LICC - Word for the Week - God in History

Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. For I am rousing the Chaldeans. Habakkuk 1:5

Habakkuk’s prayer that God should do something about Israel’s violence and injustice was answered. But not in the way he expected. The revelation that God was working out his purposes in history by rousing the Chaldeans, brutal and ruthless conquerors, astonished and shocked him. As far as Habakkuk was concerned, God was not supposed to work with the unrighteous. ‘Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, so why are you silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?’ (1:13)

We may believe very strongly that God is actively involved in our world, both in the larger histories of peoples and cultures, as well as in the little local difficulties of our individual lives. But however strong that belief, it is often difficult to see just where and how God is at work. Like Habakkuk, we have to acknowledge that God is indeed active, but not as we expect and not as we, in our heart of hearts, would always wish.

Is a calm sea for the evacuation of troops from the beaches an act of God? Then why not a more decisive intervention at an earlier point? An individual sees God in action when he misses the plane that crashed. But what about the others who were killed?

We need the humility to say that we cannot always see where God is at work. Looking back in faith, we may see his purposes accomplished in surprising ways, in our own lives as well as in the bigger movements of history. But we know that he is patient, not necessarily intervening to prevent the uncomfortable consequences of the fallen nature of our world, because those consequences may bring people to their knees in repentance.

When we cannot see where or how he is at work, we trust that he does indeed know what is best. In the midst of a very mixed bag of life experiences, we are required, in the words of another prophet, ‘to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God’. One day we will see the whole picture and understand his perfect dealings with humanity.

Margaret Killingray

LICC - Word for the Week - Surprised by joy

Monday, October 24, 2005 11:16 AM

The fruit of the Spirit is joy, Gal.5:22. You welcomed the message with the
joy given by the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes.1:6

How would we define the experience of becoming a Christian? "Surprised by
joy" is how C.S.Lewis described it. The Thessalonians, who welcomed the
message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit, experienced it as deliverance
from fear and bondage. They "turned to God from idols, to serve the living
and true God" (v.9). What an exchange - the dead and false for the living
and true! Along with conviction of the futility of their past life, the Holy
Spirit gave these new believers joy.

This joy was no ephemeral thing, no frothy emotionalism. It sustained the
Thessalonians through the persecution that followed their acknowledgment of
Christ. And it issued in an extraordinary change of behaviour. Their lives
were characterised by practical love. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul
commended the churches of Macedonia (of which the Thessalonian church was
one) that "out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and extreme
poverty welled up in rich generosity", and they gave, far beyond their
means, to help the famine-stricken Christians in Jerusalem. I wonder whether
joy is a missing element in our churches, or in our individual lives, today.
Perhaps our culture is to blame. Comfortable agnostics may not find
conversion such a radical change as the exchange of the dead and false for
the living and true. Or maybe we have so many other support systems that
putting our faith in Christ is simply adding one more to our portfolio.

But Christian faith and life are still as radically different from that of
the surrounding culture. We have been transferred from darkness to light,
from the emptiness of seeking our fulfilment in material things and the
opinions of others to fullness of purpose, security and identity as children
of our heavenly Father. Some cause for joy! This joy, which is the fruit of
the Spirit, then enables us, as those who have found a priceless treasure,
to stand up and be counted, in our daily life and work, in spite of
opposition and ridicule. And it spills over in energy, love and an almost
reckless generosity.

Helen Parry

http://www.licc.org.uk

LICC - Connecting With Culture - Wishful Thinking

28 October 2005 10:37

My wife and I drove past a rather nasty local pub recently. "I wish they'd
bulldoze it," she sighed. "It's horrible." Three hours later, it had burned
to the ground. No one was hurt - and, thankfully, my wife had an alibi.

This week, Alex McKie made the headlines (in the Independent, at least) by
inviting us all to make three wishes. She set up the 'Three Wishes Project'
in memory of her late sister, and has been travelling the country to
discover what's on our hearts. Her only instructions are: (1) Wish for
yourself (even if you also wish well for others), (2) follow your heart's
desire (your head may mislead you) and (3) be specific and definite (you're
more likely to notice when your wish has come true - or if, indeed, it
already has). Many people use their first wish to give them limitless
powers (we've all done it), but McKie is hoping to generate more realistic
dreams which, she believes, we'll begin to fulfil once we verbalise them.

Many replies have been moving and revealing.'To find a man who makes me
laugh and start a family with him; to do my job the best I can always; to be
happy' says a lady, 29, from the south-west. 'A
house in Glastonbury; a gentle death; a clear, incremental decrease in
materialism' suggests a man, 48, from the south-east. Another woman sums up
how many of us perhaps feel: 'to be in a romantic, loving relationship; to
be fulfilled in my job; to identify the skills that I really have and
develop them to their full potential'.

There's a fine line, surely, between wishing and praying. And not all our
wishes or prayers are necessarily well motivated. The Bible warns us
frequently to flee our 'evil desires' (2 Timothy 2.22; Colossians 3.5). Yet
Psalm 37 declares: 'Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the
desires of your heart.' God is no genie, thankfully. But if we seek what he
wants first, we'll have a better idea, surely, of what we should wish for
ourselves and for others. McKie's question remains a good one, nevertheless.
If you did have three wishes, what would they be? You can't do much about
them until you know...

In the meantime, however, a gentle word from my wife: be careful what you
wish for.

Brian Draper

Tell us your wishes here!!

NOOMA

Have seen a Home Group teaching DVD from NOOMA. Was pretty good, so pay
their site a visit and have a look around. Biblical teaching using 21st
century methods.

Click here for NOOMA

Blessings and peace

Your Call (Conceivably by JRW Stott)

Your call is clear, cold centuries across;
You bid me follow You, and take my cross,
and daily lose myself, myself deny,
and stern against myself shout `Crucify'

My stubborn nature rises to rebel
against You call. proud choruses of hell
unite to magnify my restless hate
of servitude, lest I capitulate

The world, to see my cross, would pause and jeer
I have no choice, but to persevere
to save myself - and follow You from far
more slow than Magi - for I have no star

And yet You call me still. Your cross
eclipses mine, transforms the bitter loss
I thought that I would suffer if I came
to You - into immeasurable gain

I kneel before You, Jesus, crucified
my cross is shouldered and my self denied
I'll follow daily, closely, not refurse
for love of You and man myself to lose

Poem by Ephraem of Syria, 4th century

Child of Bethlehem
What contrasts You embrace
No one has ever been so humble
No one has ever wielded such power
We stand in awe of Your holiness
And yet we are bathed in Your love.

And where shall we look for You
You were in high heaven In the glory of the godhead
Yet those who search for You on earth
Found You in a tiny baby at Mary's breast
We came in hushed reverance to find You as God
and You welcome us as man.

We come unthinkingly to find You as man
and are blinded by the light of Your Godhead
You are the heir to David's throne
But You renounced all of his royal splendour.
Of all his luxurious bedrooms,
you chose a stable.

Of all his magnificent beds,
you chose a feeding trough.
Of all his golden chariots, you chose an ass.
Never was there a king like you!
Instead of royal isolation,
you made yourself available to everyone who needed you.

Instead of high security,
you made yourself vulnerable to those who hated you.
It is we who need you, above anything in the world.
You give yourself to us with such total generosity,
that it might almost seem that you need us.
There was never a king like this before!

LICC - Connecting with Culture - The science of aliens

Have you ever seen a skywhale? It's a rather beautiful animal, over five metres long and weighing 600kg, which glides slowly on thermals above pagoda forests. How about a gulphog? That's more frightening - a 500kg predatorthat lives in stinger-fan forests and can run at 60kph.

If the answer is no - and it will be - it'll be because they (probably) don't exist. That, however, has not stopped the Science Museum from exploring what they, and other alien life forms, might look like, in its exhibition the Science of Aliens, which opened in London last week. Alien life has long been an established feature of our fears and fictions. But the exhibition goes further by inventing two planets, Aurelia and Blue Moon, and imagining what life on them might look like. Alongside skywhales and gulphogs, we see six-legged mudpods, microscopic hysterias and thousand-metre pagoda trees. If some of these wonderfully strange aliens also seem strangely familiar, it's for a reason. Wherever it might evolve, life will face similar problems and invariably converge on similar solutions. There are, after all, only so manyways of (for instance) seeing and flying.

Despite the breathtaking variety of life on Earth - and the exhibition reminds us that our planet is home to creatures at least as strange as those on Aurelia - there is order within the apparent chaos, a balance between freedom and necessity so exquisite that you can almost hear the morning stars singing together in celebration of it. The Science of Aliens is, of course, a work of imagination. Yet, as is so often the case, it is our imagination that inspires us and orients us towards our Creator. Perhaps it is that which underlies those inspiring, frustrating chapters at the end of the book of Job. When God speaks, we want an answer to Job's questions. We want logic, reasoning, analysis. Instead, we get questions and we get wonder. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am? Where were you whenI laid Aurelia's foundations? Can you make a pet of the skywhale?

Nick Spencer

LICC - Word for the Week - Wrestling with God

LICC - word for the week - wrestling with God

How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to
you, 'Violence!' but you do not save? There is strife and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails. Habakkuk 1:1-4

Habakkuk was inspired to write a psalm. (Not all the psalms in the Old Testament are in the book of psalms.) His praise psalm of deep faith and trust in the Lord God forms the third and final chapter of the 'oracle' he received. But chapters one and two show us how he came to write it through an honest dialogue with God, asking the questions he wanted sorted before hecommitted himself to true and trusting worship.

His psalm, his prayer, came from an active, on-going debate in which he tried to come to terms with what he knew of God's character and sovereignty - and the state of the world around him. He faced the enormity of disintegrating societies, caused, perhaps in part by natural calamities, drought, famine, hurricane and earthquake, but also made worse by human failure and wickedness, inefficiency and apathy. Habakkuk echoed the personal despair felt by some of the psalmists - 'Will you forget me for ever?' (Psalm 13:1) - and the outrage of the prophets at the injustice and discrimination meted out to the poor by the rich and powerful within thecovenant people of God.

Some of us are tempted to retreat into a spiritual comfort zone and to turn our backs on unpleasant realities, so that 'the things of earth grow strangely dim'. When questioned, we are sometimes driven to produce glib responses about God's timing, God's love and God's judgment instead of facing up to what can happen to faith and trust in the midst of suffering and gross injustice. But Habakkuk shows us that a passionate debate - a cry
of protest and complaint - is also part of a legitimate life of prayer. We should not be 'otherworldly' when we pray, for we are deeply embedded in this world and need to carry the indignation and confusion of that involvement to the Lord. How could it be otherwise? Jesus, in the midst of bloody and noisy injustice, also cried out 'Must I call for help, but you do not listen?'- but in the words of another psalm.

Margaret Killingray

LICC - Connecting with Culture - National Giving Week

I used to cross the road to avoid beggars. These days, however, with 'charity muggers' (those hardy folk with clipboards and a permanent smile who ask, "Sir, do you have a moment to help starving children?") clogging our streets, I'd rather risk having to buy a cup of tea for a tramp. All of which persuades me that I've still some way to go to live up to the immortal words of Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Here's a question for the next charity fund-raising quiz night: Which Gospel recordsJesus saying this? A: None. Paul cites the words in Acts 20.35.)

Jesus' dictum implies that there is blessing in both giving and receiving, and some of us, perhaps, need to learn the art of receiving graciously, as well as giving abundantly. But giving remains the priority in a world of such obvious need. The Bible exhorts us at almost every turn to be generous to the poor, and reminds us that if we give to those who need our help, then we're giving to the Lord. How generous are we - really - towards the God who gave us so much in the first place, and forgave us the greatest of debts? Charitable giving has, perhaps surprisingly in our buoyant economy, fallen over the last 10 years by a staggering 25 per cent. That's why, presumably, the Charities Aid Foundation has declared next week 'National Giving Week' - to encourage us to give more, to plan our giving more carefully and to makeit more tax-efficient.

Giving to charity can be like trying to heal cancer with a sticking plaster. We still have to fight the systems that perpetuate the gap between rich and poor. But if we're not careful, we can end up neither giving nor fighting, leaving it all instead to the few who, through their generosity of spirit, can truly be bothered. Next week is a chance to re-consider how much we give, to whom and how regularly. We might also think about what else we can offer - such as our time or our talent. But as we seek, daily, to turn our faith into action, we cannot let the charity mugger be our sole inspiration for crossing to the other side of the road. God loves a cheerful giver. Freely we have received; freely, then, we should give it a try.

Brian Draper

LICC - Word for the Week - Love is...

LICC - Word for the Week - Love is...

The fruit of the Spirit is love. Galatians 5:22

Everybody, it seems, is searching for love - longing to be loved, longing to find someone to love. But what a muddle we get into when we try to pin down what we mean by love. It all springs out of our human need for relationship - for acceptance, for affection, for companionship, as well as for that most elusive thing, the experience of being "in love".

C.S.Lewis, in his useful book The Four Loves, distinguishes affection, friendship and eros (romantic sexual love) from the love that is the essence of the character of God (1 John 4:8). This is the love that Paul describes as patient and kind, not envious, boastful, proud, rude or self-seeking, not easily angered and keeping no record of wrongs (1 Cor.13: 4-5).

Sadly, in our increasingly fragmented society, there are many Christians who miss out on eros - the love that will ideally lead to marriage. It is deeply unhelpful to tell single members of our churches that all they need is Jesus. The whole Bible speaks of the importance of living, human community, and, for those who cannot find, or cannot fulfil, eros, the need for affection and friendship is crucial. In fact, we all yearn for the helping hand, the friendly hug, the eye to eye communication, the shared joke, the sociable meal.

But somehow we just don't have it in us to love everyone equally, either in our churches or in our workplaces. We have such different personalities, backgrounds and ways of doing things. The love that is the fruit of the Spirit, however, transcends our human likes and dislikes, and also transcends the affection and friendship we have for particular people: it both embraces these and goes far beyond them. For, Jesus said, this love can extend even to our enemies
So in the church there is no excuse for some people feeling excluded and unloved. We must plead with the Holy Spirit who lives in us to give us Jesus' love for everyone. And this includes our colleagues at work and everyone else we meet in our everyday lives. Some people may seem to us unlovely, but nobody is unlovable.

Helen Parry

LICC - Word for the Week - Love is forgiveness

'The fruit of the Spirit is love', Galatians 5:22.

'Love covers over a multitude of sins', 1 Peter 4:8

We all know that love is to be the distinctive mark of the Christian living. But how can we bring ourselves to love people who have deeply hurt or abused us? Or, indeed, people who continue to hurt or abuse us? Perhaps this is the hardest thing that God ever asks us to do.

Jesus' teaching is clear - that we should love our enemies, bless those who curse us and pray for those who ill-treat us (Luke 6:27-28). But before we consider how we can do this, we should perhaps ask Why? Why should I, the one who has been wronged, who has been damaged or diminished, love the person who has done this to me?

Well, first, because Jesus, whom we humans wronged and spurned, loved us first. So we cannot grow close to him while resentment and bitterness stops up in us the spring of love for others. And second, because resentment and bitterness eats us up. It haunts our waking, disturbs our sleeping, and lurks round corners jumping out on us suddenly when we least expect it. It distorts our judgment, hinders our spontaneity and impregnates us with those most unattractive twins - self-righteousness and self-pity.

But how can we bridge the chasm between bitterness and love? The first step is forgiveness. Martin Luther King wrote: "We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. Whoever is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love". Part of forgiveness is the will to forgive - the resolve to banish the sense of injured innocence that we may secretly cherish. Even to articulate the words "I forgive her" through clenched teeth is a start. But the forgiveness that truly liberates, and makes way for love, is only the fruit of the Spirit.

Whether the person who has wronged me belongs to my distant past, or daily sits beside me in the office or opposite me at the breakfast table, please,Holy Spirit, nurture in my life that love that covers a multitude of sins.

Helen Parry