Body and spirit; one person

Not only am I flesh and blood; a body of unconscious responses with a determined mind, lodged in a complex interaction of matter with the environment, I am spirit. It is my spirit, the invisible me, that breathes life into this body and makes me alive, a person, the image of God.
And why spirit? You cannot touch it, measure it or weigh it but I believe in it; I am more than the sum of my parts; I am more than complex chemistry. With my spirit I know God; I worship him, praise him and delight in him. This eternal relationship is the fire in my heart that gives me a glimpse of true love and true freedom – I am alive.
The tragedy is that this relationship is broken and has to be mended. My experience of life is that something other than spirit seeks to drive my choices. And my spirit despairs at the hopeless choices I make and the painful thoughts I think as I struggle with the hurts of life and selfishness – I am dead.
The curse is my having to make choices based on my own needs and knowledge. My own knowledge of good and evil is fallible and crooked, drawing on death. Freedom comes from a restored relationship with God in Christ. Our choices are guided by endless rules and taboos, reactions and hurts, and we are driven to do what we think is right through guilt and the fear of punishment or we choose to make no conscious decision at all and ignore the issue, choosing to follow our urges, the path of least resistance and our fantasies.
Jesus cuts through this weight of law; the laws of nurture and nature, and says plainly, all is resolved in love; the love of God and our neighbour. The only free choice is moment by moment love of God and our neighbour.
And the light in everyman’s heart confirms this, driving back the darkness of our broken relationship with God calling us to choose life in Christ. Jesus not only speaks the word of truth he is the way of truth. In him we know God and Jesus provides the way to God, washing us clean from guilt and condemnation, taking on himself the pain and punishment of our death. And so in this world of guilt and shame we act with hope, made right with God through the righteousness of Jesus.
In Christ we are made right with God. Each day, each moment, each choice is made in Christ because we love God and we love our neighbour, the image of God. No longer are we enslaved to laws and driven by guilt, we live in the light of God’s grace, Jesus Christ, freed to love, living in the spirit.
Difficult choices and horrible hurts are now encountered through the spirit, perfecting our relationship with God. We might not look much and we may not appear much, but we are fired by a love for God and our neighbour which brings peace through God’s grace for each moment, painting a much larger canvas.

Walsingham

Why’s the water holy? you ask.
Ah – the bishop’s blessed the tap.
Love. Corporation water
Sprinkled by holy hands.
It’s centurion faith. My dear.
Now, look;
Those naughty boys!
Goodness. Do you see?
Holy Virgin water pistols!
And the priest’s looking on.

My heart bleeds.

On the beach at Penbryn

On the beach at Penbryn
Watched
Two peregrines swoop,
Crest the land's cut edge,
And cascade down the striated face
Of rock
Folden long.

Time’s forces cleave,
Yield, as-if-hewn slabs;
Tumbling giant coffins of rock.
Succumbed.
Sucked smooth lozenges
At the foot of the shattered shale.

The birds double back,
Arch over the hill beyond,
Glimpse the graveyard
Snooked from sea sight.

Ancient stones stand,
Labour of priestly hands.
Placed for princess.
Pitted
Chiselled
Edges now smoothed;
Earth etched fading forms
Of piety recalled in granite;
Ephemera in Time's tireless trend.

The birds go and
The watchers tread
Epitaphs in the sand.

Heaven and Hell

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All the evil of the world is always before God; the violence, abuse, malicious thinking, the pain and hate. He sees everything, the wickedness of hearts and the violence of actions; he witnesses all the evil in all time. One day this will stop. He will bring it to an end, but the amazing thing is that God looks, and he gazes, in love, a love that sends his only son to the Earth to create a way back to holiness; and he waits in patience so that each of us might turn back to him and be received. His mercy knows no bounds.

The Prodigal Son painted by Rembrandt

God created us for the richness of eternity; this was his blessing, that we would worship him and enjoy him for ever. This is life, the enjoyment and worship of God who lavishes his love on us. God is love and he created us in his image able to experience and give love. Love is love when it is freely given and freely accepted; a parent might love their child but that love has to be accepted for it to be complete.

We are God’s treasure and he lavishes his love on us and we choose to return that love. My condition is that I am dead to God; faith awakens in me the possibility of life. If I catch God’s heart and hear his call this faith is realised and I fall to my knees and grasp his all enfolding grace. I am made new in Christ. It is God who awakens this faith as he waits patiently for my response and faith brings me to life from death.


Until I die it is this faith that sustains me, it is spiritual food that keeps me on the way and spiritual drink that refreshes me keeping me alive.


If I choose to remain dead turning my back on the call of God, I am counted with the violent, the abusers and haters who loath life and cling to death encouraging others to join them. God looks on in love longing to extend his mercy but one day there will be an end. God is patient; he waits and endures all the violence so that all may be welcomed into life.


One day this violence will be ended and burned up. God will end it and renew the Earth. Those who chose death will continue with their choice, eternal death. Eternity is a blessing God will not take back and we choose how we experience it.


I grieve at this; it is not the heart of God that any would be lost. He is the God of love, but love is not complete if it is not accepted. Love does not force itself. For love to be glorified it has to be chosen. The story of the returning prodigal son echoes this. Because God is a God of love there has to be a hell or love would be meaningless. But my response is to do the work of the Father and have faith in him seeking out of my own poverty, brokenness and need those who are hurting, to bring them to faith. Eternity on a renewed Earth is the blessing we have been created for- God is true to this blessing and through Jesus we are saved from eternal death to eternal life.


Jesus has a lot to say about the misery of hell but he reserves his ire for the self righteous and self assured – religious bigots, absolutists and hypocrites who keep others from love. To everyman he has given the gift of the light of faith shining in their hearts so that everyman might be rescued from the darkness into the light. This is made possible in Jesus.


John 3:16-21 (ESV) 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” <o:p></o:p>

Keep it Simple

There is a lot in the media that is good but most of it is rubbish. If you are caught up in the daily grind of a hand to mouth existence, it might be a release; a hope, or an irrelevance. The media can educate and inform and has the potential to do great good. But most of it is trivial twaddle.

Outwardly our attitude to the media is prayerful and critical. We campaign to protect the vulnerable and the abused and sound warnings when boundaries are breached: a prophetic voice understood within each culture. The shared values of our nation drives us to engage prophetically with our culture so that we can pray into it and bring healing in the name of Jesus.

As individuals our stand is important. Our priority is a deep relationship with God with no space for escapism from the moment by moment engagement of this relationship. Jesus is our Lord and our maker and no time is not his time. He knows and he searches us, purifying us as we turn to him through his grace. He loves us unconditionally.

Things aren't easy. We will have to make tough decisions. We might actually find ourselves outside where we would hope to be. The problem is we are super affluent and we live in a hugely rich culture saturated by the media. We barely have time to stop and think. Am I happy? We're often so tired and don't consider our own well-being. Our work places demands on us and makes us machines for the system. This is the curse we are under and wealth doesn't make it any easier. In fact Jesus warns us that being rich makes it harder.

Somehow in the midst of all this affluence we need to keep ourselves centred on God. Blessings are promised to the poor in spirit so it will help if we can simplify our lives. God has made the sacrifice so that in Jesus this is possible. Being in Jesus we are enabled to be part of the system but detached from it. In Jesus we can face the media with wisdom.

Fresh, Real Coffee

I breakfasted this morning thinking about the grace of God and living this life in a world he loves but is under his judgement. Thoughts of refining fire were in my head and perfecting through suffering.

However my attention was quickly drawn to the coffee I was about to make. There were enough grounds left for one brew. In the past this would have been a bad moment and making the coffee an act of frugality, because the grounds would have lost their savour. But we have been drinking more coffee recently and the grounds still had a pleasing aroma. I enjoyed my cup of coffee, made with the care of experience, familiarity with the process and understanding of the importance of warming the pot and the grounds and not pouring on boiling water.


The grace of God enables us to come to God and experience his refreshing touch in simple ways. Overindulgence often can bring dryness but in Christ there is always the anticipation of freshness as we are careful to seek and know a deeper revelation of our need and God's provision. The coffee reminded me of the importance of spending time with God regularly and the reassurance that this would not become a stale experience, in fact it will teach me to be who God wants me to be and give me the time to reflect on what he wants me to do.

With God there is the fire of judgement and refining but also the coolness of the garden where God expresses his special care and where, a friend reminded me this morning, God can tend to the planting which is his word in our hearts, so that we can be fitted for the very real hostilities of the world. Then we can carry the fresh winsome aroma of the garden that is the work of God in us to those in need of the refreshing forgiveness of God.

Darwin

I listened recently to Tim Keller's sermon on good, evil and suffering and was very taken by his clarity. His take on the violence of nature set me thinking.
Darwin is being remembered this year. He is the father of modern Biology and his synthesis of what he understood he was observing and the philosophy of those around him has come to be a truth of our time.
Natural Selection is a soulless mechanism, driving nature to persevere in, exploit and adapt to environments. Nature is violent, and the strong and fittest are able to exploit and master their environments often to the detriment of other organisms.
In effect, Darwinism provides an ugly truth, driving the natural and social order we see. God is taken out of the picture and so provision is replaced by competition and what should be opposed tolerated. The surface truth becomes the truth.
It is true that each of us and every organism is a miracle of survival and according to Darwinism our existence marks us out as being in the lineage of the strong; we owe our existence to the robustness of our genes and our posterity depends on us being able to pass on the information we have received. We are the successful.
Yet deep down we sense a purpose beyond this scenario. Intuition points us to this being a surface truth. Our awareness of ourselves and this inbuilt knowledge indicates a significance to our lives that is deeper than Darwinism describes. Indeed we behave and act as if every moment matters and is significant; we care.
It is a rare person who dispenses with our sense of humanity; justice, beauty and mercy, for the sake of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. But this humanity is of little purpose if nature is all there is and is actually dangerous if it impedes the progress of the strongest. It spells our doom. If our purpose is to adapt to survive and Darwinism is our root belief, it is folly to resist this and the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good, which is served best through the preservation of the freedoms of the strong. That is natural justice. But actually we hate those who appease evil and disdain those who acquiesce to wrong doing for the greater good. Nixon famously believed that as president he was above the law and we think him sick, deluded by paranoia.
Darwinism does not give us the answers to our intuition that we have significance. Without God, Darwinism has been used to legitimise the worst atrocities and philosophies the past 200 years have had to offer; Marxism, Nazi ism, racism and eugenics.
If my friend suffers I will not succumb to fatalism, I will fight for his life, and I will not abandon him or God because I reason I am more than flesh. To think otherwise I think is delusional.