Tag: Christianity

Some wise words from the Trevin Wax blog today:

I came across a blog run by Community Church Derby — about which I know nothing — here.  The blog is a set of daily thoughts on Psalm 23, for Lent. 

The item for Sunday 18th March struck me particularly:

Sunday 18th March ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and staff they comfort me.’

God, our Shepherd, wants to guide us. The question is will we allow him to guide us? Will we allow him to be our compass, our reference point in life? Christianity is not a system of beliefs that we choose to sign up to the try our best to live up to, it’s a call to a radical new way of life which involves making a daily decision to allow God, our Shepherd to lead us and give our life direction, meaning and purpose.

The Sheep: Pray for someone you know who is self-employed and for those who work mostly alone during the day, maybe in the home. Pray against feelings of loneliness and that they would know God’s presence with them in the hours of work.

There are a lot of lonely people out there, you know.  There are a lot of people also, whose work prevents them from really meeting people, even if they sit in an office.  I’ve encountered a number of these over the last couple of months, and I have been struck by how alone most people are. 

Giving our life meaning, seeking every day God’s will in our decisions … what does this mean, in practice?  Or do we just drift on, doing what we always do, and asking for His help only in crises?  The answer, surely, will differ for each of us.  We can, at least, all ask God how He wants us to play this.

Note that the church in question uses “radical” in its proper sense, of returning to the root (radix) of Christian teaching in the New Testament.

An old college friend died a couple of years ago.  I only found out a week or so ago, when I did something that I never do — I logged into Friends Reunited.  A menu highlighted that someone that I knew at college had a page, and it was him.

The page was written by him.  It discussed his life, and gave his thoughts about it.  And then someone had added a note at the bottom with news of his death.

The page made rather sad reading.  His career evidently never went anywhere, and then he gave it up and took a series of short-term jobs, unsuited to a man of his abilities.

This man was an Oxford graduate.  He was brighter than I am, and was in the year above me at college, doing the same subject.  We were, in some ways, very similar people, and I got on well with him. 

In imagination I can still see his window in the Rose Lane Annex.  It was often lit late at night.  I remember going up to see him, at some late hour, as students do, and finding him playing LP’s of Russian composers — he introduced me to Shostakovich — and drinking strange teas.  The one I remember looked more like logwood chippings than tea!  We would discuss politics, in which we were both active, although he was slightly more right-wing than myself.

He had grown up among Christians.  He owned a number of Graham Kendrick LP’s, which I took care to copy.  His parents were simple folk, delighted to have so intelligent a son. 

But he had rejected Christ at some point before I knew him.  I remember him complaining about the Christian Union at college — made up of the brightest that England could produce, remember — that it was not intellectual enough.  He said that he had been along to a bible study, and that he and another would discuss the Greek of the passage, while everyone else looked blank.

But I also remember learning something else about him.  There was a debate in the Union, and I spoke, somewhat ineptly, against the newly fashionable promotion of unnatural vice.  To my surprise he got up — we were sitting together — and spoke for it.  Later he told me that he had become a homosexual.  I didn’t throw him out — indeed I couldn’t really believe it, and tended to treat the profession as one of his eccentricities — but it was odd.  In time he went down from college, as we all did, and I saw him no more.  I kept in contact for a couple of years, but then lost contact with him, and with others of my time at college.

The page makes clear that he never married.  It contains what is perhaps the saddest phrase I ever saw:

I have no children (that I know of).

What self-inflicted emptiness lies behind those words!  I fear that, before I knew him, he came up to college and Satan drew him into sin, to reject Christ, and then on into unnatural vice, thereby cutting him off from everyone.  I remember him saying that he could no longer relate to his parents, in times of trouble.

Now he is dead.  He died at 48 (I think), alone.  What sort of life did he have?  Not much, from the look of it.  Yet he was a marvellous creation of God’s, a “character” in the best sort of way, one that Dickens would have delighted to draw.

He was a decent chap, I always felt, and yet, on the face of it, he lived a miserable life and died without God.  Who can doubt his damnation?  His life was empty.  He neither made himself happy, nor did what God asked.  Poor soul! 

Let us hope that I am wrong, and that, before he died, he repented and turned back to God. 

It is a sobering warning to us all, to take heed of ourselves.  This is not a rehearsal.  This is not play-acting.  This life … this is it.  Either turn to God, or lose even what we think we choose instead.

Over the last few days, I have been reading life lessons: life-changing stories for christian growth, ed. Glenn Myers, Christian Focus, 2010.  It’s a slim paperback, less than 100 pages.  It consists of ten chapters, in each of which someone reflects on their life, and how God has worked in it.

It’s been enormously helpful to me, because it’s real.  These are people who have had real problems.  They have not always overcome them, but had to learn to live with them.  Yet they all know God, and are faithful to him.

It’s also easy to read, and intelligent.

I won’t give a link to an online shop.  Go to your Christian bookshop and support them by buying or ordering it.  It will do you good.

All of us need something to aspire to.  Books of Christian testimony can sometimes be a little corny, or superficial.  This one is gold.

I’ve been trying to connect with Christians in my local area.  It’s always a tiresome process, when you move to a new town, and a lot of people do not manage to make the transfer.

Traditionally you made the rounds of the local churches, in a series of Sunday services; the good, the bad, the mad and the embarrassing.  If you were lucky, you found someone who you could relate to, and settled in that church.  If you weren’t — and a lot of people weren’t — you got more and more embarrassed, and gave up after church number four-to-eight (depending on your persistence level).

But the web has made quite a difference, I find.  People are setting up sites to network people.  In my own town, for instance, a search on “<town name> Christians” brings up some dubious sites and then a site which contains a calendar of events, lists of projects, and so forth.  It’s not perfect, and there are dreck “events” in there, but it gives you a bit more than you might otherwise get.  The newcomer can at least go along to some of the evidently larger events and see a cross-section of people from the area.

Facebook is also coming into its own.  You get things in Derby like the Derby Community Church on FB here, with a link to its own website; and the Derby City Mission here.  In some ways these are more useful than the standalone websites, since they get updates and can be watched for news.

It’s really hard for Christians who move town to integrate into the new community, whether they are single or married.  There seems to be practically no horizontal communication.  I wonder how many of those people who leave Christian Unions when they leave college every summer, most of whom go to new towns, actually make it through and get hooked up to the Christian community in their new town.  Few, I would guess.

Surely something could be done?