What law cannot do

We're driving through traffic and the morning show comes on the radio. I listen to the discussion about today's dilemma, the one tossed out by the presenter to tempt people to ring in.

"Umbrella Etiquette" is the spin and someone rings with the suggestion that all umbrellas should be clear so that when they're held low, the view is not obscured. Nice. Simple, creative idea.

Suddenly the talk is of 'policing' the move to clear umbrellas and 'standards' for maufacturers of brollies, and my eyes do that cartoon thing that reminds me of minds boggling (not good in traffic). What the? I punch the off button with my finger, because there's no point in getting infuriated at morning radio.

Why does a good idea have to mean a new rule or guideline? When did suggestions become acts of parliament and law? Who said that wisdom or right living must be legislated? Is the purpose of a law to keep those who should know better out of trouble or is it to protect potential victims?

Can the law make me a good person?

I wish that I could fastidiously do all the things that would leave my life unsullied. Sometimes. Other times I just want to spend an hour sitting, eating maltesers and watching Dr Phil.

But I know that making more rules is not going to make us more caring, more compassionate, or less selfish. It just isn't going to happen.

The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Romans 8:3

The paradox is that by living in a finite human body, Jesus invited us into the possibility of living the life God intended - no longer trapped by our own finite weakness.

I'm taking the time to listen to Romans 8, verse by verse, with the aim of memorising it. Join me?

The practice of stop and listen.

Sarah's having a gathering at her blog, around the practices of parenting. She has compiled her practices, or disciplines of mothering, over the past few months and they are definitely worth reading. She commented that her practices have helped her to enjoy mothering, which surprised her.

Everyone is joining in to add their practices, so I thought I'd add a post to the carnival. Click on the button below to go over and check it out.

I rarely read parenting books and I steer away from giving advice that isn't solicited with a question. I hope I'm a good-enough mother, but I'm not an exemplary parent. I dreamed of transcending my own parents but discovered that I make the same mistakes they did. Mums at playgroup say they couldn't imagine me shouting at my children, but that's mainly because I know how to behave in public and they don't live next door to me.

Maybe like you, I have times when parenting goes smoothly and fills me with joy. And then there's times when parenting seems impossible and I'm ashamed of how I behave.

Most of my disasters spring from assumptions, preoccupations and selfishness (and hunger). Good moments spring out of unexpected comments, expressions of love or excitement, and just pausing to enjoy.

The practice I am remembering daily, is to stop, and listen.

When the steam is about to explode from every hole in my head, and there's criticism burning the end of my tongue, I stop. I swallow hard ... and listen. I'm starting to discover all sorts of reasons or circumstances which change the temperature of a situation from red hot to cooling quickly.

When it's bedtime, and I'd rather be checking facebook or watching "Outnumbered", I stop. I lie back down on the bed and hear stories of the day or get spontaneous cuddles. I listen and I'm seeing each child taking shape as they slowly explain themselves to me.

When the job's not done exactly as I like it, or I'm being ignored when I ask for a hand, it's time to stop. Let the hurt or the blunt correction stay put. I breathe out slow and I listen to where everyone is, what's going on and usually my perspective changes or I realise that it can wait for the moment.

When the sound of bodies bounding on the trampoline mingles with shouts and laughter, it's a stop and listen moment. Or that instant when I notice the silence in the hallway, as breaths slow and bodies relax into night. That instant is a stop and listen call.

Rather than react instantly, I'm practicing stopping and listening.



A secret revealed

I lay down on the bed beside him and his tiny hands grip my neck and pull. We laugh, noses touching and he asks me "Why?" when I say that he's little.

"Well, your legs are shorter than mine, your arms are shorter, your head is smaller..."

He's little, but he's big and we tell him he's big so he'll want to stop wearing nappies. How does he not get confused?

I know him, I absorb him, I enjoy him as we compare limb length and kiss goodnight. And tomorrow there'll be new glints of him in our touch and talk.

I started reading Matthew last year, winding through to twenty-eight and back to one again. Finding familiar and new, striking and puzzling side by side. I searched for the deeper meaning, struggled to hold the whole piece in my mind to grasp its uniqueness. Perhaps I strived to be a gnostic and find the hidden secret.

It wasn't till I read Redemption that it crept on me. The secret was not hidden, in fact it was more about revealing, about meeting and seeing. About listening and touching.

The purpose of life is not to be a better person, or to find more theological secrets. The purpose of life is to spend it with God. The purpose of faith is not me transcending myself, it is about me finding myself in the presence of God.

The purpose of reading Matthew, is not mining for nuggets. 

Reading Matthew is sitting on a hillside and eating a feast with five thousand people, or waking in a storm to see the waves suddenly calmed. It's sitting and listening as Jesus forgives, or heals or even rebukes. It is being in the presence of God, the Son.

God is with us, and reading his story is not just an intellectual exercise. It's a little like lying on the bed saying goodnight. It's that time when you meet someone face to face and give them your full attention. You get to know them by seeing them live, by stopping and listening to them.

Anything we gain in pursuing God is hollow without God himself. The fact that he is with us, within us by his Spirit and present before us in the person of Jesus, is miraculous and life-giving.

"we don't just get peace from God; God is our peace - he gives us himself.

We don't just get joy from God; he is our joy - he gives us himself."

p161 Redemption by Mike Wilkerson.

I'm linking with Emily for the last Imperfect Prose for a while. I'm excited that the break's because she's writing a book.

Free

Belonging to Jesus drags me back from the clifftop brink of condemnation. And if that was all, I'd be leaning over the edge again in no time.

Belonging also brings the Spirit.

I sometimes think there's a fight going on inside me. A fight between the right thing and the wrong thing. Which one will I do?

This is a different picture.

There's an animal trapped in a small box, with very little food, barely any light and a few sips of water. It's not aware that when the supplies run out, starvation will arrive. It doesn't even wonder beyond the next mouthful. Someone comes and lifts the furry little thing out of the box, placing it in a protected garden with sunshine, snacks, water to drink and to play in and other animals to befriend.

The Spirit has come and lifted me up out of the murky dark and I am no longer trapped. I have been freed from the fight within me, because I am no longer alone in it. I used to have to strive to be good enough to beat sin or death. Now God's Spirit has freed me from it.

The life I've been given is in the protected, abundant garden.

Listen and remember.

And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Romans 8:2

Brushing up on a classical education

I read a great letter last week. It was written by a specialist, when he saw a patient again after many years. The patient had a particularly bad injury but it had healed with resulting eye problems.

The specialist commented on his difficulty remembering the details where once he would have remembered every 'slice of the scalpel'. He was self-deprecating in reflecting on his increasing age. And then he said...

Tempus fugit.

I wish I could see Latin (or French, or Greek etc.) phrases and know what they mean. Oh, for a classical education, and the chance to go up or come down at Oxford (yes, I've read too much Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh in my time).

Praise the Lord for Google, I did a little wiki-research, and I discovered that tempus fugit means 'time flies' (or flees - which I like a little better).

It is from a poem by Virgil,
"Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore"

which means,
"But meanwhile it flees,
time flees irretrievably,
while we wander around,
prisoners of our love of detail."

Wow. How does he know us so well?

A faithful life

The funeral today was for a woman who has lived a faithful life. She has been having palliative treatment for cancer for six months and, four weeks ago, the funeral was for her husband. I can only imagine what it is like to see both your parents die within a month.

Her sister's husband looked stooped and worn today, his smile broad and sad-eyed. Her son's ex-wife will be more alone without her. She was praised by her doubting son for her faith in God and His love for her.

This family draws people from all through our community together. Gathered today, I saw the butcher who retired last year, the 'girls' from the chemist, people who've moved away from our church many years ago. They are well known for their extended family meals, their camping adventures and their loyalty. There's a prison officer who mows their lawn regularly because he remembers the years they let him live among their family.

The couple, who had been at our church for forty years, had loved many people, through youth groups and boys brigade, sporting teams and after school care, neighbourly love and inviting homeless young people into their family. They had seen the boom times and the broken times of our church and had served on, despite many people moving to bigger or newer churches.

They are well loved, because people had felt and seen the generosity of their love.

They were never celebrities and they lived a quiet life. They faced many hardships, losses and disappointments, particularly through chronic illness. But they didn't let those hard things shape them, they never became bitter or angry. Instead they continued to praise the God who loved them and to love people around them.

Sometimes I long to be recognised and for people to know the good I do. But that's not what a faithful life is about. I hesitate to start a heresy, but perhaps the most famous Christians are not necessarily the most faithful.

It may be faintly cliched to wonder what people will say at my funeral one day, but I do hope that however quiet it is, that people will say that I have lived faithfully.

Listen to the Light

I've talked about feasting on truth and I heard a couple of Sundays ago that reading the bible brings 'light in a dark place'. I'm going to spend some posts letting Romans 8 savour. I want to help it settle in my memory, like we did more than 15 years ago on a Summer Mission I went on (We learnt Romans 12 in 10 days). I'm going to take it a little slower than that, but I'll be trying to memorise it as I go. Join me?

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1

It's so easy to define myself by condemning someone else. To comfort myself by consigning someone else for falling short. I inflate myself by letting the air out of someone else.
And when I think I am condemned by my behaviour or by another person's opinion, my perspective narrows. I respond defensively and I refuse to see possiblity.
Condemnation makes me bitter and pessimistic, and it draws the hope out of me. It shrivels me.

Belonging is the antedote. When I am part of the tribe and I know I am accepted, then I don't have to condemn to prove myself. And belonging frees me to accept, rather than condemn others.
But the final piece to the puzzle is who we belong to. To Jesus, the one who chose not to condemn an adulterous woman, as those around her wanted to do. Instead he called her to live as one who belonged to Him.

Belonging to Jesus is my identity. Not just me, but 'one who belongs to Jesus'.
And it frees me from the ultimate condemnation - death and separation from God.

Listen to Romans 8:1 and remember to whom you belong.