Bone Idle

It feels like a bit of a challenge to move back into employment.

I’ve been in that ambiguous state that could be regarded either as “between churches” or “retired early”. Life for me has mostly gone on at a stately pace.

Many senior Christians with busier personalities and better connections than mine fill their time to capacity, even without paid employment. “We are so busy now we are retired,” they cry, “that we don’t know how we found time to work!”

When I’ve been at home, I’ve got by through having a daily routine. Behind it all are twin basic aims: to make sure to speak to someone and to get out of the four walls each day.

The routine involves plenty of time spent behind a desk. I have a rich and varied devotional time in the mornings. Then comes preaching and teaching preparation. At some point in the day I will go out walking or shopping for an hour or so, always hoping to have a chat to at least one other person on the way. Other elements in the mix include educational TV watching and a great deal of resting. Apart from that, filling the hours has often been a matter of doing the rounds of coffee events like an old timer!

The opportunity to do guest house ministry in Wales has been a Godsend. This season I will have spent some 60 days in Llandudno and Conwy. This has given me a real focus of interest.

To be fair to myself, I have endeavoured to do volunteering work in my local community, and have been enriched by joining community organisations. Yet it’s amazing how often you find you simply aren’t needed.

All in all, I can understand why people go on pre-retirement courses; it is very easy to vegetate if you don’t plan for all those empty hours and set goals for yourself.

What does the great adventure of a new pastorate do for my use of time? In many ways that remains to be seen. When you are looking after one small church, there are limits to what you can do. I know some pastors who cope with that by deliberately making work for themselves in order to justify their existence. That is not my approach. Of course I hope the new appointment will generate enough activity, as the months go by, to keep me fully occupied simply doing what God puts my way. Until that happens, my pattern may not look vastly different from the routine described above. But I would rather be busy in God’s way than mine.

The Bible is firm with idle and lazy people.

Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief, officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
and gathers her food in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
and want like an armed man.

(Proverbs 6:6-11 ESV)

“Be diligent,” counselled John Wesley right at the start of his “Twelve Rules of a Helper”. “Never be unemployed a moment. Never be triflingly employed. Never while away time.” And lower down: “You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work.”

It did him no harm; he lived for some 88 years! At the same time, being human is about “being” as well as “doing”, and I trust Christians will encourage church workers to have sanctified leisure as well as being busy, busy, busy. Our Saviour sets the pattern.

On the lone mountain side,
Before the morning’s light,
The Man of sorrows wept and cried,
And rose refreshed with might.

Oh, hear us then, for we
Are very weak and frail,
We make the Saviour’s Name our plea,
And surely must prevail. 

From C.H. Spurgeon, "Sweetly the holy hymn" in Hymns for an Early Morning Prayer Meeting (perhaps inspired by Matthew 14:23 “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone …” )

Migrations - the sequel

Carrying on the theme of migration, I myself am soon to migrate. I am delighted to report that in mid-November I take up the pastorate of Durrington Free Church, in the middle of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

The move south is a few weeks away yet. My life, though, is gradually being transferred to storage bins and boxes. It is a familiar routine. On average, in recent times, I have moved once every four years.

Perhaps I’m something of a nomad. And perhaps that’s the way God wants it, but I’ve been resistant.

You see, I have a couple of dreams. One is definitely within God’s will. The other I’m more doubtful about.

The doubtful dream is one about eventually being settled. On retirement you find a pleasant home where you can put down roots in a healthful area that you already know reasonably well.

The facilities are good and there are friendly people who know you and will welcome you. Within easy reach are to be found a sound gospel church and community groups to join. You have a garden you can get established and enough space in the house to accommodate an array of exciting electronic gadgets. The neighbourhood is quiet; country lanes are not far away. The noise pollution of barking, yelping pet dogs is mercifully a thing of the past. A sufficient, guaranteed pension income allows you to explore new possibilities.

Sounds good at first. It fails to take account of a number of things.

First, I have yet to master this retirement business. When faced with enforced leisure I don’t function well.

Second, in God’s purposes there is no real retirement. The Promised Land was supposed to be journey’s end for the Israelites of old. Yet they were expected to leave their houses once a year and build shelters for themselves out in the open - it was called the Feast of Tabernacles - to remind them of the Exodus from Egypt. This festival is no longer binding on Christians, but they are told in Hebrews 13:14

For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come (NIV).

This should be a warning. A long, settled earthly retirement is not wrong for the Christian, but it is not an automatic entitlement either.

The other dream is more likely to be within God’s will. It is about being pastor of a church where I can serve God productively among people who understand what that service means.

“Surely,” you say to yourself, “that would describe any church.” Yet it is astonishing how many put road blocks in front of a pastor that are totally uncalled for. In situations like that a pastor will feel that he is a guest at the table, not a member of the family. Meaningful service becomes impossible and survival or departure is the name of the game.

As the next stage of my life’s journey takes me to Wiltshire, I have high hopes that the experience will be positive both for the new pastor and for the church.

It will be a joy to find the elusive pastorate which works out. Yet that joy, like all earthly joys, is a guide and a pointer rather than an end in itself. For those who remain faithful unto death, through all the ups and downs, there is a heavenly home yet to be revealed.

Years ago, God spoke to me dramatically through Psalm 138:8 -

The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me.

The Holy Spirit brings this up to date for the Christian in another verse, Philippians 1:6 -

… he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Make that Day your goal, and both disappointments and joys fall into their God-given place.

Migrations

Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: "My father was a wandering Aramaean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians ill-treated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labour. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now I bring the first fruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me." Deuteronomy 26:5-10 NIV

Migration is a phenomenon that applies not only to the human race but also to much of nature. We wonder at the extraordinary movements of birds, summer by summer, making their way to their northern feeding grounds and then returning southwards for the winter.

Among humans there were vast migrations even before written history began. As a student of languages, I used to learn about the massive people movements that must have taken place in time out of mind. Early populations would have moved en masse from central Asia and fanned out right through Europe, taking their languages with them.

Nowadays the issue of migration is very much a talking point. Many thousands are desperate to get from their homelands in Africa and Asia and make their way to the west. In an effort to make sense of it all, we try to classify them as either economic migrants or political refugees. Economic migrants are mostly seen as wishing to take advantage of the affluence of the developed world, unless they can contribute skills that the receiving country particularly needs. Political migrants may find a more sympathetic reception. These are people who go in the fear of their lives because of conditions in their home countries. In practice it is often not possible to determine which motive is uppermost in the mind of a particular migrant.

There is much about migration in the Bible. The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land is burned into the consciousness of the Jewish people and indeed Christians to this very day. The model of Christians as people on a journey looms large in the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 12:13-14 we read that the Lord Jesus was hounded to death as an outsider and His followers too are outsiders in this world:

“… Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” (ESV)

Because true citizens of God’s Kingdom are looking for another and better country, they are never prepared to compromise with the worldly conditions and expectations that they find around them. We may have all the trappings of affluence. Yet we cannot simply rest content with the status we have now. The Lord Jesus made these pointed remarks:

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward (Matthew 6:16)

In other words, in the admiration people give them they have already had all the reward they are going to get.

In what I call the Great Reversal, Jesus repeatedly states how the downtrodden will receive blessing in the next life. Remember, too, that He said about Himself that He had nowhere to lay His head (Matthew 8:20).

None of this means that we can in any way romanticise the aching issues of migration, the human dramas that are going on around us. But it does remind us that the human race is not programmed to be stuck in a groove. We are to embrace change – first and foremost the change of repentance: the 180° turnaround from sin to righteousness, from rejecting Christ to accepting Him. Then we go on to move deliberately to the pattern of service that God has for us, which may take us well away from the familiar and comfortable.

Monumental Vanity

“Vanity of vanities,” exclaimed the fabulously wealthy King Solomon after conducting a long experiment in enjoying every kind of luxury. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NKJV).

During the past couple of years, travelling about with time to spare, I have discovered a number of things about myself. One is that I have mixed feelings about stately homes.

As a member of the National Trust I have the privilege of free access, during the season, to over 300 historic buildings all round the country. I wouldn’t say that I don’t still enjoy visiting such places. There’s always some new focus of interest. I am not even too bothered by having to fight my way through crowds (sometimes almost literally) to get round. I appreciate that the Trust is very popular and others have just the same right to be there as I do.

It’s really a case of knowing too much about how these places came into existence. The two words “conspicuous consumption” just about cover it. If you had the good(?) fortune to rise in wealth or status in past times, the social set you moved among would expect you to keep up appearances. To do this meant spending your gains on colossal building projects, on acquiring curios, engaging in the social whirl, travel and other pursuits that made a good impression in the right places.

What of the people who were involved in providing the services that kept this aristocratic leisure industry in being? The whole enterprise would certainly provide employment for a large workforce in the professions, the crafts and trades. It was, in that sense, good for the local economy. But then there were the countless menial workers who lived a life of sheer drudgery and often danger to keep the whole business going.

Sometimes you can spot in the great houses a hint of recognition of the roles of these lowly people. I am thinking of Penrhyn Castle in North Wales. This full-scale mock-Norman castle was a massive statement of the power of the Pennant family. For many generations they had profited from the slave trade. When this was abolished they continued to amass enormous wealth, but did so now from the slate mines at nearby Bethesda.

Amid all the signs of showy opulence in the Castle there hangs a painting depicting quarry workers at their perilous and wretched toil. It is sobering to study the picture and consider how the Castle, that overbearing monument to the vain pretensions of man, stands today as a result of their humble labours. It is also pleasing that, in the work of art, these toilers gain at least a little belated credit.

But back to King Solomon and the Bible book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was like one of the castle-building landed gentry but with a philosophical turn of mind. For him the years of leisure and wealth were the opportunity for a giant experiment to find out what really matters in life. At various times he tried laughter, alcohol, building projects, financial investment and wisdom. He concluded that all were pointless.

Solomon seemed to sink into despair until the very last two verses.

Fear God and keep his commandments,
For this is the whole duty of man.
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether it is good or whether it is evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

In other words, every activity is meaningful after all … because God judges it! Everything is significant because nothing escapes His notice.

It is easy to feel that you are just a meaningless cog in a wheel, engaged in dead-end work, going nowhere. But that is not how God sees us. As the Lord Jesus says, 

“Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.  Therefore whoever confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:29-32).

As for my visits to the former estates of the rich, I get more pleasure out of going round the gardens than the houses nowadays. There is more room to move. Nature is better than man-made display. The gardens also give me ideas for plants for when I again have a workable garden of my own.  

Firstfruits

Last year I talked of my frequent journeys to the local hedgerows to pick what proved to be a bumper crop of blackberries. This year the signs look just as good.

Most of the fruit here in the north-west of England is still green. However, some early ripening brambles have already begun to mature, as I discovered the weekend before last. I had nothing handy to put any fruit in, but still couldn’t resist picking some. Home wasn’t far away, and I took back all I could in my cupped hand.

The first instalment - the firstfruits. These are important in the Bible. Exodus 23 talks of the Feast of Harvest to be celebrated with

“the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field” (verse 16, NIV)

and directs,

“Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God” (verse 19).

The books of Leviticus and Numbers describe how the firstfruits should be brought to God as a ritual offering. But firstfruits need not simply be grain. They could be human as well. Deuteronomy 21:15-17 describes a situation sadly common in early Bible times when a man had two wives, one of whom he came to prefer to the other.

The scenario goes on to assume that the man had boy children by them both. He was not to give the child of the loved wife precedence over the child of the unloved. If the son of the unloved is the firstborn, he must be given

“a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength”.

So “firstfruits” can be extended to mean the first instalment of anything. It is not surprising that the Lord Jesus Christ is described as firstfruits. He achieved many spectacular firsts - most of all when He rose again from death. 1 Corinthians 15:20 goes,

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”, in other words, those who die believing in Him will follow in His footsteps and rise again - that is a promise!

Romans 8:23 talks about believers having “the firstfruits of the Spirit”. The new, spiritual lease of life that is breathed into us when we become Christians is like a down-payment on the eternal glory to come in God’s heavenly kingdom. In a similar way the earliest Christians are thought of in the Bible as the firstfruits of the great multitude of those who will be saved down the centuries by trusting in Jesus.

The firstfruits were collected a long time ago. But, tell me, are you part of that great harvest that follows them, to God’s glory?

I look forward to another bumper crop of blackberries - the first few I held in my hand a couple of weeks ago being just the firstfruits. I won’t be able to keep them in the freezer this time, though. You see, God has graciously given me another opportunity to be the Pastor of a church. Within a few months I expect to be on the move down south. It is wonderful to have this new opening for service. May God give me and all His faithful labourers an abundant harvest.

Faith - not so unreachable

It is ever so frustrating to have someone say to you, “I wish I had your faith”, when you know perfectly well there is nothing stopping them!

People of firm Christian faith are not a different species from anyone else, nor do they live on a different planet. They are not saintly Olympians who can strain every muscle to achieve world records in some hugely daunting spiritual discipline.

Persons of weak faith and those of strong faith all share a common humanity and are all alike created in God’s image. God thinks of unbelievers in exactly the same terms as He thinks of Christians: 

“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked,” declares the Lord GOD, “and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23 ESV)

Two war veterans were responding to their experience of the Vietnam conflict. One declared, 

“I do not believe in God, because God couldn’t allow something so appallingly bad.” 

The other declared, 

“I believe in God, because there has to be something better than this.”  

Here, I would suggest, is the difference. Both men had endured the same things. On one level the viewpoint of the second man was just a hair’s breadth away from that of the first. On another level it was a world away. He had some faith. The other had none.

The following very thoughtful description of faith is from a Lebanese Christian who chose to stay in her own country, at great personal risk, instead of leaving to seek peace and security abroad. It comes down to five straightforward affirmations she makes about God.

Faith is:

• Expecting God to accomplish miracles through my five loaves and two fishes. He can use me.
• Rejecting the feeling of panic when things seem out of control. He is in control.
• Confidence in God's faithfulness to me in an uncertain world. He holds the future.
• Depending on the fact that God loves me, not on my ability to figure out how or why. He can be trusted.
• Thanking God for his gift of emotional health, not assuming it all stems from my ability to cope with stress. He provides.

'… I do believe; help me to overcome my unbelief' (Mark 9:24).

From “Day by Day With the Persecuted Church” (ed. Jan Pit)

Are you willing to believe 

• that God can use you? 
• That He is in control? 
• That He holds the future? 
• That He can be trusted? 
• That He provides? 

 All of these follow from the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the fact that He continues to show a prayerful interest in sinners who throw themselves on His mercy. Surely it is worth giving it a go.

And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6)

In hope, against all human hope,
self-desperate, I believe;
Thy quickening word shall raise me up,
Thou shalt Thy Spirit give.

Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees,
and looks to that alone;
laughs at impossibilities,
and cries: It shall be done!

Charles Wesley, 1707-88

Miracles

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines "miracle" as "an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused by God". Today, experts seem determined to exclude the miraculous when trying to explain the universe. I believe it is a huge mistake to banish miracles. If you do so, explaining the universe becomes like putting together a jigsaw with some important pieces missing.

The Lord Jesus Christ made use of miracles so that intelligent observers could form a clear picture of who He really was. The Gospel of Mark describes how He did this. A thoughtful Our Daily Bread Ministries writer shows how Mark puts it over for us. The section from chapter 4 verse 35 to chapter 5 verse 43 records four miracles. After the first, the disciples are "very much afraid" and ask one another, "Who then is this ...?" (Mark 4:41 NASB). This is exactly what Jesus means them to do, so they can learn the truth about Him.

The first in this series of miracles is the stilling of the storm (4:35-41). It demonstrates Jesus’ absolute power over nature. Incidentally, it also shows He is completely human too, with a human being's weakness. He was so tired that even the violent tossing of the waves did not wake Him at first, so that the disciples were scared at first that their boat would capsize before He could help!

The second miracle shows Jesus' total command of the spiritual world (5:1-20). It is the healing of a man who was so profoundly deranged as to be beyond all human help. However sceptical you may be about demons leaving the man and entering an enormous herd of pigs, the simultaneous jumping of the pigs into the sea would only have added to the onlookers' sense of how awesome the miracle was.

Not only did wonders never before seen occur during Jesus' ministry, wonder often followed wonder in quick succession. Jesus' reputation for healing the sick was growing apace. A woman with a haemorrhage testified to having tapped into healing power from Jesus (5:33). The Saviour was already on His way to lay healing hands on a desperately sick small girl. After the previous healing incident, word came that the girl had died. Undaunted, Jesus went on to reveal that He had power even over death: He raised the girl back to life.

"Who then is this?" Each miracle shows Jesus as the Omnipotent Sovereign God. To a first century Jew who knew his Bible, these works echoed Old Testament stories which would have been familiar to him. The days of Moses who parted the seas, and Elijah who breathed life back into the dead, were back. It was as though God's ancient power had returned to earth and gone into overdrive. "In Jewish minds," says our thoughtful writer, "the power to control the sea and the waves was exclusive to God (Job 38:8-11; Psalm 65:5-7; Isaiah 51:10; Nahum 1:3-5)."

You can refuse, if you like, to believe in miracles or to see through the eyes of His onlookers what Jesus did. Some did indeed refuse to believe. But surely you, like these nay-sayers, will be missing the whole point!

Who is He, in yonder stall,
At whose feet the shepherds fall? ...

Who is He that from the grave
Comes to heal and help and save? ...

Who is He that from His throne
Rules through all the worlds alone?

'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Benjamin Russell Hanby, 1833-67