Offering ourselves- sins and all

What an interesting concept! I always think about offering my work, my best, my virtue to God. If not, then at least my efforts and my best intentions! But Henri Nouwen says:

If we keep waiting until we are "worthy" of God, we will move further, rather than closer to Him. We are called each day to present to the Lord the whole of our lives - our joys as well as sorrows, our successes as well as failures, our hopes as well as fears.

How amazing! I never doubted that God can see all of my life, if He really wanted to, but somehow I think I assumed that He only looked at the best bits and closed His eyes to the rest. Of course this can't be true, since I know that He is with me in the trials as well, and in all my daily activities, but I guess I just thought that He wouldn't be interested in everything. Perhaps He is after all. God always being there in everything I do and say - a new idea for me!

Passover

Tonight was our Solace Passover meal (actual Passover is next week, coinciding with Easter). I love entering into the tradition of storytelling, of recounting the events of our history and owning it as our own story. I love the teaching and community aspects of it - you can't have Passover on your own!

We have a wonderful, abundant meal with symbolic foods, roast lamb, fruit and milk and honey desserts. We told the story of the first Passover, complete with symbolic actions and tastes. This is something I would like to do every year!

Children of God together

The children of God need to support, protect and hold one another to God's heart.

Absolutely. Some of the greatest comfort I have comes from the prayers of my sisters in Christ, both at church (Solace and St Jude's) and online through WWAW and CHFWeb. One of the things I find saddest is when the church tears herself apart with internal divisions and strife, with one part of the Body of Christ turning to another and saying "I don't need you!"

This is what I love about the spiritual Re-making course; it allows us to find the good and find the gifts in those other traditions which we would not necessarily appreciate otherwise. Being invited to return to the charismatic roots I abandoned long ago, I am reminded of the great gifts and fire that are to be had there, as well as how necessary it is for the church to have the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the body. I am so glad the gifts of the HS are for today! And even more glad to have a minister gifted with so many of them! And maybe even to have a little of the giftings myself: intercessory prayer, encouragement and sometimes prophecy (which is really listening to God).

When we abandon the Body, when we try to strike out on our own and do it all our own way, discover God's meaning "for ourselves", then we are alone and vulnerable. We risk making mistakes and wrong interpretations without others to correct us, we are open to go to extremes in one direction and completely ignore others. We are very open to sins of pride and self-righteousness, and at the same time less aware of them. We are vulnerable to emotion and doubt in times of weakness with no-one else to reinforce our moments of weakness. God knows us so well! He made the Church to be everything to us that we need, to complete our human incompleteness and to be family for us all. Thank God for His amazing plans to good to us!

Always journeying, never arriving

This is an aspect of God I find both reassuring (because I will never come to the end of Him) and depressing (I will never know Him "well enough"). It is the task which can never be completed which daunts the heart, yet at the same time completed tasks are in the past and can never be done again, authors fully explored must give way to new ideas by new people - thank God that never happens with Him!

I am always amazed at the variety and difference of God. I was amazed when I first realized this, and I am amazed all over again each time I think about it. God is as different to every one of us as we are from each other. True justice but no sameness, to treat every single person as an individual, taking us all on a case-by-case basis with no "one size fits all", no precedents, no rules and no exceptions. He gives to us each as we need and demands of us as we are gifted and enabled (not necessarily in that order). His is the ultimate respect for the individual, with no illusion that we are all created equal! Love so amazing, so divine, so perfectly tailored and yet so demanding - no comparisons are possible!

Prayer: childlike or childish?

Henri Nouwen has hit the nail on the head once again! He likens our "childish" prayers to asking for a present from Santa Claus, and getting it and running away.

"All the attention is on the gift and none of the one who gives it... your spiritual life is reduced to a beeline toward what you want."

Ouch! Too true to be comfortable! So often my prayer life waxes and wanes with my feelings of being looked after, being tired, being secure, needing security. So often it reflects what *I* want and how *I* feel, and is dependent on my prayers being answered.

I have just finished a book in which a girl prays for twenty years to be rescued - and she finally is. Suddenly, her relationship with God falters - now she has what she needs, she needs a new way to relate to God. I wonder if this is why my prayers falter sometimes - I have everything I need, so I don't see God as "necessary" to work in my life. More than a grain of truth in that.

God sees everyone as special

"Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart."

I think this is they key to evangelism: not to see others as projects, or as a series of arguments to be refuted, or even as people to be convinced. God sees us all as individuals, loves us as individual children, and we need to do the same with everyone. Believers are our brothers and sisters, to be loved and encouraged to grow in every way, including in faith. Non-Christians are also beloved children of God, to be loved and encouraged to grow and to seek God, in whatever way He chooses to reveal Himself to them. When we see people as individuals, then we see them as God sees them. Anything less does a disservice to God's message, and to the individual bearing the image of God in front of us.

Deep trust throughout the ages

The words of Psalm 23 are a prayer for people through the ages. They have been prayed many times, and are today, and will be for maybe thousands of years to come. As we pray these words we are surrounded by the body of Christ - the believers who came before and after us, those of the great united Church which is spread out through all of time. We hold the hands of those who went before us, in order to lead those who will follow us. There is a reassurance and truth in that.

We are not alone, standing on a limb, interpreting the Bible and thinking through doubts for the first time. We have the whole history of God with His people, and all the thoughts and wisdom of those who struggled before us. We still need to adapt the truths to our own time and place, but human nature doesn't change and neither does God. We have more in common (and more to learn) from the ancients and even the "recents" than we think.