resolve conflict with a hug

It is good to be back and blogging. Sorry it's been so long.

As you know I stand in Durham selling the War Cry on a weekly basis and I see so many people pass me by and people interacting with each other.

 Durham is a university city and during term time the city is awash with students. Many students wait for each other by where I stand, I see many greetings.

Greetings vary from a smile, hand shake, a simple help but more and more I see people openly hugging each other with beaming smiles.

In recent months the number of people who have given me money and then a hug is at a 25 year high.

I often find myself at Durham station watching trains with my 3 year old grandson, and once again I find myself people watching. I just love the reunion cuddle. There is so much joy expressed. The act of hugging is so much of God.

Just before Christmas there was a lovely incident happened around us. The result was godly but the route has been far from him.

Over the last few weeks there had been a misunderstanding between two people who had never met but somehow their paths had crossed on Facebook. Well I say crossed, a better term might have been, bumped into each other. Others joined in and internet escalation occurred. One of the two was left traumatized, hurting at the mistruths so openly aired, and in fear of physical harm if ever the met.

So back to this lovely incident before Christmas.

It so happened that the two people from Facebook were to come into contact with each other in a very public place.

What would be the reaction when these two met?

Exchanging growls across the room?

Eye Knives thrown from 20 yards, or would arm to arm combat commence?

What happened was amazing.

The person who was hurting the most, on seeing the other come in, ran over and threw their arms around the them, introduced themselves and said "it’s all good here'.

Conflict, disarmed by a cuddle, a cuddle that also resulted in an apology by the other.

Paul said greet each other with a brotherly kiss. Disarm the power of disharmony and disunity by embracing each other.

The problem in the so many British churches is the stiff upper lip and pride.

Pride says I am better than you, a hug says we are all in this together and I want to embrace your life with mine.

It seems that there is a new generation outside the church leading the way in hugging.

 I remember a prime minister advocating an extreme policy encouraging people to "hug a hoodie"

As a church leader in the Salvation Army, can I advocate an even more extreme policy, Christians hugging Christians. Try it in 2014!

Jesus said "by this will all men know that you are my disciples, that you show love, one for another.”

 

 

Fake Watches, Fake Salvationism & Fake Toilet Cleaner, they all stink

There is a program on BBC Tv called “Fake Britain”. The program uncovers the fraudulent behavour of fakers and scammers in this green and pleasant land we call Great Britain.

I tell you, having just returned from Turkey, Britain has nothing on them when it comes to fakes.

For a while now I have been looking for a new watch. The watch I have, I bought at Argos for £25, about 6 to 8 years ago.

 It has had 3 new straps, 5 new batteries, the date won’t move and the day is in French, but it keeps very good time, has a clear dial and glows in the dark.

In Turkey I was looking around the shops and the markets, there are plenty of watches to be had.

The shops looked great and just like jewelry shops in the UK. 

Some shops plainly and blatantly advertised “Genuine Fakes” but others did not.

At one market stall I picked up a watch to have a better look. Within seconds I had the stall holder by my side.

52 tl, that’s the price! He said.

But for you today, 35 tl.

I looked again at the watch, and before I looked up, in less than 10 seconds the price had come down to 20 tl.

£6 British Pounds for a brand new Rolex Watch.

I said no thank you and walked off.

I wonder if I missed a real bargain?

Or would I have missed every future appointment by a few minutes?

I wondered if there was anything real for sale in Turkey, we were even sold fake Saffron Powder, which we only discovered when the Custom Officer asked what we were carrying.

Some things really don’t matter who makes them and what they look like. If they are cheap, and useful and we buy them with no expectations then OK, but some things really need to be right.

I would not buy a fake watch, whatever the make. A watch is not for show, it is for telling the time and time can be crucial.

Time is what we have to live by, we get up at a certain time, school and work start at a certain time and if you are into Coronation Street that too starts on time. Get the time wrong and it seems to knock your whole day out.

 A watch is important!

If people ask you the time they expect you to tell them the right time. There is no guarantee that a fake watch can do that.

That really got me thinking.

It is so important that we as the Salvation Army get it right.

We are so recognizable by our uniforms, and our uniforms give out the message of the “whosoever” gospel.

The Salvation Army has through its history been known to serve the lost and broken in the name of Christ.

But what about individual Salvationists?

If we wear the uniform, we must be involved in the soul saving work of The Salvation Army.

In the military army, Soldiers are in battle with the enemy and some get injured, and need to be rescued by others, who risk their own lives to save their friends.

Jesus said “by this, will all men know that you are my disciples, that you love one another”.

If we want to be an army, then this must be every soldier’s attitude in battle with the enemy.

Are we true soldiers, are we true disciples?

James talks about faith and works, how the two must go together.

True Salvationism is indeed a heart to God and a hand to man, but can everyone rely on every Salvationist wearing the uniform to be living out the whosoever gospel?

It is as important as with the watch, people need Salvation, and they need to know they can rely on Salvationists to deliver love and Grace

Uniforms without the Salvationist heart is as fake as an unreliable watch. All show.

Now what about toilet cleaner?

Well one night in Turkey we had a three and a half hour storm. Amazing to watch and it poured down for the whole time.

Next morning we went out onto the balcony and experienced an amazing smell.

Turkey is literally covered in Pine Trees and when it rains heavy the whole area is filled with the essence of pine fresh. I have never smelt anything like it.

No matter how much effort is put in by toilet cleaner manufacturers, they will never capture the true smell of pine fresh.

To be honest the fake toilet cleaner stinks and so do the watches, and yes Fake Salvationism too.  

Wrong turns, scary roads, mountaintops, blowouts and then the Valleys

We had planned to take the long coast road from Dalaman to Kemer, about 280 K, but God had a different journey for us.

Signs in Turkey, I could say are misleading, a better word is possibly missing. It must be presumed that you know the way.

I thought I had planned well, we had google directions, arrows and maps etc., but I don’t think google has been here.

So we took a wrong turning, a turning that pointed to the city we were heading towards, but not the way we had planned to go.

We were amazed at the quality of the road which was leading us into the mountains, duel carriageway through the roughest of terrains, amazing engineering!

The road seemed to go on and on, and up and up, our ears popping several times as we drove.

Then we started to worry.

Our instructions were next to useless, the tiny map we had was in the boot, the land around us seemed to be abandoned, and there was nowhere to stop.

Eventually we came to a village that seemed to take up the only piece of flat land for miles. We stopped to use the facilities and to get a drink.

Ordering a coffee was quite a traumatic experience, I’m not sure many English visitors had ever stopped there, so asking directions was even more of a challenge, the village was no named on the map and the people didn’t seem to know where they were either.

Meshiel now armed with the tiny map worked it all out.

There were a number of roads, on our flat map, that we had to take to get us to our destination.

The good roads disappeared and soon we were travelling upwards on a single track road cut into the edge of the mountain, sheer drop to one side, solid rock to the other.

Up and up we traveled until we seemed to reach a peak, over 2500 M above the sea, well above everything really.

I got out of the car, went to a vantage point where an old Turkish man was standing. He seemed to have a shack type shelter about 100 m from where we were standing.

I looked towards him, and he looked towards me, both raising our eyes to the clear sky and raising a hand, as though in praise of our creator. The language of beauty! As he walked off I was there all alone, on top of the world, my heart filled with praise and my eyes with tears. A most beautiful moment that had taken possibly two hours of very scary driving.

The mountain top experiences are what Christians seem to long for, moments of close communion with God.

But they are scary moments and not easy to reach. On the mountain top there is no denying the ultimate power of God. These moments are supernatural experiences taking us beyond our human comfort zones and also out of our human control. Moments reflected in Peter’s comments on the mount of transfiguration.

Although the mountain top experience of God was wonderful and very precious, it was but a personal encounter and the building of shelter at that point would have been a selfish thing to do and I would say reckless. On the mountain there was no water and no growth, staying there would be the death of me.

As we quickly travelled down from the mountain, still on scary roads, we saw the land becoming greener and as we entered into the valley we began to drive through farm land, seeing the local farmers working so hard in the fields, in temperatures in their 30’s.

In the fields were peaches, olives, grapes and pomegranates, trees laden with fruit.

So often we long after the mountaintop experiences but it is the hard work in the valleys that produce the fruit and sustains us, hardens us and proves us.

Well after more than five hours and within 5 miles of our destination, the smell of the sea coming through the air con, there is a noise at the back of the car.

We pulled over to the edge of by now a very fast road without a hard shoulder to find our rear, road side tyre had blown out.

I have never known us so calm!

Without a fluster or a cross word and with the speed and precision of a formula one team we had it changed and on our way.

We had travelled on a road we had not planned, but we had travelled with God and picked up His peace in the beauty he had shown us on the way.

Next week I will be blogging from the wet and cold of Langley Moor.

When the bottom drops out of your sea

When the bottom drops out of the sea!

Over these last two days we have had the privilege to be in some of the most beautiful settings in the world, or at least we think so.

Yesterday we were by a huge Lake in southern Turkey, surrounded by Blue Mountains on one side and green on the other. A promenade of cafes and moored boats and a vast blue lake.

As we walked towards the water’s edge the wind was blowing quite strong in our faces, and then we noticed that the lake was rough and choppy, and a small boat seemed to be struggling to reach the shore.

We had visited that area to take the sunset cruise, but when seeing the water we chose to sit in a café for two hours and just watch the boats.

Meshiel spoke of how the boat, struggling in the wind reminded her of the boats in the Bible on Lake Galilee.

On two occasions was have the disciples crossing the lake in the storm, on one occasion Jesus is asleep in the stern and the disciples fear for their lives and wake Him, at once He is in control and the storm is calmed.

Today I was reminded of the other time when Jesus walks on the water.

We visited a beach not far from where we are staying, a flat, sandy beach on the Aegean Sea. Again there was quite a breeze and the waves were breaking onto the shore with a burst of warm white foam.

We go running into the waves, bay watch style, style is probably a bit of a strong word, if you had seen us.

The waves were so strong, they crashed against our bodies, at times almost covering us completely.

When we got through the crashing bit it seemed quite calm.

The waves would rise and fell and we would try to allow our bodies to rise and fall with them.

In moments of high confidence you can allow yourself to fully float on your back, your natural buoyancy riding the waves.

As Jesus approached the boat walking on the water, Peter called to Him and had the faith to walk out of the boat, on the water towards Jesus. We know how that ended, seeing the waves, feeling the wind, and taking his focus of Jesus, saw the bottom fall out of Peter’s sea.

Today from a moment of total confidence, floating high on the waves, all ended in panic as a huge wave came crashing down and the bottom seemed to fall out of the sea.

It is a natural instinct to try and keep our feet in touch with the ground even in the sea. It takes faith to lift your feet up and float, to ride on the waves.

So often it seems impossible for us to touch the bottom when the storms are raging around us, we seem to be taken by the waves.

Why do we forget that when we have faith in the master of the storm, faith enough to lie back and rest, faith that looks up into the heavens and not into waves, we are given the power to see the storm out.

As we came to sunset, yesterday, the lake was like a mirror reflecting the glory of the skies and the fish danced in the warmth of the evening.

There is always a great calm when we allow Jesus to see us through the storms, fully relying on Him.

Radical but not random!!

Well, I was back in Durham with my papers this week, Tuesday my usual day, at my usual time. One of my regular customers came up to me looked at his watch and said “I could set my calendar by you, I know its Tuesday because you are here”.
Well that started me thinking, I want to be radical yet I find myself in the same place, at the same time every week, doing something I have been doing in the same way now for 7 years or more, and before me a little old lady had been doing it there for 30 years. That seems to be erring towards tradition, not being radical.
I believe to be practical and effective as a modern Christian who is willing to think outside of the box, you still need to have the stability in your faith life that gives you the authority to be radical.
“I could set my calendar by you”!
What an important statement that is. It is saying that I am reliable in my actions. Of course this is a joke and just something to say, but the underlying truth is very important.
Within the Christian life there needs to be the underlying foundations, the non-negotiable, and the core values.
Our faith, whatever denomination, should be firmly attached to the two commands that Jesus underlined. Love God with all your being, and love your neighbour as you love yourself.
Our living should have truth in its DNA. We need above all things to be truthful and reliable people. We cannot be people who randomly bend the truth, because once bent it can never be re-straightened, and in bending the truth once we set a standard that people see.
The truth of our faith must be clearly evident in the way we live our lives. We cannot be random livers, adding faith to one part of our lives and not applying it to others. People see and understand who we are by the way we live and interact with them.
Much of the New Testament teaching of Paul has the Christian as being in Christ, lives being changed and renewed from the inside out, people need to see Christ likeness, with a truth and reliability that they can set their lives to.
Radical Christianity in my thinking, is not about being wild and random, or dismissing everything that has gone before as worthless. It’s taking the truth and values of 2000 years of faith and applying it in ways that are understandable to the present age.
The problem with traditionalism is that a too well trodden path is full of ruts, ruts force the traveler to walk in them, and ruts become deeper and deeper eventually becoming graves.
Jesus came into a very traditional religious time and introduces a new and more open approach, but we still find him in the synagogue for worship, and as far as possible observing the daily rhythms of prayer.
Peter, empowered by the Holy Spirit and seeing many thousands taking up the new faith, still has that rhythm of prayer in his life, a remnant of his Jewish past. It is during one of these prayer times that he is called to come out of his Jewish comfort zone and take the faith to the gentiles, which would mean eating with them. To Peter that was radical, but it was something rising out of the truth of his faith in Jesus.
Radical Christianity that is based on random thinking and distorted doctrine can only lead people away from truth.
Radical Christianity that grows out of the truth of the gospel, and reaches out in love to our neighbour, by the indwelling power of an Almighty God, it is that that will bring salvation to a modern thinking generation.
Many people came to faith by watching the early church in action, they found truth and reliability in people who were stepping away from the norm but holding fast to their God.
I want to be a person people can set their lives to, but they need to know that my life is in Christ.

God in Wellies

As I was standing in Durham today I got this very clear picture of God in Wellies

I say it was a clear picture, the wellies were clear, and I had a sense that God was there, but had no clear image of God Himself. But the wellies were plodging in muck (I thought cow muck, if you get the picture!).

As I watched the people of Durham milling around I began to see a crowd like them all walking around in that muck, and right there with them was this picture of God.

Recently I have read two books by William Paul Young, “The Shack” and “Cross Roads”, both have been seen by some as Heresy.

Both of these books are about fictional people meeting God in very messy situations. Child abduction, Pedophilia, Murder, Lies, embezzlement, family breakup, Greed, Cancer, Healing, Forgiveness and death, are but some of the issues the people face in these books, and right there in the middle of it all are images of God.

The images might to some appear different to what you see in scripture, but as you get to know Jesus better and as you read into the true character of God, in my opinion these images are not too far from the truth. What I found in these books was a God, a three in one God, who’s love for people drags Him into the most unholy of places.

There is a passion that runs through my whole being that draws me to the real down to earth Grace of God.

Back on the street in Durham, my mind took me to AD 25. Jesus was born but not yet known.

The nation was under Roman occupation with pagan practices and emperor worship. The Jewish church, doing everything they could to keep clean. There was so much defilement around that staying holy took up all their time, with ritual washing, avoiding involvement with death and disease, gentiles, tax collectors, sinners, dirt and dung.   

Into that situation came Jesus, nothing like what they might have expected from scripture.

All the things the Church avoided, Jesus became involved in and Grace came to our world.

I was speaking with a man whose Brother had ended his own life; he was mentally ill and had lived with problems for quite some time. The man said his brother had attended a good evangelical church, a church that was growing and attracting young families. But his brother felt that he was not on the agenda, and felt rejected.

I told this man about my picture of God in Wellies. His eyes seem to light up. Had God himself met his brother in the room where he had died? We don’t know, but I believe in a God who gets involved in the mess of human life even if the church sometimes misses His presence.

We see the Cross of Christ as a holy place, but the Romans saw it just as the place of execution. On Friday Jesus died and his blood poured onto the ground below, mixing with the blood of criminals who had hung there only days before, and on Monday other blood would be added to His.

The Grace of God poured out to all men, while all men were dead in sin.

As God’s Church, The Salvation Army, let’s take hold of a God who comes to seek and save the lost. Let’s come out of our comfort zones, cast aside our polished shoes, put our wellies on and join our God plodging in the muck.



Back in time, System Restore



Our day off, usually a Wednesday, is nearly always spent at Cineworld.

Sometimes we can fit three films into one day!

Meshiel has an unlimited card and I have two pay as you go Orange phones, just for going to the cinema.

Well yesterday we watched a film called About Time. Amazing!  It had us in tears and it had us laughing.

All the men of one family had the gift of time travel, not to the future, just back to their lived past. They would go into a dark cupboard, clench their fists and think of a time that they wanted to travel  back to, and away back they went.

Often they used the gift mealy to relive a moment they had just fouled up, making things right again. Often it was things that had been said, that shouldn’t have been.

In the letter of James and chapter 3 he talks about how the tongue can cause so much trouble and how it needs to be tamed.

O how easy it would be, if like in the film we could just lock ourselves in the cupboard for a moment, coming back out to live that moment again, say things differently and see how sweet life would be.

How often do we sit and wonder what life would have been like, if we hadn’t made the mistakes we had along the way. If only!

In the film, Tim, the main character, tries to go back in time to help his sister recover her life, having made some bad choices, but he finds by changing her past it impacts on his present in a dramatic way.

On a computer it has always wise to set a restore point to a time when you know everything was working as it should be. To a time before you let viruses in by venturing to non safe websites or opening spam mail offering you the world for nothing, this then corrupts the whole computer. It’s easy; you do a system restore back to that point, and lo! The computer is back and everything is good! But where are my photos that I took last week?

 Lost! Because you can’t turn back time!

We are the people we are because of the people we have been.

We might not like some of the things we have done in the past, not one of us would like our whole lives shown as a film, but there is a way to be restored.

You see there was a restore point created in history. I was a Friday, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Him the law of the Spirit of life sets me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8 1.2

In Christ I am a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come 2 Corinthians 5 17  

The restore point was and is, the grace of God being poured through Jesus to us on that first Good Friday.

We do not have the gift of returning to a point in time where we can change the way life has gone for us, but through Jesus we can come to terms with who we are today, and in Him feel no condemnation for the past.

So what of the future?

Is it happy ever after?

We will still make mistakes, and other people’s mistakes will impact on our lives, but we can be assured that the restore point is forever.

I need to restore every day.

PS "About Time" is an unmissable film and I haven't given much away