JEHOVAH-JIREH – The Lord provides (Genesis 22:13-14)

I have been on holiday for the last couple of weeks.  It was not what I am used to, two weeks in the sun doing very little except for reading, swimming and soaking up the rays.  We went to Whitley Bay on the North East coast and I was anticipating a fortnight of rain-soaked, family outings!  However, as usual, I was surprised that despite my preconceptions it was just what I needed and a real blessing from God, and Lesley who kindly loaned us her house.  I was able to relax, spend time with my family, as well as enjoy the beauty of God’s creation and experience healing and revelation in the most unexpected of places.  The other thing that was different is I don’t usually have any contact with friends while I am away.  On this holiday, though, I really valued their occasional news updates and brief words of love and encouragement.

This has caused me to acknowledge how much I impose on God what I think He should do to meet my needs.  Then when He doesn’t do what I want, I am disappointed and do a more rationally justified equivalent of a toddler tantrum or adolescent sulk.  The truth is God meets all my needs but not in the ways I expect.  This was always true of Jesus.  Tom Wright says in ‘Luke for Everyone’, commenting on Luke chapter 2, verses 41-52, “Jesus doesn’t do or say what Mary and Joseph or the two on the road (to Emmaus), were expecting.  It will be like that with us, too…Discipleship always involves the unexpected.” (p.29-30) Taking my friends as an example then, I can see He has given me different relationships that feed and nurture the many-sided facets of my personality and provide stimulation for the variety of interests I have.  God is not just my provider when I have a bill to pay or an event to staff.  He is the God who knows me inside and out and is constantly surprising me with the multiplicity of ways in which He cares for me. 

I have been wondering if the same is true of church.  We expect one expression of worship to meet all our varied and complex needs for intimacy with God and desire for fellowship.  However, I have discovered that I can experience a rich diversity in God and the community of faith by engaging with different expressions of worship and interacting with groups of Christians who emphasise alternative aspects of witness and service.  I have felt vaguely uncomfortable with this, wondering if I am just pandering to our “pick’n’mix” culture, choosing the bits I like and opting out of the bits I don’t get anything from.  But maybe if I am genuine, committed and willing to go the extra mile for the relationships in these different contexts, then I will not fall into this trap.  And actually I will have a greatly enhanced picture of God.  It is as stark a contrast as having had a flat, one-dimensional image and now seeing Him in magnificent 3-d! 

So on returning from my holiday, I am resolved to curb my natural inclination to tell God how to do His job.  Rather, I want to spend time marvelling and rejoicing at all the creative and unexpected ways God is truly my provider, especially when His provision also challenges my prejudices!  For, as Isaiah 55 verse 8 says, “’…my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways’, declares the Lord.”

How the Biblical Theme of Kingship in the Old Testament is totally reframed in Christ

It is human nature to compare ourselves to others and want what they have.  We learn by imitation and as we grow, we want desperately to fit in and not stand out from the crowd.  It fulfils our need for acceptance and belonging.  God’s people are not immune from this despite the knowledge and experience of God’s love and provision.  In 1 Samuel 8, verse 5 the Israelites come to Samuel, the prophet, and say, “appoint for us…a king to govern us, like other nations.”  But, as he reminds them, they are not like the other nations.  They already have a king, one who is Lord over heaven and earth.  What is God’s response to their request? “They have not rejected you (Samuel), but they have rejected me from being king over them.  Just as they have done to me from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods.”  So Samuel warns them of the consequences, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you; he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen…He will take your daughters to perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers.  He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work.  He will take one tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.  And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”  The people are adamant, “No!  But we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” Samuel does what they ask and with their first king Saul and, more successfully, with his successor, David, Israel does become a stronger and more unified force that is able to defeat its enemies. 

However, they soon paid the price and when David’s son Solomon acceded the throne he extended David’s modest system of taxation of the twelve different districts of his territory supporting his court with the provisions for one month each year, to include the raising of revenue for the administration of the collection of such taxes.  “The very idea of a privileged elite being served and paid for by the ordinary citizens was a fundamental denial of the traditions of their people.” (Drane, p.93)   However, worse was to come as the income generated was still not enough to fund Solomon’s lavish lifestyle and ambitious building projects.  He introduced ‘forced labour’ and so was guilty of enslaving his own people.  Thus, “human monarchy stands under suspicion because it became in Israel, as elsewhere, an engine for preference, privilege, monopoly and self indulgence.” (Brueggemann, p.604)  Further criticism is levelled at Solomon and subsequent monarchs for the taking of foreign wives who introduce idolatry into the royal household (Deut 7:1-4).  Even the king is subject like all other Israelites to live in reverence to God and obedience to His law (Deut. 17:18-20).  And the promise of an everlasting dynasty made to David, is conditional upon him and his descendants keeping God’s commands (1 Ki. 9:4-5). 

The other major critique of kingship in the Old Testament comes with the Exile of God’s people and the destruction of Jerusalem, the administrative and spiritual heart of the nation, at the hands of the Babylonians in 587BC.  Both prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel put the blame squarely at the door of the kings for this calamity.  “…thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.” (Jer. 23:2)  “Thus says the Lord God: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!  Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.  You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and hardship you have ruled them.  So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd…” (Ez. 34:2-5) This is because they not only did not heed the warnings attached to covenantal disobedience (1 Ki. 9:6-9) but they had failed in, “the establishment and maintenance of justice as (their) primary obligation to Yahweh and to Israelite society.” (Brueggemann, p.611) 

Despite the obvious failure of kingship to inaugurate wise and just leadership, the people of God persisted in their hope for a new king in the model of David (Brueggemann, p.617) to free them from oppression, reinstate their ownership of the land and crush their enemies (Psalm 2:7-9).  This idea is vitally important to get our heads around if we are to understand why Jesus came to be so hated by the Jews.  “In the first scenes of the gospel, Luke dramatically portrays the families of John the Baptist and of Jesus as Jews who expect a prophet and a king who will conduct a holy war on Israel’s enemies.  In his 4^th chapter, then, Luke introduces the awaited leader.  He is wholly different to what has been expected.  He is the anointed of God who will announce a year of favour for both Jews and their opponents.” (Bosch, p.111)  In a reflection of my earlier quote from Ezekiel on the failure of Israel’s kings, Jesus says of himself, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me (kings were always anointed with oil in a religious ceremony to recognise the position they had been given by God and for that to be acknowledged before the people) to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” However, in this direct quote from the prophet Isaiah, Jesus stops short of proclaiming “the day of vengeance of our God.”  He had not come to crush their enemies but to love them (Luke 6:27), not come to overthrow the Romans but to render unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s (Matt 22:21), not come to restore Jerusalem to its former glory but put right worship back at its heart (Matt 12:6), not come to punish those outside the law but fulfil it so that all may enter into the holy of holies (Matt 27:51).  This is indeed good news for you and I, but is not what the majority of Jews wanted to hear!

The triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem ahead of the Passover with the crowd shouting, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!’ (Luke 19:38) and his condemnation to death by this same crowd just days later, is the climax of this conflict between Israelite expectation and God-given reality.  “At the heart of Luke’s picture of the cross is the mocking of Jesus as ‘King of the Jews’…Here comes his royal cup-bearer, only it’s a Roman soldier offering him the sour wine poor people drank.  Here is his royal placard, announcing his kingship to the world, but it is in fact his criminal charge which explains his cruel death (Luke 23:36-38).” (Wright, p.284)  Seeing Jesus then is truly like viewing the kings of the Old Testament through the looking glass.  He took their vision of kingship and totally redefined it.  All that God’s people longed for that was a good and true reflection of Yahweh such as His compassion, justice and mercy can be seen all the more clearly. Yet the distorted image magnified by human pride, greed and lust for revenge is dispelled.  Finally the ultimate good shepherd (John 10:14) is revealed.  It is He who inherits the throne of David, fulfilling God’s promise that his lineage would reign forever (2 Sam 7:16).  He models leadership that not only prefers others (John 13:14-15) but is humble and sacrificial even to death (Phil 2:7-8).  “In the paradoxical power of the lamb who was slain, omnipotence is not to be understood as the power of unlimited coercion but as the power of infinite persuasion, the invincible power of self negating, self sacrificing love.” (Dark, p22) And we too now look forward in hope and expectation for our perfect king to take His rightful place of honour and glory.  Then we shall enjoy the fullness of His Kingdom come (Matt 6:10) and know the rule of God without mediation.  “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Rev. 21:3)  It is a glorious hope indeed and one which will not be disappointed!

Photo is of the King’s Stone, Kingston-upon-Thames

I have always felt a failure as a Christian.  I have been surrounded by good people who seem to be in a permanent state of Holy Spirit ecstasy and enduring intimacy with the Lord Jesus.  This is not my experience and has led me to question whether after 22 years of following Christ and a lifetime of knowing Him, my salvation is real.  I believe the Bible is true when it tells me God loves me but to be honest I have felt only the most fleeting of assurances that this love is actually for me.  And yet I crave it with every fibre of my being.  We all do.  Tracey Emin says it in neon lights, “You forgot to kiss my soul”.  It is the hunger for an unshakeable knowing at the core of our personhood that the truth of who we are is loved.  Not just that, but the affirmation that we are worthy of such love.  It enables us to reveal the beauty we keep hidden so that it might enrich the lives of others.   Jesus said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt 6 v.33).  The merest snatches of intimacy keeps us wanting more, keeps us searching, keep us knocking at the door of His heart.  Perhaps I should learn to accept the longing. 

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s collected saying and thoughts, Citadelle, he said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs and organise the work; teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.”  The desire for more, better, deeper can be used by God to motivate us to see more of His kingdom come and not just for our own gratification.  While precious moments where God’s mercy and goodness overwhelm us in worship are to be cherished and celebrated, what about finding love and fulfilment in God through the mundane?  On Saturday I massaged the hands of a 94 year-old woman at a church fun day.  She was so blessed and delighted by this simple act that I felt God’s pleasure. There was genuine satisfaction in bringing His kingdom near and I also felt loved and valued when two people on different occasions during the day commended me for my gentle spirit.  So rather than berating myself for not being good enough or getting frustrated with God for His hidden-ness, I am resolved to look harder for Him in the unexpected places of my daily life and accept that living with longing is part of the package of being His.

A couple of weeks ago now, I was part of a team ministering to those attending the Mind, Body, Spirit exhibition at the Horticultural Halls near Victoria in London.  It was fantastic being able to bless people who are looking to meet their spiritual needs at such an event with a free massage and Ruach or Jesus Deck card reading.  Over the five days of the festival, many commented that in an environment where everyone was trying to sell something, we offered something different.  However, what I also enjoy about these opportunities for demonstrating God’s love to spiritual seekers, is working alongside other Christians with a similar understanding of mission.  We are sharing a desire to be a foretaste of God’s abundant life for what many church goers would consider unlikely people in potentially harmful situations. I had some wonderful conversations with Reiki healers, a tarot card reader and Yoga instructor.  These are often the people who care for the most vulnerable in our society, as well as the planet we share.  They are seeking to use what has helped them, to bring hope and healing to others.  It is always amazing to see where God is already at work in their lives and partner with the Holy Spirit to bring a little more recognition of His grace to them. 

Some of the people I value most in my life are partners with me in this work and often the chance for me to give to spiritual seekers is also an opportunity for me to feel blessed and encouraged in a ministry that many Christians are critical and fearful of.  As is often the case, I came across a concept in a book that has helped me to understand what is going on in these ministry situations.  Michael Frost in ‘Exiles’ says of creating community, “We build community incidentally, when our imaginations are captured by a higher, even nobler cause.  Though it took me a while, I came to realise that Christian community results from the greater cause of Christian mission.” (p.108)  I think this is such a valuable lesson and one that our churches urgently need to learn.  He goes on, “…aiming for community is a bit like aiming for happiness.  It’s not a goal in itself.  We find happiness as an incidental by-product of pursuing love, justice, hospitality and generosity.  When you aim for happiness, you are bound to miss it.  Likewise with community.  It’s not our goal.  It’s a by-product of pursuing something else.  Those who love community destroy it, but those who love people build it.”  This sums up perfectly what I got out of working with Dekhomai at the Mind, Body, Spirit event.  It is what I experience every time I join with Eden People for events in Guildford and it is my hope and expectation for the missional community that is being created here in Kingston.  My prayer is, thank you Lord for those I partner with in mission and please help us to love people as you have loved us, so that true community might be built and your Kingdom will come!

When I was a child I rarely cried and when I did they were tears of frustration and anger rather than because I was hurt or sad.  Even now I hate to cry and have always seen tears as a means of manipulation.  In my experience, talking that seeks to tackle conflict and work things out for the benefit of both parties stops when the tissues come out.  So I have found it intensely embarrassing and disconcerting to dissolve into floods of tears anytime I emotionally engage in worship.  I hate appearing so weak and ‘womanly’ but as soon as I encounter God in any meaningful way, the tears just start to flow.  This has been going on for some time now and I have begun to realise that this outpouring of grief is not just about me and my stuff, although I would be a liar and a hypocrite not to acknowledge that this is surely a factor, but is a sadness for the church and its unwillingness to be honest about its place in our post-modern, pluralist and consumer-driven world.  I was reading a book this morning, called ‘Exiles’ by Michael Frost and a penny dropped for me.  I am experiencing something of the emotions of those displaced people in Psalm 137 (or Boney M without the lycra and the afro), “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.”  And I too wonder how I can sing such mindless and sentimental love songs to Jesus every Sunday when I live in such a strange and alien land.   This has also led me to concur with Frost that one of the ways we might be able to overcome our sadness or at least turn it into something that motivates us to tackle the wrongs of our current age and passionately and proactively present an alternative consciousness, is to sing a different song. 

I have felt troubled by the trend for new expressions of church to abandon corporate singing and until today I couldn’t put my finger on why.  I don’t believe to be church we have to sing together, but actually there is a power in singing that we see not just in worship but on the terraces, ringing around the rugby stadium or being belted out by party goers and those attending pop concerts at the O2.  A song can move us like nothing else and as Frost points out, “so many great revolutions have been birthed through the songs that their revolutionaries sang.” (p.22)  So, I would like to lay down a challenge.  Rather than being in denial or letting our despair overwhelm us, could we begin to feel and express in song the righteous anger of God that burns at humankind for continuing to tolerate and collude with power structures that perpetuate injustice, starvation, inequality and environmental destruction?  He compares the depth of His pain and anguish to that of a woman screaming out in childbirth (Isaiah 42:14) but, “God’s songs give birth to a new world, a new way of being his followers.  And when we join in on the chorus of these rough, revolutionary songs, we share in the promise-making of God.  We too declare our commitment to a new way, a way of justice, peace, mercy and generosity.”(p.23)  Maybe, at last, the time for tears is ended and it’s time to get really angry!  In our anger, as we cry out to God, we give voice to the longing of the displaced and begin to not only re-imagine but actually re-create home.  This is the truth, no matter how long or how bad our experience of exile, we can have a foretaste of home in the person of Christ while we wait expectantly for the time when we will never have to leave home again.

I had a great day last week at the CMS open day for their new Pioneer Mission Leadership Training course. Christians from all over the country gathered to talk about the new ways of doing mission and church they are pioneering and find out more about how they could be equipped, resourced and encouraged to achieve even greater things with the gifts that God has blessed them with.  However, it was also heartbreaking to hear story after story of how church leaders have sought to quash their passion and imaginative ideas.  This seemed to come out of a fear that valuable members of their congregation might be redeployed behind someone else’s vision and that an understanding of church and faith could be shaken such that an already beleaguered Christian minority might never recover!  On this day I also met someone who is seeking to understand this dilemma.  He asked me to consider the following question in order to contribute to his research:

How does leadership within church need to change to meet the challenge of our changing culture and Gods mission within it?  Here is my answer:

“I think that first and foremost leadership should be recognised as being primarily about seeing, releasing and making space for the gifts of church members so that they fulfil the vocation that God has for each one of them. It is then in this context of working out what that vocation is, how it can be lived out and how it fits within a larger vision of the coming of God’s Kingdom, that the real business of discipleship happens.  This would require a really radical grasp of leadership as servanthood. Vicar, minister, leader as servant to the members of the congregation who are seen as being mature followers of Christ when they are totally consumed with fulfilling the purposes of God in their own lives and not sidetracked into passively or dualistically maintaining and resourcing the vision of a particular church.  I realise this could be potentially individualistic but I would trust that God would call some to be partners, workers, intercessors, financial backers and encouragers of those who have a vocation to start new things for the sake of the gospel. 

In my experience, while I seek to pursue my own vocation, I am still able to disciple people as I further this, as well as encouraging the call on their life and putting them in touch with others that I think could help their dreams and visions become reality.  In biblical terms, I think it requires a shift in emphasis in the 5-fold ministry of apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher and pastor that Paul writes about in his letter to the Ephesians (ch.4).  If we had apostle/prophets leading churches rather than teachers/pastors, I think the focus of church would be re-orientated to going rather than receiving.  There would be less fear that what we try might be potentially harmful so more risky initiatives would be started. Also our faith would be much better integrated so that we are changed by God’s spirit as we live out a more holistic expression of work, church, family and community.”

Since writing this I came across the following in the book, ‘The Shaping of Things to Come’ by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch:

“We need to dream again, and to do this we must cultivate a love for imagination.  Before we can do it, we need to dream it…Considered philosophically, all that a great visionary leader does is awaken and harness the dreams and visions of the members of a given community and give them deeper coherence by means of a grand vision that ties together all the ‘little visions’ of the members of the group…My task as a leader is to so articulate the vision that others are willing to embed their sense of purpose within the common vision of the community…It is this capacity to articulate a preferred future based on a common moral vision that allows people to dream again.  This is true of all true apostolic leadership.  And in a profound sense the leader is the key person in the release of the spiritual creativity and innovation in any setting – the catalyst for reconceptualising the mission of the church (p.188).  But imagination takes courage, as it involves risk.  In fact if there were no courage, there could be no imagination.  And if there were no risk, there could be no apostolic leadership, only priestly maintenance and more of the same boring stuff that is keeping people from getting in touch with that most radical and dangerous person…None other than Jesus (p.189).”

This is exactly what I was trying to say, only better!  If you would like to do your bit to encourage visionary and apostolic leadership that ‘reconceptualises the church’ and puts those who are not yet Christians ‘in touch with the radical and dangerous person of Christ’, then why not consider becoming a friend of CMS’s Pioneer Mission Leadership Course?  To find out more visit the website: http://pioneer.cms-uk.org.

When I was a child one of my favourite stories was that of the Little Red Hen.  For those of you not familiar with this tale, it is about a chicken who decides to bake some bread.  She approaches a different animal in the farmyard to help at each stage of the bread making process but is always met with the same response, ‘No, I will not help you.’  The Little Red Hen’s standard reply to this refusal of help is, ‘then I shall do it myself’.  Eventually, she manages to produce a delicious loaf of fresh bread.  Then all the animals show an interest in helping her to eat the bread!  It is at this point that she says with great satisfaction, ‘No, I shall eat it myself’.  I loved this story as I was a very independent child and ‘doing it myself’ was the standard retort to anyone who sought to help me in any way.  I have been thinking about this story quite a bit lately as I am sometimes tempted to feel like the Little Red Hen in being proud enough to believe I can do without the assistance of anyone else and in not wanting to ask for help because I might get turned down.  When this happens I need to remind myself that more often than not people can’t help, not because they don’t want to, but because they are already busy or because they are fearful of stepping out. 

God does not want me to do it myself, and He always provides me with enough people to work in partnership with so that we are each blessed in the giving, as well as in the receiving.  I have also begun to recognise that wanting to do it myself is more about the fear of rejection than a desire to be independent.  If I don’t have to ask for help, then I won’t have to cope with people saying no.  But if I don’t ask for help, then I deny others the opportunity for doing good in our community, and we are all the poorer.  As was articulated in a reading on my Pioneer Mission Leadership Course, ‘we all have a part of the wisdom’.  The biblical model for ministry is one of a body, it has many parts that fulfil different functions but all are essential to sustain the life and health of the whole.  I, therefore, hope and pray that God will redeem the Little Red Hen mentality in me and replace it with the courage to keep asking for others to work alongside me and see our interdependence as a model of how we are all of immense value to Him and essential to His plan for positively transforming creation.

I had great fun on Bank Holiday Monday putting on activities to amuse, challenge and inspire the people of Kingston as part of the annual May Merrie.  On the green outside the parish church we had a tent where children could make name bracelets and name plates for their bedroom doors and in the church we had an art installation exploring the importance of our names and the names of God.  In the marketplace, there was an opportunity to have a free spiritual reading using Ruach cards that use biblical and Celtic Christian symbolism to bless and reveal God’s love and purpose in Christ to spiritual seekers. 

For some Christians this is a controversial activity that is unnecessary because they believe the good news of salvation available to all because of Jesus’ death on the cross does not need to be made culturally relevant.  This is because the gospel has sufficient power and potency in its unadulterated purity to attract unbelievers without being dressed up or applied to the way we live.  Yet the bible describes Jesus as ‘the word made flesh who dwelt among us’.  He became the living embodiment of the rescue mission that God undertook for humankind and all of creation.  If God himself could be clothed with the gospel in order for us to understand and receive it, are we not called to do the same?  Can any idea be understood distinct from its cultural context?  As David Bosch put it in, ‘Transforming Mission’, “The gospel always comes to people in cultural robes.  There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ gospel isolated from culture” (p.297).  The reality for most Christians is that this is an academic question.   It is so long since they intentionally sought to share the gospel that they do not see the pressing need for the transforming message of Christ to be radically re-interpreted for our predominantly post-modern culture.  Always quick to criticise those of us who are wrestling with this issue, I suggest they leave the safety of their Christian bunkers and enter into a dynamic dialogue with those of us who might make mistakes, but are desperate to see the oppressed freed from injustice, the broken healed and the empty satisfied.  Which do you think God is more concerned about, doctrinal purity or pursuing a passion that all might experience His life-giving, all encompassing love and acceptance?

This week I was involved in creating an art installation at Kingston University.  Entitled ‘Metamorphosis’, the artwork took visitors to the Chaplaincy on a journey of transformation from earth-bound, hungry caterpillar to a beautiful and colourful butterfly eager to take flight.  This process of change was used to explore how university students might see their experience of learning but was also likened to a journey of faith.  The idea came from a book called ‘Chrysalis’ by Alan Jamieson.  He proposed that when we first encounter Christ it is all very new and exciting and like the caterpillar all the experiences we have feed us and cause us to grow.  However, as we begin to mature and life becomes more challenging, we often begin to question what we have learnt as we seek to make our faith relevant to real-life relationships and situations.  It is in this process of struggle and deconstruction that God is able to reshape us so that we are more truly the unique creation he has made us to be and we more radiantly reflect His glory in the world.  We are then ready to emerge from our cocoon recreated more closely into His likeness, the beauty of our true selves evident to all as we take flight! 

I feel this transformation very much mirrors my own experience of life and faith and finding people who identify with this process in their own life has made me more confident to try new things and enabled me to be more willing to reveal the depth of my own thoughts and intuitions.  But more than this personal journey of self discovery, the miracle of ‘metamorphosis’ can awaken in us the desire for “all things to be made new” and an experience of physical or spiritual transformation can also be a foretaste of the recreation that God has promised us for eternity.  “I have struggled,” writes Michael McCarthy, of the Independent, “to find a way of expressing my elation at seeing the first butterfly of the year.  It was a brimstone, a bright yellow brimstone.  Using science, and rationality, I can tell you quite a lot about it: that it was an insect; that it belonged to the butterfly family Pieridae, the whites… that in its caterpillar stage it had fed on the plants buckthorn or alder buckthorn; and that it had hibernated disguised as a leaf, probably in an ivy clump, until the first warm day in March woke it up.  But that doesn’t really describe it. That brimstone electrified me instantly; it was the sign of the turning year, not just of the warm times coming again but of the great rebirth of everything, the great unstoppable renewal, and the brilliance of its colour seemed to proclaim the magnitude of the change it was signalling.”  Now we see in part, snatch glimpses, sense fleeting impressions of a greater reality.  Having lived in the equivalent of monochrome, we eagerly await a life of glorious technicolour!

So the Sting song goes and I have been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between love and freedom.  What amazes Bridget Jones is that Mr Darcy could love her just as she is and for every one of us we have a basic need to be loved and affirmed for the person we really are right now with all our faults and failures, disappointments and pain.  But, it is impossible to love without freedom.  No human being can be coerced into loving another.  This is why God gives us free will.  Even the creator of the universe cannot make the beings He has created love Him.  Our Western society is obsessed with freedom and it is an individual’s right to live exactly as they choose.  As demonstrations in the Middle East highlight this is not an automatic right.  However, freedom on its own can be a damaging thing.  It can leave us with no regard for the consequences of our actions on others and no fixed points to cling to, nothing to rely upon when relationships or institutions inevitably let us down.  It can feel like endlessly falling while desperately reaching out for someone or something to stop us.  This is why freedom should be exercised within certain parameters that respect our own health and well-being as well as that of others.  While the world is fixated with freedom, it appears the church is preoccupied with safety.  Leaders seek to protect the flock from the temptations of our contemporary culture.  I would rather see Christians equipped to selectively engage with the world to reveal God’s redemptive power in creative and relevant ways.  I came across a quote in a magazine this week that said, “True freedom should not be defined in negative terms – a freedom from interference.  True freedom has to be about freedom for something – to become who we were made to be.” (Andy Hickford in April’s Christianity p.45) If we knew the reality of God’s healing through His unconditional love and acceptance and the church could free us to be who we are called to be, what a potent force for transformation we would each become.