The year of trusting in God

I've been telling people that 2024 has been, for me, the year of trusting in God.  Of course, that's what every year should be (!), but this year has been different as my capabilities have been so reduced and so unpredictable, and I've had to trust God in that uncertainty.

When I got my concussion back in January I went rapidly downhill over a week or so, to the point where I was only out of bed around 3 hours or so in a day, much of that just sitting in a chair not doing much.  Previously I'd been averaging around 7 1/2 hours in a day and being pretty active within that, both mentally and physically.

Initially I was in survival mode (and not doing very well at all until I started getting help from the concussion service).  I had to drop pretty much all my Just Kai work, although I did manage to organise our annual summer team picnic and, with extensive help from Christine, get out useful Easter recommendations.

Escaping the fear machine

At the moment, I feel a bit like I'm surrounded by voices that urge me to be afraid.  The New Zealand media is the main voice, with stories about our current Covid outbreak dominating everything, and this voice is reinforced by many people I speak to, by social media, even, to an extent, by my church prayer meetings.  It feels like there is one key issue in the whole world, and that subject is scary.

I often buy into it.  I miss the Covid-free-paradise that we had only a month or so ago.   I tend towards the anxious anyway.

All of which makes my 'Sabbath Mondays' particularly precious right now.  I'm so appreciating having a day to just 'be' and a day to fix my eyes on Jesus.

Two favourite psalms

For our home group last week, we each had to pick a psalm of significance to us and talk a little about what it meant to us.  We then spent some time as a group, praying the sorts of things the psalmist was praying in the psalm, before doing the same with the next person's psalm.

Two psalms immediately came to mind for me (or rather, phrases from two psalms - I couldn't have told you the numbers of either, let alone quoted them in their entirety), and I was struck by how similar they were.

The story of Naaman's healing

Today I read the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5:1-19.  I won't write it out here as it's long, but what I say below might not make sense without reading it.

I was really struck by two things:

1.  Naaman, the king of Aram (where Naaman lived) and the king of Israel (where he went to get help) all assumed that anyone powerful enough to heal Naaman of leprosy would be, at least, known to the king.  Presumably, they would be someone in the control of the king - so that asking the king for help was the way to get their help.  But Elisha wasn't anything to do with the government hierarchy.  Perhaps he was somewhere close to it (as he knew that the king had gotten super-upset at receiving the king of Aram's letter), but maybe not - that could have been widespread knowledge, after all.  And the king certainly didn't know enough about Elisha to know to send Naaman to him.
2. the servant girl (who was Jewish), knew that her God would help her master, if he just got to the person God worked through.

I find the second point particularly interesting.  We often act like God provides specific material help to Christians, but that non-Christians only get the generic help of 'the rain falls on the just and the unjust'.  Which means I'm often uncertain how to pray for non-Christians in need of actual help.  This story encourages me to pray for them in the same way I pray for Christians.

But the first point is also interesting, too, in terms of how God's agents are primarily in His control, and may or may not otherwise occupy the positions we expect.

I'm also fascinated that Naaman asks for a large quantity of earth to take back with him.  I presume this is to do with the idea that gods are associated with particular locations.  Now that Naaman wants to worship the God of Israel, he wants to take a bit of Israel back home with him to enable him to do that!

Abiding in God

As I said earlier, I've been lower in energy since our holiday in mid-June - although the reduced energy is carrying on so long it may be simply because of winter, rather than the holiday.  The last 2-3 weeks, though, I've been much less frustrated about it all - I've been mostly content, albeit punctuated with the odd patches of extreme panic!

One thing that has made a huge difference is a 'breath prayer' I've been praying.  If I wake in the middle of the night and can't sleep, I start saying "You are the true vine, help me to rest in You."  If I find myself fretting during the day, I do the same.  God has used this to really transform my attitude :-)

Moving to Level 2

I have found the transition to Covid-19 alert level 2 surprisingly difficult.  At least, I think that's what it is!  Today and yesterday I seem to have been getting upset uncommonly easy.

I found the move to having an alert system and rapidly moving through levels 2, 3 and into 4 not too bad.  It took adjustment to have Martin and Sarah at home all the time.  I'm used to being on my own a lot and found that quite overwhelming initially.  But we have a large house where all three of us can easily be fairly separate, and after a week or so that became much less of an issue.

Survival strategies

Over the course of the last six months or so, I've put into place a number of survival strategies that have helped me cope with the big change in my life.  I wrote earlier about Sabbath-keeping and care-casting.  Since then I've added two other practises that have also been super-helpful.

Sabbath-keeping and care-casting

Life has been feeling very relentless recently: I'm pressured by lots of Just Kai possibilities, there's various complicated people things going on, and I'm still learning to manage my different (and much less predictable) energy levels.  But I wanted to share something I started doing about two months ago that's made a huge difference: Sabbath keeping.

God saving people because other people are righteous

I've grown up with the idea that "God doesn't have grandchildren": if you want to be 'saved' you personally need to repent and ask God for help.  You can't rely on your parents' salvation or, indeed, on anything else.  Recently I've been wondering how Biblical this is.

A long way to go

I thought it was time for a bit of an update...

It's a funny time at the moment.  I started seeing a physio about 6 weeks ago, since then exercise has been my main occupation every weekday morning.  He has me doing various strength-type exercises each morning (some 5 days a week, others two or three), plus twice a week I go for a walk for an hour or so and twice a week I go for a bike ride.  The bike riding's been a bit of a shock to the system!  At the beginning I could only go the length of our driveway a couple of times but I'm now doing just under 4km (which takes me 15 minutes) and I'm hoping to be cycling for transport a bit before too long.

In one sense, I've definitely made enormous progress in the past 4 1/2 months.  My physical abilities have gone through the roof.  This is my graph of how many steps I'm averaging per day (the numbers are the average of the two weeks leading up to that day - my steps are very variable per day, so averages make it easier to tell what's going on!)

The numbers are still small, but the graph is just going up and up!

On not being 'there' yet

For some years I have listened most Sundays to a sermon by Darrell Johnson.  I have appreciated his practical applications and the way he so explicitly draws his points from the text at hand; I also appreciate the rich background information he links me to.

He is now retired and I have finished his back catalogue on YouTube, but I found that his church, First Baptist in Vancouver, Canada, publishes all their sermons online.  Last year I appreciated their series on Colossians.  Today I had intended to go to my own church, but was too tired and ended up staying home.  I've listened to all the recent sermons on my own church's website so I turned back to First Baptist and listened to the first sermon in their series Why Jesus says He came.  It was called The Preteen Jesus.

Saying goodbye

I feel like I've got a whole new life now.  I still get tired (and am still actually resting a great deal of the time), but it's a different quality of tired: and when I'm tired I can still move and think astonishingly easily.  Only once in the last three weeks has Martin carried me anywhere, and that was more because I was overwrought and overwhelmed and wanted something familiar than because of physical need.  A few other times I've felt really done-in and have considered asking him, but each of those times I tried it myself first, and each time it was vastly easier than expected.

But that's the thing.  All my expectations are wrong.  All my habits are needing to change.  I keep going to put something down on the walker and it's not there; I keep assuming I can't do things and then finding that I can.  It's good, but it's also awfully disconcerting.

On Friday a week ago, people came to collect my shower stool and walker.  They've just been sitting on the spare bed upstairs for a few weeks: I clearly don't need them so it's best they go to someone who does.  And yet, as they were taken away, I found myself crying - really hard-out crying.

shower stool and walker awaiting collection

God has healed me!

On Saturday November 3rd, I woke up without the gluey heavy feeling I've lived with since February 25th, 2003.  I believe that God miraculously healed me in the night - and healed me so that I could be part of presenting my Just Kai work at The Justice Conference!  Which is, itself, super-encouraging, quite apart from the wonder of the healing itself.

Here's what happened.

In God's strength

I have been so busy recently.  My existence is usually a fairly quiet one, but this year there's been so much that's outward-facing.  I've spent a lot of time on my fish project and have become more active on Facebook, both in supporting friends and in advocating for issues important to me.  In recent weeks my life has been consumed by work on Just Kai.

As the busyness has increased I've felt an increasingly urgent tug to return to spiritual practises that had become neglected.

So this week I've resumed doing lectio divina each morning, focusing on one of the day's lectionary readings as before.  It's been so helpful!  I've realised I've been trying to do God's work in my own strength, and getting so stressed by it.  Such foolishness!

Love Mercy

A friend asked me to record a short video on what 'love mercy' means in my own life for her to use in a sermon on Micah 6:8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

The sermon has unfortunately needed to be postponed, but I thought I'd share what I came up with here:

The Mission of God's People

The Langham Partnership is currently promoting an online course taught by their international director, Chris Wright.  It looks really interesting.  It's called "The Mission of God's People" and considers the work 'regular' Christians (who aren't missionaries) are called by God to do.  Some similar issues are looked at in Why You're Here by John G. Stackhouse Jr. (recently reviewed by Martin on this blog).

(I couldn't get the promotional video to embed, but clicking on the image will take you to a page where you can play it!)

If that sounds interesting to you, read more about it (or sign up) here.  It's a self-paced course with 15 modules that you can do whenever suits you.  It costs US$120 (or US$100 if you sign up by 3/8/18) and that gives you access to the material for a year.
 

Why You're Here: Ethics for the Real World

Recently I won a copy of Why You're Here: Ethics for the Real World (John G. Stackhouse, Jr.) on Goodreads.  Martin found it really exciting and has written the following review of it.

Jesus is already ruling the world

I have been pondering a lot recently on how I think the world works.  I think I have overly bought in to the idea that how things look is how they are: that the people who govern bits of the world are the people truly in charge, that things will only change if people change them etc.  These things have a truth, but they miss the fact that God is on the throne!

The sermon below has been particularly influential in this.  It's part of a series on the Book of Revelation from First Baptist Church in Vancouver, entitled Things are not (only) as they seem.  The preacher is Darrell Johnson, who was lecturing at Regent College in the time Martin studied there.  I discovered him a couple of years back whilst working my way through all the plenary sessions of IFES World Assembly at Mexico, and have listened to one of his sermons most Sundays over the last year or two (his YouTube channel is here).

In it he makes the point that Christ is already on the throne and we are already reigning with him (in particular, via. our prayers).

A living sacrifice

In recent weeks I've been feeling like God wants me to take new steps in being a 'living sacrifice', a term Paul used in his letter to the Roman Christians that we have recorded in the New Testament:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2, NRSV

I feel like God is calling me to be less conformed to the patterns of living I've settled into and to be more deliberate in living for him in terms of how I use my time.

There are no good people

On Radio New Zealand National, Kim Hill recently interviewed Reni Eddo-Lodge about her 2014 blog post Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race and its aftermath.

Listening to her speak, Martin and I realised that Christianity has something really important to offer here.  Reni Eddo-Lodge is concerned with the way we white people simply do not notice our own racism.   One of the things that prevents us from doing so is that we are perpetually dividing the world into 'good people' and 'bad people'.  When it comes to race, racists are clearly the 'bad people'.  This means that, when a person of colour calls out racist attitudes in a white person, that white person isn't in a good place to hear that message as they're likely to assume they're a good person and hence know that they can't be a racist.

But one of the core tenants of Christianity is that none of us get to be the 'good people;.  I came across this again just today in my New Testament reading.  In Luke 11, Jesus is explaining to his disciples that they can confidently ask God for what they need.  To illustrate his point, he says:

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?  Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Luke 11:11-13, NRSV

Did you see it?  Jesus takes for granted that his disciples are 'evil' and seems to assume that they will take this for granted as well.