather, whatever my feelings or sense of failings might be, if that were true, it would be revolutionary. At a stroke, faith ceases again to be about effort, success or failure, finding the right, pious or reverent way of doing things and instead becomes a task of acceptance: acceptance of mercy, grace, forgiveness, opportunity, possibility and hope. My sense of who I am may change with how I feel, but the actuality of who I am, in light of what God has done and who Jesus is, that does not change. God has done it. He has placed his self in me. Christ in me the hope of glory. My hope is not me. It is so much more and so much greater than that. What a relief!