Healthy living blog VI

Thank you for giving me your attention for the 90 seconds it will take you to read this paragraph. 90 seconds is quite a lot of attention but where your attention is, there your heart and treasure lie. Like me you may have already given attention to prayer this morning. Like me you’ll have folk to attend to as the hours roll on, attention to wives and husbands, children, parents, colleagues, friends and so on. To give attention to someone, God or man, is nothing passive but active, a work in fact, a work of concentration, of giving and receiving. What I’m saying to you might profit your ongoing reflection today. It is voiced from what I have received myself in living my life up to this day. Giving attention is demanding. It requires actively laying aside distractions to be fully in the present moment. If you’re capable of giving attention to me this morning it augurs well for your giving attention to the tasks or people ahead. In living my life today I want to see and attend to every next person I meet as Christ before me. Every one of us, for sure, is Christ-like, in God’s image, even if some look like it more than others! There’s the rub! Thank you for your attention just now. God bless you for receiving my thought and may he help you attend to him hour by hour in all he’s got in store for you today. [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]


Sometimes we need reminding to give folk the benefit of the doubt. A lonely chap sets his heart on finding company so he goes to a pet shop. ‘Don’t like cats and dogs are too much trouble’ he says to the proprietor. ‘What have you got for me?’  ‘I’ve got just the thing’ the owner says. She goes into the back returning with a shoe box. ‘Look in here. It’s a talking centipede’. ‘A talking centipede? Never come across such a thing!’  ‘You’ll find it great company’. Trusting her recommendation money is exchanged and the guy goes home with his centipede. ‘Welcome to my home’ he says to it. ‘Maybe you’d like to come with me to the 8 o’clock tomorrow?’ He’s a church goer. No reply from the centipede. Up next morning and about ready for Church he looks in on his new pet. ‘I’m off to the 8 o’clock soon’ he says. Then, just before he leaves the house, once again, and by now anxious at the lack of response from his new pet, ‘I said I’m off to the 8 o’clock -  can you hear me?’ ‘I heard you the first time and I’m putting my shoes on.’ It’s a funny story and it’s got a reminder to give allowance to folk. Unless you’ve walked in other people’s shoes you’re never going to know what it’s like for them to do things as best they can for you. An Indian Prayer: ‘Great Spirit, grant that I may not judge my neighbour, before I have walked for a day in his moccasins’. [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


Whilst you read this paragraph over the next minute and a half a lot will happen to you. You will blink 30 times and your brain will have 50 separate thoughts to compete with mine, which is why you're finding it hard to concentrate! Meanwhile the solar system will carry us 15,000 miles round the Milky Way and 3 million likes will be posted on Facebook pages worldwide. We've got a short time together, now down to a minute, and I want to make the most of it by suggesting the remaining 1000 minutes of your day can be transformed by two prayers I'm going to lead us in. ‘Lord God I give you my life, it's sorrows and joys, it's needs and concerns and those which touch me in my neighbours. Take my time, talents and money this day and employ them to your praise and service. I want you to use my life to the full, let nothing be wasted or misdirected, just take every minute and fill it with the unalterable newness of Jesus your Son, in whose name I pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen’. God bless and use every minute of your day! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


I wonder how much of an enthusiast you are? Or how sympathetic you are to those who don’t share your enthusiasm? Passion for truth, for God, brings enthusiasm and that’s a great thing. It’s got its dangers though, as anyone who’s been hosed down by enthusiasm knows! A 12th century monk, William of Saint Thierry, must have known this when he wrote these wise words: Love of the truth drives us from the world to God, and the truth of love sends us back from God to the world. Our souls are fired up with enthusiasm as we contemplate the truth of God in prayer and worship. That enthusiasm is clothed with love from above that inspires service of the world. As we look lovingly and enthusiastically to God’s truth we’re touched by his love and sympathy for all that is. I love it when people respond to the message of the Christian good news but I try to hold sympathy with the people who don’t as well. They have their reasons - and I may be one of them! Enthusiasm and sympathy flow best in the life of God, Father, Son and Spirit as the Psalmist indicates when he writes love and truth walk in the presence of God (Psalm 61:7) Love and truth flow unevenly and partially in our hearts which is why I invite you to join this prayer: May the love of truth drive us from the world to you, Lord and the truth of your love send us back from you to serve the world as you desire. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


‘
Those with more materialistic values consistently have worse relationships, with more conflict’ writes psychotherapist Graham Music in a recent book on well being and he goes on to say, ‘This is significant if the perceived shift towards more materialistic values in the west is accurate’. 

It does seem right to say that our culture is getting more materialistic. Families travel to Cathedral sized shopping malls instead of church on a Sunday for what’s called ‘retail therapy’. The same families have a 50-50 chance nowadays of breaking up through divorce. 

You can’t make a direct link between divorce and shopping - though shopping has always tested my marriage! We all need to shop. It can be fun and it can help build family relations. My own experience of happy families, though, is linked to parents who hold themselves and their children to spiritual disciplines.

In the book of Wisdom Chapter 2 verse 23 we read ‘God created human beings to be immortal, he made them as an image of his own nature’. The best material clue to this spiritual truth is you and I and the love we give out, especially in the family. Our desire to love and be loved betrays something beyond the material order. It’s a reflection of our Creator, no less, and it's the best evidence for him on the earth.

 As Saint Augustine of Hippo, touching on the deepest human need, famously prayed: ‘Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!’ [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


I’m an optimist because I hold to a God of joyful surprises. When I look back I see the cosmos has a beginning, science is one with faith here, and that this beginning came surprisingly out of nothing. Did you know that’s Christian faith - God made all that is not out of anything - in which case he’d not be God - or out of himself - in which case the world would be Godlike - but out of nothing? The God who brought being out of nothing went on to bring Jesus from a virgin womb, in a new creation that changed everything. The immortal God was born of a mortal womb to bring us immortality. My optimism is based on the consequence of the incarnation which is the occurrence of Christ’s resurrection, that is so evidenced it’s said no jury in the world would dismiss that evidence. The God who brought everything out of nothing, Jesus from a virgin womb and life out of death is myGod - so I’m an optimist. If God has this past record how can I doubt his future programme, even if I can’t predict or gain say it? ‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life... nor anything... in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’. (Romans 8:35f) [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture from Anne Twisleton]


'Enjoy' they say and it’s a good thought. 'Enjoy'! Isn't this a slightly childish invitation, not that I wish misery on anyone! Children are great at enjoyment and woe betide us if we so lose childish innocence we can’t share and profit from simple entertainment. A grown up view of the world though recognises both joy and sorrow. Very often we gain satisfaction living through sorrow or accompanying others in their trials but you wouldn’t call this enjoyable. Nowadays in the western world there’s loads of opportunity for recreation and some folk go for more and more extreme sports to guarantee a thrill. At the same time many are consumed by demands that leave precious little space for themselves. If our society is to be a place of satisfaction for many or most of us we need more opportunities for service that will draw energy and enthusiasm into caring for the needy. When we read what the Bible says about enjoyment it’s mainly linked to loss of self interest, rewards for those who serve the poor and the anticipation of seeing God face to face. Enjoy! The church catechism says the purpose of Christian life is to attain the enjoyment of God in teaching built from 1 John 3: ‘See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are... when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is’. I want to enjoy life but most of all I want one day to enjoy God! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


Human beings are built to devote themselves to work but work with interludes. We achieve much more as we balance work with leisure. When we escape our work routine and relax, our bodies recuperate from the pressures of work and our minds expand away from the focus they hold us to at work. We find ourselves walking slower, pacing ourselves, with body, mind and spirit more attuned to one another and to those we live closest to. Just as our bodies gain from a more spacious environment, our minds are lifted by sight of the vastness of the sea, so it can be that our spirits expand towards God. Things that we hold in mind or spirit sort themselves, what's important gains ground over what's merely urgent, the day to day pressing things which challenge before they pass us by. 'The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms' we read in the King James Version of Deuteronomy 33v27. So often it is recreation that brings us back to the reality of God in eternity, loosening us from the cramping pressure of time - literally re-creating us and recovering the quality of family life and friendship. Creation's an ongoing process in which we're called to cooperate so our hearts set themselves less on things that pass and more on things that last. God bless us in both our work and our recreation. [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


It may be you lack peace of mind. Perhaps it’s due to an illness giving grief to your body that disturbs your whole being. Or an upset in relationships, a concern about something you have to account for, or a thing ahead you’re just getting your head around. Lack of peace is a tell tale sign we need to interpret because God desires we live in his peace even if that goes beyond our understanding. I find when my peace is disturbed over a number of days it challenges me as to how surrendered my life is to God. Very often lack of peace links to anger about the way things are, inability to change those things and most significant of all, lack of submission to God. I don’t know about you but I begin each day submitting it overall to God so it's given to be God’s day lived through me. Like any resolve it needs sticking at. Giving your life to God is something that needs repeating. It's also something basic to Christian worship where, at the eucharist, we regularly offer ourselves to God with Christ. Inner turmoil when it comes is an invitation to seek attention for body, mind or spirit. Sometimes that attention is as simple as an act of faith in God as God of your life through rough and smooth. ‘Take, Lord, and receive all that I am: my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire life. Dispose of me according to your will. All I need is your love and your grace. That is enough for me. Amen.’  [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]


There’s something about getting out into the countryside. So many of us spend life moving between homes and workplaces hemmed in by buildings. It’s good to have a roof over your head but it's also good to spend time in the great outdoors as many of us have been able to do this summer. I’ve enjoyed climbing a few hills and mountains, travelling across immense land features and up towering slopes. Such experiences help me expand in body, mind and spirit with the benefit of settling my thinking, shaking my concerns down to what’s most important. Being out in the country helps you get a perspective on life. It also puts you in your place. I find myself quoting Psalm 95: ‘​In his hand are the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains are his​‘ or Psalm 8: ‘​what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?’ What must he be like who made the heights and depths of the earth? Who am I, mere mortal, to be cared for by God whose glory fills heaven and earth? It's good to be put in our place, to see ​actually how small we are​, through taking ourselves into a natural landscape. There, pondering the immensity of God who made all that is, Christianity is seen even more as the miracle it is - that God made all that is ​and m​ade us as creatures able to see what he made and open our hearts to him personally so his eternal life can become our own! Glory to God! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]


Great people - people fondly thought of - aren’t those seeking to further themselves but those recognised for furthering the good of others. They’re also resilient - they’re capable of rising above what Shakespeare’s Hamlet calls ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. They bounce back into life with a compassionate focus. Christianity’s a school of greatness. The death and resurrection of Our Lord teach us resilience. They reveal to us and in us a God who’s not above suffering and doesn’t expect anything of us he’s not ready to go through himself. Saint Paul teaches in his letter to Philippi Chapter 3 how the suffering and resurrection of God’s Son are the clue to resilience. He writes there of the key ambition we have as Christians being ‘to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings so that by becoming like him in his death, we [and others our enthusiasm infects] attain the resurrection from the dead’. In his dying and rising the forces of evil from every age and place met Jesus head on and in resilience he met and overthrew them. He took in suffering, death and all the powers of evil, absorbed and transformed them. To attain greatness is to take part in such a battle, to serve an ambition beyond being good at what you do and succeeding in it. May the Lord build in us the resilience we need to turn misfortune to good and build an outward focus for our lives that will make us truly great! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]


I got into a conversation at a supermarket till. The young man at the till didn’t go to Church but I’ll not forget what he said: ‘God’s all powerful but they make him to be a wimping wimp!’ This observation brought back to me a frequent complaint made by the great explorer Laurens Van der Post about the Church’s domestication of God which might be behind non-attendance of folk like my friend at the till. Van der Post wrote: ‘One of the strangest ideas ever conceived is the idea that religion is the opium of the people, because religion is a call to battle…human beings in their rational selves...shy like frightened horses away from a God who is not the source of opium for people but a reawakening of creation and a transcending of the forces and nuclear energies in the human soul’. So be it - God wake up in his Church such a vision of God, such passion and supernatural perspective!

 Van der Post was imprisoned by the Japanese during World War Two and lived under the threat of execution. A date was set. The night before he records experiencing a tremendous thunderstorm outside his prison. He saw in this storm a strengthening truth, as if from the awesome truth of the resurrection. The Japanese weren’t ultimately in control. The storm witnessed a greater than human power which in the end would decide all. He was spared execution. God’s all powerful - may he forgive us making him a wimping wimp!  [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]


Sometimes I find myself in a situation where my mind’s like a tree full of monkeys with so many jostling thoughts I can’t follow or make sense of them. Other times my heart is torn in so many directions I’m at a loss to act in the best way. In such times changing where I’m sitting, so to speak, I find ill advised. I stay put with determination, refusing distractions from my mind or emotions. It helps me to recall a saying from the medieval author of a book called The Cloud of Unknowing: ‘It is not what you are nor what you have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you would be’. As the medieval writer makes clear when we experience ourselves as if in a cloud so far as God and life goes what’s most important is to stay put and in his words: ‘Beat with a sharp dart of longing love upon this cloud of unknowing which is between you and your God’. How are you today? Is life good or are you in a place of confusion? Stay put and look to God with love making an act of faith, one such as Jesus taught us: ‘Your kingdom come, O Lord, your will be done, in my life and in the life of the world!’ [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, picture by Anne Twisleton]



I had a rough sea crossing some time back on a short outing from Newhaven to Dieppe. There was a gale and we were warned against going on deck. From the ferry you could see the rise and fall of the sea and smaller boats in the English Channel perilously bobbing up and down. On board there was a gentle motion on account of the stabilisers which counter the rocking we’d otherwise have felt directly. It was a great parable of Christian faith which doesn’t take you out of troubled seas but helps you sail through them with peace passing understanding. The same week I’d experienced a bereavement. Whilst the pain of loss was there I found it allayed by knowledge of the risen Lord, through whom we know life is changed and not ended by death. Jesus Christ is our stabiliser as we voyage through the stormy seas of life. His Church - the immense body it is - sails like a boat towards the eternal shore and, as the song goes, ‘with Jesus in the boat you can smile at the storm’. You can smile, but, as on my ferry, you still feel the sea’s movement. No boat is aloof in a storm even if its passengers benefit from those wonderful stabilisers below deck. Like me you may be travelling now through a storm in your life. Put faith in Jesus Christ as your stabiliser and keep fellowship with others in the ferry which is his Church. You’ll one day reach harbour and be part of the rejoicing felt after a stormy voyage! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]


My life is not about me but about God. That’s something I’m spending my life waking up to, since the way I’m built tempts me to think otherwise. Yet how can I live and breathe and speak and write without what’s been given me from beyond myself? I come from God, I belong to God, I go to God. To think I possess myself is an illusion. My earthly life has a beginning and an end and these point me beyond myself. Human beings are self-centred but we possess within ourselves the capacity to re-centre ourselves on God. Though we’re part of the material world needing to be fed, clothed and employed there’s something at work drawing us out of ourselves which the Bible calls the image of God. My life is not ultimately about me but about God and this is a great discovery, invitation and challenge. To wake up to the fact you’re a created being puts you in your place. I’m a creature dependent on God for my every breath! Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, writes the Psalmist. That God who gave me life loves me and invites me to welcome his life to live within me is awesome. What a discovery! What an invitation - and what a challenge!  You, O God, made us to reach out to you and find peace beyond our understanding in welcoming you as the centre of our lives! My life isn’t about me - it’s about you, Lord, to whom I will give thanks now and always! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]


An egoist is a person more interested in themselves than me, the joke runs. Centuries on from Freud we’re blessed with self knowledge and self love often to the exclusion of self forgetfulness. As thinking beings we’re bound to be self-interested to a degree.  Thinking happens inside your mind though it hopefully spills into your heart and through your will into good acts. Few thinkers had as great an impact as Marx who wrote ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.’ It’s good to know and love ourselves but aren’t we here to change the world both for ourselves and for the common good? To give out in self-forgetfulness? You can’t give what you haven’t got though! Unless you know and love yourself - possess yourself - it’s hard to forget yourself in loving your neighbour. Mindfulness is all the rage and does a lot of good helping folk live more aware of themselves. It’s lost its historic tag though - mindfulness of others. The word Thoughtfulness holds that truth, a quality of considerate self engagement. I want to know and love myself better so I can better forget myself and help sweeten the world. To have faith, the capacity to centre yourself away from yourself in God, puts you at a tremendous advantage in terms of self knowledge and overcoming our natural preoccupation with self.  The Holy Spirit’s invitation is precisely this: ‘know yourself, love yourself, forget yourself’. It's a recipe for sweetening the world. [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]



The experience of love is the best pointer to heaven. Experiencing love expands our vision of the world, ourselves and our destiny. The greatest challenge it gives me personally is to my self-sufficiency. Part of my up-bringing, living in a prosperous culture, self-sufficiency is a natural development I’m thankfully finding more and more challenged. If love makes the world - this world and the next - go round, it shakes self-sufficiency taking us out of ourselves towards others. Welcoming love in this sense though is a profound spiritual challenge. Over the years I have been privileged to mentor some gifted and high achieving people whose incapacity to receive love has come close to being their undoing. I think of the multi-millionaire business man whose hard work took him away from seeking to receive from his wife - his was all the giving - and how their marriage dissolved through refusal of love. By contrast I think of Bernard whose life was turned upside down as for the first time he welcomed God’s love deep in his heart by seeking the Holy Spirit. I will never forget his appearance all grins on my doorstep early one morning to tell me he’d received a new gift of prayer - speaking in tongues! Such incidences do more than anything to build your faith! Many of us ‘church regulars’ have more duty than joy about us despite church being described in scripture as a ‘colony of heaven’ on earth. Where Christians capture love from God and one another, their gatherings are seen as truly such outposts. God open us to his love today, whatever or whoever brings it us! [Broadcast on Premier Christian Radio]

























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