Setting the world right

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One lazy Sunday afternoon, a father was dozing on the sofa. His wee girl shook him awake, “Daddy, I’m bored!” He looked around for something to do, and noticed that the Sunday newspaper had a photo of a map of the world. He showed her the picture, then tore it into pieces, and told her to put the world back together again. Since she was too young to know where all the countries were, he thought the rest of the afternoon was his to doze in.
A few minutes later she shook him again. “I’m finished, Daddy!”
“You can’t be!”, but when he looked he saw that the world had indeed been put back together. “How did you do that? You didn’t know where all the countries are!”
“Well,” she said, “there was a picture of a person on the other side, and when I got my person back together, the world got back together too.”
We are like that. Too often our lives get ripped to bits. Our person is in pieces, and because our lives are in pieces, our world is too.

Perfect sense

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I have blogged before about perfection in Being Perfect and it is one area where I tend to get into disagreement with other Christians, even Pastors. Most people I talk to say that it is impossible to be perfect. Bearing in mind my own track record, I tend to agree with them. But – and it is an almighty but – we are told to be perfect by Jesus himself :
You must be perfect — just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48, TEV)
It doesn’t seem to matter what translation you use. I looked at 15 different versions, and all of them, with the sole exception of The Message, used the word “perfect”. In all of these translations, it wasn’t a request, it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command.

Right, Mountain, out of the way!

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A friend of mine will shortly set out on an amazing adventure – to climb Mount Kilimanjaro – to help raise funds for the charity Scottish Spina Bifida. I really admire him for that. It will take courage, strength and endurance. You can sponsor him if you would like to give him a wee bit more encouragement.
But I ask myself why he doesn’t just walk round it. After all, when we face problems in our lives, some of them look like mountains, and that’s often the easiest thing to do, isn’t it – walk round them? Sometimes we don’t even do that – we just stand there and look at them. They are huge! I’ll never get over it! Scientists say that Mount Everest is getting higher all the time. As we just stand and look at our problems, they get bigger too. Sometimes we can’t even see the top.

Making the best of the worst

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Can you remember the worst thing you have ever done? What category does it fall into – embarrassing, dodgy, illegal, evil? Is it worse than anything anyone you know has ever done? Does it scream at you, or merely give you a nudge? Was it a long time ago, or fairly recent? Maybe it was a one-off, or perhaps a serial occurrence? Does it lie in wait for you, or is it in your mind all the time?
Answers on a postcard to…..

Jealousy is good!

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Can you name the seven deadly sins?
I suppose it is something that isn’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days, and there will be a number of reasons for that. Firstly, people don’t hear about them any more. Secondly, a lot of people wouldn’t know what some of them even meant if they did hear them. Thirdly, there are so many more sins out there – the world has come a long way since the early days of the church. Technology has moved on and you can sin faster, with more people and more often than you ever could back then!
I don’t know why the church came up with the idea of limiting the “deadly” sins to any number. As far as I can see, unless the sin is forgiven by God, even the smallest, most insignificant sin is deadly.

Possessed

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In this period of economic downturn there is much tightening of belts going on. There is the fear of losing a job, and the depression that comes from having lost one. People aren’t going out as much, aren’t buying as much. At a time of low interest rates, credit is very hard to get, and mortgages are only available if you have a substantial deposit and a secure salary.
Today in the UK, not having a television is one of the official measures of poverty. When I was very young, it was a mark of affluence – black and white affluence, but still affluence! Our standard of living has increased immensely in a relatively short period. We have more possessions than we ever had, and we throw them away faster than we ever did. Once they are out of fashion, they are out of the door. Once they are old tech, we are looking at the new.

Follow the instructions

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I once bought a new kitchen for my house. It was a self assembly kitchen. I was never very good at woodwork and stuff like that in school, so I was really pushing out the boundary of my ability, to say the least! I asked the guy at the store if it was easy to build the units. “Oh yes!” he said, “once you’ve done the first unit, the rest is easy.”
He wasn’t joking! I think it took me three or four days to assemble the first one successfully. I did it lots of times, a different way each time – but I was always left with an extra bit at the end, and the extra bit wasn’t always the same extra bit! Finally, I understood what the instructions were trying to tell me – it wasn’t my fault, you see – they just weren’t speaking to me clearly enough. I hate instructions that mumble, don’t you?

Riches to Rags

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The story of Ted Williams, which has gone viral on YouTube, is the kind that we all like. A down-and-out, begging on the street, is discovered and his voice is wonderful, just perfect for TV and radio. A film of him speaking is posted on the net, and suddenly everyone wants to listen to him, everyone wants to give him a job. He is famous, his life is turned round. He has a great future. He will make millions. A great story of rags to riches!

Fear is the lock

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I have blogged a couple of times on the subject of fear (Fear is the Key and Fearful Delight) and the subject keeps coming up in my reading. It’s hardly surprising – I did a quick scan of the concordance and the word appears in well over 200 passages. That is not to mention all the similes and adjectives associated with it. It’s not just the Bible either. Fear is a big element in our society – Google the word, and you get 146 million results!

100 not out

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Nearly one in five people currently in the UK will live to see their 100th birthday, according to the government. The Department for Work and Pensions said its figures suggested 10 million people – 17% of the population – would become centenarians. (source – BBC)

There are definitely more older people around now – although the funny thing is that the older I get, the younger the older people seem to be – or is that just me? It is very obvious that we are living longer, and so we should, since medical advances mean that previously fatal conditions are now manageable. So we should perhaps aspire to live to 100 years old. Whether the prediction will be the case when the obesity bomb hits the ground is another matter.

Obediently yours

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I don’t know how young I was when I was first disobedient. I am sure that as a baby I showed signs of the disobedience to come – perhaps it was just turning my head away to refuse to eat the food on the spoon in front of me, or perhaps I just refused to do something that I had been told to do. But was that real disobedience, or was it just the case that I didn’t understand the words? As a toddler, I almost certainly refused to do something, even though I fully understood the words. But was that real disobedience, or was it just the case that I didn’t understand the rules? By the time I was at school, I understood both the language and the rules, and I know I was disobedient on many occasions, and punishment followed accordingly.

Oh me of little faith!

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Christmas Day was a busy one, calling in at our first round of visits at 11 am and leaving the last one at 11 pm. I could say that it was all go, but I would be more accurate if I said it was all eat. By the time Libby and I got home, we were very full and very tired. Boxing Day had an emergency start as we nearly slept in (as we would have loved to do) and we barely made it to church on time. Our church is very lively and, even when I am sitting down, I can’t stop moving in time to the music. The result was that I was very tired by the time I got home. We both were, and we settled down to be truly lazy relaxed.