There are many prodigal sons

... of which I am counted as one.

I misheard the lyrics of a song the other day, and heard those lovely words instead :) Yes, my heart said, I am a prodigal son, returned and forgiven :)

But the real song is just as poignant. Here follow the lyrics:

Leeland - Tears of the Saints

There are many prodigal sons
On our city streets they run
Searching for shelter
There are homes broken down
People's hopes have fallen to the ground
From failures

This is an emergency!

There are tears from the saints
For the lost and unsaved
We're crying for them come back home
We're crying for them come back home
And all your children will stretch out their hands
And pick up the crippled man
Father, we will lead them home
Father, we will lead them home

There are schools full of hatred
Even churches have forsaken
Love and mercy
May we see this generation
In its state of desperation
For Your glory

This is an emergency!

There are tears from the saints
For the lost and unsaved
We're crying for them come back home
We're crying for them come back home
And all your children will stretch out their hands
And pick up the crippled man
Father, we will lead them home
Father, we will lead them home

Sinner, reach out your hands!
Children, in Christ you stand!
Sinner, reach out your hands!
Children, in Christ you stand!

There are tears from the saints
For the lost and unsaved
We're crying for them come back home
We're crying for them come back home
And all Your children will stretch out their hands
And pick up the crippled man
Father, we will lead them home
Father, we will lead them home

Mad as hell... My life has value!

I just watched a video clip, in which a man is raging against the injustices and problems of the world. At the climax of his rant, he urges his viewers to take a stand, and he shouts:

"You've got to get mad. You've got to say 'I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!'"

The irony didn't escape me. He ends up cursing the One Person who can assure him the certainty of being confident that his life has value.

Now, I've heard many comments that Christians always seem to be so down on themselves because they always refer to themselves as wretched sinners. Yes, yes, this we openly admit. We ARE sinners. Sinners = people who have rebelled against God's good and right way.

But this does NOT mean that we're these insecure drips that walk around feeling that we have absolutely no dignity and no sense of self-worth. As Christians, we have two mindblowing reason to feel immensely valued:
1) Human beings are created in God's image
2) Human beings were considered of such value by God that He sent His Son down to earth to die on the cross for us. You don't die for invaluable things...

But, yes, let's get mad! Let's get furious when others tell us that we as human beings have no value, when people tell us we are just as meaningless and valueless as the next lump of mud, when someone tries to fool us into believing that human beings are nothing. Let's get MAD!'Cause I'm a human being, praise God! My life has value!

blergh..................

Sometimes I just feel unloved, insignificant and unappreciated.

In fact, last Sunday was exactly one of those days. It was a number of things, really: the Saturday had been an awesome but EXTREMELY packed day. Which meant I slept the whole of Sunday as I was still a bit sick. Which in turn meant that by Sunday evening I hadn't done any prep work for the seemingly mad week ahead, but I headed off to church anyway. And church was madness! A million and one things to do, a million and one people to talk to, and a great talk on the meaning of life. But this meant that I just felt a bit overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done AND the reminder that there were so many people I loved who could die without knowing God. Then I got home to face my diary, and instead of organising my week, was just bleak about everything. As in everything. Oh yes, add to this an awful foot injury which is taking its sweet time to heal.

Blergh x 100000000000000000000000000.

And it was hot and I was irritated and so I went to sleep feeling rather blergh and frustrated with God. And I had the longest chat ever with God telling Him how frustrated I was and mad at myself for not trusting in Him and for trying to do everything and mad at the fact that some of my nearest and dearest weren't Christians yet and mad at the heat and mad at the smokey fires that are burning up our mountains and mad at my foot for not healing and mad at me for not letting my foot heal by resting and mad at being so busy and involved and mad that I felt underappreciated and no-one had asked how I was doing and mad 'cause I felt that no-one made effort with me and mad that I thought such silly things when my friends are superamazing and so wonderful and then I was just mad. MAD. And then I woke up at 3 still mad (in fact, probably even MORE mad considering it was 3 in the morning) and hot. But when I switched on my cellphone, the following message came through from an unknown number: "You looked a bit sad tonight. Are you okay?"

And I was completely overwhelmed. For at that moment, it felt as though God was gently reminding me that no matter how insignificant or unloved I felt, I was always of concern to Him. Even though I had felt unnoticed that evening, someone had noticed and been concerned enough to sms. And through that person, I felt as though as Someone Else was reminding me that I was never no-one to Him.

What an unbelievably amazing feeling it was being reminded by a member of God's body that to God I am always precious in His sight. :) Yay!

And no, then I was no longer mad :)

We are family... Your brother and your sister and me, hey hey hey!

I was thinking the other day how to differentiate between different types of family: the family you're born into, random unrelated people you might 'adopt' into your family (I have the habit of adopting various individuals as family members.. mostly to get stuff out of them ;) ), and then your Christian family, of course.

I figured that the family you're born into would be referred to blood family. But then I had the cool epiphany that we could also refer to our Christian family as blood family. More specifically, Jesus'-blood family. 'Cause it is only because of Jesus' blood shed on the cross that we can come to know Him! And when we do, we are immediately brought into unity with a whole new awesome family as well!! Which means a whole new bunch of sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers to drive you absolutely crazy up the wall.. ;)

Isn't that a cool thought?

Little Miss Son-shine

If, as God's dearly beloved children, we are all to be like His Beloved Son, then that makes us all little rays of Son-shine :)

Life is short. So what's the point? Part #2

It breaks my heart to think of many of the people I love, for whom Life will be nothing more than Doug walking off stage before getting to the point of his talk.

And I write this, that life only has meaning if you know the true and living God, not as someone who is perfect, not as someone for whom life has been easy, but as someone who has had MANY doubts, who has had many crises, who has turned against God, who has been mad and angry at Him, who has at many a time not wanted to obey Him or love Him. But each time I have been reminded of His goodness, love, mercy, and of His trueness.

I have no idea who reads my blogs, except for those kind souls that leave me messages (much appreciated, by the by), but if you do stumble upon this post... consider what it is I'm saying.

Quite often we come to the Bible with our own expectations - the BSCs want to use it as a textbook for creationism vs. evolution; the BAs see in it a postmodern exploration of the relationship between language and the real (don't ask; it's a bit of a random hypothesis I once had) - instead of turning to the Bible and seeing what it has to say for itself. John's gospel makes it clear what the Bible's purpose:
"These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31).

Oh my wellingtons, what a claim. But if it's true...


Someone once told me that the word 'Bible' could stand for "Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth". Please don't leave earth without checking it out.

Life is short. So what's the point?

This Sunday we had a guest service with the topic: "Life. What's the point?"

[Or something like that. Can't remember the blurb correctly.]

But man, it was interesting.

Just before Doug, our minister, gave the talk, he showed a Xbox ad which had been banned in England. [Ooh, I know you're curious now... Here we go: Xbox]. The ad shows a baby shooting out of a woman's womb in the hospital room, rapidly becoming older as he hurtles through the sky, growing through the phases of being a toddler, child, teenager, man, old man, till he loses steam and flies KADUMPH into a coffin. The words on the screen? "Life is short. Play more. Xbox"

Brilliant.

And so profound.

So what is the point of life?

Love, sex, money, relationships, fame, drink, knowledge, work, family, glory?

As Doug was preaching on Ecclesiastes, he went through many of those above options as the writer of Ecclesiastes himself had sought pleasure in many of those things. Yet, after each new attempt, he'd come to the conclusion that it didn't fulfill or satisfy him. So what more could Doug do but conclude with "So it seems that life is meaningless then", slam the Bible shut and walk off stage?

And as I was sitting there, as the anxious whispers started up around me as people start wondering if that REALLY was it, I was struck by the clarity of his illustration: We felt uncomfortable at this abrupt ending because somehow we expected more. Maybe it was because we were at a church that we expected answers, but even in everyday life, something inside us cries for a life of meaning. We want answers to our question of 'Why are we here? What's the point? What does it all mean?'

Fortunately, after a few very uncomfortable seconds, Doug finally got up and said: "But luckily for us, Ecclesiastes doesn't end there."

And dare I say, it's because God "has set eternity in the hearts of men" (Eccl 3:11)? Life is short. It'd be silly to delude ourselves otherwise. Yet, we know instinctively that there's more to life. And maybe it's because life isn't it.

Excited by Roadkill

What a disturbing title for a post, you might be thinking.

You have a point there.

What's even more disturbing is at the moment, it's kinda true.

Now before you add 'crazy psycho maniac' to the list of things that you think I am, let me explain.

Remember this post: Stop doing dead things!? (Haha, another interesting title, I won't lie!)

In that particular post, I looked at Ephesians 2:1-5 which talks about how we've been raised from being dead in our transgressions to being alive in Christ. Now it just so happened that the day we looked at it in our bible study group, my co-leader had just ridden over a squirrel. With her bike. Front wheel and back.

Gross.

But what a great illustration! We don't like to think of death, and indeed our culture is one which removes and hides any evidence of death. Ernst Becker, a philosopher/writer, goes so far as to hypothesise "that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality" (Wikipedia).

Yet, no matter how hard we try to run away from it, death is everywhere. And if your driving is as bad as mine is, you'll definitely see Death's obvious hand in the roadkill left littering the roads behind you.

Okay, bad joke. My driving isn't that bad. However, the idea is that roadkill IS a visual, obvious, unavoidable picture of the ugliness, the inevitability, the unavoidability, the futility, the nothingness, the deadness of death.

Fortunately, the story doesn't end there. My friend said that when she looked back from her bike, the squirrel wasn't there on the road. It must've bounced off, happily still alive. And in a way, our rebirth as Christians is like a reverse roadkill incident. We start off as flattened, blobs of maggotty, fleshy, dead, unrecognisable messes, and in Christ we become bouncey jumpy alive squirrels.

I dare you not to get excited by roadkill after that thought!