Living in the New

"He took my hand and led me out between the pillars into the warm sunlight.
We stood in a fair grassy court, with blue fresh sky above; mountain sky.
In the centre of the court was a bath, filled by a clear stream, where many could have swum and played....
The air which came from Psyche's clothes and limbs was wild and sweet.
Joy silenced me". C S Lewis - Till We Have Faces.

It's been there from our moment of great loss onwards - our tendency to obscure or 're-interpret' our relationship to the material world. We're surrounded by schemes and products that encourage us to do that all the time, but few of us really stop to ask why, and is there a much better answer?

In a popular TV show that's been running here in the UK for a few years now, one popular image guru hit upon a truth that the general beauty industry tends to ignore - genuine 'good health' can only begin when we really find a way to become 'happy' about who we really are, which can then become reflected in a confidence about our bodies.

The Christian message (when it's presented well), essentially places us before the mirror of facing essential truths about our nature, our existence and our true purpose. Humans were not made to be 'gods' or worms - our true place is in the life we were meant to inhabit between heaven and earth, rooted to creation, but in fellowship with God. Only here, in that context, can we truly find the 'perfection' that we so deeply crave for our entire nature, body and soul.

The work of God through Jesus Christ has been to reveal His power (grace) in order to destroy that which is unnatural in the order of creation - the evil which tarnishes and corrupts the good made in the beginning. Christ's death and resurrection, then, is the way in which God untangles our inability to be natural (to be what we were created to be) - it allows the natural to be restored, so faith in Christ's work becomes the means whereby we can be re-connected to the life and nature we are intended to know forever.

One of my greatest joys as a photographer is when I see a flowering of confidence and fresh awareness of character appear within a person as a result of 'seeing' themselves afresh through a set of images from a shoot, or in another photographer, taking new steps, because a workshop or discussion has encouraged him or her to do so. That manner of 'making new' is at the very heart of the gift of life which springs from the work of God's Spirit as we trust in Jesus Christ - the living word and bread of heaven.

God is seeking to open our hearts, minds, bodies and souls to the reality of new life, so that whether we our raised up or face trial, in whatever we do, we might know a richness that is never diminished, but grows until that day of new beginnings - the renewal of the cosmos!

The Wonderous Expression

"At present, we do not see this, but we see Him who for a season was humbled to be lower than the angels - Jesus - now crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death so that by God's grace He might taste death for everyone...
It was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many to glory, should be the author of salvation through such suffering". Hebrews 2:9 & 10.


So there I was, traveling across the beautiful Devon countryside, listening to a friend convey their puzzlement at the 'move-ability' of the feast of Easter, enjoying the lightness of the friendly banter, but already feeling in my depths that THE special moment of the year was about to arrive again - when both the season of nature and the 'moment' often termed holy week had once more merged to convey a truth as deep and as precious as the sweetest pollen on a morning breeze....

Once more my thoughts returned to that moment in the garden when Father, Son and Spirit had acted together in the final creative moment of that first 'holy' week - to make one (male and female) which would express His likeness and Image (note: holy because of God's conclusive 'inhabiting' of the 7th day). Theologians have long pondered in what sense this is true of us, and it may be that all of such answers hold some aspect of the answer, but there is one answer that must be true.
The famous statement of the Westminster Confession speaks of how our purpose is to glorify God and thereby enjoy Him forever, to fulfill the greatest commandment, but tied to this is the other great command - to love each other. When we look upon the temple of God's handiwork structured and then furnished in the work of creation, we view the realm where we are intended to be 'priests and kings' - those responsible for living a life toward God and each other that will indeed express the 'beauty of holiness' by the fact that all of this was made good and is meant to be used well. We can so often seek God in all the wrong places, when He wishes us to invest reality into the soil beneath our feet, the handiwork of our hands, the passion of our hearts.

Good Friday is a day when we can begin to comprehend the breadth, height and depth of God's love for us and the world He has made - that Christ came, suffered and died to remove the stain of our folly of seeking to be gods and becoming less than human. We can indeed look upon Jesus and see the new beginning; the one which so clearly speaks of the world in which there will be no more sin and sickness, suffering or sorrow, but a glorious eternity of life marked by love and joy in His care.

Come and dine - taste and see, that the wine of His mercy, the bread of His provision, will make your soul assured, and your face to shine..!

Sola Deo Gloria.

Seeing Well

"Be as interested in as many things as possible (because that still won't be enough to satiate your need for 'connection' to create good art). Fill your day and your mind and your surroundings with curiosity - ask questions of everybody and about everything...be a 'limitless' person to others - don't hide your ignorance, for this is simply the unlit side of curiosity and the outside door to wisdom and knowledge". Hans Rookmaaker.


It's something photography has taught me so well - how little I really see and how much I really miss.
We all know that by using light, our eyes take information from the world around us to allow us to perceive and engage with what we then deem to be the 'real' world, but the reality is that we are often pretty lax, even careless about how we employ and use this wonder that we actually miss a great deal. Our ignorance begins very close to home - concerning the eye itself.

Recent research has revealed that far from being just a 'lens' to see through, the retina is in fact an external piece of brain tissue which has more computational ability than today's most sophisticated super computers! This capability allows the eye to complete intelligent, highly constructive processes regarding the world well before the information is passed through into the brain itself for further processing.

Every morning when we wake, most of us have the ability to employ this tool as our first means of exploring the world with questions, but we tend to switch to 'safe' mode, eat our toast as we listen to the weather report, and generally live life the same way we did yesterday.
The reality, however, is that life is never that two dimensional. There is far more going on if we are prepared to 'lift the rug' and take a closer look - if we move beyond our usual comfort zones.

Art can move us because it seeks to do just that - it seeks to paint on a broad canvas (thereby causing us to quickly take notice) words and images that seek to express something 'larger' about the reality of our being here, and such questions, thoughts and impressions resonate with each of us because we know we were designed to 'see' at such a level.

As a Christian, I believe there is a similarity between the power of our eyes to connect us to reality and the gift of faith. Faith can so often be seen as something passive - a statement on a page that we assent to in some dusty corner of our thoughts - but real faith disturbs and provokes us, inspires and challenges us, keeps us awake at all hours as we ponder some wonder. Faith is not afraid to 'dance in the rain', explore the tiniest atomic particle or stand bare before the glory of a sunset, for in all of this and much more, it can indeed 'see' a greater wisdom.

As Easter draws near, we need to re-discover both the world around us, and the 'deeper' world which whispers through what we observe.

A world going nowhere...?

"Life isn't easy
Love never lasts
You just carry on
And keep moving fast"

From 'Cry Like A Rainstorm' by Linda Ronstadt.

It's pretty easy these days to despair - both on a personal and social level - about the state of life on this world. Everyday brings yet more stories of misery, pain, woe and despair. It seems that everyone is either enveloped in such hurt or moving as fast as they can in 'eat, drink and be merry' mode to try and keep away from it, but life tugs us into trial whatever we do. If it's not happening to us personally right now, it's happening to someone close. Sit down with most people for a couple of minutes who want to talk, and you'll be stunned by what most of us carry on our backs most of the time...we really are a race standing on the cliff edge with a gale rising behind.

It's easy for us, especially when in pain, to be spiteful about such a plight - we can all to easily become a mob all wanting to scramble higher - but we know that's not the answer. In those moments when life is kinder, we reveal another side to what it means to be human - one marked by care, affection, and a delight in all that is genuinely good - that is what resides beneath the 'rags' of our more "burnt out" experiences.

In a world slashed and torn by the wound of sin, it's important we understand that the pearls of our experience (some of which are forged and honed by the very pain we know) are of eternal value, for they indeed speak of a life we are meant to know - forever.

When Christ looked upon the mass of the 'walking wounded' (you and me), He felt compassion for us - a love that had brought God here as man to live and die to show that there is more, far more to life than we often comprehend amidst the mire. Christ implores us to look up, to look through those moments of wonder and beauty we encounter to see the one behind such marvels and realize that there is an answer to the bleakness - a solution which will result in a new creation, where all of life is marked by grace and peace.

In those moments when you sense awe in your soul, pause and reflect on this.

The Empty Set

"Everyone who relies on deeds defined by law to be righteous are cursed,
because as the law says 'cursed is anyone who does not abide by everything contained in the law, fulfilling it all'. No, the righteous will live by faith....
In Christ alone, the blessings of Abraham come to us,
we receive the promised life in the Spirit through this faith".

Paul to the Galatians.

Have you ever been in a situation where you have totally miss-interpreted or miss-understood the information you've been given about a particular subject or task? I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or stubborn (probably both!), but I often find myself these days 'tripping up' in this fashion and then realizing - "Ah ha! I should have done this". Normally, of course, making such mistakes isn't too serious (you can usually re-do most things), but what if you're doing something totally wrong about something that really matters?

In his 'letter of liberation' to the miss-guided Galatians, the Apostle Paul confronts just such a problem - one that arises again and again in Christianity.


Now I realize that my last statement is pretty strong, and may raise some objections...
'How can that be?' someone may ask - 'we no longer have those early 'Judaizers' peddling certain rites or practices in our day', but to reduce the purpose of this epistle to something as cultural as allowing or stopping a certain tradition is to entirely miss-construe the nature of the systemic 'leaven' - the malady - which Paul is exposing.

Those Reformers of the 1500's which sought to correctly apply the Apostle's teaching here spoke of the vital distinction between a 'theology about the cross' (what they often referred to as a 'theology of glory') and a 'theology of the cross' - where our faith (our 'dying' and 'living' each day) is determined by a genuine union with Christ.
As then, and in Paul's day, the church is plagued with 'about' theology -approaches which look at the New Testament and seek to determine what is meant by formulating some system which makes it reasonable. The cross can then become some form of example to us (i.e. of God's love) - something that we can assent to without this in any manner impacting directly upon ourselves. We are left as merely spectators, seeking to judge if such a 'fact' has any real bearing or relation to the rest of our reality. The defining element, then, quickly becomes our own determinations rather than the revelation provided by God.
It leaves us , by our own faculties (should we chose), to 'climb' towards 'God' - to use such understanding as a means to reach (what we determine) as heavenward. By holding such views (however these may be deemed 'right'), we fall into the same trap as the Galatians - seeking to gain and advocate a 'form' of righteousness detached from Christ and the actual theology of the cross.

Christianity is something very different to this.
Christ calls us not to speculate, to de-construct His work in this way, but to participate, each day, in His life through a dying to self and a living through Him.
The Cross is an end to all that has gone before, putting to death the dreadful fraud of finding ways and means other than union with Christ as the truth - it is as total and as final as physical death, and it must be something which works in us everyday if we are to know any freedom from the "old" - the old nature, the law, and sin.

To conclude,
"The stem of the Cross becomes the staff of life, and thereby in the midst of the world life is set up anew upon a cursed ground...What a strange paradise, this hill of Golgotha - this cross, this broken body, this shed blood. What a strange tree of life, this tree on which God must suffer and die - die! But it is in fact the Kingdom of resurrection given to those who draw close by God's grace; it is the open door of imperishable hope, of waiting and patience...the centre of both the fallen and preserved world of God" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Creation and Fall).

Let us come, and let us thereby walk and live.

Getting the Facts Right

"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of". Hamlet.

It's been an interesting few weeks.
I've been both delighted and intrigued to participate in an on-line discussion which has certainly touched upon the deeper issues of just how is someone 'made right' with God and equally, assuming that transpires, how do you then live?
(Anyone wishing to read the discussion for themselves can do so at the Internet monk blog site.
Here is the archive link to this:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/riffs-021308-the-white-horse-inn-lawgospel-and-why-i-want-my-sermon-on-the-mount-back#comments

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a big Science Fiction fan, and one of the common scenarios in this genre is humanity facing places or circumstances that are totally alien.
A good example was in the Star Trek series, Enterprise, where in the third season, the ship and crew have to traverse an area of space where the normal physical laws no longer apply, making their journey very strange and perilous indeed.
What is true in such fiction is equally true about reality.

The revelation we are supplied in scripture informs us that the original realm we once inhabited has gone, and with it, our genuine humanity. If you or I were to even view that placed described as "Eden" as we are right now, it would truly be an alien world to us - we are so 'detached', so alien to what we were created to be.
There are telling 'whispers' inside each of us that prompt us of that reality - we're aware when we do something wrong, and we're afraid, especially of death, because we sense there is just something not right about corruption and decay - about that part of us that leans all to easily to evil or to fear.

Such a 'voice' tells us that there is something more, but it leaves us in despair about how we reach beyond what we are (we can, of course, pretend we're doing OK, but the 'voice' is still there, telling us how things really are).

Christianity is the answer because it tells us that God is not seeking to turn us into something alien (dis-embodied souls, re-incarnated creatures or nothingness) - He is about restoring us to live in the world we left behind - making us truly human once again.
Now maybe we think we know this - we've been to church a few times and been 'in the group' long enough to know the guide - but how directly does this reality impact upon the way we look at life each day? How do you 'unpack' such redemption in your everyday experience?

What was fascinating about the blog discussion I referred to earlier was just how many think the way forward is to seek to revert to some kind of understanding or behavior which they had even before they were Christians - employ the 'voice' of do's and dont's as the safe policy. The guide gives so many rules, so many requirements, goes the reasoning, that surely the way to make progress is by just seeking to keep these - isn't that why they are there?

The problem here is, just like in a good sci-fi story, applying the wrong solution in the wrong circumstances is well nigh disastrous!

Back in the 1500's, Martin Luther wrote an amazing book - the Bondage of the Will - which sought to expose the fatal flaw in such reasoning - acting that way is totally alien to what we now are, so what is needed is not rule keeping, but life in the new!

Christ came to free us from the tyranny of our 'alien-ness' to God's good work, to clothe us in a new nature that we might actually begin to live well. When the nature of Jesus Christ becomes evident in us, then the genuine characteristics of that life (love, joy, peace) will become expressed in what we are and what we do - not by rule keeping, but by living in the life which comes from Him.

That is what the good news is really all about!

"It is the story of something that happened here on earth, strong enough to break the hold of (the old) on us, strong enough to turn this earth itself into a place of light and life...
It is (giving back the) voice that is strong enough to make us and keep us human,
to enable us to live as we were intended to live - as creatures of God".

Gerhard Forde.

I must conclude my thoughts here by saying that whilst there were some in the discussion who suggested what might be termed 'law keeping' was the best way forward, there were others that recognized that Christianity really calls for much more -
a 'death' to everything tainted by mankind's departure from God (including our own moralizing and rule-making) and a 'resurrection' each day to the life that comes to us from above.
That indeed is the hope which can help.

THE D A R K N E S S

"Light has come into this world, but men loved darkness instead of the light because their deeds
were evil. Everyone who hates the light will not come to it, because it exposes their deeds, but whoever comes by means of truth will come to the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what they have done has been done through God". John's Gospel, chapter 3, verses 19-21.

It is without doubt one of the most dreadful and terrifying things that can happen to people - when a lie is given power and credibility and promoted as good and right. I can recall many years ago watching the film, 'The Killing Fields' and feeling totally horrified at how human beings can give themselves over (via fear or selfishness) to the atrocious. It is, sadly, a common tale of our times; a savage age filled with examples in almost every part of the world of such carnage, but rarely do we face the reality of what generates such evil. Thankfully, if painfully, life can occasionally intervene to jolt us back to this reality. It did for me this week.

Traveling on a train to a nearby city, I encountered a group of youths, aged between around eleven and thirteen years of age. They decided to sit in the carriage where I was, and, despite this being deemed a zone where mobile phones and the like should not be used, proceeded to loudly begin to use such devices.

It wasn't just their flagrant disrespect for everyone else in the place that was the problem - it was the sheer level of profanity in the materials they were accessing and discussing without any sense of conscience or shame. Two boys across from me, not yet in their teens, openly discussed 'family porn' videos they had downloaded that morning and homosexual acts as 'fun', before joining in singing a grotesque rap song they had on their phones.
I sought to ask them, politely, to turn off these devices as they were not meant to be used - this merely resulted in a few minutes quieter use, before they became even louder.

I found myself shaking from the incident as I left the train; the incident was like a nightmare in slow motion, and for good reason - there was simply no respect in these young boys for themselves or others, allowed at such an age to travel without parents or adults they could look up to, that would prevent them so easily reveling in such corruption (one even spoke of how his parent liked the videos!).

The darkness that resides in the human heart which makes us shameless has indeed become evident, vaunted in our world, and this in itself is a judgment upon a race which now loudly denies the God who formed us and has brought light into our miserable estate.

The last few days have made me so very aware of the fact that we all share a propensity to fall;
to mis-use what God has bestowed and demean what He has made us to be, but thankfully,
as was the case for Noah following his drunken errors, there is mercy if we seek the light of genuine grace, found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.