Cambodia here I come!

There are not many weeks left now until a team of 10 of us from Norkirken travel to Cambodia. The plan is to serve the people in the area and projects in which Normisjon is involved. We will be visiting and contributing to these projects with health care (we have a doctor and two nurses on the team), teaching (we have a school teacher and a pre-school teacher on the team), there are four teenagers who will be involved in youth activities, sport and drama etc for the teaching and health team... and then there is me!

I am doing some teaching, both biblical and language, looking at the projects and Normisjon's work in Cambodia with a view to being better informed myself and therefore better able to enthuse the church on my return. I will also be involved in the other group's teaching. As the trip gets closer this blog will have more about it and there will be regular updates whilst we are away. We leave on the 23rd of June. I am now vaccinated against all sorts of things and am starting to think about what to put in my suitcase.

There are a number of resources we are taking with us to use and then leave in Cambodia for the local people to continue using. We are for example taking some puppets. We will use them in some teaching we are having for sunday-school teachers. The plan is to show different ways of sharing bible stories with children and puppets are great for this. I have bought in two sets that we think will cover lots of different bible stories. I bought them in the UK as I was able to get puppets with asian skin colour and features for a man, a boy and a girl (the girl can also be a boy with a change of clothes), a pig and a sheep. This is a picture of Lucy the sheep. She is such fun!

Amazing grace

So what is so amazing about grace? As well as being a really good question is is the title of a book by Philip Yancey which I have been intending to read for some years. On my last visit to the UK I bought a copy of it and it has been sitting tantalizingly on the coffee table since I got back.

The well known hymn may hold a clue here:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.

It is by grace that we are saved from ourselves and the results of our actions. God calls it sin, society has many words for it but whatever words we use for it, it is lethal - literally, and it is everywhere. Sin leads to death and unfortunately for us, we have all sinned. We cannot help ourselves. I challenge you to live a week without sinning, no? How about a day? 24 hours without thinking or doing anything which is wrong. Still can't do it? How about an hour? Can you manage an hour without sinning, no? Me neither! We are in a mess and if we stop for long enough to think about it we realise our predicament.

It might be tempting to compare ourselves to others. We could find someone else who in our view is "worse" than we are and compare ourselves to them. We would then conclude that we are "not so bad". The problem is that not so bad is not good enough. It is like being a dirty rag and comparing ourselves with other dirty rags, we may be more dirty or less dirty but we cannot escape that fact that we are dirty.

To come to God and enter His presence we have to be clean, pure, holy because God is a holy God. Therein lies our problem, we are not and never can enter his presence because of the sin which dirtys us and dirtys humanity. This is what Easter is all about, God in Jesus took the initiative to come and help us out of the predicament we have got ourselves into. He dealt with our sin by taking what we deserved, death and separation from Him, upon himself on the cross and he showed that he had triumphed over it when he rose to life on the third day. Now through Jesus we are washed clean and able to come to him at all times. We could do nothing to help ourselves but thankfully we didn't have to. Christianity is the only religion where God takes the initiative. We cannot do anything to save ourselves and so God did it for us. In all other religions one has to earn salvation. This is grace that God gives us what we don't deserve because he loves us.

We who have received so much grace should be gracious. We should live like Jesus of whom it was said he was "full of grace and truth". Here comes a challenging question, how are we the church doing? Is the church which is the body of Christ full of grace and truth? Lets reduce it a little to the churches where we live, are they places that are known for their grace? If we were to ask people on the street to describe the local church would they come even close to seeing it as a place of grace and truth?

I suspect we have some work to do in living out the grace we have freely received in such a way that society around us looks on in wonder and cannot understand us. Philip Yancy writes "Grace is the church's great distinctive. It's the one thing the world cannot duplicate and the one thing it craves above all else - for only grace can bring hope and transformation to a jaded world."

Lets live in such a way as to bring hope and grace wherever we are and to whoever we meet.

Reflective service

Yes, it is a long time since I have written anything here, but here I am again!

Yesterday in church we had a reflective service on the theme of Easter. Chairs had been removed and the space which that created was used for 11 different Easter-themed installations, the twelth was a video sermon from utube which was running in the cafe. For anyone wondering what I ran, you can follow this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeTMVq6kQZI&feature=related  It is called "No arms, no legs, no worries" and is hugely powerful.

The different installations looked at different aspects of the Easter story and each had a point or application to reflect over, an activity and / or something to pray about. The very youngest children went out to their own activities but the others stayed with their families and enjoyed the different posts.

We had fourty minutes for this and people were engaged the whole time as the pictures show.

People have different preferred learning styles and a visual interractive service like this one will appeal to some more than others but from the comments and feedback afterwards it seems that lots of people were able to use it to focus on God and what He did for us in Jesus at Easter.

When I wrote my dissertation it included a significant amount on "What is church?" a question that is worth reflecting on. What do you think? Was this church? Why or why not?

Dine løfter er mange din nåde er stor!

Do you recognise the title to this? For anyone who doesn't speak norwegian roughly translated it means "Your have made many promises and your grace is great", it is  the opening line of a song that has been in my head for the last couple of days. God has made so many promises to us his children and he is so gracious towards us. In our evening quiet time we are looking at John's gospel chapterby chapter to see which prommises we can find in it.

This song is not by any means a new and modern one but the words are hugely powerful, there are two lines that have really spoken to me recently "Herre led du meg frem, la meg bli til hjelp for dem som du viser meg trenger en hånd". It roughly translated means" Lord lead me on and let me help those who you show me need a helping hand".  I pray that the Lord will  show me who he wants me to help and at the same time I try not to use any lack of clear divine leading as a reason not to help people who need it.

I am adding to my daily prayer list during lent that God will show me who he has in mind for me to help. This is partly inspired by the course we have done recently in our house church called "The power of a whisper" by Bill Hybles. The course encourages us to hear God whisper to us in our everday lives and then to act on those whispers.

So what has this led to so far... small things, everyday things really but it is interesting that I am seeing everything differently. I am consciously looking for God in everything and I am finding him there too! I challenge you to do the same, look for God and what he wants you to do in all the everyday situations, family, work, hobbies, even a trip shopping can become exciting. It is a bit easier to get out of bed when you can say to yourself "I wonder what plans God has for me today?" 

A walk with a difference

On Tuesday we had our annual celebration in church where we focus on the vokunteers in the congregation who give freely of their time and energy throughout the year. A red carpet was rolled out for people's arrival and everyone was greeted by hand. We had tried to create an atmosphere that was welcoming and smart with linen tablecloths, candlelight, good atmosphere and an interesting program. Two Caleb prizes were handed out. I think the fifty or so people who came had a good evening.

The two course meal of Chinese food followed by ice cream cake seemed to go down very well. There was some Chinese left at the end of the evening and in the light of my trying to focus my life more on Jesus I thought as it is such a very cold night I would take the Chinese food and some coffee out into town and see if there were any homeless people who could use a good meal. I am not sure that Jesus would have given the leftovers to the poor; I suspect he would have invited them in to the party!

As the evening ended and people headed for home I gathered the remains up. A few people noticed and were interested in what I was doing; two of them said immediately that they too would come. At just after 10pm four of us set off on foot to see if we could find anyone who might be glad of a meal and some hot coffee. The evening was very cold and there was an icy wind whipping our hands and faces. We went to all the likely places we could think of and looked for anyone in need.

The reflective vests which church bought in last year with "I have time" written in Norwegian on them were very useful as conversation openers. The vests gave us some form of authority. As we walked along the main street we were cheered by someone! There were a number of people in town, having been out celebrating Valentine’s day and there were several who wanted to talk to us about what we were doing, all thought it was a great and much needed thing to do but none of them were hungry. In fact we didn't find anyone to give a meal to. It was so cold that it wasn't possible to find anyone sleeping rough.

By the time we had been all over town and it was after 11pm we decided to go to the police station and see if they could use the food. It is better than throwing it away we reasoned. They were very pleased with it and said that they would enjoy it very much!

The four of us, one man and three ladies (one of whom is over 70!) felt that it was time well spent and we shall be doing it again next time there is something to give away. We were in fact surprised that nobody had thought of doing it sooner. There were a couple of jokes made that next time they go to a party with Tracy they better bring their snow suits just in case!

What will it take?

How good must my life be and how awful does someone else’s have to be before I am prepared to do something about it? This is a question someone raised at a prayer meeting last week. She and her husband had been asking themselves that question. It has stayed with me as I have gone about my comfortable everyday routine. What will it take to cause me do something?  

I struggle to accept my own apathy and inability to really live like Jesus in every way. The trouble is that I make excuses to myself. I have become quite adept at it too; after all I have had a life-time of practice. It is easy to promise myself I will do something when the children are bigger or when I know what I ought to do or when I have more time or money or energy or… What will it take to make me do something, I call myself a Christian, a disciple of Jesus and yet I do not always live it.

It is easier to compare myself with others around me and to say well, I am better than him or not as good as her. Doing that is fundamentally flawed because I should not be interested in comparing myself with my peers but I should be concerned with comparing myself to Jesus and his call on my life. The idea of waiting, holding back is not one that I find when I read the bible.  I John 2.6 says, ”Whoever says “I abide in him,” ought to walk as he walked.” Jesus did not hold back.  At the service on Sunday night we sang the song Brother, Sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you. This is a powerful song with challenging words and if I mean what I say to God in song then I need to see Jesus in all the people I meet. I need to look at other people no matter who they are and love them like Jesus loves them.

It is easy to love people you like and get along with. It is harder to love the unlovely, the difficult, the weak and the vulnerable. It is difficult  to love those who are different to us but that is what being a disciple of Jesus calls us to do.

I don’t want these words to be empty words thrown thoughtlessly out into cyberspace. I have to start somewhere so I am going to sign up to take part in the Godhets festival this year. I am also going to take a walk around town when the good people of Sandnes are safely in their homes and I am going to attempt to look with Jesus’ eyes.

God is all-knowing

If I stop and think for a moment about the fact that God is all-knowing, it can be both scary and reassuring at the same time. All of us put on some sort of mask sometimes. We do not reveal our true selves to everyone we meet. God is all-knowing and he knows me better than I know myself. Do I find that just a little bit scary? Yes I do. It means that I cannot fool him or hide from him or keep something from him. I can't fake it. There is nothing that I can say or do that is going to be a surprise to him and on top of all that HE STILL LOVES ME!

Hebrews 4.13 "

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. "

I have to ask myself whether I really take what I have just shared with you seriously. Does it permeate the way I think about God? Does it show in the way I talk to him and about him? If not, why not! When I pray I can be totally honest because God knows me so well. As I walk with him I need to learn to trust him more and more because he knows me so well  and loves me so deeply. There is nothing that will happen today that he and I can't tackle together. However, it is aurprisingly easy to forget that and to get caught up in and focussed on all the wrong things.

"Father God, Dad, You know me and you love me as I am. Show me how to get really serious about loving you deeply with every part of my life. Amen.