If you aren't doing anything on Tuesday 29 June @8pm, Dr. Michael Ward is giving a free public lecture The Heavens Declare the Glory of God based on his book Planet Narnia.
I'd like to go, (I need to speak to the Milkybar_Kid first though! He knows who he is.)
If you would like to go, give me a shout, if I can make it, I am happy to provide free transport up to St Peter's College, Oxford and back on the night!
I'm not going because I have read all the Narnia books, but because C. S. Lewis had a very different way of looking at the world. A breath of fresh air when you live in the putrefying atmosphere of egocentric modernism.
Below is the video they have produced to bring us up to speed on where, with God's help, we as a movement have been and where, God-willing, we're going.
I was so stirred watching it. I love what they do with the arrows, and what those arrows represent! I love being part of a Jesus-centred movement like this one.
Just finished reading The Translator by Daoud Hari. 178 pages divided up into 27 bitesize chapters. It hasn't got any pictures! That's probably a good thing - not sure I could cope.
Here is the author himself:
In the book, he gives some beautiful cameos of life growing up in Darfur (which, I didn't know until reading, is a region twice the size of the UK):
Everyone has meaningful and interdependent relationships with the people who live on their doorstep.
Where we would race on our bikes, Daoud and his friends would race camels. Every camel has a unique hoof which acts like a number plate, so you can tell by the tracks who's been through town.
But when the chirping birds suddenly, inexplicably fell silent and flew away, they knew it was time for another game, a game of Hide and Seek and would run to the hills and wadis. However, in this version of the well loved children's classic, if they got caught by their pursuers (government or rebel soldiers), they were either killed, raped, kidnapped or taken away for torture and interrogation as their attackers sought to systematically wipe the indigenous people off the land. It's a horror I cannot begin to imagine.
Books like this are good for me. They remind me that fiction is a poor substitute for truth and how much of a strange bubble prosperous Western life is. How long til it bursts I wonder, and it will burst.
That the suffering brought by the Fall is more keenly felt by the rest of the world's population than by those, like me, who by Western birth, have been able to vaccinate themselves from many of the world's ills.
That when you have nothing left to lose, you can be much more single-minded about the pursuit of what's right. I don't care what people say about how accumulation of wealth is not evil per se (they are right) it handicaps us chronically, pure and simple. Whilst it may be morally acceptable for an athlete to run with a rucksack of rocks on his back, no athlete serious about taking the prize would entertain the thought. If he did, he would be thought a fool, not only by his mentor and peers, but also by those who turned up to watch him compete. All eyes are on the church. Oh that we might live up to what we have received and attained.
They remind me that the phrases: "Jesus is Lord" and "That no one comes to the Father except by him" must never be allowed to sink in my thinking to the level of trotted out cliché. Christ is still not named across vast swathes of continents encompassing millions of people. Sovereign grace means a Christian can sleep sound, but noteasy.
I'm going to Sudan this summer God-permitting to visit a friend from my church, Naomi, who is building a school out there. I look forward very much to meeting the people and hearing their stories. With God's help, I will leave with them something worth keeping.
You're welcome to borrow/have the book, just ask. :-)
I only noticed it the other day, when preparing a talk. The Old Testament revelation kicks off proper in Genesis 22 when a father lays his only son on wood and sacrifices him on a mountain. It then ends in 1 Kings 8 with God among his people, the people that he has given to Solomon, his wise king, in the land of their inheritance!
All of us are born curved in on ourselves, and thus bent on a hatred of the Truth, but the echo of the image of God in each of us means we still yearn for intelligible meaning from the complex universe in which we find ourselves birthed. We know we can't live in chaos, it's just impossible. Even the most ardent philosophical anarchists who rail against the rule of law admit the need of some level of interpersonal order built on a mutually agreed foundation of common sense.
We aren't Truth-seekers, but we are order-seekers.
Of course we all want truth (with a small "t"). We all want to know whodunit? Or, who sent us that Valentine's card? Or who ate all the leftover Banoffee in the fridge? Or how do we reform the Welfare State? Or how does a Bumble Bee fly? Or, how do we feed an expanding world population..? Or what will people think of me after I'm gone? But when it comes to Truth (with a capital T) we are less concerned. Yes, we all want to find a unifying principle (e.g.) and/or cause (e.g.) around which to organise our lives - for life is more predictable/meaningful then, but we aren't bothered about Truth so long as there's food on the table, something on TV and someone significant with whom to enjoy those things.
If we (and I definitely include me here) aren't careful, those of us who call ourselves Christians, can come to view Christ in this way - the genie who orders my world for me and helps me to make sense of it. We say we want Truth, but really we just want tidiness and order - God on our own terms running things how we want them to be run. We want him to feed us and fetch for us whilst we continue to stare at our navels.
Into this human/self centred preoccupation for tidiness and order, for me and my own, Jesus declares:
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.* For I have come to turn
" 'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -
a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
The Pursuit of The Truth is a wholly different enterprise, beyond anything we natural-born navel-gazers ordinarily understand.
The greatest miracle that God can do is to take an unholy person out of an unholy world, make that unholy person holy, put them back in an unholy world and keep them holy.
Washer's opening gambit "Jesus - the only expected person of history" is awesome to ponder - Psalm 139 is Christ speaking - not David or me. (Since when did David or you or I ever rise on the wings of the dawn?).
I'm not going because I have read all the Narnia books, but because C. S. Lewis had a very different way of looking at the world. A breath of fresh air when you live in the putrefying atmosphere of egocentric modernism.
God, this is awesome. Help me to be faithfully obedient, generous-hearted and open-handed, again! Amen.
If we (and I definitely include me here) aren't careful, those of us who call ourselves Christians, can come to view Christ in this way - the genie who orders my world for me and helps me to make sense of it. We say we want Truth, but really we just want tidiness and order - God on our own terms running things how we want them to be run. We want him to feed us and fetch for us whilst we continue to stare at our navels.
