Category: Getting to grips with God stuff

Well I am a Christian…

S is for Syria, Sadness and Solomon

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuffLeave a comment

I’ve been desperately trying to avoid writing this one. But really – what else could ‘S’ be for but Syria.

My avoidance has not been apathy, it’s been helplessness. What can I say that has not already been said? And even if I did come up with something new, what would it be worth in the great scheme of what is happening across the Middle East and Europe?

The statues in the image below are part of the Irish Famine Memorial; a haunting depiction of the helpless, hopeless Irish people who had no option but to emigrate or die of starvation. The gaunt faces remind me of images of Live Aid in 1985. To think that hunger and death was once so close to home is still shocking to me.  It’s said that through death and emigration, Ireland lost about 4 million people.

irish famine syrian

 

I’m not sure who first made and posted the ‘photoshopped’ image above. I’ve seen it a few times on social media and grabbed this copy from the Irish Times website. But I have to say, it stopped me in my tracks when I saw it. I was all for helping Syrian refugees, “Let them in by all means – and fast. But hang on… what about the numbers, and what about the ones who are going to make trouble and what if there isn’t enough room for us all (to live undisturbed I mean…)?”

Then I saw that merged photo and I was moved to tears; because I knew, if they were Irish people I wouldn’t be asking any questions other than – ‘what are you going to do to help?”

I remember that scene in the Titanic movie, when they wouldn’t let more people on the lifeboats for fear they would buckle or topple over. Fear, grief and more than a little self-preservation put a limit on who could be rescued. I’m not judging, I’d have been the same, I’m sure.

So what is to be done? What is the answer? I believe the wisdom of Solomon is needed for this crisis. A whole nation of displaced, terrified, people are on the move looking for a chance to raise their families in peace and safety. Who am I to say they should be denied that? And as for the talk of those whose intentions are not for peace, but for getting their terrorist agenda in under the radar…? Well I doubt every Irish person who emigrated had the purist of intentions; but America and Australia and the other countries they fled to still stand.

Who decides who is worthy of a chance to live anyway – good or bad? It isn’t me. The instructions I read in my Bible are clear about mercy and love, about welcoming the alien and feeding the poor – it doesn’t say… “but only the nice ones.”

And still I confess there is a nagging feeling in my gut. One that scares me about a massive influx of displaced people – into my place. What will my world be like when the dust settles and the unsettled have settled?

You see…? I told you my words would not be worth much!

R is for Rampart

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuff5 Comments

15488800365_a96b029ab1_nThis is a word that is easy to pass by in the Bible. It’s only mentioned a few times. Rampart.
Definition of Rampart on dictionary.com says this:
1. Fortification.
a broad elevation or mound of earth raised as a fortification around a place and usually capped with a stone or earth parapet. 2. anything serving as a bulwark or defense.

One of the few uses of this word in the NIV is found in the Book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk, one of the ‘minor’ prophets, has complained to God and received God’s response. God’s answer to Habakkuk’s first complaint is not a pleasant one. He declares the people of Israel will be defeated in battle and taken into captivity by the Babylonians, ‘that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own.’ Habakkuk goes on to make a second complaint and says, “I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.”

Ramparts were used as a watch tower, a place to see what enemy might be coming. Habakkuk declares he will wait for God’s second answer on the very place that would stop, or at least warn of, an invasion. Here the rampart may or may not be a construction, where Habakkuk intends to actually stand and wait. Whether there is a tangible rampart or not, there is definitely a figurative significance.

The rebel in me wonders if Habakkuk was getting all ‘whateverrrrr’ with God. Was he off to the ramparts to stand there all, “Eh like hello? look where I’m standing, a rampart! DUH!”  OK, so maybe the ‘whatever’ thing hadn’t arrived in Israel at that stage, but it’s clear that Habakkuk is not happy with God’s first answer and, with a bit of attitude, demands a second one.

The problems experienced by God’s people came from the fact that they constantly disobeyed God. In chapter 1 v 4, Habakkuk says ‘the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.’

Despite Habakkuk’s complaining, the invasion did come; no rampart could stop God’s plan from coming to pass.

I suppose it’s a lesson in making sure that we don’t rely on our old faithful defences. I’m alright cos I pray, I’m alright cos I read my Bible, I’m alright cos I go to church, I’m alright cos I give. These are things we should be doing – but they are a response to the relationship we have with God – not things we do to earn his favour. Using our prayer life or church attendance as a rampart just won’t do. Our only rampart is Jesus.

You want to stop the wrath of God from coming crashing down on your life – then stand on the Rampart, the Rock, that is Jesus Christ.

photo credit: Wall @ Qila Rohtas (Rohtas Fort) via photopin (license)

Q is for Quickening

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuffLeave a comment

My dad was a big fan of westerns. He was an avid watcher of The High Chaparral and Bonanza. He talked about Little Joe and Hoss, like they were mates he drank with in his local. He’d watch all the films too, from The Dirty Dozen and The Outlaw Josey Wales to more fun musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Calamity Jane.

I spotted a ‘modern’ western in the TV Guide one time and suggested he watch it. “The Quick and the Dead, Da” I said. “Not sure what that means, but it’s supposed to be a good one.”

“It means you’re either dead or alive,” he replied, without even looking up from his newspaper.

“So to be quick means to be alive? How’s that?”

“Well, when them fellas point their guns at you, you better move quick or you’ll be dead!” 15672703048_23e89a5a14_n

That conversation is the only reason I understood that line from the epic hymn ‘And Can it Be’

I love those old hymns, with big tunes and deep theology. The language is not always accessible and lines like – ‘Thine eye diffused a quickening ray…’ can, at first, mean little to the hearer. I knew what it meant tho, cos my da told me that to be quick is to be alive. 🙂

Even though the meaning is the same, the context is a bit different from the movie to the hymn. To be quick is to live, but to me quickened, is to be made alive. pastorhistorian.com has a whole blog post devoted to the hymn and says, ‘The language of quickening or “making alive” is present in the Authorized Version of Ephesians 2:1 and 4. “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; . . . Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.”  The quickening of the sinner resulted in a dungeon now inflamed with light, chains being broken, and a free heart.”

Being quickened is not just living – it’s living free, living full, living fast – but not loose! 😉

photo credit: Stetson On The Rocks via photopin (license)

P is for Perfection

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuff3 Comments

girl 2Ah yes, now here is a subject I know a LOT about. Only because I’ve been searching for it for a long long time – no sign yet. (Although the little one to the left there thinks I’m doing ok…)

During the sermon last Sunday morning, in Colossians 3, the preacher said that Paul’s teaching was encouraging the readers to let the peace, love and purity of Christ permeate the world around them, rather than what was happening in Colossi; the pluralistic culture permeating the church.

In the course of the sermon, when talking about the characteristics and behaviour of “the new self”, he said something along the lines of, ‘if you are in Christ, you have the Spirit of the Lord; by grace, you can do these things…’ These things being, patience, compassion, kindness, forgiveness and love, and the context is within the church – Christian to Christian.

So why don’t we do it all the time? Why aren’t we perfect? If we have the Spirit of Christ to do these things, why aren’t we doing them?

The IVP New Dictionary of Theology, when describing perfection, says – “At all times Christians have been faced with the tension between this calling to reflect in their lives and conduct the perfect holiness of God, and the fact, all too evident to experience, of the continuing presence within the personality of the sinful tendencies of their former lives.”

Now if you’re like me, you had to read that a few times, then read it again, stopping at every comma – and eventually are quizzically looking at your own right eye, getting the gist of it.

I think what it means is – we’re supposed to be perfect, or at least WANT to be perfect, but we are incapable of being so. Or maybe the Apostle Paul, puts it better in Romans 7… “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

This is the dilemma we are living with, the tension of the now and not yet. We have this ‘new self’, the old person we used to be is gone.  Yet we still don’t have it sussed. No more or less than the Colossian Christians, to whom Paul had to write to teach them how they should treat each other.

So if you’re like them (and me), struggling to get it right, mostly getting it wrong; tripping up a lot of the time – often over the same stumbling blocks – well, be don’t despair…
nobody’s perfect*

photo credit: Good Job! via photopin (license)

* except Jesus 🙂

O is for Omni

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuffLeave a comment

Continuing with my April AtoZ (4 months later, but however) today’s word is ‘Omni’

The Oxford English Dictionary says that ‘omni’ means ‘of all things, in all ways or places.’ The all concept is attributed to God in a number of ways. It’s most often seen in these three characteristics: Omnipotent – all powerful, Omnipresent – ever everywhere, and Omniscient –  all knowing.

We see them attributed to God throughout Scripture – but I always remember the first time I realised that these three ‘omnis’ are packaged nice and neat together in one Psalm. It became my favourite Psalm that day. (Although, I have few favourites 🙂 )

Psalm 139:1-6… YOU KNOW EVERYTHING, and that sort of knowledge is absolutely out of my league
Psalm 139:6-12… YOU ARE EVERYWHERE, I cannot get away from you, no matter how hard I try
Psalm 139:13-18… YOU SEE EVERYTHING, from the moment I was made, every day since and all the days to come

The psalmist doesn’t stop there. He can’t get his head around the fact that there are people who still hate God – especially in the light of these amazing attributes. Describing God’s character in this way leads to a sudden outburst of defence of God, and frustration that He won’t just wipe away anyone who doesn’t worship Him. But then, the writer immediately moves to contrition.

Why the sudden jump? I reckon it’s cos you can’t (or your shouldn’t be able to) understand God’s fabulousness and at the same time let your heart be filled with hatred. As well as raising indignation in the writer, an understanding these ‘super-God’ qualities gives him an understanding of his own imperfection.

It’s a challenge isn’t it?! Other people’s non-interest or abject hatred of God can raise our heckles, but our knowledge of who He is should keep us in check. After the psalmist’s outburst about the sins of God’s enemies, he looks upon his own imperfect heart and asks God to cleanse him.

Psalm 139:23-24 
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

#thatisALL 🙂

A x

 

Back to busy-ness…

On By auntyamoIn Getting to grips with God stuff, Random Ramblings, Writing, Blogging etc8 Comments

You’d have to wonder what gives a blogger the audacity, nay.. the temerity to wander off the reservation, leave her blog languishing for the want of a post; and then to saunter back and pick up where she left off – all the while expecting her readers to swoon and sigh with relief that she deigned to notice them again.

I reckon it’s my heightened sense of self-importance and a list of dazzlingly weak excuses 🙂 And the knowledge that there’s a lot of love and grace in you lot *imagine here a picture of me with an innocent smile – I don’t have one to post at present…*

For weeks now I’ve said… “as soon as I get settled,” or “as soon as that’s over,” or “as soon as I don’t have to think about that anymore… I’ll start writing again.” I’ve no idea where I got this crazy notion that I can only write when there is nothing else going on in my brain. I don’t normally have a taste for such luxuries. I realise that ‘the quieter day’ isn’t coming. In fact I heard an old lady once say, with great solemnity, “ah sure if it isn’t something, it’s something else.” Dagnabbit the woman was right!

I’ve been complaining to God about how little time and energy I have to write, as well as a lack of ideas, inspiration and you know… words. But instead of things quietening down, God has put me on a path that will make life a whole lot busier (and more exciting). I can’t tell you about it at the mo, but if what I believe is about to happen, actually happens… well I’ll be giving up all hopes of a quieter day, setting the alarm clock at least an hour earlier each day and, I trust, will be busier and more fulfilled than I have ever been. 🙂

Anyway, sorry for disappearing… again. While I wait to tell you about the thing I can’t tell you about yet… I’ll continue with the AtoZ – thanks for letting me know you liked it so far.

Next up is the ‘Omni’s 

A x

 

N is for Nephilim

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuff1 Comment

NNow these guys  are interesting. I’ve read quite a bit about the Nephilim – and not everyone agrees who they are…

They first appear in Genesis 6…
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The discussion usually centres around ‘the sons of God and the daughters of men.’ Some sources say that the sons of God were fallen angels. Others say that they were lapsed followers of God who were attracted to women who were not followers of God, hence God’s frustration with their choice of wives.

It makes more sense that they were human. Jesus mentions angels in the NT and says that they don’t marry. (Matt 22:29) Also the beginning of the above section is talking specifically about the increase of human beings. The Nephilim are only mentioned briefly and are not talked about again until their descendants are mentioned in the book of Numbers, when the 12 spies went to check out the land (Another great story!). “And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”” (Num 13:33 ESV) It’s important to note that this was after the flood, so these Nephilim were descendants of one of Noah’s sons. So… were Nephilim people of a particular stature, rather than of a particular tribe? Not sure, but they were obviously big guys! Later on we hear that Goliath, the Philistine, was another human of gargantuan proportions. So it wasn’t unheard of, or an ‘angelic’ quality to be big!

I freely admit that this a 2 minute thought on a well documented discussion about who these Nephilim were – and don’t get me started on the Rock Monsters in the Noah movie.

I believe that the more important point is the story that surrounds them. God continually calling His people back to Him, and all but Noah responded. The Ark was built and the rains came. No one, not even the ‘sons of God’ saw what was coming, or realised God’s judgement was about to fall.

The Nephilim were ‘heroes of old, men of renown’ – but they weren’t on the ark!
There’s another lifeboat coming, I intend to be on it – how about you?

M is for Macarise

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuff7 Comments

MToday’s word is Macarise. It has nothing to with fast food production, pasta with cheese; or equally cheesy spanish pop songs. It’s even BETTER than those things 🙂

phrontistery.info defines it as: to declare to be happy or blessed. A macarism (the noun) is also known as a ‘beatitude – taking pleasure in someone else’s joy.’ So the word can also be used to congratulate someone on their joy.

Last year I did some research on the difference between contentment and happiness. You can be content ‘in every situation’ without necessarily being happy about it. I read somewhere (sorry I can remember where) that contentment is and inner state; more to do with how you feel about how things are. Happiness is a response to the receipt of something good. This is macarism – a beatitude – declaring happiness because of a blessing.

The added element of congratulating others on their joy – well it’s double prizes isn’t it. It echoes Romans 12:15, which says that we should rejoice with those who rejoice.

There are some obvious cases of macarism in the Bible. The two that spring to mind immediately are when Miriam grabbed a tambouine and danced and sang after crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 15:20ff.), and Mary’s own expression of joy; magnifying the LORD for His blessing upon her (Luke 1:46ff.)

My prayer for each and every reader of this post is that the Lord would give you cause to macarise today. 🙂 x

L is for Laud

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuff4 Comments

LI realised a few years ago that I’d been singing a hymn wrong. The first line is All glory, laud and honour to Thee, Redeemer King.’ I presumed it was a typo in the hymn book and was singing ‘All glory Lord, and honour.’ (I didn’t seem to have a problem with the terrible grammar of that sentence.)

When we changed to projecting hymn words on a screen, the word ‘laud’ was still there. I knew that they would not have carried a typo over from the book. So I went looking for the definition…

Oxforddictionaries.com says this: Laud – Late Middle English: the noun from Old French laude, the verb from Latin laudare, both from Latin laus, laud – ‘praise’

There’s nothing new I can say about praise. Even if you don’t believe in God, you know what praise is – whether it be for a sports team, a musician or your child’s maths homework 🙂 BUT when rummaging around to see how the word ‘laud’ is used, I found some troponyms of the word.

Stay with me now…

A troponym is a way of enacting a verb. It’s different from an adverb – she sang brightly, he walked slowly etc. It is a method by which an action can be carried out. So a troponym of ‘laud’ is simply, a way in which one can ‘laud’ You still with me? 😉 Well one of the troponyms is -to ‘ensky’ which means – to exalt to the skies; lift to the skies or to heaven with praise.

Presuming I haven’t totally confused you, I hope you think that is a fantastic as I do!

In the updated version of the hymn book, they’ve changed the word to ‘praise’. I know that a lot of flowery and unfamiliar language is not always helpful, especially to folks who are new to it all. I just think laud is a better and a fuller word. I’ve been blessed in the exploration what it really means.

Whatever word we use, the important thing is that it all goes to Him.

K is for Koinonia

On By auntyamoIn April AtoZ, Getting to grips with God stuff10 Comments

KWelcome to the half-way mark of the A to Z Challenge  – or just beyond it. This is the start of week three and today’s letter ‘K’ is for another word I love – Koinonia.

GotQuestions.org explains the word like this: Koinonia is a Greek word that occurs 20 times in the Bible. Koinonia’s primary meaning is “fellowship, sharing in common, communion.” The first occurrence of koinonia is Acts 2:42, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Christian fellowship is a key aspect of the Christian life. Believers in Christ are to come together in love, faith, and encouragement. That is the essence of koinonia.

Yesterday evening our pastor preached on 1 Samuel 20, about the covenant that David and Jonathan made with each other. He was speaking about the particular nature of their friendship and the covenant promises they made to one another. After making the agreement (it’s a great story btw, you should go read it), Jonathan says, “remember, the Lord is witness between you and me forever.” Their friendship and promises were in the context of their common relationship with God. During yesterday’s sermon, the pastor noted that this can be a lonely world, and surely all friendships are valuable. It’s not that we should disregard friendships with with those who don’t share our faith – it’s just acknowledging that friendships with other believers are different.

There is ‘koinonia’ 🙂

Have you ever looked around your church on a Sunday and wondered how you managed to end up part of such a motley crew? Oh… so just me then! Nah… I doubt that.

I’ve been in a few different churches over the years, having moved a few times. I’m always amazed at the mixed bunch I end up in. Quite often there are folk who I’d never hang out with in any other context. There’s nothing wrong with them; it’s just that because of different backgrounds, age, personality, likes/dislikes etc our paths would most likely never cross.

In our natural born family it’s a blood tie that keeps us together. Even if a family is not ‘together’ as such, a blood relative will always be one – even if you never see them. In the family of God, the fellowship, the ‘koinonia’ of the followers of Christ has that same sticking power!

If you’re a Christian then I’m your sister in Christ. If I drive you nuts that’s just hard cheese – we’re stuck with each other 🙂 Kinda nice tho’ eh?