Trust and confidence

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
Does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this,
You will lead me by the right road
Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
And you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton

I am learning more and more how superficial my trust and confidence in God has been. I am also learning of the richness of his grace, and his goodness and mercy....onward. Good weekend in London with Josh and Jen and Madison and Riley, and others - holidays coming soon, I am ready. Bev off to conduct Aunt Ethel's funeral in White Rock, we'll meet up in Montreal, and we'll all meet up in heaven one day, at the appointed time.

Abundance...

Dallas Willard on "Nondiscipleship"

Nondiscipleship costs:

abiding peace,

a life penetrated throughout by love,

faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good,

hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances,

power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil,

In short it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).

In the last couple of days I have walked and talked with friends for whom I pray and with whom I am connected. The abundance of these relationships and spirit connections are the fruit of closely following after Jesus, which includes prayer.

I choose to follow Jesus and lead others in following him.

Contentment without Complacency

Here's the challenge - to live every moment with total contentment but without a hint of complacency. To never let envy or ambition or greed steal joy from the deep places of our beings, but to never become self-satisfied by where we are on our journey either.

Anxiety is one danger; apathy is the other. Jesus is the answer to both. Christians find themselves in the strange business of disentangling themselves from the things of this world while busily engaging themselves more deeply than ever in the affairs of life.

Somehow Christians should be both more in love with the world and less in love with the world than anyone else. A tricky, worthy and needful dance.

"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I live you; never will I forsake you"

Make me a channel of your grace....

I have a heavy heart today - I am feeling for a family whose teen-age son was killed in a canoeing mishap last weekend. I am feeling for the people of Zimbabwe and the desparate situation there.

Whether it's the humidity, or residual tiredness from a year of work, study, travel, (I believe these factors bring down the walls of my spirit) the point is my heart is keenly feeling these losses.

I can't deny it, should I? I am mindful of the body of Christ, one part suffers and we suffer - this cuts across family, denominational, national borders.

I also received an email today from a friend, with a prayer that spoke to my situation - the mysterious body of Christ.

I will continue to be broken when others suffer, it's not even volitional, but I pray that in my sensitivity I would share the grace which I have received. I believe it is God's sacrifice.

"That other souls, refreshed and fed, may share his life through mine."

Drink it in....

Starry-eyed optimist, muddy-eyed pessimist – no “open-eyed realist”.

Christianity is an invitation to everyone to drink more deeply of life, but that includes both the most delicious and the most bitter flavours it has to offer.

sometimes I want
to go deeper into
the silences of God;
but sometimes the
silences are so deep,
they threaten
to swallow me up.

the truths of the son
finger their way through
my heart, leaving
bloodstains and blossoms
wherever they pass.

This planet is immersed in the paradox of good and evil and has footpaths that lead to both paradise and the inferno. God offered wonder, we chose pain, and now our world is woven with both. He is with us and for us and loves the world. Drink it in.

When the music stops, all is stripped away...

A recently released British journalist hostage stated "everyone should be a prisoner a some point, in order to value and appreciated freedom".



Desparation drives us to the holy.

That's a hard place to be, but is the way to holiness.

My Haitian friends experience tremendous physical challenges, which takes them to the footstool of heaven. They know how to pray, they know how to sing from the heart, beyond the emotions, they know how to praise God, they know how to perservere.

There is nothing romantic about poverty - it sucks, Jesus never blessed it. There is nothing endearing about a "functional atheism" in the western world where we have so much stuff, we don't really "need" God. What I do know is that when we strip away all the stuff, and the supports and the trappings, we find God.

Goods or God - God is the better, and yet we are all called to shared in community of the riches of our store-house, material or spiritual.

Meaninglessness, loneliness find answers when are lives are stripped bare of the accoutrements. In the quiet place is God.

Attentive to God's creation...

The 21st C has seen unprecedented progress and tragedy. Rape of the environment, genocide, global poverty, exploitation of children (child soldiers, sexual trafficking), explosion of the city.

At dark times in the history of the world God has raised up groups, individuals to speak prophetically – not predict (foretell) but declare (forthtell). A book has been written "The new Friars", youth around the world are responding in similar ways, yet independent of each other.

Missional, incarnational, devotional, communal, marginal. Like St. Francis of old – they are discovering spiritual disciplines, solitude, fasting, silence, and discovering new reverence in love for creation, creatures, God, fellow human beings and themselves.

Shane Claibourne is one – he traveled to India to work with Mother Teresa, in attending to the lepers in Calcutta. He found most lepers did not have a word for thank you in their vocabulary – no had ever given them anything. He found a new word: a conventional Hindu expression of greeting - namaste - I honour the holy one who lives in you – or I see Jesus in you – he would here these words when attending the needs of the lepers.

A prayer I have recently learned is this: “Lord help me to see each person whom I meet today as someone of infinite value and immense worth”.

It is a matter of being attentive to God’s creation – his creatures – we are made in his image, with a capacity for ill yes, but a capacity for goodness. Loving others as ourselves, being attentive is a good start.

This was strengthened during a recent trip to Haiti – for two weeks – no running water, fourteen people in a one-floor three bedroom house, in a unique culture. Lost six pounds, was quite ill for two days, but met beautiful people, many who were fortunate to have one meal every two days, and had tremendous physical needs, but were rich and deep in spirit, living perseverance, trust, crying out to God.

Our trip we went to learn from our sisters and brothers and learn we did. We stood in solidarity with them, and it was an encouragement. We return not to guilt other Christians, but to challenge them about sharing of our resources. We return able to constructively pray.

Often we are not attentive to God’s voice – filled with TV, muzak, ipods, busyness. Often we are oblivious to trends to manipulation, to the corruption of souls by materialism, indulgent living.

We all need each other – the rich in goods, poor in spirit western church needs the poor in goods, rich in spirit third-world church. We need to journey, do pilgrimage, we are shallow, we are superficial. God help us to be attentive to his creation.