Jesus Is The Way

  Here’s a surprise. It turns out I’m not so great at forgiveness.   I find it much easier to cling onto the stuff that irritates me than I do to let it go. I need that niggling splinter wedged under the skin to keep me alert. Something stung and the little shard of unforgiveness lets me keep it in focus so that next time that rough edge draws near I know enough to give it a wide berth. But of course I don’t really avoid it. I push the splinter in deeper so that I remember and rage.   Unforgiveness also keeps me in control. It appeals to my sense of self. I’m wronged, and don’t you forget it. And in harbouring the darkness I kid myself that I’ve captured it, tamed it, or at least stored it till I can use it.   I could make a daily list of the wrongdoers – a roll call of the guilty; the driver who cut me up, in fact anyone who jumps a queue ahead of me , the one who spreads stories about me , the neighbour who makes a noise that disturb...

  If you were to live your life as a follower of Jesus, what do you think it would be like?   Would you expect to be guaranteed health, wealth, happiness and a quiet life? You might get all of that, but I wouldn’t count on it.   Health and happiness? Yes please, even though everything in my experience of the world so far tells me both things can’t last. Wealth? A little more wouldn’t hurt, but you’ve got to be in it to win it, as they say, either by birth, by graft or just plain luck. And wealth can vanish in the breathing of a microscopic virus.   A quiet life? That might be your thing, but some of us prefer the unpredictable crash and clatter of a life lived with risk.   In my experience a life of faith can’t be restrained, cosy or materially secure to make it worth adopting as a way of being. Surely it has to be at least a little edgy, a little uncomfortable, a little challenging? Faith is going to make us step out of the boat if we want t...

    One of the biggest sections in a bookshop nowadays is the self-help rack. There are books on everything, every problem you might face in life, every way to get to the top, every technique to be fitter, more successful, how to win friends and influence people. How to be more in control of others, of life, of you .   It seems we’ve never been more in need of help. And we’ve never looked to more people to help get us out of the hole we’re in, regardless of how qualified they might be to actually do us any good. Many of these books are helpful and can help us master techniques to deal with modern life. There’s an awful lot to handle out there, and there’s clearly a need or the bookshops would be giving them all shelf space. The growing number of books that seem to appear every other day is symptomatic of a world that’s crying out for help!   It’s a multi-million dollar industry geared towards making us feel we are in control of our own...

  A bit of nostalgia for a moment.   Does anyone remember crowds at sports events? It’s so weird to be watching sport on TV, the odd voice echoing around an empty stadium, arena, court, wherever it may be. But the times are what they are for the moment, and for sports lovers like myself, we’ll take what we can get.   But I do miss the crowds.   Thinking back even further I can remember as a child watching sport on TV, especially anything from America, and being puzzled by something I saw almost every week. There was a strange message that seemed to appear wherever large groups of people gathered.   You may have seen in yourself. Always someone, somewhere in the crowd, holding up a placard out of nowhere saying “John 3:16”.   In the days before I became a Christian I used to wonder if it was someone reminding a friend of something they had to do (“John! Don’t forget the dentist appointment at 3:16pm”), an address, a secr...

    You’ve probably heard the story in the Bible about the prodigal son, in Luke’s gospel (Chapter 15 if you want to read it). It tells the story of a young man who leaves home, gets involved in a pretty desperate lifestyle and, on the verge of despair, comes back home to his father’s house. It’s also the story of a father who longs for his child to come home.   It’s a parable, which basically means it’s a story about each and every one of us, and how we have drifted off from a loving father.   It happened to me.   Twice.   Before you start thinking only the desperate become Christians, I have to say that when I came to faith in Jesus, in the mid-eighties, I was on the crest of a wave. I’d just started university, living away from home, loving life, doing well in my studies. I was ticking along quite nicely, thank you very much.   I’d grown up with Christian parents, the odd church visit on special occasions, s...

  Haven’t we all been asking questions recently? Questions like; When will this all be over? What will the new normal look like? Will I have a job to go back to? Am I going to get through this?   And probably some even bigger questions too: why am I here? What is the purpose of life?   So, why are you here? Not just on this page, but on this earth? And where do you look to find your purpose?   It sometimes takes a crisis to stop us in our tracks and question ourselves and our greater existence. Many of the things we have held dear for so long, many of the things we put our faith in, have been shown to be on shaky ground. We have also found that we are not as in control as we thought we were.   But then again, why does it matter? If there is nothing else beyond this life, let’s eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. And tomorrow we die has become a little too close for comfort these days. But what is it that makes us cl...