A Life Ruined for the Ordinary (Part 1)

I have just got back home after attending the Church Army Conference.  The program was mostly the societies endorsed Evangelists sharing the story of their lives and subsequent ministries.  I was very encouraged hearing of the extraordinary things God has been doing in the lives of these relatively ordinary people, so I thought it might be worth recording my story on the chance someone might find encouragement in the work God has be doing in me.

Mine is not one of those dramatic conversion stories some people have.  My parents turned back to God after the birth of a still born child when I was 5.  My earliest memories are of us as a family attending church, being part of a Sunday school and of parents who served God in a variety of ways in their local Church.  At that age I naturally trusted and believed in God, this is not to say I have not had to develop my own faith.  Since then I have had doubts and times when I have wandered far from God but each time God has brought me back and through that process deepened my understanding of Him and I have grown in faith. 

My sisters and I ready for church on Sunday morning

I recently celebrated my 58^th birthday. I have been following Jesus for something like 53 years. 

My first experience of actively taking on a ministry responsibility was when I was about 14, I was a keen member of CEBS (The Church of England Boy’s Society) and the CEBS leader wanted to begin a group for the very young boys, 5 – 7 year olds.  After thinking about it I talked to the leader and he agreed to let me try.  Once a week for an hour and a half I had charge of half a dozen excited boys, and needed to prepare a program to maintain their interest, lots of games, a devotional, some skills work.  I was only ever half a step in front of the boys but it was fun and I learnt quite a bit about ministry and leadership and serving God.

A couple of years later I was part of the church’s youth group when all the older teenagers became young adults, got married or moved on and we suddenly found that the group no longer had any of the older teens left to lead it, and in fact I was now one of the older teens at 16.  Again I took on the leadership of the youth group and started an after church on Sunday night ‘coffee shop’ for those that did not have to rush home after evening service. 

The coffee shop became popular and teens started dropping in who were only loosely connected with the church and they had not all gone to church before dropping by or some came from other churches in the area.

This was the mid sixties, the beginning of modern youth culture.  Rock music, long hair, beards, motor scooters and motor bikes.  Of rebellion, of the counter culture, of Vietnam and moratoriums, peace, love and dropping out. Of teenagers questioning everything and everyone searching to find who they are and what they stand for.

It was a time of deep conservativism in mainstream Australia, of Robert Menzies and Bob Askin. It was a time when the Church of England had just started calling itself the Anglican Church and still used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

When the church’s parish council heard what was happening on Sunday nights, of teenagers in front of the church and staying after services were over they became concerned.   They did what many churches have been doing and continue to do with those they do not know or understand, who are different to them.  They shut the door on them.  They informed me that the coffee shop was closed.

And I knew to the core of my being that something was not right in their decision.

I asked the Rector if he would arrange a meeting with the three Parish Wardens.  The meeting took place and I asked them to reconsider their decision.  I suggested these were the very people that the church existed to reach out to, those who did not yet know God.  They listened and we prayed and the coffee shop was allowed to remain open.

Those men are all long dead now.  I cannot imagine it was easy for them to trust a kid like me with what they feared might happen to their old historic building but they did, they were gracious, and I think it was in that time that my life’s journey was set a course.

Depression

Depression is now epidemic today in the western world. 

·        1 in 6 men have clinical depression.

·        1 in 5 women also have clinical depression.

·        It is estimated 1 in 4 teenagers now have clinical depression.

·        Every person is likely to suffer a form of depression at some time in their life.

·        Only I in 9 people who have clinical depression seek treatment it.

Yet figures suggest the earlier that treatment is started, the easier and quicker it is to remedy.

Dr. Martin Seligman has made a study of depression.  His ideas dominate psychology in the USA and have caused a revolution in the treatment of depression in American in the last 10 years.

Until Seligman’s research it was widely believed that a person was powerless to change their circumstances.  It was believed that people are simply programmed to act and respond in certain ways that can not be changed.

Then one day his 5 year old daughter taught him a profound lesson.  Seligman and his young daughter were out weeding the garden.  He the busy phycologist was concentrating on the task at hand ... weeding the garden as quickly as possible.  His daughter on the other hand, was more interested in having fun.  She found delight in pulling the weeds and tossing them in the air and watching them flutter back to the ground.

In a cranky tone he reprimanded his daughter for not getting on with the task.  Work now.  Play later.  

His daughter a little upset but with the honesty of a young child finally came back to her father with a question.  “You know how I learned not to be whiney by the time I was 5?  Well, why can’t you learn not to be grumpy?”

·        This simple childish question changed modern phycology.   It set Seligman learning and studying how to become happy.

Depression robs us of happiness but if we can learn how to be happy it can act as a buffer to prevent depression. If we suffer depression happiness can help make antidepressant drugs more effective.

Happiness was not the only buffer Seligman found.  He ended with a list of 13 buffers to stress and depression.  The list includes: Courage.  Future mindedness.  Optimism.  Interpersonal skills.  Faith.  Work ethic.  Hope.  Honesty.  Perseverance. Capacity for insight.  Forgiveness.  Resilience and happiness.

Before Seligman’s work an America Psychologists could loose their licences to practice if they asked about a person’s faith.  Seligman found in his study of happiness that the happiest people are conservative Christians.

Since Seligman’s work it is now compulsory for Psychologists to take a spiritual inventory of all patients.  Faith is understood to be so helpful in the process of prevention and recovery that a Psychologist who does not do this with each patient they see is now considered negligent if they do not take this inventory.

It seems that science and Phycology are only now just discovering what Christians have always known.  We humans are wonderfully made by God but we made with design limits that can not be exceeded without real harm to ourselves. We are designed to be healthiest when we are in relationship with our creator.

Forgiving and forgetting

We all long and need to be loved and to give love to others.  Sometimes though it all goes wrong and we are left with disappointment and hurt.  The fairy tale can turn into a reality we did not plan or imagine and all we are left with is shattered dreams and disappointment.

What happens when relationships break down, when love stops, when you have been disappointed by others, when they don’t live up to your hopes and expectations?

Can you find it in you to forgive and forget or do you let life’s disappointment keep on hurting?

In my job, I meet lots of people of all ages, and unfortunately there are some older people that I have learned to try to avoid, they seem to sap my energy.  They are often people who have been hurt at some time in their past, but have never got passed that disappointment.  They can not let it go and so the hurt keeps on damaging them.  Over time they can become bitter and twisted.

There are other older people though that I really enjoy being around.  They are fun.  They often have a deep wisdom, and enjoy contributing to those around them, especially children.  When you talk with these people and get to know them, I have discovered that often they too have had real sorrow, and disappointments to cope with.

What’s the difference?

I think it is because they have learnt to truly forgive.  They have learnt to forgive as God does.  With some people that ability comes because they have known what it is to be forgiven by God.

There is a song that sums it up well, the song is, “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, and it says,

“Pardon for sin and peace to endure

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow”.

When we receive God’s forgiveness we also receive His blessing and power.  His Holy Spirit works in and with us, transforming us, healing our past, and giving us a bright hope for the future.

God can even help us to be forgiving of others…

Does Christianity offer any help in uncertain times?

We live in troubled times.  Korea testing rockets, our country is still at war in Afghanistan, there is always a fear that terrorism may strike at ourselves, or someone we love.  The “Aussie dollar” is still high, manufacturing industries are closing and unemployment is rising.  Europe faces an uncertain financial future that threatens other nation’s economies.

Would Christianity have anything to offer in these circumstances to help people cope?

When the apostle Paul considered the lasting benefits of Christianity he wrote, “and now these three remain:  faith, hope and love.”

Faith, hope and love, the world under values these but without anyone of them people’s very survival can be threatened.  

Viktor Frankel a Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist discovered just how important each were. 

In 1942, as a young doctor, along with his new bride, his mother, father, and brother, he was arrested and taken to a concentration.  The events that occurred there and at three other camps led the Frankel to realize the significance of faith, hope and love.

The loss of the research he had been undertaking was a significant event for him.  He had sewn it into the lining of his coat, but was forced to discard it at the last minute.  He spent many nights trying to reconstruct it, in his mind and on slips of stolen paper.

Another significant moment came while on march to work.  Another prisoner wondered out loud about the fate of their wives.  Then Frankel began to think about his own wife, and realized that she was present within him; in his mind.  He later wrote, “The salvation of man is through love and in love.  I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. “

And throughout his ordeal, he could not help but see that, among those given a chance for survival, it was those who held on to a hope of the future,  whether it be a significant task before them, or a return to their loved ones who were most likely to survive their suffering.

Frankel wrote …“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future … and this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”

Does Christianity have anything to offer King Island if things get hard.  Yes as it always has; the greatest and most valuable of all gifts.  Christianity offers the sure and certain hope that God is watching over us, he loves us and cares for us with a love that will last for all eternity.  We enter into that love and hope through faith is God and his Son Jesus.

Faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love; God’s love, because only he can overcome the world.

Anzac Day: Damion Parer

Anzac Day: RSL  Dawn Service

Last time I was in Canberra I visited the “National Film and Sound Archives”.  While there one particular exhibit caught my attention.  It featured the first Australian Academy Award winning film ...”Kakoda Frontline”.

The film images are now iconic.  The “diggers” fighting their way across the steep, mountainous terrain, hampered by dense jungle, continuous rain storms, river crossings but ever by their sides helping;  sometimes carrying the wounded are the New Guinea natives, the legendary ‘fuzzy wuzzy angles”  It was little wonder the film won an Academy Award.

At the time the film was being shot life back in Australia was still relatively good, they had not really been touched by the war.  No German or Japanese night bombers flying over, raining down death and destruction.  Rationing was not as tight as in England.  No sounds of canon firing in the distance.  It was easy to pretend the war posed no danger,  it was too far away to threaten Australia or her future.

But the threat was real and coming closer.  Japan after entering the war and a string of victories in the Pacific had decided to attack New Guinea landing with a force of 1500 men and with 3000 more in reserve.  All that was standing between them and the exposed north of Australia was the hastily formed 39^th battalion.  They carried the nick name the “chocolate soldiers” because every one back at home thought they would just melt at the first sign of any real fighting. 

These ‘chocolate soldiers” managed to hold out in hard, vicious fighting and with reinforcement they managed to defeat and turn back the military might of Japan.

Damien Parer was the photographer of this film “Kakoda Frontline”.  Damien has significant connections with King Island.  His parents lived here, he himself spent much of his boyhood here and his family owned the Hotel that still bears their name.  The film ends with a strong statement by Damien Parer in which he makes an impassioned plea warning people back in Australia not to be complacent about the dangers they and the soldiers are facing on their behalf. 

Parer realized the danger Australian were in.  The north of the country was virtually unprotected.  His film and his call to vigilance and action helped stir the nation.

Parer did not survive the war.  He was killed less than 2 years after the release of “Kakoda Frontline” by Japanese machine gun fire while again filming the war.  He died telling the world the news they needed to hear.

Visit any RSL club in Australia and you will see the phrase, “Lest we forget” but where have those words come from and why are they used on War memorials?

It comes from a poem written by Rudyard Kipling to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee is 1897. Kipling recognized that England was in some danger.  All Empires when they rise in wealth and power tend to begin forgetting about God and boasting about their own efforts to achieve greatness.  Recessional then is both a poem expressing pride in Britain’s achievements and a warning against the dangers of becoming arrogant and forgetting that it is God who is in ultimate power and so the one who is responsible for giving victories in times of war.

The Recessional:

God of our fathers, known of old…
Lord of our far-flung battle line…
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine…
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies…
The Captains and the Kings depart…
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!

The ancient sacrifice Kipling speaks of is God’s own sacrifice of himself upon a cross.

Damien Parer recognised the danger to our nation of being complacent.  Even with the danger that Japan entering the war presented: life went on in Australia in relatively comfort and most people did not realize the danger they were in or what the soldiers were going through.  Damien gave his life warning people and the filming scenes of struggle the soldiers faced that would going preserve their freedom and safety.

Rudyard Kipling also recognized a different sort of complacency ... and the need to remind people of the danger they were in when they forgot about God and took their good fortune for granted.  He wrote His poem “Recessional” to tell of that danger.

Each generation seems can become complacent, there is a constant need for the world to be reminded that there is one who is ultimately responsible, one who one day we will all need to stand before and give an account to ... God.

His own Son came into the world to be the Good News, the Good News that God forgives us through Jesus,  that God loves us and cares for us.  

Evidence of The Resurrection

Graveyard: Norfolk Island

What proof is needed to convince someone that God exists and that Jesus is the Son of God.

It is a question Christians and non-Christians alike have wrestled with down the ages.  For the Apostle Paul, the answer was firmly tied into the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.  Paul believed that if Jesus did rise from the dead as He claimed, then he had to be God.  Who else but God commands that sort of authority, to raise a person from the dead.  If the resurrection was true, then everything else that Jesus claimed had to be true. 

Paul become satisfied beyond a doubt about the truth and reliability of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  It changed his life dramatically.  So what evidence would it take to convince some one like Paul?  We read about it in 1 Corinthians 15: 3 – 8.

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Jesus appeared to the Disciples.  They were all convinced that it was Jesus who had returned from the dead.  It changed their lives, and most of them believed in it so strongly they were willing to give up their lives so others would also know the truth.

The 500 brothers.  These witnesses were well known.  They probably were not reluctant in telling people who were interested what they had seen.  The resurrection was well announced and testified to.  Yet no one seems to be able to have produced  Jesus’ body, or come up with a credible alternative suggestion as to what happened.  Any of these things would have stopped Christianity dead in it’s tracks.  The 500 where convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.

James the brother of Jesus.  Up to this point all the witnesses Paul lists had been believers and followers of Jesus before his death.  James was not.  James met the resurrected Jesus, and again that event changed his life.  From scorn and doubt James become the leader of the Church in Jerusalem.  James was convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Finally we have Paul himself.  Paul encountered Jesus on his way to Damascus to round up the Christians there and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment.  Paul met Jesus on that road, and it changed his life.  From persecuting the Christians he became their chief spokesperson.  He gave his life to tell others of what He knew to be true.   Paul was convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Have you made up your mind yet on where you stand?

Good Friday: The God who suffers.

I have three heroes, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus.  Each of them understood there was a powerful, transformational relationship between unearned suffering and redemption.

·        Gandhi led his people in a great revolution.  India wanted freedom from Colonial English rule.  Gandhi took the tools of suffering and non-violence as his chosen weapons to fight his battles with.  At one time he called his people to go on a great march … ending at the sea where they made salt.  They broke the laws of England that forbade the production of salt … the English had a monopoly on the salt trade … and England to defend their profits sent the police and army in.  As a result many, many Indians were brutally beaten.  The world’s media covered the story … the world heard about the savagery and took action.  As a result India gained her independence.

·        Gandhi knew as Martin Luther King Jr. was to learn a generation later … “unearned suffering is redemptive”.

·        A generation after India gained her independence, Black  Americans found themselves engaged in a struggle for freedom also.  Martin Luther King Jr. was a leader in that struggle.

·        He too led his people on a march, this time over a bridge, where they were met by the police, with batons ready … as the front row of marchers met the police they were knock senseless to the ground … but the row behind pressed forward taking their place to be bludgeoned … row after row … the beaten victims carried away and bandaged … all the while the television cameras were sending the pictures into the homes of America, ordinary people became horrified by what they were witnessing … the broken skulls, black eyes and the beating of the unarmed … non resisting black marchers caused the silent people to finally demand a change … the end of segregation was achieved with broken bodies of the non-resisting marchers.

·        There is something truly and remarkably redemptive about unearned suffering.

Martin Luther King and Gandhi both had a model. 

The Prophet Isaiah announced to the world that God’s chosen servant, God’s Messiah would be rejected by the world.

·         He would be made to suffer greatly.  He would be stricken … smitten …  afflicted …  pierced …  crushed … punished and wounded. 

·        He would suffer these indignities and pain on our behalf, because he … the innocent one would take our sins upon himself and would be punished for them in our place.

·        It would be through Jesus’ unearned suffering that we receive redemption.

Redeemer.

Each Jew had a Redeemer Kinsman whose task was three fold.

1.      To buy back property or the person sold into slavery … to ensure freedom.

2.     To take the life of another who had murdered a relative … to ensure justice.

3.     (Ruth and Boaz)  To marry a relatives widow, and to make sure an heir was born … the child born to such a relationship was treated as the child of the dead person … to ensure a future as a member of God’s chosen people.

Jesus became the redeemer of the whole world. 

·        His death ensures freedom from slavery to sin.  We can become the recipients of God’s grace.  We can enjoy true freedom to be the people God created us to be.

·        His death pays sins penalty.  The wages of sin is death; Jesus has paid that penalty once and for all time.  The demands of justice have been met.

·        His death ensures an eternal future, freed from any pain or suffering.  A glorious future in the presence of God.  We no longer need to be eternally separated from God.  We have the chance to enjoy the perfect future.

All this has been made possible by the suffering Jesus Christ.  Although he did nothing to deserve the agony he went through his unmerited suffering made possible the redemption of the whole world.

·        Each week in the Communion service we say the prayer of Consecration, reminding us all of the words of Jesus on the night before he died on the cross…

·        “Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it too his disciples, saying, “Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me’.  Likewise after supper he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, ‘Drink from this all of you; for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for the many for the remission of sins.’

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. both knew the power of unearned suffering.  Gandhi adapted the ideas to win freedom for India, but did not accept Jesus’ promises of redemption for himself.  He rejected Christ … I believe to his own loss.

Martin Luther King also adapted the power of unearned suffering to bring freedom to black America.  King also saw the redemption Jesus won on the cross as something Jesus did for him.  King was able to write:

“More than ever before I am convinced of the reality of a personal God.  True, I have always believed in the personality of God.  But in the past the idea of a personal God was little more than a metaphysical category that I found theologically and philosophically satisfying.  Now it is a living reality that has been validated in the experiences of everyday life.  In the midst of lonely days and dreary nights I have heard an inner voice saying, “Lo, I will be with you.”  When the chains of fear and the manacles of frustration have all but stymied my efforts, I have felt the power of God transforming the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope. 

Do you have that same assurance of the presence and care of a loving God in your life.  The choice is yours; you too can either accept or reject the redemption Jesus won for us on the cross.  The choice is yours alone to make.  I believe there is no other way to find peace with God, than through the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.

·        It is only through Jesus’ suffering and death that we have peace with God.