Peace on earth and goodwill to all people?

Christmas is traditionally a time where many people around the world celebrate the promise of peace associated with the coming of Messiah, who carries the additional title of Prince of Peace. Even in the midst of the terrible battles of World War 1, somewhere deep in the soldiers’ being was the sense that Christmas Day was a day for peace. On the 25th December 1914, British and German soldiers at the front ended up exchanging gifts and souvenirs, taking photos, singing songs and even playing a game of football together!

We all long for peace. As people of faith, Jesus promised peace many times, from verses such as John 14:27, “My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you”, or Galatians 5:22, reminding us that peace is a quintessential part of the fruit of the Spirit. However, with all that is going on in the world, many of us struggle to find peace. If Jesus promised it for us, why do we seem to lose it so easily? And how do we have peace in the light of all that is not right?

A few days ago we returned from a quick trip to Uganda. Only short weeks out from Christmas, not to mention on the tail of the global upheaval caused by a tiny microorganism, travelling nearly halfway around the globe we had a plethora of opportunities to experience a lack of peace. From uncertainty about our first time out of the country in more than three years, where so much had changed, to the issue of whether our luggage would arrive with us, to finding ways to rest on a thirty plus hour journey; from food challenges and finding “places of convenience” (not to mention the level of confrontation we might find there, because, lets face it, sometimes PPE, a mask and gumboots are looking like serious options when travelling in developing countries!), to the threat of malaria weighed in with the side effects of antimalarials, not to mention driving in some very adverse conditions - so many cracks and crevices for our peace to leak out through.

Early on in our trip, I became aware of some background anxiety and pre-planning going on in my head about how I would manage such pre-empted issues around each upcoming day. I had a sudden realisation that I was trying to deal with this in my own strength and that I didn’t need to. I remembered that I could leave these things with my Heavenly Father, and that He would sort it all out for me. As I did that, I found that sometimes the situation would be well above my expectations, or that He had gone ahead and would provide the right opportunities or answers where I needed them.

A great example of the way God went ahead of us came very early on with our car hire. Five years ago, we had hired a Rav4 through a small company (there are no large car hire companies in Uganda), which was great, so we contacted them again. The day we arrived, the gentleman meeting us with the car apologised. The Rav4 had had “issues” that morning, so they had upgraded us for no extra cost to a Prado with eight seats, which had also been lifted to have greater clearance. This car proved invaluable so many times on our trip, from driving through boggy goat trails to a village, to being able to take quite a few others with us numerous times, to just our general comfort on some longer trips on often quite bad roads. And of course, functioning air conditioning was an absolute blessing, especially in the notorious Kampala traffic.

The added blessing of this vehicle was such a definite message from God that He was with us, that He knew all our needs (and even cared about our “would likes”). In acknowledging this was from God, it further expanded our faith, and hence, our peace. “Dad’s here, He’s got it all sorted ahead of time, just go for the ride with Him.”

Over the past couple of years, many of us have had ample opportunity to have our cracks and crevices where peace can leak out exposed – those places in our being where we are far more focussed on doing than be-ing, those areas where situations in the past have hurt and disappointed us and we are sure that this will be another, or even where fear still has a stronghold in our lives. In my journey through this season, when I have found myself short on peace God has been reminding me to go back to the place where I lost my peace. It is usually easy to pinpoint the moment. And so, I go back there and maybe forgive the person whose behaviour or words created the crack for my peace to leak out, or break my agreements with the fear that came from some source or other I had interacted with and sent it all back where it came from, in Jesus’ name. And wonderfully, my peace returns to me.

If you are in a place this Christmas where peace seems hard to find, let me encourage you that in Creator God, the source of all peace, there is an endless supply. Meet with Him today. Ask Him where you left your peace and who you need to forgive and/or what agreements you need to break. And may this season be one in which your peace deepens immeasurably and expands out to those around you.

Are you ready for another new year?

As I spent some time reflecting on the passing year yesterday, I was feeling a bit like it might go out with more of the proverbial whimper rather than a bang. Thinking back to this time last year when so many were hopeful that 2021 would be “better” than 2020, it could be easy to feel as though we are barely crawling over this “finishing line” and really don’t have much energy left to hope for anything. So much of the latter part of this year, for us, has felt like treading water after a shipwreck, barely managing to keep our heads above water. And if we weren’t in that place ourselves, we were trying help others from going under. And yet…

One of the activities I like to do at the end of a year is look back to the beginning – it’s hopes, what I have felt God saying, goals I might have set - to see how these played out through the year. This has been particularly helpful this year as so much of the last month or so has felt “lost”. Even as I acknowledged my sense that I “should” have done more, and the list of what I still haven’t done started to flit through my mind, so much of the good of this year, the positive and productive activities and circumstances, the way God opened doors and shifted so much in our lives (even in ways that didn’t feel so much like Him!) started to flood my thoughts.

No, in the middle of the continuing global upheaval of this year, in the middle of the loss, pain, rejection, fear, anxiety and panic that has roared around like a hurricane, I can come to the end standing upright and say, “It was a good year”. Yes, it is far too easy to look at all the issues and negativity, the darkness, but God is still here, still sovereign and still bringing His plans and purposes to fruition. Anytime I like, I can head to that place of stillness in Him, with Him, in the middle of the storm. I can choose to focus instead on gratitude for what is, or what has been good, rather than living in hopelessness and despair.

Heading my mind toward that place of stillness yesterday morning, the first lines of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” started playing in my mind. Looking up all the words, I can’t help but see it as a wonderful prayer for this time (check out the whole song here). The first and last verses are:

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind In one the hearts of all mankind; Bid all our sad divisions cease, And be Thyself our King of Peace.”

The last verse particularly resonates with me. Oh, that our divisions would cease! And what a prayer that has been through the ages. How that might happen is for next week’s blog, though…

Returning to the beginning of the year, there were a few entries from my journal that hit me again. I had been reading through Isaiah, particularly chapter 40 and 41. These chapters are filled with the promise that God does and will show up. That He will make a way where there seems no way, that every obstacle will be removed out of His path, and much about people seeing His glory in plain sight; that it is time to proclaim Him loudly and proudly; that He will be known by all, throughout the earth. The beautiful picture of dry, barren wastelands and deserts turning into springs, into places of lush growth is a central part of the promise here.

Into these reflections, the word God gave me for 2021 was “peace”. As I have shared earlier, it was not a word I immediately embraced. Peace, like patience (and probably every other fruit of the Spirit), generally requires a good dose of the opposite to experience its manifestation. However, into my little rejection of this word, Yeshua whispered, “Shalom” to me. Going on a search through the deeper connotations of this word we so loosely translate “peace”, excited me no end!

Wholeness, healing, restoration, restitution, integrity, harmony, prosperity, welfare, “righteous recompense”, unbrokenness, fullness, “the days of mourning are completed”.

In fact, going back to Is 40:1 (TPT), it begins,

“Comfort, comfort my people with gentle, compassionate words. Speak tenderly from the heart to revive those in Jerusalem, and proclaim that their warfare is over. Her debt of sin is paid for, and she will not be treated as guilty. Prophesy to her that she has received from the hand of Yahweh twice as many blessings as all her sins.”

This sounds very much like “shalom” to me!

So, 2021 started with much hope and excitement for me about what God was going to do. I must confess, that not much of it has been in the format I perhaps expected or would have liked. In fact, I am still processing how some things could be part of His will, especially as they have seemed to have dashed some of my hopes to pieces. However, I will keep seeking Him for the next step and the next step, with the hope, and even confidence, that His plans are better, even when I can’t really see His hand in it.

I refuse to allow disappointment and unmet expectations lead me into a place of bitterness or retreat.

For each of us, in fact, the only way we can step into this new year with hope rather than despair, with joy rather than bitterness is through gratitude. Our gratitude may just be for the opportunities to draw closer to God, to depend on Him in greater measure, to learn more of Who He is for us; it may be finding thankfulness in the little things, like provision or simply for a beautiful day.

If we want to be well positioned for all that 2022 will bring, an attitude of gratitude is a giant step in a life-giving direction, leading us toward freedom, joy and shalom and most importantly, strengthening our connection with Father God, Yeshua, His Son and Holy Spirit.

“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

A special gift - some space to pause, reflect and refresh.

Many of us are weary and perhaps feeling dry or even hopeless. On Monday, as we were praying, verses of encouragement and hope kept coming into my mind, one after another, almost like the autocue going mad. Added to this, we are currently in the middle of the Jewish celebration Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. This is a time to celebrate God’s provision and care for us, to rejoice, but also to be reminded that He has promised to “tabernacle” or dwell with us and within us. We have become His dwelling place.

In the light of all this, I felt to put together a little space for each of you to hit the pause button on life, reflect on scripture and be refreshed in the presence of Jesus. Enjoy! (There is around 17 minutes of interactive material, with a few more minutes at the end to simply be and allow the music to wash over you.)

If you would like to prepare before you start, the Scriptures are: Matthew 11:28-30; Ps 23; Is 40:28-31; Is 35:1,3,6,7; John 4:13-14 and John 7:37-38. The Matthew verses are from The Passion, Is 35 from the NIV and all others are from the Complete Jewish Bible.

Backing music by David Lastra, “Selah”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivEUZ4TpBG4

Just a storm in a teacup?

One of the things God has been teaching me in the last few years is to walk with Him moment by moment, day by day, becoming more reliant on Him for each step. As we walk into this season where our lives are being radically impacted with rapid change, this is even more important.

I come back to a word He gave me a while back:

“You only get grace for WHAT IS not WHAT IF”.

Each moment and circumstance we find ourselves in, He will give us the grace for at that time – generally not before it occurs.

A couple of weeks back, I had some quite clear words from God. The first was that this is a “storm in a teacup”. Far from diminishing the severity or seriousness of what is going on in our world, this is simply about perspective. Perspective is so important at this time.

If we connect with all the world is telling us about doom, gloom and our powerlessness in the face of tragedy and disease, it will leave us without hope.

However, there is another perspective.

Yes, from our human perspective, that tea cup and “storm” may be the size of the earth - enormous to us. And like the disciples in the boat with a storm raging, we can feel as though Jesus is asleep – we can’t understand why He is not more concerned, why He isn’t doing more. Given the scope of what is unfolding and the absolute focus from media, it can be so difficult to turn our focus elsewhere.

However, there is another perspective and this is the one we need to grab hold of. From God’s vantage point, the earth is more the tea cup size, even smaller. He is more than able to deal with any storm on our planet.

He has not been caught by surprise and He is not disrupted!

Sure, we get to join with Him, with what He is doing, through prayer, through loving each other, even though that might need to be in more creative ways. We don’t have to partner with panic and fear and anxiety. They are already working well in our communities without our help!

(C) https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-jimig

Alongside this picture of God’s perspective on this “global pandemic”, I was asking Him what He wanted me to know about the way forward. I love His sense of humour, because straight away I sensed, “Have I told you it is time to panic, be anxious or worry?” I said, “No”. And His response, “Then it is not time to panic, be anxious or worry!”. Something shifted in me, and as crazy as it might sound, deep in my core I sensed His lack of fear or worry – I connected with it.

If He is not worried, neither do we need to be.

Friends, we all like to feel that we are doing something to help when disaster strikes or even looms. The best thing place to start with is to deal with our own fears and anxiety. Just as the cabin crew tell us on airplane flights – you need to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can help others.

The way we do this at this time is through our connection with God. The difficult part of this (and I know, because I have struggled with it too!), is getting ourselves still before Him, stilling our racing thoughts. One way to do this is to tell Him all you are really feeling and ask Him what He wants you to know about it, or how He feels. As I have done that myself, I have repeatedly seen His face fill with anticipation and excitement – there is a sense that He is about to do something amazing. The words, “Just watch what I am about to do!”, come to mind.

In terms of other aspects of managing ourselves through this, as numerous others have already pointed out, minimising our interaction with worldly news and media is really important. Yes, don’t disconnect entirely, but if we spend too much time there, we can open ourselves up to get infected with fear and panic which is not of God.

Just as we are “socially distancing” physically to prevent any infection from the virus, we also need to do this from those who are obviously carrying the “virus” of panic and passing it on to all and sundry.

If we deal with ourselves and press into God we will find He is faithful. He will give us what we need – starting with His peace and comfort. We can pray – but we also need to move from the desperate, begging prayers into prayer that waits on Him what His solutions. How can we be light, peace and comfort in the now too obvious darkness? What does He want to shift in our ways of seeing life and false comforts and refuges that we have packaged around us? How does He want to stretch and shift us and mold us into new ways of being?

While it is difficult to be stripped away from so many of those things that have been our “always”, there is another aspect of this situation that is opportunity: it is an opportunity to shift things up, to cleanse and remove things that have held us back, distracted us or filled our time with “must”. In this time, there is an opportunity to reassess the things that we have thought were essential to our lives, that we couldn’t do without (like toilet paper!).

What does that look like for you?

When your tank is running dry

It’s only just past 10 in the morning, and already I have found myself looking up at the sky many times today. What started out as blue skies has gradually been covered with ever darkening clouds. The wind is strong from the north and the temperature was already over 25°C at 8am. The humidity is well up and I am dripping. But what I am hoping for still hasn’t arrived. What has been promised by the weather bureau so many times may just pass us by again.

RAIN!

As we near the official end of summer, we are feeling the effects of very minimal rain over the last two months. The grass is a dry grey-brown and some plants are looking very much worse for wear. Even the weeds are dying! Being reliant on our rain tanks, we have had to pay for water to be trucked in.

Please let it rain today!

Perhaps you can relate to this - those feelings of disappointment about hopes that seem to never materialise and maybe you even feel as though disappointment has been a recurring theme in your life?

Back at Christmas, I was reminded anew of this struggle between hope and delivery.

In many ways, Christmas can be fraught with unmet hopes and disappointments. However, this year I was reminded of the depth and reality of hopes actually being met at that first Christmas.

In the lead up to Christmas, I experienced a number of disappointments. So I was really not feeling very celebratory at all and trying desperately to find some meaning in all the festivities. 

Finally, on the morning of Christmas Eve in church I had my own little epiphany. I am not sure why - I am not aware of anything especially different being said, and the Christmas carols we sang were not unusual. But somewhere in the midst of the singing, I found myself reflecting "this really did happen". Jesus really was born to real people who experienced those things we are told about. Mary really had an encounter with the Holy Spirit, Joseph really had those struggles and those dreams. The shepherds really had an angelic encounter. Anna and Simeon were real people who finally saw their hopes birthed in Jesus. It really all happened. 

Don't get me wrong. I hadn't been having a faith crisis or anything. This was simply a new level of 'knowing'. It was as though it almost became my own memory. Think of the Israelites, who told their stories over and over and other cultures where stories of the past are told - it becomes part of their cultural memory. It wasn't just a story that happened to someone else at some other time. It happened to their family.

It's a bit like the ownership we start to take of our ancestors when we find out more about them. Even if we never knew them, their story becomes part of our DNA. I have been sensing this particularly with members of my family tree who were involved in Christian ministry or mission - there is a greater level of affinity. (Although, I am not sure what this says about a large proportion of Australian people who would like to find they had convicts in their ancestry!)

Back to my own journey, this experience was not simply an anomaly or blip along the way. It tied in well with another insight I sensed from God around the same time.

This was to do with hope. I was reminded again of my own story and the realisation there are two ways to hope in God.

One is the belief that it is all about our ability. The belief that if we can cling tightly enough to God, we will get to the places and circumstances He has for us; we will be ok. But we have to do the work to cling to Him, to press further into Him. I recall the picture He gave me some time ago of how I had been when my first marriage ended, where I was like a little child being taught to float in the pool. Even as I was told, "lay back and relax, I've got you, I won't let go", I was clinging so tightly that I wasn't even in the water! My fear of the unknown, the future was preventing me trusting that God had it all under control.

What I sensed Him reminding me was that hope is not all about us. It is not even about our ability to hope.

Hope is about rest.

If we hope in God, it is not vain hope. It is hope at rest. We know He is good, we know He is able.

The alternative to hope is hopelessness, which can lead to despair. When we make hope all about our workings, then when those things we would like to see come about don't, we quickly fall into feeling powerless in our ability to do anything. Which, really, is the whole point of faith and prayer. It is the recognition that we are powerless to make God do anything, to change many circumstances we find ourselves in. 

As I was doing my Lenten readings the other day, I didn’t get past the first few words of one of the Scriptures. As I read it, I just wanted to stop there and soak deeply in what God showed me. It was so freeing! The reading was from Isaiah 9:6-7

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders…Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.”

It is Jesus who shoulders the responsibility of the governments and the governance of every aspect of our world, human as well as all the physical, chemical and biological laws and so on. 
So often, we feel as though we have to do something to change the world, we despair of where it is all heading and live in fear of the future. This reminded me that Jesus knows and has already done something about it. 

We are not the answer. He is. 

We can work hard at all sorts of solutions, but unless He is in the midst of them, unless they are His ideas, they will be temporary fixes at best. True transformation – of individuals, of communities, of our world – only comes through encounter with the risen Christ, encounter with the Kingdom of Heaven. 

For me, this has become a resounding hope. I can look around at what is going on in our world: millions of refugees; another mass shooting; the effect of pornography, drugs and a permissive culture on our young people – on it goes, and find it easy to despair and wonder how it can change. However, two words keep resounding in my mind: 

“BUT GOD…” 

It doesn’t matter how big the problem or need, God is way bigger and He can change everything in an instant. We just have to connect with that close relative of hope, and TRUST His impeccable timing and His perfect ways to bring it all about!

Meanwhile, I’m off to hang the washing out.

"And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!" 

(Romans 5:5, Passion)

The Deafening Roar of Silence

I am an extrovert. Take away human contact for too long and I quickly cease to function well. My energy and creativity drop and the most mundane tasks become difficult. 

However, in more recent years I have also come to value time alone; time with peace and quiet. 

Fortunately, I live somewhere I get plenty of that, even though noise and people are never far away. But there are those times when I just love to decrease the sensory input. At those times, even music can be an intrusion.

Of course, not everyone is like this. I know many who rarely enjoy a really quiet environment. There are those who, to my amazement, love to have the tv or radio running in the background from morning to night. The idea of not having noise is isolating at best, for them.

For me, though, heading up to the mountains this week for a day of cross-country skiing was one of those welcome time outs. As we left the resort and headed up the trail, all noise of people, vehicles and generators drifted away behind us. Although there were the occasional other skiers, they quickly disappeared and we were on our own again. Eventually, we became aware that the only sound apart from ourselves was the thump and crash of ice and snow falling off the trees.

At one point, we stopped for a snack and a bit of a rest and just listened to the silence. Complete and utter silence. Not even the sound of birds. You don't realise how noisy life is until you are in a space where there is absolute silence. It was beautiful. I longed to just stay there, and if it weren't for the cold and the need to ski back to the car park, I could have quite easily set up camp and remained indefinitely.

As we stood and quietened even our breathing, listening to the sound of silence, the sound of nothing, I became aware of noise that wasn't noise. The words that came to mind were 'the thunder and roar of God'. I am not sure how to really describe it, whether it was just the awareness of His majesty in the beauty of His creation, or the fact that as all other distractions were stripped away, His sovereignty was somehow obvious - we were in the presence of royalty. It was like the majestic music from a movie, or even the reverberating sound check in the cinema. And yet, physically it was silent. It was one of those moments where I would have liked to build a little memorial, like the piles of rocks the Israelites left at places of encounter with God. Like a sign, "God was here".

We had been discussing the whole creation idea earlier in the day, what it was like for God to create from nothing, to dream up the ideas, the seeds of what it would all look like. My husband shared the thought that creation was an expression of God, it is a reflection of who He is, but more than that, He is within and through it. He permeates creation. He is the life blood that pulsates through it all. Perhaps this was part of the thunder and roar. Hearing His heartbeat in His creation. 

Sometimes we can hate the silence because of what we cannot silence - the voices of despair, of pain, of loneliness, of hunger, of anger or bitterness that scream out at us if we don't have enough other distractions. We can fill up our lives with other stuff so we don't have to deal with that which is too hard. Perhaps we don't even realise we are doing it, until silence comes crashing in on us. And for some, silence is to be feared, because we don't want to face that which dwells within. 

And yet, I want to promise, to give a commitment that what we fear, what we dislike so much can be exactly what we need. Like Elijah hiding in the cave (see 1 Kings 19:11-14), in pain and despair, longing for God to speak, make it all right - first there was mighty, loud wind; then an earthquake, then fire, before the gentleness and stillness of God came upon him. He wanted God to act strongly, to be loud and present and forceful, and yet God came in silence, in stillness, because this is what Elijah actually needed.

So it is with us. While we want to keep running from the 'demons' that chase us down, that haunt us, we stay exhausted; we are never free, never rested. We remain trapped in the lie that these things have power over us; that living in fear is the only safe way to live. It is only as we stop and wait on God, that His stillness, peace and gentleness can start to infiltrate us with His answers, His rest for us, and His freedom. It is in this place that we start to find what really defines us - is it Him or the world, Him or our circumstances? It is only when we cease striving to deafen the silence, we discover the space to find the One who truly defines us.