Ant Massacre

Yes it was me – I am fully responsible for the recent massacre of ants in our kitchen. I grew fed up with their burrowing in the sugar jar, queuing up to the grocery cupboard and their sneaky infiltration of our fridge! I did try surface spray to dissuade them from coming in but they just changed their route rather than their target. Eventually I went looking for ant poison in the supermarket. I disregarded anything that said non-toxic – I didn’t want to give them bad taste in their moth I wanted them gone. I put down the ant traps on morning before work – the idea is that the ants come to the sweet poison, take it back to the nest and kill off the colony – but I think the toxic concoction was stronger than I realised as they didn’t die neatly back in the nest – our kitchen floor looked like a war zone with dead bodies scattered all over and the odd ant looking like he was trying to retrieve a deceased loved one. Since I swept up the causalities there have not been ants in my kitchen.

I’m not really as harsh as I sound but sometimes we need to take a harsher route in dealing with our problems – coaxing the aunts did not work, a harsher approach was called for. In the same way God did not take a gentle approach in dealing with our sin. His holiness and justice did not allow him just to sweep our sin under the carpet. His approach to dealing with the problem was a tough one – the death of His son Jesus.

Hebrews 2:9-11 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 10 In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. 11 Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.

God did not take an easy route in dealing with sin – His solution was costly. It makes we wonder if we shouldn’t be taking a stronger tactic in dealing with sin in our own lives. Personally speaking I think I am quite soft on myself – do I perhaps take God’s forgiveness for granted, do I take His Holiness and dislike of sin to lightly. Should I not be more radical in dealing with sin? Jesus certainly didn’t suggest a softly softly approach.

Mark 9:43-49 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out, 44 [where "'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'] 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell, 46 [where "'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'] 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where “‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 Everyone will be salted with fire.

Lord thank you for not avoiding dealing with our sin problem because the only solution was so costly – help me to deal with sin in the same way, even if it may be uncomfortable for me.

Baby Safe Baby

Yesterday a baby was dropped off in the Baby Safe and it made me feel so sad – to think how excited I am waiting for our little one to arrive when there is another mum out there struggling so badly that she see giving up her baby as the only option. She was brave to bring the baby somewhere safe, but what torment she must have been in to make that decision and how is she doing today? Will she be affirmed that she made the right choice or will she be plagued by doubt and regret? I struggle to put myself in her shoes, my heart breaks for her and the baby. Honestly my initial reaction was ‘How could a mum do that?’, but 30 secs later it turned to sorrow for the mum who thought this was the best choice and sorrow for a baby who may grow up with knowing her mum.

Life is difficult. We end up facing circumstances and choices that we never conceived of and were never prepared for. Thankfully despite our changeableness and sometime rebellion God says that He will never abandon us:

Psalms 89:30-33 If his children refuse to do what I tell them, if they refuse to walk in the way I show them, 31 If they spit on the directions I give them and tear up the rules I post for them– 32 I’ll rub their faces in the dirt of their rebellion and make them face the music. 33 But I’ll never throw them out, never abandon or disown them. (The Message)

I pray for this mum that she would know God’s faithfulness and she would know His healing after her hard choice – for the days and years that lie ahead when she second guesses her decision that she would encounter people who could bring her God’s peace.

 

Preparing for times of doubt

The girls of my lovely cell group lured me to a house last week under false pretences – it was my surprise baby shower. I was spoilt, pampered and loved. Silly games were played including the chocolate nappy game, my waters broke and baby pictures. Thankfully I manage to avoid sampling more than one baby food. Throughout the whole proceedings I sat like a Queen on a throne and was given a lovely pedicure – definitely I was spoilt. Amongst all the beautiful gifts for baby there was one gift for all the girls that really touched me. Each one thought of a word to describe me and why they thought I would be a good mum. They then wrote the words on a canvas so that I could be reminded of them on the days when I doubted myself. I’m very sure there will be days in the next few months and years when I panicking and doubting my ability to deal with this little girl who is on her way so the canvas has taken pride of place in the baby’s room.

So it is the same in our walk with God – sometimes we get overwhelmed with the situation we are in and we forget who we are. I love the lists that Neil Anderson has in the back of his book Bondage Breaker – he has a list of who God says I am.  When the world, the devil or my own mind whisper to me that I’m not good enough I have a list to turn to that says differently – and after all I figure God knows me better than I do.

Some of the verses on my list are:

I am created by God:

Psalms 139:13-14  For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  14  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

I am adopted by God:

Ephesians 1:4-6  For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love  5  he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will  6  to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

I am forgiven:

1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

I am not condemned:

Romans 8:1-2  Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,  2  because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

Times of doubt will come. How are you prepared to deal with them? What verses make you list of doubt beaters? Lord in times of doubt may your Word and your thoughts about me bring peace and faith.

Jesus’ gentleman – Charles Murray Senior

As I logged on to Facebook this morning my husband was puzzled by the tear that slipped down my face. A string of posts caused that tear – Charles Murray Senior, eldest elder of Orangefield Presbyterian Church has passed into glory aged 103 and 8 months. He had loved and served the Lord for 90 years. My tear was not really for Mr Murray but for the space that he leaves behind, for Charlie Murray Junior and for a community of believers who have lost a Saint. For any Orangefielder Mr Murray was an institution – always sweets in his pockets for kids and words of encouragement for adults. His conversation was always centered around Jesus. One of my fondest memories was the Sunday after mum died we went to church – usually people avoid church for a few weeks so our presence was a wee bit awkward for some who didn’t know what to say. Mr Murray was straight over to Dad and I – he addressed the situation head one and said that we had done the right thing in coming straight to church and that he had done the same thing after Mrs Murray died. It took us a moment to twig that Mrs Murray was his wife!

Mr Murray’s legacy is a life spent loving and declaring Jesus. I am actually a bit surprised that he died – I thought he might pull an Enoch and keep walking and talking with God right into glory.

Genesis 5:23-24 Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years.  ²⁴Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Mr Murray’s life is a challenge to me to love Jesus well, to love Him consistently and love Him more than anything else.

2 Timothy 4:7-8  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  ⁸Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day–and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Now his reward is to be with the One he loved so well.

When too much information is a scary thing

Last night was the first night of antenatal classes. Seven couples gathered in a dimly lit room in the hospital with wind chime music tinkling in the background. Each couple expressing their nervousness and excitement about the immanent arrivals. As the evening progressed past the deep breathing exercises (which nearly caused me to sleep except for the interruption from the ice machine!) things got more interesting. The Sister started addressing the Dads, giving them advice and instructions about what to expect. Then she went on to give a demo of what happens in labour using a doll and a plastic pelvis. Already I think the information was getting too much for some folk – but when the doll refused to slip easily through the pelvis there was a look of fear on some faces. After a tour of the ward the Sister looked at her group and was faced with silence. When asking if people felt better about the prospective birth a few Dads confessed that they were now more nervous and sacred than they had been before the class started!

Often we think that knowing what lies ahead of us will take the fear away. If only we knew how this situation would turn out, how this relationship would end up etc. But in truth knowing is not always helpful, in fact it can make is more fearful. Looking back on difficult times in my life I think knowing what to expect in advance would not have prepared me any better for them and in fact might have led me to panic and to struggle more than necessary.

I’m not suggesting ignorance is bliss but I do believe that there is a reason why God wants us to trust Him with the future and leave it in His capable hands. We have to learn to trust Him that even though tough times may lie ahead he is in control:

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

While the getting there may be hard and painful we can trust our heavenly father that there will be a happy ending, even if the ending is not the one we had imagined.

Romans 8:28  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Lord, I don’t want to bury my head in the sand – I know tough times lie in the future – but help me to keep my focus on you, the One in charge of the happy endings.

What will she be like?

We are on a countdown – six weeks left if baby follows the doctor’s text book. Some days I am excited, others nervous & others a bit fearful. What will she be like? Will she look more like me than her Dad? Will she pick up my good habits or my bad habits? Whose temperament will she have – will she be talkative like me or thoughtful like her Dad? Will she be a contented baby? According to science she won’t get my blue eyes but curls are very likely. At the top is a photo of my mum & I 35 years ago – many people have mistaken it for me and a baby – we are enough a like that some people get sad me because I remind them so much of mum. My prayer for our baby though is not that she would take after her Mum or her Dad but that each of us would take after Jesus instead:

2 Corinthians 3:18  All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (The Message)

The future is both exciting and unknown. What will her life be like – I know we won’t be able to shield her from every hard time, but what lies in store for her? I’m sure I will do my best to protect her from all life’s faults and for a long time I’m sure she will think her Dad hangs the sun out for her every day. Yet the best gift we can give her is to know that know that all things are in the hands of the One who made her:

Colossians 1:15-17  We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created.  16  For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels–everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.  17  He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. (The Message)

What will she be like – well we’ll just have to wait and see. What we do know for sure is that she will be well loved, not just by her family but more importantly by the One who made her.

Average pushy mom?

 

A thought crossed my mind the other day that took me by surprise – I actually shocked myself. I was at the baby doctor and Baby Soko was being measured on the scan. According to dates she was exactly 33 weeks that day and the baby doctor was very impressed that all the measurements – head, tummy, leg  and weight came out at exactly 33 weeks. He declared our wee girl to be perfectly average. This is where my surprising thought popped in – ‘Don’t call my child average!’. Thankfully it wasn’t one of those moments when you think you only thought something but really said it out loud! My reaction surprised me. Since when is average a bad thing? Oh no – am I going to be a pushy mom?

We live with a lot of pressure to succeed and do well – to excel at everything. Yet while doing things to the best of our ability is what God requires of us we have added peer pressure and self-pressure to perform to impress others. I know I am guilty of it – I like to do things well. I’m not keen on ordinary when spectacular can be found. Yet by always aiming to impress am I missing out on the ordinary? Surely the aim should not be the applause of others but knowing that we have done the best we possibly can?

Colossians 3:23-24  Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,  24  since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

For myself I need to change my standards – God’s approval and His knowing I have done my best needs to replace the applause of others. Lord help me to honour you with the highest standard of living a life to honour and please only You.

Wet bottoms and red faces – some thoughts on work

I had a bit of a shock the other day – I guess I was a bit out of the loop when it comes to toilet technology. I was in a shopping centre and thanks to my baby bump I’ve become a connoisseur of public toilets. This particular mall has automated doors to get into the bathroom and then no actual flush buttons or handles in each cubical to flush with. Instead the toilet is meant to automatically flush as you leave. However I must have visited a dysfunctional toilet for as I sat down I started to hear a gurgling noise and all of a sudden the toilet flushed while I was still on top of it! It happened once more before I could get free – I ended up wet bottomed and red faced! In another public bathroom a few days later I struggled to get paper towel out of the dispenser thing until a lady gracefully waved her hand in front of the dispenser and some towel gently rolled out!

All this automation got me to thinking – I’m sure it is meant to be there both to make our lives easier and for helping the germ phobic (although you still had to open & close the cubical door – I’m glad that one was not also automatic otherwise I would have put on quite a show!). I wonder if our drive to make life easier is actually making us lazy? With instant coffee, drive throughs, internet banking, email on our cell phones etc is our life of better quality or are we actually more stressed?

God designed us to work – it is the way He built us. Work was introduced from the beginning and is not a result of the fall.

Genesis 2:15  The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Yet we spend so much time trying to think of ways to get around it. For many of us this week is the first week back to work after the holidays and I have heard many complaints and sighs. Yet we are created to work. Paul instructed the Thessalonians church to keep away from idleness:

2 Thessalonians 3:6-10  In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.  7  For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you,  8  nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.  9  We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow.  10  For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”

So my embarrassing incident reminds me that God did not design me for a life of idleness and as I start out on the new working year I am thankful for the work I have to do and pray that God will be glorified by it.

Sitting Comfortably: Do we need a theology of Discomfort?

I have said before that I like to be comfortable – to live within my comfort zone. Although I have lived in different cultures I don’t exactly like change and strangeness – but I do really enjoy those cultural differences once they become familiar to be me.

I’m in the middle of reading Dave Gibbons book ‘The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church’. I really love the idea of being third culture – it is based on the idea of mission kids who live with their feet in two cultures and develop for themselves a third, kind of best of both. However there is one part that has me uncomfortable – his theology of discomfort. I understand the principle but I’m not entirely comfortable with it – perhaps it is just semantics? Let me explain. Gibbons rightly says that Jesus lived an uncomfortable life:

If any word epitomizes  Jesus’ life, it’s discomfort, from the beginning – his birth amid poverty, in a bed of straw, into a hostile world – to the end – his death, by the Via Dolorosa, full of shame, sacrifice, humility, pain, betrayal, and rejection. (pg 78)

He goes on to say:

Jesus chooses to be identified with people who are on the outside looking in those whom most people of his day felt uncomfortable being around and justified in ignoring. (pg 82)

Gibbons rightly challenges us to move outside our comfort zone and to love those who we are uncomfortable with – however this is also where I have an issue.  I don’t think that Jesus was actually uncomfortable with any of these people – he was at home with the tax collectors & prostitutes and equally at ease amongst the religious elite. Likewise the Apostles spread the Gospel amongst the wealthy influential as well as the poor and enslaved. I think our discomfort is actually sin. When we are uncomfortable with people it is because they are not the same as us – their difference scares us. I agree with Gibbons that we need to reach out to all people – even if they are radically different than us, but perhaps rather than moving out of our comfort zone we need to have our comfort zone radically expanded? We need to see others not through our own eyes which judge people and assess their worth and value, but rather through the eyes of God who despite our sin loves us.

We need to see our commonalities – we have all sinned, we are all in the same boat despite our different races, genders, economic statuses, cultures.

Romans 3:22-24  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,  23  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  24  and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

That is Good News we have to share and live out.

Lord, help me, by your Spirit, expand my comfort zone – to love others the way you do and to be comfortable with any person because they are loved by You.

Trusting 2012

 

I’m a bit of a scaredy cat really. You’ll not find me bungee jumping or even jumping from the highest diving board. I will do everything possible to avoid taking part in a ‘Trust Fall’. But I think my issue is not heights, my issue is control and trust. I like to be safe and in control. Unfortunately no matter how much I try I do not have the ability nor the power to control the world around me and that leads to panic and fear. As I look back over the past year there have been many ups and downs, all beyond my control. Sometimes it feels like you are on a rollercoaster – on a roller coaster you don’t get a steering wheel nor set of brakes – you just have to go with the ride. Understandably given my control issues I’m not that keen on Roller Coasters either!

In this past year no matter how I have tried to fix broken situations, to make things better, it has been beyond my control and at the end of it all, frustrating. It is funny during the year some things came right in ways that were totally beyond my control that I had worn myself out worrying about for years also. So as I look towards 2012 I do so with excitement at the new journey of parenthood, but also with a bit of trepidation – what will the year hold?

I have decided that my word for this year should be TRUST. I have chosen the word trust because it seems to me to be the opposite of controlling everything myself. Giving over everything to God is a scary business, except I know the One who is in control is totally Trustworthy:

Psalms 20:7-8 Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. 8 They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm.

It’s funny – after thinking about Trust over the weekend this morning’s sermons was on the same topic! (I’ll put a link to the sermon once it is uploaded onto the church website).

So this year I choose to TRUST:
T – Seek God for the Truth of who I am and who He is
R – Rest in the knowledge that He is in control so I don’t have to be
U- Understand that God knows what is going on even when I don’t
S – Submit to God’s authority over my life and will
T – realise that I am on Team Jesus so even if my circumstances look bad I’m on the winning side.

Lord, I commit 2012 to you not knowing what lies ahead but with enormous gratitude that You are in control.