1 – Timing

I keep a personal journal. I don’t write in it every day, and sometimes I won’t write in it for weeks. When I do write, it is generally a thought that I’ve had after reading something in the Bible. It’s a useful thought, one that should change me and how I think and how I…

Well, well! Will, will!

How big is your faith?
In our Celebrate Recovery programme, we have been talking quite a bit about faith and, to help people get a grasp of what Jesus said about faith (Matthew 17:20), we gave everyone a mustard seed. If we have faith that big, we can move a mountain. It has quite an impact when you do this – but I strongly recommend that you sellotape the mustard seed to a piece of paper – the last thing you want to happen is that they lose the mustard seed, because that is just a powerful anti-message that faith can be easily lost!

Right, Mountain, out of the way!

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.

Piggy in the middle

I have heard some daft ideas in my time, but there was one which I came across years and years ago which has stuck in my mind ever since I first heard it. It wasn’t so much an idea, as a theory of life and I think it is also used to show the importance of logic in an argument.

The theory states that I am the only person in the world. No one else exists, just me. That is when the argument starts, because you chip in with the comment that you are there too, so I am wrong. Ah, but you are only there as part of my imagination. I am making you say that you are there.

To be or not to be

They say that what you are is what you eat. I have never really understood that. OK, I can see that if you do not eat meat you can be called a vegetarian or a vegan, but that is really as far as it goes – it puts you into a category, but that is only part of what you are, part of what you do.

So, what else can define what you are? Your fashion or your taste in music can suggest what age group you fall into. Your accent can suggest where you come from. The car you drive, or your lack of a car, can point to your income group, but not necessarily. The way your children behave can possibly show how good a parent you are. How you behave might point to what you have been through earlier in life. But all these things only show a bit of you – they are not what you are, who you are. Like nationality or political affiliation, they might classify part of you, but they don’t define you.

Why does he do that?

Libby and I have a cat, a wonderful cat who goes by the name of Keziah.
But Keziah is like all cats. She is demanding and self-centred, greedy and sometimes destructive. She is always after something. We get up in the morning and she is immediately asking for food. After she has eaten, she wants to be on my knee and for me to start petting her. Then she wants out. Then she wants in. Then she wants fed. Then she wants petted. Then she wants out. And so it goes on. She has even learned to beg like a dog for food. She is always after something, and if we ignore her she might resort to picking the carpet to bits with her claws.
Why do we do it?

How does he do that again?

Sometimes he does it in the form of an amazing miracle, such as sending manna and quail to feed the Israelites in the desert. Sometimes he does it through the voice of Jesus, who told Lazarus to come out of the tomb. Sometimes he does it through Peter’s shadow, healing the sick at the side of the road, and sometimes he does it through the great evangelists of today. Sometimes it is spontaneous, mostly it is through prayer, always it is because of love.

Engaging the Silence

A wonderful poem on unanswered prayer by Pete Greig in his book God on Mute: first there is prayer and where there is prayer there may be miracles but where miracles may not be there are questions and where the are questions there may be silence but silence may be more than absence silence may…

What goes down!

I have been reading an amazing book – Faith and Doubt, by John Ortberg. In part of the book, John explains that there are three kinds of faith: the faith that we say we have. This is what I call “Sunday faith”. It is where we tell people that we have faith for something, but…

Altar ego

But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you. (Matthew 6:6) Holy Bible, New Living Translation There is no doubt about it, we are complex beings. It is a delight to know that we are…