Be Careful What You Blog For

You remember me talking about needing nothing but a relationship with Jesus even at the detriment of my creature comforts like dear relationships and connection to me laptop. Well would you believe that today me personal laptop is currently undergoing some technical difficulties which means it is not available to me at this moment. Inconvenient? Yes. Pain in the neck? Definitely. Refreshing, liberating and challenging in a stimulating way? Absolutely.

Life goes on and you get on with it somehow. At present the wife is allowing me to use her machine, which is very generous of her, even if like her it’s a cute little thing with keys far too small for my fingers!!

So I be just blogging in gratitude to the fact that sometimes God gives an insight into foresight that we appreciate in hindsight and it remains all good

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Laying The Ground Rules

Ah this is more like it. It’s a Tuesday. It’s late night. I’ve ministered to the wife’s needs and heard her day. I’ve had the day at work and the evening at the session and I’m ready to write.

We learnt a fair amount of stuff today in the session, legislation, communication and the importance of referral systems to support the learner in their holistic approach to effective learning. Among other things we learnt today was the importance of setting ground rules with the learners in our given class. As we discussed some of the things to be stated in any set of ground rules I found it intriguing how much for granted people took their own values, almost as though their own values should naturally be followed by others just because it’s the standards of their day. What’s also fascinating is how on the one side imposing views and beliefs on others is a bad thing, but in actuality that’s what teaching seeks to do by one means or another. Nothing is rigorously challenged about those beliefs and they are taken on face value. What lies beneath however, is often something that appeals to an objective authority. It is as if it is good because it was good for me and my parents and the upbringing I had.

Ground rules, however are important in any given venture. A certain understanding of the guidelines and necessary boundaries to experience the best of what’s available can only be a good thing. The alternative of feeling anything goes and finding out it’s hugely detrimental effects can make any venture fraught with danger after danger. Ground rules are cool, ground rules are important. In the sense of being with a group of learners who you want to empower in their understanding and overall development sharing the experience and having ownership of the making of the ground rules can only be a good thing.

As I thought further on the subject I looked at it in the light of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. In a very real way these can be considered the ground rules for access to the Kingdom of Heaven and His ability to teach them obviously left his listeners amazed at the level of authority with which He spoke. When you read it out – not as if you’re reading a menu, but as if you’re reading someone teaching – when you read it that way it is quite something to see how connected it all is and how challenging these ground rules are. Imagine being told that the way is going to be hard, imagine being told that only a few would ever find it – that doesn’t exactly sound like an inclusive deal does it. That doesn’t sound all-embracing really. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making out that Jesus had an agenda that fell neatly into a right-wing version of heaven brought about by as many wars and offensive behaviours as possible. I’m definitely not making out that Jesus was applauding those with a mentality to completely opt out of the world as we know it and live in communes and enclaves and even worst Christian ghettos where we have Christianised versions of world products and lifestyle.

What I am suggesting, back to my desire about wanting to teach people who want to be taught, in as much as I want what I teach to be accessible to people of different backgrounds and style, there is actually something about the content and it’s challenge that not everyone will live up to or want. Them are just the ground rules.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Getting By With A Little Help ...

Well here we go, This is a bit unusual, but here I am blogging at this time of day and it made a whole heap of sense to do it.

I’ve noted on maybe a few occasions that my tendency is to be a bit of a loner. It is nothing to me to be in my own company carrying along merrily with whatever task I set my mind to – reading a book, watching a movie, writing a blog, studying me Bible, whatever. My own company is brilliant – solitude has not really been an issue to me.

Yet over the years the value of relationships, companionships, friendship, fellowship and all the other ships in the same company have come to the fore and I enjoy being able to call someone, email someone or even that quaint notion of sitting down and face to face sharing with someone. I love it. This has even contributed to the number of personal tributes I’ve made to special people in my life from my darling wife to my dear friend (you didn’t think I forgot that trip did you?) Mavia.

The growing realisation is as well that I am the product of other people. I have aspects of me that are unique and God-given and the like, but for the large part I’m a result of the impact of other people. The book that influences me is the mind of another person. The food that gives me satisfaction how mechanised the process is still the labour of love of another person. The television programmes and web-sites are obviously the product of another person. I am indeed not a rock or an island by myself It would be the height of being foolhardy to discount just how many people have made me who I am today.

So in reflecting on that I came across this familiar song and thought it appropriate once more the celebrate good friends and the blessing that God has given me in being a relational being to realise that I get by with a little help from my friends. There is of course a friend who sticks closer than a brother, so in that case I’m also indebted to the enormous help that has got me by from Jesus.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

What's Really Important

Do you ever ask yourself what’s really important? Do you ever answer yourself by a changed life – not drastically, but noticeably? Do you catch up on yourself when you said you would do something, or be somewhere and then find that you’ve wandered far from that goal, despite still having a desire to achieve that goal?

It’s fine if you don’t ask those questions or engage in that sort of inner-monologue, we’re not all meant to be that reflective, for some people it’s too much to deal with. I am intrigued by how many people I know have an active life that keeps them busy so that they don’t ever stop to consider these things. They are irrepressible in their zeal to get the job done, whatever it is. Their energy makes them almost indefatigable in their conquest. Yet when life happens as it invariably does with those things that arrest us all of a sudden we’re not prepared to answer those issues, yet have to be forced to develop the capacity to do so or face a miserable time looking to avoid it.

Stuff happens in life that allows me to recognise how attached I am to material things. It is a bit like the songwriter suggests in the inimitable voice of Joni Mitchell – you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. As you may note, I enjoy the pleasures of being able to write and save stuff and publish it online. I love that whole thing and have been tremendously blessed with the resources I’ve gained online whether it’s audio works or pdf files on interesting subjects.

I have thus invested a considerable amount of time on this here ICT equipment and a considerable amount of my creativity and energy. As with anything of this nature, that means the stuff becomes valuable because I’ve invested myself in it. Unsurprisingly hard-drives and computers have become very important to me. Yeah, take me telly. Take me Skybox, take some of my books and other than that there really is not many earthly materials that I have to my name. Touch my hard-drive, though and that becomes an issue. I’m making progress in this area.

I remember not so long ago a friend of mine sought to help me out with some difficulties I was having with my hard-drive and subsequently went and got the thing irreparably damaged. It was like a death in the family. It was as though someone had ripped my heart out because all that time and effort that I had saved and deposited on that hard-drive was just gone. Now that to me was more valuable than money, than jewels, etc. it was me that was gone – or a large part of it.

Sadly that’s not the only time hard-drives have failed me for one reason or another. Yet with each time, it’s as though I’m given a reminder of that question I asked at the top – what is really important in life? What could I not live without?

My friends mean a lot to me, I so appreciate their company and companionship. I remember asking God for friends and now recalling the ones I get to engage with, I’m really grateful for them. Yet I could live without them (not that I’d want to but you get my drift). My daughters are incredibly precious to me, but one day soon as they get older I appreciate there will come a time when they will fly away and have families of their own. Even my wife, herself, the very heart-beat of our family and love of my life has a death contract on her – no it’s not a serious threat by the Mafia, it is the inevitability that we are all destined to die. So I’ve learnt and am learning, whenever I forget and get hung up on things, that the things that are important are the things that last forever. Values of love, peace, justice, hope and faith. More importantly relationships that last forever – the source of all that I enjoy and respect.

My friends and family are vitally important, I know however that when they fail and when hard-drives pass away, the love of Jesus lasts for ever. Now it’s the tricky thing of shaping and moulding my life around that conviction. God help me.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Remembering Love

I’ve been on a weekend conference. Now that sounds posh doesn’t it? What other phrases can I chuck in there? We did lunch and cracked the deal that should see millions flooding in. Not true, but it sounds right in the context of a weekend conference.

In any case, you may remember the talk I’ve been making about confessional community and I had a glimpse of what that looked like this weekend with a group of people I don’t know. They were more than happy to share aspects of their lives that were hard to share. Really confessing some deep stuff that they have struggled and overcome and in some cases yet to overcome all in an atmosphere that celebrated the freedom that we have to share these things and more importantly, that which brings it above self-help, our complete dependence on Jesus to help us in these things. Funnily enough that was not the sole point of the weekend, indeed it was looking at some interesting aspects of the time to come.

So I enjoyed the weekend. I enjoyed it a great deal and one of the highlights of it was the opportunity to share in communion. Now that’s a whole topic in itself in terms of my position on that in comparison to some other approaches. I won’t go into it now. What I will go into is the run-up to it. There was talk about the importance of love as the motive for all we do. A love that forgives our enemy. A love that endures all things and believes all things. A love so rooted and grounded in being loved first that we no longer love for what we want from others or a self-indulgent desire to be loved, but knowing we are already loved we give.

Nothing typifies this greater than the three crucial images of a follower of Christ – the cross, the empty tomb and the right hand of God. The journey all disciples take in their realisation of the greatest love there has ever been. This love is only possible because of what Jesus has done for us to be reconciled to the greatest lover in the universe. On realising this again and remembering this I recall the most moving expression my dad ever had about love through tears and thanksgiving and likewise I burst out in tears of thanksgiving.

So I see how love makes me appreciate my family and other loved ones. I see how love set me free to be one who loves. That is my heart’s desire and privilege one day, one conversation, one relationship at a time.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd