The Journey (Ruth)

A refugee journey

(Based on the Bible book of Ruth, an ancestor of Jesus)



No rain. No rain. Still no rain.


Harvests failed. Hunger drove us out. We crossed borders looking for relief. We wanted only the simple dignity of earning a day's wage, of feeding our families. We trekked, dusty and worn.


I am Naomi. In my own language my name means joy. What irony that was to become.


Now I am weary and full of years, but at that time we were young and willing. We worked hard. We worked long hours doing the jobs they didn't want. We learned their language and customs. We made a home and a life. The day came when could arrange marriages for our sons. What a proud day. What a happy day.


Then the sickness came to our village. My husband's body, weak with hard labour, was quickly overcome. We wept deeply for our loss.


Our sons worked even harder. Their future was my hope. We kept saving for the weddings. We kept our heads high. More people died. Labour shortages. Work was harder but wages rose. Then disaster again knocked at our door. One son after the other was taken sick and died.


We were now 3 widows in one household. How could I, broken in health and heart, produce more sons to honour our promise to those two young women? I revoked their contract and gave them freedom to find new husbands. I decided to return to the land of my birth. Though little more than a beggar I needed to be among my own.


I sold what we had left to pay safe passage with a trading caravan. Well, I say safe. How safe has it ever been for women travelling alone? But it was a risk I had to take.


I said goodbye to the girls but they wouldn't let me go. Finally one agreed to return to her parents but Ruth held on to me. Stubbornly she begged me, "I will go with you. Your people will become my people, your God will become my God."


In my grey mood I said some hard things to her. I told her there would be only shame waiting for us, returning with no working men and no foreign money. But still she came. She hung on to this dried up depressed shell of a woman. She made me eat when food felt like dust in my mouth. She made me walk when all I wanted was to curl up and die too. She trusted in my God, whose very name I was cursing in my despair.


We came to the land of my ancestors. Old friends and family shook their heads when they saw me. When they greeted us I said "Don't call me Naomi, joy. My new name is Mara, bitterness. I have gone sour with grief." There was no welcome party. We had brought no honour in our homecoming.


According to the customs of my land, laid down by our God in his laws, the poor must be provided for. They harvest round field edges, grain left standing for this purpose. We call our God "The Living God" because although we have times and places for meeting him, we can't confine him to them. He hates when the weak are neglected and oppressed. He shows himself to be full of grace and compassion, slow to anger and completely reliable in his love. He gives legal rights even to women, foreigners and those in need, a rarity in my day and age.


So Ruth went to work in the field of a relative of my late husband. Being a good man, Boaz instructed his workers to leave her extra grain, to make sure she was unharmed and to give food to her. In time, in order to provide for us fully he negotiated to take her as his wife. I could give him no bridal gift but according to our laws if she marries a family member he can take over some ancestral land in my late husband's name so we brought him a blessing and our honour was restored.


Now, finally settled in her new land, Ruth gave birth to a son. More honour. I had not smiled since my loss in that distant place. I had journeyed in deep depression. When dear Ruth put the baby in my arms, at long last I laughed and sobbed all at once. I was flooded with joy and hope for the future. Our God had rescued me from distress and shame through the faithfulness of this young woman. May his name be praised.

The Lord's Prayer for the Very Worn

The Lord's Prayer for the Very Worn

Not me trying to think up something clever, this is how I pray. I'm too weary or muddle headed to think what to say, or even feel'like saying anything, so I go for wheat Jesus said to say, that's good enough for me. But if I just recite it my brain will be elsewhere by line 2 so I try to say it like I feel I can be more simple or at least in a way that makes me think about what it's saying. So it comes out different every time. 

Just come sit with me a moments quiet. I like to just feel myself listen a little moment and catch a couple of breaths.

Dear Father God, somehow both not tied down by our human limitations yet fully understanding them. You're really special to us regardless of what our feelings are or aren't doing today. 

We can't begin to understand how you'd do it, but we want your kingdom to come and your will to be done in our little time and space bubble, however limited it seems to us it still counts, whatever hills and valleys we go through today. Please give us the strength and clarity of thought to be able to make any key decisions if needed and the courage to be able to say no and yes, to understand your will as much as we need to for today. 

Please provide for us and our nearest and dearest, we throw and chuck our burdens onto you because you've said that you care or us. Thank you. 💕

We invite you into our thought lives today. We're not asking to have no pain but we really want the grace to be able to forgive and receive forgiveness. 

Please protect and strengthen us, we are weak and vulnerable even on the days we feel full of it, let alone how we are now. Please help us to find comfort in healthy ways and places. Give us the strength to be able to stand against the evil one and having done all, to stand. Is armour uncomfortable in bed ? Maybe not yours. May your peace, utterly incomprehensible given the circumstances, keep our hearts and minds in the love and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I find it so hard to grasp about your kingship, some times everything seems on the surface so out of control, but I believe and continue to hang on to the fact that 

* you have the authority to do what you think best, 

* you have the power and the wherewithall to get it done, 

and 

* you will get the credit you deserve, glory to you King Jesus.

I agree most wholeheartedly. 

"Healing Miracles"

The Wind Blows Where It Wills

I've been thinking about the words of Jesus, "The wind blows where ever it pleases" (John 3v8), saying that the work of the spirit can't be put into our preconceived boxes. God can make someone born again, even if they're elderly. Not the traditional jewish way of going about things, poor old Nicodemus.

I've been thinking about this tendancy of God in the context of praying for healing. I spent many years in "charismatic" and "pentecostal" type churches where there can be an approach to this that is at the time both enthusiastic but also narrow.  It helps me to understand the limitations of this as compared with the whole breadth of God's working as displayed in the bible to realise that although God never leaves prayer unheared and he doesn't do nothing, but even by having faith we can't dictate to God how to act for the best. For the sake of simplicity I've called it all healing miracles but it's an intentionally loose and perhaps willingly provocative use of the term. 


I learned to sail with my brother when i was a kid. We had a little boat, a Mirror dingy to be precise. You have to keep looking at the little pennant at the top of the mast all the time to see the wind direction, then you move the sail and the rudder accordingly. Similarly there is always a wind sock at airports. Pilots need to be able to read the wind strength and direction. So too we need to keep our spirits sensitive to watch for the wind of the spirit (or listen for the voice of the shepherd to change picture). He doesn't do things just to rules, but to needs. He sees a much bigger picture than we do.

"The gifts of the spirit are for all those who have need" 1 Corinthians 12.

* God may do a healing miracle. Disease is banished, death is prevented for the time being.

* God could also do a setting free from fear of death miracle so we can depart in peace when our end does have to come. Our end of life story, even if untimely, makes a fitting hem to the garment that was our earthly existance and the memory we leave behind.

* God may do a giving family/friends/neighbours the time and will miracle so they look after their sick one (although I have questions about the theology and possibility of divine coercion as such, perhaps prompting would be a better word). I suspect that this is what those weakened by age, disease or disability dream of most. None of us would want to be a nuisance, but most would cherish the loving, loyal, thoughtful help of a trusted human being. We're designed to trigger the release of all sorts of helpful hormones when we have even seemingly trivial ammounts of contact with others, it's an amazing mutual healing system if only we access it. Loneliness, feelings of abandonment or betrayal can render a difficult or painful life far far worse than it needed to be. Likewise, even small gestures of sharing the burden of caring can help avoid the damage that can be done to lone helpers.

* God might do a provision of medication, equipment or a trained health worker miracle. All the financial provision as well as suitable and just administration that are links in this chain.

* God may act by a getting someone to study, research, find a cure, get it into production at an affordable price and find a sponsor to pay for it all miracle.

* God may give a word of knowledge or wisdom miracle to provide insight into the cause of the disease so that it can be halted or prevented.

* God may instigate a repentance miracle so abuse or neglect cease. He may also stir up communities and law makers to institute justice and protection and provision for the vulnerable. 

* God may do an inner healing miracle so that self neglect or abuse habits are replaced by a healthier inner life.

* God may do a forgiveness miracle so that bitterness no longer eats at our health. He may also stir us up to provide adequate justice so that victims may have healing recognition and compensation.

* God may provide story tellers and educators who can dispel superstitions, prevent ostracism, expose and avoid exploitation of those in need, enable public health guidlines, hygiene, quarantine. These too have miraculous effects.

Same sicknesses, all get a desired miracle effect. No "one size fits all" solutions, all perfectly tailored to us if we listen and don't hurry to give hasty easy answer advice. 

I have observed and experienced the beneficial effects of prayer, both public and privateand seen God at work. The power and strengthening of his presence with me has been such a consolation and reassurance. I have also experienced the blessing of Christians loving and giving, practical acts which to me are no less spiritual or miraculous. Likewise social justice as well as charitable movements that led to things like the foundation of hospitals, (let alone much worse things than simple illness, like prison reform, anti-slavery etc) It seems to me such action is ordered in the bible just as much as working in the supernatural, if not more so, the different approaches working hand in hand. 

I have observed that in Christian circles we can do a lot of damage if we try to force the gameplan for one person onto someone else just because their circumstances appear to us to be similar. God knows what ignorant and thoughtless attitudes some people have had to cope with in the name of well meaningness not deliberate malice ! I saw my friend publicly humiliated by a preacher praying for her knees and wanting to get out of her wheelchair and walk. She was gracious about it afterwards, but as she said to me, "Liz, these knees are plastic, I don't know what he was expecting." Of course that's an extreme example. I don't want us to stop praying for healing, I'm still an all out fan despite not having had "the biggie". 

So what "miracle" do I want ? If you're praying for my family what should you ask for ?

Of course I'd love for my daughters and I to be well and to be able to resume a normal life, but there are other, bigger things I'm holding out for. When people have said they'll pray for us to be healed I'd have loved them to ask God what quite to pray, what might be asked of them, or maybe if I'm thinking cynically, I think that's what some might be avoiding. I know how scary hearing about us, the chronically sick, can be. We can be taken to represent everyone's nightmare scenario, huge loss or pain but with out the cut off point of an operation or the release of death (even if we see that as the ultimate failure instead of an ultimate healing).

I believe my generation has to seek for public health measures to deal with the epidemic of this neurological disease which has been variously labelled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephomyelitis, Fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, Post Viral Syndrome, Psychosomatisation, and who knows what other coinfections, bodily and emotional damage are implicated too. I want proper biomedical research to find treatments. I want the public denunciation of the charlatans who have taken advantage of the vulnerable to further their careers and fortunes, for them to be deposed from their positions of power and replaced by responsible and iintelligent medics and public servants. I want adequate training for professionals, support for carers, understanding for the sick, allowance for convalescence, public education for prevention measures. 

"Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer."

NB Some of these works may take more than one generation to fulfill. For so many instant wish fulfillment isn't an option, even in the context of a "miracle believing" church. However some of us have the amazing "luck" to have been born into a time and place where many of our wants are gratified. We eat our fill, several times a day, a balanced and interesting diet. We have access to pain relief, antibiotics, radiotherapy, the list is endless. Many of us have a truly remarkable life expectancy. We're very rich, in relative terms. In attributing some things to miracles, to direct divine intervention, I'm not wanting to rule out human endeavour, rather the opposite. Maybe the sort of public health and social structure issues adressed in the old testament, if wisely applied of course, could contribute substantially to the general health of a community. For example the levitical instructions for contageous diseases all include quarantine and washing, checking with an impartial official who is paid on a prorata rate per intervention not on it's outcome. For example the tradition of gleaning, leaving the edges of a harvest for the destitute to collect. For example the legal obligation to give every man, woman, child, foreigner, even slaves one full day in seven as rest, plus public holidays and to leave land fallow at least one in seven years. 

Maybe humble hearts, grateful attitudes and thoughtful tongues could contribute significantly to our well being and a fruitful prayer life. 

Back to prayer, although i don't feel I quite left it...

one another

one another.

been thinking some thoughts.

it's not original but i've never heard it preached on - the "to one another" s. 

the list i saw some years ago had 35 verses noted on it. it's all the things that we should do for each other, how we should relate to one another." be devoted to one another in brotherly love, honour one another above yourselves" for example.

my starting point in my thinking lately has been the obvious  new commandment - "that you love one another as i have loved you". i've only just got why it's a new commandment cos the summary of the law, the old commandment is love too. but that was  to love your neighbour as you love yourself, this is to love as christ loves. whew ! i did make the link a while back tho that when paul reminds husbands to love their wives he's only repeating the instruction that's given to everyone but maybe husbands need more reminding to do it for their wives. also the guideline for wives to submit to/respect their husbands is a repeat of the word given to everyone a verse earlier - "submit to one another out of reverence for christ" !! He isn't asking us to do anything extra for our partners than what he asks us to do for others in a sense - just we need extra reminding to do it for a spouse :-) (and the parents/elderly and bosses) very confusing tho having the title stuck before the submit verse rather than after it.

i associate the love one another idea with dribbly choruses in the charismatic renewal and having to hold hands with strangers in meetings - but somehow this is fellowship/koinonia that includes and goes beyond the get together/eklesia. maybe the realities of it makes holding hands with strangers seem positively preferable for us relationally challenged europeans.

reading the letters by john,  the special friend, i was struck by what sounds like an elderly man repeating over and over in desperation for someone to listen and not lose the heart of the good news - love love love. this is a highly participatory activity that can't be accomplished in rows of people who have no eye contact with anyone and go home without talking to anyone. obviously there's the place for the big. but maybe a shortage of the middlin' and the small. i was "friends" for a while with a woman in the states on fb who was going through a bad time and then just after moving house had her purse stolen and had no cash to get her through to the end of the month. i asked her had she mentioned it at church - she said there are 3000 people in my church, you can't. I put some euros in an envelope with a little card for her which gave her the money to buy gasoline to get to work every day and to get to her mothers for the rest of the month. someone from her church must at least have seen her fb entries - or maybe not ? i would happily queue up and go to a huge church to hear people teach but i wouldn't call it fellowship. don't get me wrong, it wasn't sacrificial giving, just a little bit of spare, but it made me want to cry that a little sick nobody a thousand miles away was able to spot what was needed and no one near enough to be able to give her a hug as well. you didn't need to be clairvoyant to understand her fb post !


i was struck some years ago too about the inclusiveness of paul's practical instructions in 1 corinthians - in each set of instructions from ch 10 onwards there's the words each, every or all ! this is life, this is how the good news works. i don't like the instruction manual image very much as i feel it gives too much of a mechanical, put your money in the slot and you'll get a can of coke automatic feel to something which is obviously much more organic. but here i feel it's appropriate. there are all these clear instructions - this is what you do - "bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of christ" "speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" "encourage one another and all the more as the day approaches" "forgive one another as God has forgiven you in Christ" "sharing with one another as each had need" - and that's just a few i can remember-ish by heart

bodies need skeletons - eklesia, structure appointments, other wise we'd never do anything, but they also need flesh koinonia - being built together, every ligament etc (ephesians)

A story : 'Help'

'Help'

Wild briars whipped at his legs, but Dimitri didn't notice. Eyes fixed on the road he scrambled into his hidden look-out point. He'd heard the news. His cousin had rushed up to tell his father. There'd been a riot. That would mean new prisoners. 

Dimitri lived with his parents and his brothers and sisters in a little house next to the jail. Jailer was a poorly paid and little respected job. His father often spoke of getting another job. Well he talked about it. Dimitri didn't know what the jail looked like inside.  He'd looked in once but ran away sick with the smell and the noise.

They were coming up the hillside out of town. The Guard, only two prisoners, and the usual curious crowd. Dimitri ducked as he saw his father anxiously came out to meet them. He was always living on his nerves, terrified in-case a prisoner escaped, then he would be executed. Dimitri had learned to duck quickly if his father lashed out when he was like that. He'd have to keep the little ones quiet at supper.

That night Dimitri was restless. He had slept but something had woken him. It was the quiet. There was no shouting or moaning in the cells next-door. Just the sound of singing. It sent shivers up his spine.

Dimitri stood in the rubble that had been his house. The babies were crying. Everyone was shouting. His mother was desperately counting children. His father was oblivious of them all. He was shrieking and waving a knife. Dimitri stared his eyes wide, less worried about the earth quake than by the hysterical behaviour of his father. He'd never seen him this bad before. His father was going to kill himself. Dimitri tried to make his legs move but he was rooted to the spot.

Then a voice called out clearly amongst the debris that had been the jail.

"Don't harm your self, we're all here."

The Jailer called for called for lights and rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. The prisoners were walking around, their chains had fallen off them.

"What must I do to be saved?"

They replied : "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved - you and your household."

We don't know what became of Dimitri and his brothers and sisters. We don't even know his real name. The last we hear is that the jailer at Philippi washed and fed his prisoners, they were all baptised and "the whole family was filled with joy, because they had come to believe in God."

Many children have lived in de-humanising poverty, witnessed trauma, or their parents in distress. The love of God is for whole families. If you identified with that child, but didn't have the help you needed at the time, I believe it's never too late to experience the healing hand of Jesus so that we can avoid passing on our chaos to a further generation.

From Acts chapter 16

The Stink

The Stink

This was going to be the smelliest ever of smells.

Dennis the Menace and his faithful mutt, Gnasher, crouched down behind the shed. Dennis gingerly opened his sports bag. It held every single bottle of his Mum's perfumes. He took out a pair of slippers and started to pour the perfume onto them. 

"We're going to put the biggest smell in the world onto Dad's slippers " he said to Gnasher, "then we'll be able to whiff whenever he's coming and run away. Hee hee !"

"Gneee ! Gnash ! " replied Gnasher. 

Little did our mischievous friend realise - the drips he was getting on himself were going to tell his Dad exactly what was going on !!

In the ancient song Psalm 133 it says : "How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It's like the precious oil poured on Aaron's head, running down his beard and onto his garment." Aaron would never forget the day of his commissioning as a priest. You can hear one of his sons watching the ceremony saying in his head as he sees the oil dripping - 

"Me' Mam'll kill 'im. It wont come out in the wash." 

Every time he put on his priestly robes the oil stain would still be giving off it's powerful fragrance.

What marks us out ? Do we have the fragrance of Christ ? "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples - if you have love for one another." Is it noticeable that we are followers of Jesus by our acts of kindness and thoughtfulness?

from Psalm 133 and John ...

A story : "Friends Reunited"

The Reunion

The traveller pulled his cloak more tightly round him. The chill morning mist was lifting. They'd be landing soon.

Stepping swiftly down the gang-plank. Dodging the waving arms selling carpets, bread, scarves, fruit. Picking out a lad to carry his modest luggage and to show the way. Walking briskly through the town, the rich fragrances, the odour of spiced stews, the smell of too many donkeys and too many people in too little space. Entering a courtyard. The boy took his coin and left.

The Master was with a customer. With a flurry of unfamiliar courtesy the stranger was seated and brought hot sweet tea. He sipped his drink and brushed away any last minute doubts about what he had come to do.

Paul bid farewell to his customer. He turned and with a cry of delight recognised his old friend Barnabus ...

All those years of setting up his business. Years of stability. Did he want to give it up to go back on the road, back to the mission? Did he want to give up well earned comfort and a successful business to get back in harness, face so many new challenges,  found and train excitable new churches, the good news to be brought through thick and thin? 

And who of us with maturing years will step up to new marks, bring the experience of years to join with the enthusiasm of pioneering the new ...