I need you like the rain (on a Bank Holiday weekend)

Perhaps the worship leader did not want to go to the church BBQ. Perhaps he wanted a quiet weekend. As the rain poured down, and we sang "I need you like the rain" and I sat there thinking how nice it would be to see the sunshine again, I wondered if anyone else was thinking what I was thinking.

As far as I know there is not a song entitled, "I need you like the sunshine." Now, I know we need the rain, but sitting there on a damp Bank Holiday Sunday morning with things that I wanted to do which involved going outside, I did not particularly feel like I needed the rain. Or rather perhaps I did need the rain, just not here, not now.

Was I therefore trying to say to God, I need you, just not now, not here, not today - dear God please can I have a weekend off??? Today couldn't I have some sunshine....

Some people will be uncomfortable about me saying this, aren't I being slightly silly, a bit ridiculous, a little mocking of things that are spiritual, rather indeed unspiritual. Perhaps I am being slightly provocative, and it's not just that I think we should think seriously about the words that we sing it is something bigger than that.

Jesus came that the relations with Him and the relationships with others that sin has broken might be healed. I once had a boss who commented particularly negatively about some witticism that I had made in a meeting - people had laughed and enjoyed it, and I do not think there had been any negative feedback - it was just that she was rather lacking in the humour department. Her comment was not just that I should not say it, I should not think it. Well she was not exactly what I would describe as a friend, she was a particularly unpleasant boss.

However sometimes Christians can give that impression, don't say it, don't even think about it. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, we do not question the ridiculous - we submit, we love, we trust. What though we end up with is a pale imitation of a relationship. We are called to call God Father, but I can have a joke with my Dad - that is part of having a good relationship. I have said before that there ought to be a programme called Christians do the silliest things, and that is okay. However we need to be able to talk about it, to walk with each other, to travel together and to discuss.

Of course part of the problem is that Jesus did not do ridiculous things, so we do not have examples of how the disciples dealt with Him with spiritual ridiculousness. However Jesus himself had some tough words for the Pharisees and their ridiculous rules and some of that could be seen as mocking the spiritual and quite unspiritual. We know that His language upset them rather. Jesus had a taste for highlighting the ridiculous, for debunking the apparently spiritual. Jesus stood for truth and honesty, and sometimes we need to be more honest.

So God I need you like the sunshine on a bank holiday weekend, but I praise you Lord that you do exist. I need you like the dry ground needs rain. I need you like the plants need sunshine. I need you as a child needs a father.

At times we need to take ourselves rather less seriously. God likes it when we laugh together. Perhaps we need to review of understanding of God, I do not believe that God is the serious school master with a big red pen who delights to mark down our mistakes.

Perhaps He does have a big red pen, perhaps He does mark crosses all over our mistakes, and by it He marks the words, "Paid in full". He has done it because He wants us to live again, to laugh again, to rediscover the joy of living and loving.

Send the Bus???

This originates from an exercise in writing a Psalm in church, except the Psalm writing led me to have an idea that was not really a Psalm at all. With apologies to General Booth.

Lord, Send the Bus.

I'm hungry and I'm cold
I feel like I am growing old
I've been waiting here so long
I started to write this song
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus

Lord, I am still waiting here
And it feels like a passing year
The battle needs to be won
It's time for me to move on
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus

I'm tired of all this waiting
The transport procrastinating
The world seems to be passing me by
It makes me want to cry
Lord, send the bus, send the bus, send the bus

I have been waiting here so long
Perhaps my method has been wrong
It's time to stop the talking
I'd be better to set off walking
Lord, send me, send me, send me.

We live lives waiting for God to do something, for God to send some magical transport to get us from where we are to where we feel we ought to be or where we are called to be. So we wait at the heavenly bus stop doing nothing but waiting. But God wants us to stop behaving like passengers and start using the transport he has given us and start acting like followers.

A rose by any other name

Back to Genesis Ch1

Ge 1:5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”

In Genesis everything gets given a name, it is not just people who have names but the day and the night. We get to verse five and God starts to give things a name. Pure science can cope with descriptions, but the poet demands words. The omnivorous quadruped is called a rabbit, and things have a greater sense a greater meaning. Every hair on your head is numbered. Not a sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it.

God is a God who watches over His garden and delights over it. We give names to things we value, so people name their cars and assert to them personalities, it is a sign of affectation - if not affection. God does not just look and observe, he gets involved. When we give something a name we enter into a relationship with it, it becomes more real. So God uses words and gives names.

There is something mystical about creation and the relationship that God has towards it. So often we treat the planet like these are just routes to somewhere else, and we spend life travelling to somewhere not knowing that where we are matters. God though gives names like a tourist taking snaps shots. This I call day, this I call night. Like a artist naming his works, this is not just a splash of paint, this is "A Sunflower", "Water Lillies", or a "Madonna Col Bambino"

Names matter, they give the opportunity of distinction and description. The world finds not just a physical but a literary form. It is not just a flower, it is a rose.

" What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;" Romeo and Juliet.

But if Juliet could only call Romeo, him over there, and could not have nouns and descriptors then the whole of the play might be spent in trying to describe Romeo so that he could be identified. Of course if we did not have variety, if everyone did look just the same then it really would be very difficult to identify who they were. Names give us language they enable us to communicate and interact.

Of course the problem is that God did not call day, he called it something else in a language that we do not entirely understand or is perhaps beyond language, since of course there was no man to hear God's utterances.

Words matter, the gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word". Words have a certain significance. Words matter, God says let there be light and there is light. Words matter in our relationship with one another, and words matter in our relationship with God.

We live in a world created by the Word, we need to start talking God's language.

Lost in Ibiza?

I was wandering through San Antonio Bay in Ibiza on holiday with the family. We walked past a group of males just as a group of women came up to them. One of the males spoke to the women, "Hello Ladies" he said, but the women just walked off.

What really struck me was the inevitability of the situation, indeed, what made the situation almost tragic was the fact that the guy who said, "Hello Ladies," tone of voice seemed to be a meditation on hopelessness. He knew that he was sober and they were sober and it was not going to happen. He was lost in Ibiza looking for something, he probably would not call it love, but something, and he knew that though he was seeking it there was an inevitability about the fact that he was not going to find it.

We live in a world that is failing by its own standards. Often we try and measure the world by God's standards and the world cannot understand it because it does not understand God's standards. The issue though is that the world is failing by its own standards.

The world says that if you go for it, you will find it. Go out there and get it, but the problem is that those who do go for it - do not get it. The world may deliver for a short amount of time, like the drug dealer who is trying to get you hooked, but it does not deliver in the long term. The Bible warns that, in Proverbs 14

12 There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.

We need to better understand how sin works. If we were dealing with a disease we would look at the infection risks, look at how the virus or other cause of the disease operates and try to work towards a cure. That would appear to be a sensible way to operate. The problem is that many people go into denial and do not accept that they have a problem, which is exactly what happens with sin.

The reason most people are not interested in Christianity is that they do not believe they have a problem. You only need a cure if you have a problem and they do not have a problem. There is the problem of pride. I do not need religion, I do not need God. That is a lie.

I have heard of people dying of treatable cancer because they denied the symptoms, by the time they made it to the doctor it was too late.

We have a problem it is called sin, but there is a cure. Sin causes alienation from ourselves and God and ourselves and each other. There is a cure that offers the opportunity not only for reconciliation with God, but to also start to find reconciliation with ourselves and others.

God has come to us, He has said Hello, He has offered us new life, the question is will we just walk away not interested.