Mistletoe and Wine

Is there a song that really puts you in the festive mood, and Christmas isn’t really on the way until you’ve hears it? I love Christmas music, a mixture of carols and crooners, throw in some Slade and some Wham and you’ve almost got my Christmas playlist.

But for me, no Christmas playlist is complete without a but of Cliff Richard. I’ve got a bit of a reputation for being a Cliff fan which I try to debunk, but if I’m being honest, I do enjoy listening to his songs. And at Christmas, it’s his songs that set the mood for me. I remember childhood car rides with him on the CD player, or his CD in the kitchen while Christmas baking was being done. I even tried to get my choir to add one of his songs into their Christmas repertoire! (They were as excited as me…)

So, in this run up to advent, I had to visit Cliff. His music is part of my preparation fir Christmas. And as you may have guessed from the title, I wanted use Mistletoe and Wine. It sets the scene for advent and Christmas from the very beginning and what follows are some amazing lyrics:

It’s a time for giving, a time for getting
A time for forgiving, and for forgetting
Christmas is love, Christmas is peace
A time for hating and fighting to cease

Mistletoe and Wine, Keith Strachan / Jeremy Paul / Leslie George Stewart

And the reason I wanted to look at this song today is that it picks up the theme of forgiveness. Yesterday I wrote about forgiving yourself. Today, I wanted to encourage you to look at others you may need to forgive. Forgiveness is hard. It’s hard to forgive someone who has hurt you even when they apologise, it’s harder still when they don’t realise or won’t acknowledge they’ve done anything wrong. But the bible is very clear about forgiveness. It is a choice we make with no conditions.

And it’s right here in the song: a time for forgiving and for forgetting. When you hold onto a grudge against someone, you are poisoning yourself. They will be merrily living their life while you are looking back at what they’ve done. Maybe forgetting is not the correct word (but it rhymes, so works for the song) – forgiving someone doesn’t mean letting them do the same thing again, but letting go of needing to get even, moving on and leaving the situation behind is the best gift you can give yourself. You take the knife out of the wound and let it heal.

It is something Jesus models and something that the bible teaches: forgiving others is not negotiable. You must forgive ‘not 7 times, but 77 times’ – or more times than you can keep track of. And now, as we are getting ready for Christmas and getting our hearts ready for Jesus, now is the time to make that choice to let go of a grudge and to move on, to be open to love and joy and everything laid out before you instead of being anchored to the past. And if can’t persuade you, listen to Cliff tell you:

Forgive, release and be free

Today’s title is taken from a book by Joff Day about forgiving others. The premise behind the book is that in forgiving others and releasing them of any debt they owe you, you are then free to be yourself without any ties to the past. It is a book that I have found helpful in the past.

But today, I want to turn it around a little. Yes, forgiving people is a key part of being a Christian and being in a right relationship with God, but possibly more key is forgiving yourself. Yesterday I posted about believing in your identity as a child of God and not in anything else. Today, I wanted to briefly write about something that can get in the way.

Yesterday I wrote about the difference about making a mistake and being a mistake, about failing at something and about being a failure (basically, what you do is not who you are). But sometimes when we fail or when we make a mistake, it can leave an impression on us even if that’s not where our identity is. We can be disappointed in ourselves, or we can kick ourselves and tell ourselves to do better. We can be our own worst critic. The thing is, God has already forgiven us for mistakes and failures where we did wrong, and he sees the bigger picture and knows that sometimes it wasn’t our fault (although we may still blame ourselves). This blame, whether we deserve it or not, is not helpful. It can hang around and draw us backwards, make us look the the past and predict a negative future. It isn’t healthy for our own self worth or for our relationship with God.

God has already forgiven you. Jesus has already paid the price. To not forgive yourself is to not accept God’s forgiveness. It is easy to say, harder to live out. But you must try. And just as it is a process and a choice to forgive others, so it is with ourselves. We are forgiven. We are loved. We just need to realise it and believe it. And when we can get to a point of forgiving ourselves, and releasing ourselves from some impossible debt or expectation, we can be free to live our lives, loving ourselves and receiving God’s love as we should.

This advent, if you can, set aside some time to reflect on where you are being hard on yourself, on where you need to give yourself a break, and just be kind and forgive yourself. God already has.

Who are you again?

I’ve written before about identity. It’s a big topic for me, something I’ve had to change my thinking on, so it’s something I like to remind others about incase, like me, they can do with an occasional reminder.

If I were to ask you who you were, you’d probably tell me your name. On a game show, when introducing themselves, people also include their age, their job and where they are from. Sometimes people will include they married status and whether they are a parent. All of these things are true.

Internally, we can also judge ourselves on other things. We can put a lot of emphasis on possessions such as a car or a house. We can look at skills we feel we should have. These all become part of how we see ourselves, our identity. The problem with this is that if we don’t have or can’t do something we feel we should, we start to have negative thoughts about ourselves, something like feeling like a failure or a mess or like there’s something wrong with who we are.

Maybe you’ve recently lost a house, moved out of independent living into a lodging or houseshare situation. Maybe a job has gone wrong. Maybe you’ve had an accident and now can’t do something you could before. Or maybe you’ve had a relationship break, or a falling out with someone close to you.

If these are things important to your identity, these can trip a negative pattern of thinking. I know, I’ve tripped over that one many times myself. But these things are not where our identity should lie.

For example, I am not a baker. I can bake, but if you took away my ability to do that, that doesn’t take away a piece of me. I am not a musician. I can do music, but it is not who I am. Don’t get me wrong, these are both important parts of my life, things I love to do and share with others, and I would be incredibly sad if I lost the ability to do either of them. But I need to keep reminding myself that they are just parts of what I can do and not central to who I am.

That is the important bit to remember. Who you are is not wrapped up in job/tasks/relationships/possessions etc. If you make them where you find who you are, it takes much longer to recover should they go wrong. Instead, they are things that do have an impact, but there is a stronger foundation.

Maybe things have get a little messy, but you are not a mess. Maybe you make a mistake, but you are not a mistake. Maybe things go wrong, but you are not a failure. Because here is a promise from God:

But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

Isaiah 43: 1

And again, later:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 

1 John 3: 1

You have been claimed by God. Nothing can take that away. In success and failure, in joy and despair, when it’s smooth sailing and when it’s rough seas, you are God’s beloved child. With that truth as your foundation, although the hurts still hurt, and although things will still go wrong sometimes, you won’t lose sight of who you are. You are so much more than a job or a skill.

You are a child of God.

Are you sitting comfortably?

It’s a phrase that predates me. When I was very young we would visit grandparents in the North and my Grandma would sometimes read me a bedtime story, and this is how she would begin: Are you sitting comfortably?

When it was used on the radio, and when my Grandma asked the question, the desired answer was ‘yes’ because the phrase would be followed by, “then I dhall begin.” A story of some description would follow to be listened to in comfort and security.

So, I ask you, “are you sitting comfortably?” But I am not looking for the answer ‘yes’. I am looking to provoke thoughts. Because ‘sitting comfortably’ can lead to being complacent, and complacency can lead to laziness and carelessness. Not all the time, not everyone, but sometimes we can get so comfortable in our everyday habits that we miss the nudge that we need to make a change, or we become blind to parts of the world around us where we could help.

I am not writing here telling you that you need to change everything. In fact, I am not telling you that you need to change anything. But in this period of advent when the focus is on getting hearts ready for Christmas, I guess I’m encouraging you to just take stock for a moment, to stop and listen to the small voice of God speaking in your spirit, to see if there’s is something you do (or don’t do) that gets in the way of a good relationship with God.

In some church circles, the second Sunday of advent is used to look at John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin who wore camel hair and ate locusts and honey. He baptised people in the river Jordan, something strange for the culture of the time when baptism was reserved for purification of Jews or for conversion to Judaism. Unlike in the Christian faith, baptism wasn’t for everyone.

So John was shaking things up. And when the Pharisees and Saducees (religious leaders who were supposed to set an example) came for a baptism, John had some strong words for them. He called them a ‘brood of vipers’ and warned them to make a real change. He said, ‘bear fruit worthy of repentance.” In other words, don’t just go through the motions, take a look and see where you need to change to actually set a good example.

Please understand, I am not comparing any reader to those religious leaders. And I am certainly no John the Baptist with harsh words of warning. (For one thing, I’m not a huge fan of honey…) But John 3:16 says, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Jesus had mercy and compassion on those who listened and were open. He didn’t turn a blind eye, but gently pointed out where people needed to change. He wasn’t one to let people ‘sit comfortably’ either. More than once he spoke out and said things that led to others feeling uncomfortable, but only because he pointed out where they were living and behaving wrongly, in a way that wasn’t in line with God’s word.

So in this advent season, maybe even this week, see if you can find time time to ask yourself, “Am I sitting comfortably?” And maybe spend a bit of time being still and letting Jesus tell you if you should be.

What music does…

Music has a strange quality. Well, it has a few, but I am thinking specifically of how it can bring people together. I have just come from a local concert where my choir and some other performers came together to provide an evening of music in a small venue. The first half was general tunes, the second half Christmas songs.

It has struck me before how the choir I lead brings people from different walks of life together. But I was struck again this evening by the power music has on the listener as well as the producer. An audience can sit and listen and somehow connect with the music. It becomes a talking point between strangers in the queue for refreshments. They can join in or just sit and let the sound wash over them – and somehow there is a connection between the listener and the performer. The performer is giving something which lasts only a moment, and yet can leave a lasting impression, and the listener is receiving something that they cannot grasp or even share with others – as they hear it, it creates a personal internal response that will differ from person to person and is often hard to explain.

Some songs make us smile, while others may draw a tear. Some will help us get festive, others will get our toes tapping, while others will have us reaching for the off switch (or the ear plugs). But it will create some sort of reaction. And if human-created music can elicit such a response, I wonder what it sounds like to hear divine music?

At the birth of Jesus, angels appear in the sky singing their joyful song, at key moments people are overcome with emotion and have no choice but to sing (Miriam and Moses when they are rescued from Egypt, Mary when she finds out she will have Jesus, Simeon when he sees baby Jesus at the temple, David in the Psalms…)

But more importantly, God sings. Zephaniah 3: 17 says, ‘The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.’

I wonder what it would be like to stop and hear God’s song. Maybe it’s in the birds and the breeze, or maybe it’s something more gently in our hearts. A shared experience with other Christians, and yet also deeply personal between us and God. Music has the power to reach us on an emotional level and bring us closer to our neighbour. Maybe try and listen to God the Musician and the song he is singing over you tonight.

The mental shelf

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find that life can be a little overwhelming. Sometimes I can find myself juggling so much that I don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with it. Or something so huge comes in that I have no idea how to deal with it (more so when I was a child). What used to happen to those things, the things that were just to much, was they would get ‘shelved’. Like some people do with things in their houses they don’t want to deal with right now -it gets put in a drawer or on a shelf for later. Except it was a metaphorical shelf in my head, and I was never very good at coming back to sort it…

The problem with this approach is that even a metaphorical shelf can end up holding too much and collapse. Suddenly, you don’t have the choice of ‘dealing with it later’ (or ignoring it…) In fact, you have to deal with quite a lot all at once! I once told someone about this shelf, and their response was, “let the Carpenter take care of the shelf.”

That was some very wise advice. Jesus, a carpenter before he started his travelling ministry, would of course be able to handle anything and everything I would and had put on the shelf. And the bible doesn’t say, “pile all your cares on oneside because God isn’t interested.” No, it specifically says the opposite.

Psalm 52: 22 says, “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” 1 Peter 5: 7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares.”

Speaking from experience, it can be easier said than done. Partly, it may be a journey to believe that God actually does care about your cares and worries, big and small, because God does actually care about you. He doesn’t role his eyes and give an exasperated sigh when you start to pray. He genuinely cares for you and listens when you give him the things that are on your mind.

Another part that might make it hard is the stubborn voice inside telling you that you don’t need any help. Thanks very much God, but you can take a day off, I’ve got this. Sort of. Kind of. And in part you might – but it is much better to share it with God in case it gets bigger and out of hand, or in case something unexpected comes along. And God just wants to do life with you. Good and bad, big and small. Let Jesus help.

Maybe it’s hard because you are doing what you’ve always done. That’s ok, write one of the bible verses mentioned above somewhere to remind yourself that just because you’ve always done it alone previously, you don’t have to do it that way going forwards.

So if you have a mental shelf (or an equivalent), don’t wait for it to collapse – let the Carpenter who Cares help take care of it now.

Still, small voice

I’ve been reading a good book recently. There’s lots of good bits in it, I’m sure I’ll reference it again. But the bit that’s important for today comes in the chapter called ‘Uniquely You’. The gist of the chapter is to be you, exactly as you were created to be, unique and wonderful. To do that, you need to let God guide you. You shouldn’t compare to others, just trust God.

It then goes on to say that in order to let God guide you, you need to recognise his voice. I wonder how many times you have heard a Christian say, “God has been speaking to me about…” or something similar. Have you ever wondered what that might sound like?

I know Christians who say things like that on a regular basis, as well as Christians who couldn’t be sure of God speaking to them because they’ve never been told how to recognise it. The difficulty is that it is hard to put into words what it sounds like to have God speaking to you. I have previously mentioned about God using friends around me to talk to me (which I sometimes think is because I don’t trust myself to hear God correctly directly and need to external confirmation…). Sometimes people will have dreams or visions from God.

But mostly, it’s like a picture or a phrase rather appears in your mind. And in the book, it described it rather well:

How do we hear God’s voice? It is not usually an audible voice, but a still, small voice in our spirit that causes us to know what to do.

Authentically, Uniquely You by Joyce Meyer

Which triggered a memory of an exercise I once did with a church. I got one person to read a phrase from the bible (not sure which one, probably something about God’s love), then about 5 other people to loudly shout things that might be on a daily to do list like ‘Do the washing up’ or ‘meet that deadline’. I asked people what God was saying but through the din, they couldn’t hear. Life can be like that for us. It was for Elijah.

Elijah had many successes and a good relationship with God, but when his life was threatened and he was afraid and in despair, that went out the window. He ran away and gave up. He literally told the angel of the Lord that he wanted to die. So the angel of the Lord fed him, made him take a nap and took him away from all the distractions. And it was there that Elijah heard the still small voice of God telling him the next step, reawakening hope, proving that Elijah hadn’t been abandoned.

It can be hard to know the right way to turn at times. Maybe there’s a big decision you need to make, and one logical answer but somehow the internal conflict doesn’t make it an easy decision. (OK, that’s a personal recent experience, but maybe you have something in your life that relates?) I recently had the opportunity to go away for a few days to somewhere with no mobile reception and very dodgy Internet. In the run up, I’d had been wrestling over a decision and just couldn’t work out what to do. I could argue it with myself each way, and the ‘right’ decision seemed to change every hour (and that’s not much of an exaggeration…)

So while I was away with little contact with the outside world, everything went quiet. And there was that ‘still small voice’ helping me to make the right decision, a pull in my spirit to know what decision was best for me. Was it the logical option? Not to anyone else, no (and I had heard plenty of advice about what I should do). And yet, I came away at peace, knowing that it was the right decision for me and God agreed – because that still small voice had led me to that decision.

So if you are at a crossroads and don’t know which way to go, if you are conflicted over a decision, if you are feeling lost and need a bit of guidance, move away from the distractions and loud voices and be still and quiet. Because God will guide you – trust him and your self. He is the still small voice.

With us, within us, and around us

Do you ever hear a phrase that just strikes a chord in you? Something that sounds profound, or which is like a fresh revelation of something you already knew? It happens to me a fair amount of the time. A phrase will jump out from a film or TV show, or in a conversation with a friend, or even occasionally from a sermon or prayer, and my brain will get a little distracted and think something like, “Ooh, that’s a good way of putting it. I like that, I’ll store it away for later. I hadn’t thought to use that phrase before!” And then the phrase will hang around for a while, maybe I’ll write it down and come back to it, or maybe it will just buzz around my brain until I do something with it. Just me?

Well, I came across one of those phrases today. We were praying, and they said, “Let’s pause a moment to acknowledge God is with us, within us and around us.” And rather than pause and reflect, my brain whirred. Its a good phrase. It brings things I know into one place.

I know that God is with us. In Isaiah 41 God says to “fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” So every time I read that verse I am reminded that God is with us, and is often a word of comfort I give to others as a reminder that they are not alone.

I also know that God is within us. Ephesians 3 20 says, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”. Indeed, in yesterday’s post I wrote about God working in us to change us. I often pray for people that they will God within them as they journey as a comfort and strength.

And just this evening I was reminded that God is around us. I got out of the car a looked up at the clear night sky and could see the stars in all their glory scattered across the night sky. I enjoy walking in the countryside and marvelling at God’s creation, and just last week I walked up a hill to get a better view of a stunning sunset on the Hastings coast. God is in everything we see. The bible puts it even clearer. Psalm 125:2 “As the mountains surround Jerusalem. So the Lord surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.” If we ever forget, there is something there to remind us of God’s glory and power, something I find comfort it, so when I am overwhelmed and stressed, you will find me out walking somewhere, surrounding myself with God.

All that to say, I know all three parts of the phrase separately, but suddenly it clicking inside that they all happen simultaneously. Those things I say or do to offer comfort to others or myself are all there all the time. Quite a revelation for a moment of quiet during prayers!

God. Protector. Transformer. Comforter – with us, within us, and around us. Always.

The water that hardens the egg…

There is a saying, “the same water that softens the potato hardens the egg”. I have to admit, I’m not sure whether it’s better to be the egg or the potato in this situation. I wouldn’t want to be someone who crumbles in tough situations, but I don’t particularly relish the thought of becoming hard either…

Maybe I’m taking the saying too literally! The point it is trying to get across is that the circumstances don’t dictate our reactions, it’s what we’re made of that makes the difference.

It’s like this tale: you are holding a cup of coffee and someone bumps into you and you spill it. Why did you spill the coffee? Because you had coffee in the cup. If it had been tea, you have spilt tea instead. It’s what we have inside that will spill out when we got knocked around by life.

I like this one a little better, because it makes it clear that you can change what is in the cup. If at one point in your life you got knocked and what came out was anger a bitterness, you can choose to fill your cup with something else before the next knock. But that will only get you so far. You can make good choices, but there are some aspects of our characters that take much more to change.

Take, for a biblical example, Jacob. He is the second son of Isaac (look into Genesis for the full story). In that culture, the oldest son gets the first blessing and inheritance. Isaac is set to give those to Esau, his oldest son. But Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, favours Jacob. (For extra info, Esau and Jacob are twins). And so, together Rebekah and Jacob cheat and deceive so Jacob gets the birthright and blessings which are meant for Esau.

Jacob then runs away to live with his uncle. There he knuckles down and does good work to ‘earn’ a wife. However he gets cheated and gets the ‘wrong’ wife. (Remember, this was a long time ago and social norms were very different…) In this time, Jacob grows up a little and makes some good decisions. However, he is still a deceiver. He tricks his uncle out of sheep (read Genesis 30: 25-43, it’s a brilliant if slightly bizarre story of trickery!) and when he goes back to his homeland, he sends his family and servants ahead of him with some not-quite-truthful messages.

But then, before he meets his brother, he spends the night alone. Alone except for the man that he wrestles with all night until day break (Genesis 32: 22 onwards). But it wasn’t a man he was wrestling with, it was God, and as a result God changes him from Jacob (the deceiver) to Israel (He who wrestles with God and people).

So the good choices started him on the journey, but it was only with God’s help that he could completely change. He stopped being a potato and became an egg (or the other way round?) Whichever, he became different so similar circumstances would prompt a different response from him.

And for us? To some extent we can choose what to fill our cups with through the choices we make, through the images and words we take in and through the people we surround ourselves with. But some things, some learnt habits and responses are much harder to change alone. For these we need prayer support and we need God. Its not always a quick fix – often it’s a process of perseverance and persistently praying and making good choices, of ‘wrestling with God’. And it is hard (speaking from experience). You’ll find yourself in the same circumstances again and again, but over your self-awareness will change and you’ll try to consciously make better choices. And then one day you will realise that you have behaved completely differently – what you are made of is different.

That is who God is. God works with us and for us. Protector. Saviour. Transformer?

If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation: old things pass away; behold, all things are made new.

2 Corinthians 5: 17

More than words

Christian leaders often talk about reading the bible. They say it’s good for you to have verses you can quote and reference back to. In fact, they are so passionate about it that it can sometimes seem like they are forever banging on about it, pushing the latest daily reading subscription onto whoever they can get to listen.

OK, so they’re not all like that. To be fair, most are fairly sensitive about how they do it, and they only quote the bible in conversation when it’s really relevant. And it is kinda they’re job to start people off on their relationship with God.

Because that is what reading the bible is: the place to start. The only place to start, but it is just a starting point. We read the words and they can just stay stories or poetry. Or we can be filled with knowledge in our heads about who the bible says God is, which Jesus is. But head knowledge will only get you so far. When life gets tough (as most people will experience in some form or another) or when things happen that don’t have am easy explanation, head knowledge will only get you so far before leaving you desperate for something else.

The bible was written to start you off, but you have to experience God for yourself. Yesterday I quoted from Isaiah some of the names of Jesus which particularly come out at Christmas. , Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And there are plenty more names for God throughout the bible. Lion of Judah, Rock and Refuge, Comforter to name a few. If you can’t think of many, take a glance through the Psalms, there are plenty of examples if titles for who God is there.

Yesterday I asked you who Jesus is to you right now. Which title is most appropriate for your relationship with Jesus, for what he has done and who he has been to you this year?

And I asked this to get you thinking beyond the words. Not who others say He is, not just what you read in the bible, but specifically who He is to you. Thunk back over your year and try to think where God has been. Better yet, ask God to show you.

For me, yes, Jesus is the Prince of Peace and all those other things. But when I look back over the last year, what strikes me most is that He has been my Protector. Not that I haven’t had any trouble this year; this year has pushed me to the end of my endurance, with knock back following knock back (or so it has seemed at times) but through it all the right person or people have been in the right place at the right time, doors have opened to get me somewhere new just when I needed them to. And after all of it, I am still standing. No, it’s not been the year I was expecting. No, I don’t understand why it happened the way it did.

But the thing that happens when you go beyond the words, when the head knowledge reaches your heart is that belief sustains you. I know in my heart that God will never abandon me. I know in my heart that God is before and behind me. Therefore, I know in my heart that God has had my back all through this year.

So, I ask again. Who is Jesus to you?