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One of the more satisfying audits is to review a year's reading. I mainly read books, though I do a lot of research and casual reading by browsing favourite websites, and sometimes being diverted to new sources and resources for my interests. But yes, books remain my mainstay for learning, reading, praying, thinking, meditating, struggling, nourishing and stimulation. As Rachel Cooke wrote of Christopher De Hamel's Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts, in the digital age, the book is "the ultimate analogue consolation."

Actually the whole paragraph is worth pondering for its persuasive commendation of writing and reading as safeguards of knowledge, wisdom and yes, respect for truth:

"A scholar who can convey his enthusiasm and erudition to the lay person without ever seeming to patronise, his tone is so urbane and wise, you find yourself absorbing the most arcane and complicated stuff – the history of handwriting, say – almost by osmosis. The religious texts he describes, born of endless labour and unfathomable (to us) faith, seem not to connect at all with our own times, and yet they do, in ways I cannot begin to describe here. In a digital world that cares less and less for facts, moreover, de Hamel’s book, the product of a lifetime’s learning, is the ultimate analogue consolation."

But those words refer to a book I haven't read. This past year I've read several books that have filled gaps, opened new seams, extended horizons, or whatever other metaphor describes a book that changes the way we see the world, ourselves and the relations between the two. 

Konrad Hammond, Rudolf Bultmann. A Biography. This is more than an intellectual history of one of the greatest New Testament scholars of last or any other century. It is a history of the cultural changes in Germany from pre First World War, through the rise of National Socialism, and on into the late mid 20th Century. Bultmann's intellectual and theological development is traced with care, told with fairness and supported by an encyclopedic grasp of detail. Superficial evaluations, often based on theological presuppositions conservative or liberal, and whether adulatory or dismissive, are simply disqualified by this massive account of a mind refusing to have the questions silenced, and equally resistant to easy closure or cheap conclusions.

Demythologising was the bogey word for much of Bultmann's career. Yet even after his death his work is still by many scholars judged to be a benchmark of scholarly discipline. Further, some of his most admiring critics concede that even though his answers may be wrong, wrong headed or no longer tenable, the questions he asked, and the methods he used in asking them, remain programmatic for the discipline of NT studies.  Often it is the scholar who identifies the basic issues, the more intrtactable problems and the key critical questions, whose contribution is the most durable.

My interest in the history of New Testament interpretation made this book a weighty ingot of gold for me. Some of the greatest Christian minds have delved deep into those ancient, potent and subversive texts and have sought a deeper understanding not only of the foundation documents of our Faith, but have probed and pondered the transformative events to which they bear witness. In the middle years of the 20th Century Bultmann was a major planet drawing many other scholars into his orbit. And although many differed from him in their conclusions, the contribution of a veritable galaxy of NT scholars to our understanding of the New Testament has been far reaching, and echoes still down the decades into our own time. Names like Dibelius, Kasemann, Cullmann, Jeremias, Conzelmann, are some of those whose life work was inevitably responsive to, or reactive against, Bultmann's work. Bultmann's own interlocutors included Heidegger, Gogartern, Von Soden, Barth and others whose philosophical and theological emphases coincided or collided with his own. Like all good biographies this is the story of a life, in all its humanity, but given depth by also being an account of the mind of a great scholar theologian, and of a man of faith. Bultmann's faith was deeply entangled in the cultural and intellectual categories of Existentialism, but it is readily apparent to anyone who takes time to read him, and to hear his faith resonating in his sermons, that this complex and powerful personality was grounded (a word he would approve) in a faith deeply christological and forward looking to the eschaton and final triumph of the Christ of faith.

Ironically, and thankfully, those who don't need or can't afford the hard copy book (it is very expensive) can download to Kindle for £7.43 – this is the bargain of the year for those happy with a digital copy. But as noted above, with a big book token to take the weight of its purchase, I am happy to own it as a book, an analogue consolation Kindle notwithstanding!

It has been a long year. Half a month of it left. First will come Christmas, then that last week of waiting for the chronological confirmation it is a New Year, marked by fireworks, bells, and in Aberdeen, ship horns from the harbour. Waiting for New Year can be an exercise in passive patience, or an episode of agitated impatience, or even  a process of slow release anticipation; alternatively, waiting can be a time of fallow resting, allowing new ideas to seed and propagate, in the fertile mulch of memory, previous hopes and new born choices.

It's strange how the threshold of a date can be disturbing, interrupting the routine flow of days and weeks. Birthdays, anniversaries whether of gladness or sadness, liturgical mileposts in the year's journey, and that end of year full stop, when midnight gives way to a new year. The clock and the calendar are little different from the scrape marks on the prisoner's wall, a way of dividing time, recording how much has passed. There are no ways of assessing how much is still to come. 

For years now I have tried to save a day of quiet sometime between Christmas and New Year, for fallow resting. With a few sheets of paper, a pen, a Bible, a diary, and enough time to think backwards, and forwards. The cliche about the unexamined life not being worth living, like all cliches, has enough truth to make it bear repeating. But the over-examined life isn't much fun either. A life dissected, analysed, appraised, evaluated by various criteria from productivity and achievement, to pleasure and fulfilment, can become an exercise either in self congratulation or mass produced guilt.

So marking out fallow time, to think back and think forward, and allow our forward thinking to be shaped by our backward thinking, is not so much an exercise in self-praise or self-blame. It is the ongoing attempt to live wisely. It is the courtesy of listening, taking time to listen to our lives. It is a bid for freedom from unexamined routine. It is a taking seriously of this self which is a changing continuity that thankfully can never be pinned down to a definitive me. It is one practical way of trying for once to be obedient to a word of Scripture:

"So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a wise heart." Psalm 90.12

Numbering our days in turn means more than accurate chronology. It surely has to mean weighing the days for significance, which in turns begs a question. Significant for whom, and for what? Only when we honestly reflect backwards can we have some sense of what worked out, what mattered then and still matters, what was achieved and at what cost and was it worth it? What are the triggers of joy, the events that shaped us, the circumstances that drew us out of complacency towards challenge and change, the encounters and relationships which inevitably become part of our history, and some of them, of our identity.

It has been a long year. So I am ready again to spend a day waiting. Thinking of the story so far, in the company of the One whose Presence is the driver of the narrative? How different from that is prayer? The poet Psalmist was humble enough to recognise that careful numbering of days is not our default setting. It has to be learned, and therefore has to be taught. His words are an honest prayer for wisdom which cannot be imbibed like raw data, but is the fruit of reflection, humility, and seriousness of purpose going forward.

That contemporary management cliche, "going forward" seems to suggest there is no such thing as going backward, or if there is, it isn't a desirable state of affairs. But reflection is exactly that, a going backward, a retracing of steps, thoughts, choices, encounters, events, circumstances and everything else that makes up the interwoven but patterned tapestry that is out life. Reflection is two faced though; it is also a going forward in thought, choice and hopefulness. The question is, having reflected backwards, what we now choose, what we hope for, and thus what we decide will now be the priorities of those days still to be numbered, and on which we have no right to presume, other than in the mercy of God.

Nobody can be surprised that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has published a letter sent to our political leaders expressing serious concern at the post Referendum rise in hate crimes, and the continuing deterioration post-Brexit of public discourse around issues such as immigration, racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. Acts of violence and words of hate and ridicule against minority groups and those who are deemed to be "other", "different" and "not us" spiked post-Brexit, and are still too frequent.

The Commission is rightly careful to state, "The vast majority of people who voted to leave the European Union did so because they believe it is best for Britain and not because they are intolerant of others." That is undoubtedly true, and I have many friends and acquaintances who voted to leave, very few of whom I would ever think harboured racist views. That said, when public discourse becomes inflamed by claim and counter claim, and language becomes more rigid and confrontational, then opinions are expressed with increasing force and the rhetorical weapons of choice become more and more harmful. Inside all of us are seeds and potentialities that given the right set of circumstances, the fertility of cultural fears, the social excitement of sensitive economic and political differences blown into existential choices, can be propagated and made to grow into attitudes of which we never thought ourselves capable.

But what is more serious, strategic and concerning is the Commission's stark warning to political leaders and all politicians to cease and desist from polarising language. I welcome the implied rebuke, and the genuine and courageous finger-pointing of the letter. The following sentence is freighted with warning: "politicians of all sides should be aware of the effect on national mood of their words and policies, even when they are not enacted". That particular criticism, if not aimed at Amber Rudd, is certainly a reference to our Home Secretary, whose intended policy of requiring employers to declare the proportion of foreign people they employ was first announced at the Conservative Party Conference, then hastily withdrawn in the face of widespread dissent and opposition.

What interests me about this specific debacle is the mindset of the politician who conceived the idea of making being foreign a distinctive that has social, public and political implications which transcend the rights of the individual foreign citizen. To even think of such discrimination, and to require publication of such statistics, at the very least gives comfort to those, however small a minority, for whom anti-immigration is tinged with racism and hostility to the presence amongst us of those who are different; and whose difference is then to be highlighted as a negative datum by such blatantly irresponsible social discrimination.

Our Home Secretary has legal responsibilities to work within the law and the spirit of the law of the Human Rights Convention, a role which requires a wise protection and stewardship of social cohesion and harmony in our communities. It is therefore of major political significance that this letter unmistakably warns politicians of something they should know already, and should have no need to have it pointed out to them. Words matter. Words do things. Speech is not mere words. Spoken words and written words have power to persuade and motivate, to ignite anger or construct peace, to reassure or destabilise, to further understanding or intentionally mislead. Words used wisely help us negotiate towards co-operation, or if used as weapons, they break down bridges and use the bricks to build walls.

When an independent watchdog Body, created to be an early warning system for a deterioration in race relations, racial harmony, community diversity and that mutual respect of each other which lies at the centre of the common good, – when such a Body has to remind politicians that their words have the power to "legitimise hate", and in the same report points to statistical evidence of a spike in hate crime, then two things need thinking about. First, the politicians should take heed, and accept the weighty responsibility conferred on them by their high office, of speaking responsibly, truthfully and with respect and care for those of whom and to whom they speak. Secondly it is a disgrace that the Commission for Equality and Human Rights should have to say this at all, and that those it cites include our Home Secretary, and several of those now to the fore in Government. Some are those whose language during the Referendum was at worst a major contribuition to the problems we now face, and at best condoned by their silence the more extreme expressions of anti-immigration and anti-Eurpoean rhetoric.

I use that word "disgrace", not in its pejorative and vernacular use. I use it in a semi-technical sense, suggesting that our political leaders have disgraced their high office by their use of words that provoke such concern and censure from, of all groups, the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The kind of democracy we enjoy and evolve depends upon the integrity of our discourse, the civility of our language, and a strong ethic and stewardship of words, a standard of discourse that has recently seemed to be beyond the moral imagination and character virtues of elected leaders. That is a disgrace. 

The lack of shame, the silence of those same voices in the face of social backlashes in hate crimes, or just as reprehensible, the belated attempt at recovering moral high ground by saying the Government has made more money available to tackle hate crime, these too are a disgrace. Grace as a moral virtue exhibits a cluster of inward impulses including generosity, respect, courtesy, dignity and integrity, and giving these moral cohesion, a valuing of each human being within our communities. Long agao the redoubtable Shirley Williams wrote a book called Politics is for People. Yes it is. And political leaders, and politicians of all parties are there to serve the people not rule them, to unite the people not divide them, to work for social cohesion and co-operation, not conflict and rivalry for the sake of political and narrow ends. 

It remains to be seen whether the only response of the Government is to throw money at resources to tackle hate crimes. Unless they suppress their own inflammatory language, money is merely buying bottled water to throw on fires that will go on being ignited by the rhetorical arson of carelessly cynical words used as a hate accelerant.

 

I first came across the name Kim Fabricius on the Faith and Theology blog of Ben Myers. He is an expat American, recently retired from the URC ministry and University chaplaincy, and living in the UK. His writing is sharp, laced with Scripture often of the least comfortable but often ultimately comforting kind, his worldview is inclusive and his theology both liberal and indebted to Barth. Taken at face value this could suggest more caricature than character. But time and again I have been tapped on the shoulder and had to stop and think through what he has written. Now and again I've been tripped up, slide tackled, made to rethink what I thought I had thought about enough already.

A couple of years ago I bought his book of hymns, mostly  composed for his own congregation when something needed to be expressed that couldn't be found in the existing repertoire. Some I think are quirky and would only work in context and for a congregation who knew their minister. Others though, are sharply observed theology in the language of ordinary folk and often giving shafts of insight into social issues that cry out for a Gospel word. You can find his book on sale over here

I have used one of them several times in different churches. It says something about the nature and purpose of the church, and gives to our gathering for worship a richness of texture, a depth of purpose, and a seriousness of thought that, cumulatively, has long term consequences on Christian formation. This is because the hymn intentionally views worship as transformative of the whole person.

It's called "God's Church is a school for learning".

It appeals to me because I often think the Church is a university where every follower of Jesus is matriculated, where our minds are taken seriously. In church of all places, critical thinking, civic responsibility and social compassion. These are instilled as values, because loving God is a whole person commitment of body, mind, heart and soul, and so meeting together in church is to belong to a community of learning, where the learning and teaching is a shared experience and mutual exchange of support, insight and understanding.

God’s church is a school for learning,

life-long learning in the  Lord;

here we’re taught to be discerning

as we read and hear his  Word.

Taught to dramatise the Story,

Christians all have parts to play

in the theatre of his glory,

improvising on the way.

 

In the church of God are courses

in the arts of peace and prayer,

and in using the resources

from the files of love and care;

classes in the  craft of living,

seminars on grace and sin,

Sunday workshops in forgiving,

coaching by the Christ within.

 

Thinking thoughts of God – what wonder! –

trained in virtue, given  space,

we will make mistakes and blunder,

still in church there’s always  place:

place for all – here no exclusions –

place for each – the fast and  slow;

here we see through sight’s illusions,

here by faith alone we know.

Kim Fabricius, Paddling by the Shore (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2015), page 66.

 

I have read Denise Levertov's poetry and prose for 40 years. I've tried to understand her poetry and read numerous essays, assessments, reviews, biographies, all of which try to explain why she wrote what she wrote. Sometimes you can know too much about a writer. The well informed reader then tends to over-interpret, close down hermeneutic options. So we reduce the impact of the words themselves because instead of listening to her voice, we listen to the voices that tell us what she is saying.

But her best work defies the critics and the fans. Her poems about peace are wrenched from a heart broken by the world's self-inflicted sufferings in war after war. How do you write poems for peace, and against war? The double burden the peace poet carries is like a cross laid across her shoulders. The first burden is the weight of the poet's responsibility to language and integrity, just to write the poem. But she labours at this hard enough task, laden with the back breaking supplement of an imagination seeking to envision and say in words, what she desperately longs to happen in reality. As she writes she hopes, desperately, that her words might conceivably help that reality forward towards its consummation. A poet writing a poem about peace, in the face of war, performs an act of such reckless trust and unrealistic hope that it would be easy to give up, to give in, to let war win. Not so Levertov. 

She knows that peace doesn't just happen. Peace-making is a discipline, a sacrifice, requiring a change in the grammar of our ethics and the syntax opf our behaviour. Her poem "Making Peace" is a call to see the world differently, to construe the world towards new hopefulness, to imagine and then to enact peace-making as the new language and commerce of human relationships.

Making Peace   

A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."

But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.

If I'm honest, which mostly I try to be, honest! Anyway. If I'm honest, I find prayer as much of a problem as a solution; and I find praying raises at least as many questions as answers. It isn't that I don't believe in prayer – of course I do. And I believe in prayer because I believe in a God whose way of being is relational, personal and communicative. Those ubiquitous words inclusive and accessible, have significant purchasing power when used theologically. I think together they convey essential truth about the God I have come to know through Jesus Christ. The God to whom I pray is a God who is revealed as an eternal Triune communion of mutually self-giving love, and of outward reaching creativity. The Creator is not dependent either on the Creation. or on all the creatures brought into being through that purposive creative gift that calls all that is into being.

At the same time human beings, created by God in the image of God, have that within them which answers to the transcendent and condescending grace that seeks fellowship, communion, shared purpose and convenanted obedience. "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." The fact that those words of Augustine have near cliche status doesn't entitle us to assume we have no more need of the reminder. God seeks to include all God has made within the life of the Triune God. In Jesus Christ God has created a new and deeper access to the heart of God. No-one has put that better than the intellectually brilliant author of Hebrews,who mid-argument about the call to faithful obedience, urges his (or her?) readers, "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Heb 4.16) Three words in this verse are themselves a triune promise of inclusion and accessibility; grace, mercy, help. Whatever else we pray for, and for whatever other reasons we pray, these three touches of divine blessing into our lives are reason enough to pray.

Grace, that unlooked for gratuitous gift from the heart of God, reaching out to hold in being that which God created; mercy, which is forgiveness but so much more because mercy looks not only to forgiven past wrong, but to enabled and renewed rightness, obedience and hopefulness towards a new future; help, which is that sense of being held, supported, sustained, carried through waters too deep for us and up hills too steep for us. And the theological genius who wrote Hebrews energises and ignites those words, grace, mercy and help with the advice "come boldly before the throne of grace." Permission is given to be outspoken, to speak our mind and pour out the heart; forget the niceties, the protocols, the usual hesitations and deferences of being before the throne of power. This isn't mere power – this is the throne of grace, and permission is granted to speak plainly, and with confidence.

So I pray, in the name of Jesus who reveals the heart of God; and in the communion and power of the Holy Spirit, God's creative presence suffused throughout all reality. In prayer I give thanks and praise; I intercede in love and concern for the world in its brokenness; I confess my sin, seek forgiveness and pray for grace to forgive as I have been forgiven. At times words are necessary, at other times they get in the way. Other times silence, contemplative waiting, deep reading of Scripture, place me in the attitude of listening for that still small voice which announces the presence of God.

But however I pray, I hold on to those three words, grace, mercy and help. And whenever I pray for grace, mercy and help I am encouraged to do so with confidence, openness and trust. So, here's where the problems arise when it come to praying. What am I to pray for in a post-Brexit, post-Trump, world in which some of the most destructive ways of seeing the world and speaking of the world are well down the road to normalisation? What would grace, mercy and help look like, if I were to pray for each of these to be given to all the followers of Jesus trying faithfully and obediently to live the good news right here, right now? As I think deeply, and seek wisdom to understand what is happening in the world these days, I don't doubt for a second we need mercy, but how is that to be lived, demonstrated, made real? So perhaps I need to pray grace and help to live that radical word of Jesus, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." We live in a world impatient with mercy and given to anger – so how to model mercy, to answer anger with understanding, to make respect and compassion more persuasive than grievance and resentment.

I have no doubt that prayer is now an urgent calling on the Christian church seeking to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the sign of God's justice and righteousness in a world dangerously over-fuelled with forms of anger that are destructive of our humanity and of the social safeguards of respectful discourse. How we work that out personally, and together as church and churches, is now a required research project into the deep wells of Christian spirituality, political theology and biblical wisdom.

For years I was Chaplain of Beechwood Primary School in Aberdeen. The school provided additional learning support for children and young people from 5-18 years. The full school Assembly was a brilliant celebration of life, sometimes noisy and excited, other times thoughtful and well engaged with what was going on.

Harvest was a mixture of the two. It takes 160 uninhibited young people to sing “He’s got the whole world in His hands” the way it should be sung, and with the actions performed with as much panache as any chorus in a West End musical. We always had bread on show. Sliced and whole, crusty and soft, plain and pan, wholemeal, fifty fifty and white, and one or two speciality breads.

We always said the Lord’s Prayer just before the end. We prayed for bread, that loaf at the centre, sandwiched between hallowing God’s name and deliverance from evil. We learned together that it is our daily bread not mine, that we live in a world where hunger is the daily reality, and daily bread a miracle.  

A poem read by one of the children each year was one I discovered years ago.

Be gentle, when you touch bread,
Let it not be uncared for, unwanted.
So often bread is taken for granted.
There is so much beauty in bread,
Beauty of sun and soil,
Beauty of patient toil.
Winds and rain have caressed it,
Christ often blessed it;
Be gentle when you touch bread.

Yes indeed; Christ often blessed it. And on the night before he died he took bread, gave thanks and blessed it again, and gave it to his disciples. That loaf at the centre of the Lord’s Prayer, is also at the centre of our communion with Christ and with each other. Harvest Thanksgiving is one of those occasions when thankfulness is deliberate, planned, intentional, and focused on the deep and necessary things of life. And if, as those amazing young people at Beechwood believed, “He’s got the whole world in His hands”, then it is part of our love for God and our Christian obedience to take bread seriously.

That means amongst other things remembering the hungry, and putting some of what we have their way. There are few more important ways in which we pray the Lord’s Prayer and witness to our faith in God the Creator, than feeding the hungry, doing our best to pray for and provide daily bread. Our gratitude to God is measured by the extent of our generosity for God’s sake,

Today I have been asked to preach on "God's plan for my life – what is it?' Now there are all kinds of questions spring up in my mind when I think about that question. Some of them are less than obvious, and some ar downright disturbing. The cartoon is by way of indicating the question might not be the right question – and therefore the answer isn't so simple it can be reduced to a meme and posted on Facebook.

The following is a theological reflection which doesn't answer these questions, but seeks to put them into a theological framework which asks a deeper question: What kind of God do I believe in? As to whether God has a specific plan for my life, and whether I can or should ever know what it is……well…

Why do I want to know?

Who gave me the right to know what God is thinking and planning?

Does God have "a plan" for my life, like a blueprint, or a loving purpose in creating me to become what in freedom I choose to be?

If God has a plan for my life, can I screw it up, or refuse to follow it?

If I do screw it up or refuse, does that mean from then on nothing that happens in my life is according to God's plan?

If however God's plan for my life cannot be frustrated, does that mean everything that happens, and how my life turns out, was planned from the outset?

So how can it be my life, if God lives it for me, arranges things so that God always wins?

Is God a chess player who cannot be beaten, or a loving presence who guides but does not compel?

You can see by those questions what my underlying hesitation is. I find it difficult to think of God as a divine puppeteer pulling the strings of every human life; or to imagine God as the omnipotent author who can do as he chooses and pleases with the characters and happenings in the plot of his master story; or to believe that God as the one who created human beings in God's own image in love and for love, then overides the freedom and gift that love must always be, in order to get God's way.

And yet. The entire Bible is premised on a God whose purposes are creative, redemptive and life-giving. A God whose purposes of love and whose character as holy love is expressed in mercy and judgement, presence and absence, God as active participant in creation calling all that God has made towards fulfilment and the full potential God intended in the first place. That God has a plan is a fundamental truth of the Bible. But the God revealed in the history of Israel and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is eternal creative, outgoing, and self-giving love, seeking through grace and power and love to be eternally faithful to God's own promises.

But that sense of God's purposive love needn't imply that God is inherently coercive, or infinitely manipulative. Omnipotence needn't mean a God who overwhelms the freedom that is God's own precious but risk filled gift. What becomes clear throughout the Bible, and is revealed in definitive finality in Jesus, is that God is love in relation to all that he has made. God is an eternal community of love, a Triune exchange of trustful communion and loving creativity that ever seeks to draw from his creatures an answering love.God is relational, and his purposes are fulfilled within relatedness. God, far from controlling and coercing us into his plan, calls and commands, invites and persuades, his creatures to find their true purpose and highest good in obedience to God.

In that very specific sense God has a deep and enduring purpose for each of our lives. But that is not the same as a God who pre-determines our choices, and compels our obedience; nor does it mean that God has a blueprint which we must adhere to or we will somehow fall out of God's will and miss God's plan for our lives. The idea that God has a plan that is specific, that controls circumstances, and compels our decisions and choices in that direction, would be to reduce God from a relationship of love and freedom, to a God who micro manages our lives like a hyper-efficient line manager of the universe.That is not the God we have come to know through Jesus

Paul's astonishing claim in Romans 8.28 is a remarkably bold statement not only about God, but about the life we all lead, and how God is at work within and beyond our story. Richard Longenecker's translation of this verse is exegetically grounded, theologically profound, and pastorally applied:

"Further, we know that for those who love God, God works all things together for good – that is, on bahalf of those who are called according to His purpose."

It's not true that all things work together for good; what's true is that God works all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to God's purpose. The subject of the sentence is God. And there's that enlightening and liberating word, "purpose"; not plan, not blueprint, not micro-managed existence, but life lived in the Spirit, in response to God's call, and lived  by and for the love of God to fulfil God's purpose.

And that purpose is? Well, that is the question we all have to ask, and not once for all, but every day. How do I fit in with God's great purpose of renewing creation, reconciling all things, living out the Kingdom of God, being a light to the world? And in doing that, how do I personally live the life more abundant, be an ambassador of Christ, have the mind of Christ, follow faithfully after Jesus in a world still hostile to a Gospel that honours sacrifice, commands peace-making, hangs loose to money and possessions, loves and welcomes the stranger as Christ, hungers and thirst for justice and righteousness, sees each other person as one whom God created, for whom Christ died and whose worth is indexed to the lengths God goes to redeem, forgive and restore. 

What is God's plan for my life? To be who he called me to be. To follow Jesus faithfully. To be transformed by grace and to be a builder of the new community in Christ. It's the responsibility, and calling of each Christian to be alert to those opportunities to serve God, to find the times and places in our own lives to witness for Christ, to be responsive and adventurous in following the leading of the Spirit who draws us towards maturity and new possibilities, to be wise and faithful in discovering and developing our gifts towards the service of Jesus, and to be part of a community of Christ where we grow and discover in prayer, fellowship and discernment, what God wants of us here, and now.

God's plan for your life…what is it?  This is what it is.

This the will of God, our sanctification….

Prove that good and perfect will of God by presenting your whole self as a living sacrifice

You are fearfully and wonderfully made, unique and thoroughly and completely known to God

You are called to grow in maturity into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ..

Commanded to abide in Christ and so bear much fruit

Challenged to take up your cross daily and follow after Christ

As to the specifics, the practicalities, how that works out, Michael Ramsey's advice remains true 60 years on:  "Jesus challenges his hearers; sowing seeds of truth in their minds and consciences, and then urging them to think out the meaning of it. Think it out, think it out! It is in the process of thinking it out – together with the love and the will and the imagination – that Jesus and his message are made known." (Michael Ramsey) 

The other day someone said something that I am beginning to hear with some regularity. The exact words don't matter all that much, but the feeling with which they were said exposed a vulnerability and anxiety that is becoming increasingly common. My friend said she could no longer bear to listen to the news. I knew exactly what she meant; I've felt much the same this past year or two. Now two things immediately knocked at the door of my attention. Actually the first knocked on that door, the second kicked it down in order to be seen and heard.

First, the woman is a thoughtful, committed and long time follower of Jesus, a Christian active in her church and with as healthy a view of life and herself as you're likely to meet these days. What does a Christian mean when they say they can no longer bear to listen to the news? Isn't switching off the realities of the world in all its brokenness the last thing a Christian should do?

Second, I felt such a surge of agreement with what she said I realised it was time to sit down and ask, and think through just what the Hell is happening in our world. I don't use that word Hell much. It's too serious a word to bandy about as a lazy expletive. But as I began to think about the news we listen to day in and day out, and the drip feed of information selected by a media industry whose main mission is to hook our attention, engage our emotions and shape our view of the world, I realised that much of that cycle of news was about Hell going on all around us. So the question I'm now pondering is, 'What in heaven's name are we to do with what the Hell is going on around us?'

Of all people, Christians are equipped to look on the world without despair, to face the realities of its brokenness without giving up, to confront evil with hope and hatred with love and enmity with forgiveness. So if that's even halfway true, what difference might it make if Christians did what Christians are called to do, in the face of so much bad news? What if Christians like myself, and my friend, gave ourselves to a different kind of listening to the news? Christians are good news people. But the constant flow of up to date information and graphic images of human suffering, global disaster, brutal conflict, economic doom, political instability and social disintegration come at us from all directions and without interruption. Online immediacy of latest information, intrusive television from restaurants to supermarkets, the mobile phone attached with an umbilical cord to the ears, large civic digital screens in stations and city locations – it is hard to escape a world where connectivity is now necessary norm.

So, What in heaven's name are we to do with what the Hell is going on around us? We are coming to Advent season, a season of contrasts such as darkness and light, fear and hope, emptiness and fullness, waiting and arrival, anticipation and fulfilment. My question begins to find its answer in Advent. Listening to the news for an Advent people will mean listening in stereo to two news streams. What in heaven's name I do with the Hell that is going on around me is listen to the good news which is the counter-balance to the bad news. To the darkness I speak light; to the cynicism of political agendas I trust in the God of the Magnificat; to the suffering of the migrant, the refugee and those bereaved and wounded in war, I sing a song of hope in Emmanuel, God with us; to the poor and hungry and marginalised and lost I enact the Beatitudes, become one of those who sees Christ in the naked, hungry, imprisoned and broken-hearted.

This Advent that will be the theme of my preaching. It's not the most politically correct or politely constructed title, but it is born and borne out of being with a friend whose sigh and sadness first prompted the question, "What in Heaven's name are we to do with what the Hell is going on around us?" 

(The photo is by a friend, Charlee Maasz, taken inside Thomas Coats Memorial Church (Baptist) in Paisley. I was minister in Coats Memorial from 1980-84.)   

 

Yesterday I wrote about the death of a man who for the first 12 years of my Christian life was a mentor, friend and leader amongst our Baptist Churches in Scotland. Andrew Macrae was an inspirational, visionary leader and preacher on a Europe wide scale, who went on to take these same gifts into the academic world of theological education for mission in North America. I mention him on this blog again because he first pointed me to a certain kind of Christian reading that set my mind in a particular direction. As I began to take up night school and day release to gain qualifications for University, and as I began to prepare myself to meet the formidable Ministerial Recognition Committte, he lent me three books to read which have remained important milestones on my journey towards learning and growing in the knowledge of Christ. Life has moved on. The three books are now dated, though one of them remains in print. All three were books of substance, and my reading of them acted like the turning of an intellectual ignition key. I'll return to these three books below.

On Sunday speaking with one of our church members who like me reads for fun, as work, and just for the love of reading anyway and anywhere and anytime. The first two books I read as a new Christian were The Cross and the Switchblade, and Tortured for Christ. In conversation about such things she immediately said snap, these were amongst the first books she remembers reading as a young Christian. Both are books of testimony, written from the more extreme edges of Christian experience and conversion. One the story of an urban minister and the story of his work in New York city, in the violent world of drugs, street gangs and disillusioned lostness hungering for belonging and significance. One of the gang leaders, Nicky Cruz, was converted and so began a work of mission amongst the other gang members. 

The second is the story of a Romanian pastor, imprisoned for his work in the underground church during the Communist era. Richard Wurmbrand is unsparing in his description of deprivation, beatings, secret police, informers and the machinations of a State which saw Christian faithfulness as a serious threat to State security in the paranoid world of the Cold War. I went on to read other books of testimony and the costs and consequences of Christian witness in dangerous places; but I also started to widen my reading to include authors like Watchman Nee, Roy Hession, and Andrew Murray. I'm not sure anyone still reads them, or would even recognise the names today.

It was into those early months of reading that Andrew Macrae dropped three of his own books, lending them to me to help me get some idea of what theological reading might do for me. The first was Mere Christianity, C S Lewis's classic apologetic for the Christian faith. The book has been a phenomenon amongst Christians of all shades and ages, but especially popular amongst evangelicals for two or three generations. I read it as the eye-opener it is. To my young mind Lewis produced knock down arguments, made faith sound and read as reasonable as expecting sunrise tomorrow; he opened my mind to the scale and subtlety of Christian faith. It was thoughtful theology and yet it was an interesting, hard to put down read.

The second book was by the great Scottish scholar preacher, James S Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim. This is a book about preaching, about a faith worth preaching, and preaching worthy of faith in a Saviour who takes upon himself the universe changing work of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal. I read it like a revelation. I had never heard preaching till I was sixteen; and exposure was limited to my own church and a few other occasions. But Stewart was writing about the highest calling to which the human voice is called, the thrilling responsibility of expounding and exegeting the love of God in Christ crucified and risen. This book made you want to preach, and at the same time warned that preaching requires your hardest work, your deepest thought, your prayerful dependence on God, and all of this in the service of a Gospel that saves the world.

The third book was T C Hammond's classic, In Understanding Be Men. In the nearly 50 years since I first worked through this book, I have read thousands of books of theology. But this book was foundational for three reasons. It was methodical in going through the classic doctrines of orthodox Christian faith. Each section was broken into pragraphs and had whole lines of biblical references to anchor thought into biblical text. There were suggestions for further reading, and to this day the bibliographic pointers of books I read remain amongst the most valuable features in a book. All in all this small handbook, one of the triumphs of the early Inter Varsity Press, introduced me to theology proper and set me on a road that would lead up the mountain ranges of Christian theology, history and biblical studies.

Three books, borrowed for a few months, and each of them an impulse towards training my own mind towards the things that matter in ministry. Amongst my debts to Andrew Macrae, is the discovery of Christian thoughtfulness in the service of others. Those books explored the inexplicable mystery of God's call to preach and the never to be forgotten privilege that such a call is. And they instilled a love of learning as one essential element in those called to ministry, and to a discipleship that requires understanding of people, of Gospel, of world and of Bible, and a lifelong commitment to bring all four of these into conversation whose centre is Christ.