Perspectives

Banning the banality of brokenness
Haunting the hallowed halls
Conforming church to custom
Carved from the consciences of men

Striding into sunlight
Suffusing streams and flowers
Startling shades of brilliance
Born of another light

The presence of glory rediscovered
Engulfing compassion entered
Naked and vulnerable
In the tender touch of love

This is our calling
A commission conceived
And carried through such labours
From the heart of holiness

A costly path

Reconciliation is a costly process. Peacemaking is a painful and hard path to follow. Where relationships are ruptured and communications are cut, the shadows of despair invite demonisation of the 'other': precious people portrayed as harbingers of destruction. Truth and falsehood become pawns in a tragic dance.

Let no one imagine that reconciliation is easy. Loving begins with listening. Risking respect for the 'other' and revisiting the loathsome likelihood that we ourselves might be wrong. The real possibility that the searing searchlight of reality might rupture the protective womb of self vindication in which we have hidden.

Reconciliation carries us on a path to the Cross before we can enter into the joy of Resurrection. It is a path that all of us, if we are to grow and mature, must learn to walk upon. Again and again.

For those of us who walk this way, this painful path that promotes and produces peacemaking is neither inviting nor attractive. The humbling of heart that arises is simply necessary, before despair and darkness are exorcised in the light of love.

Let us seek to journey it together.

Out of ashes

Stunningly sobering day today, my first experience of visiting with people fresh out of a war-zone, refugees from Syria who have found sanctuary in unofficial camps in the Bekaa Valley, in the Lebanon. 

A seven year old boy, a beautiful child, with a hand blown off and toes destroyed. He kisses my cheeks, with the respect due to an elder. Mothers without husbands. Men my age with sons who have been killed. Showing hospitality and bringing me tea and coffe in their tents, reinforced with hardboard. Humanly speaking, no future to live for.

This is an environment in which many are turning to Christ, because they have no other hope. Wounded, broken and hurt. And church is growing because Christians are taking seriously the challenge of sharing the Gospel; but also demonstrating integrity as disciples, through caring for the homeless, the poor and the disadvantaged. Let'sboth pray for the work here and also learn from it.

Romanticising worship

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. (Isaiah 58:7-10 NIV)

Today is my final day of lectures at ABTS, in Lebanon. It has been a privilege to be here, meeting and teaching Christian leaders and pastors from across the Middle East. However, I am keenly aware of the need not to romanticise.

Whether we live in a free land or a land of oppression, our needs are the same. Care for family. Hopes and ambitions. The desire for security and safety. These are no less important for followers of Jesus here, in a difficult and sometimes dangerous place.

This morning, I woke thinking of both the pain that brothers and sisters here face, in making choices; and also the words of God in Isaiah 58. Too often we think of worship as songs that please. But it is something far more than that. We are saved in order that we will worship. And, conversely, the sign that we are saved is that we go on worshipping. That we hold to the call of caring for the poor and the marginalised and looking to help the impoverished and destitute. To show mercy, pursue justice and walk humbly with our God.

Here is an integral part of our worship - a demonstration that we have been saved into the life of God in Christ - to be taken up in the mission of God. It is when we live and seek to have integrity in these things that we have a credibility to bring to our Evangelism. Evangelism without these things is hollow mockery, a taunt aimed as an arrow at the heart of Christ.

Mercy missions are not simply preparations for evangelism. They are a demonstration, both by congregations and people, of integrity in and ownership of the life that Jesus Christ calls us into.