Category Archives: Children
Oh Flip, We Need A Camcorder
On Tuesday, we were sitting eating our dinner at tea-time, when Mark burst into song. He has quite a tuneful voice, which is one of the few ways in which he doesn’t take after me. (Another would be that he is of stocky build.) He began a repertoire of songs and hymns the children sing at school assembly. Most of them were songs we know, not least from those fine people at Out Of The Ark Music.
But then he went into what a Smashie and Nicey-type DJ would call ‘an oldie but goodie’. We were treated to ‘If I were a butterfly‘. He sang with a smile and put smiles on our faces, especially as he put duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh rhythms between the verse and the chorus, and when he mangled the lyrics. ‘You gave me Jesus and you made me your child’ became ‘You gave me Jesus and you gave me your child’.
Debbie said she wished she could have captured the moment on video to put on Facebook. Mark said, “I want to be on Facebook!” I said, “We need a Flip Mino.”
After much research, we ordered the basic Mino 2 GB model – not the HD one. And thanks to Amazon, whose prices were way below everyone else’s.
Not only do we plan to use it for family occasions, we can see some church uses, too. Every day we’re watching to see if the postie is bringing our new toy ministry tool. Maybe I’ll post something here when we do.
Sermon: Exercising Faith
Nineteen seventy: a terrible year for music. It was the year that songs by football teams took off. Not only did Chelsea FC inflict ‘Blue is the colour’ on the nation when they reached the FA Cup Final, the England team heading to Mexico to defend the World Cup assaulted our ears with ‘Back home’. Does anyone else have painful memories of those songs? (Not that as a Spurs fan I can be too superior, given the Chas and Dave songs my team put out in later years!)
Back home: Jesus is back home in this reading. He has come back from the eastern side of Lake Galilee, where people compromised Jewish faith with other influences. He’s on home territory. The fanboys are out – on this side of the lake he’s surrounded by a crowd, rather than suffering people asking him to leave as soon as possible, as happened when he cast the demons from the Gerasene demoniac into a herd of very non-Jewish pigs. Maybe you could say he is in a more pastoral than missional context here. (Although you’ll often be surprised how missionary you need to be in pastoral situations!)
Back home, people are in need and in desperation are showing the depth of their faith in Jesus. Both the woman with the issue of blood and Jairus, facing the death of his daughter, display extraordinary faith. I’d like us to explore these well-known stories with the goal of increasing our own faith in Christ, too.
Touch
On Thursday morning, we were walking the children into the school playground when Mark ran to follow Rebekah. However, he tripped up over Debbie’s foot and gashed both knees. He ended up in Injuries before he was in his classroom that morning. Although he had a plaster on for a few hours, we’ve tried as much as possible to let the air get to the wound, even though it has wept and left marks on bed blankets.
Rebekah has had her usual big-sister-cum-little-mummy concerns for her younger brother. However, we have had to tell her not to touch Mark’s knees! It’s just the latest example among many where as parents we’ve had to issue the ‘Don’t touch’ command. You can, I’m sure, think of many examples where you have had to say ‘Don’t touch’ to a child, because you are concerned about hygiene. They don’t understand about invisible germs, and you scream ‘Don’t touch’ in order to prevent the risk of infection.
Jewish faith had a strong ‘Don’t touch’ component to it, too. There were certain objects – or people with certain conditions – that you didn’t touch, for fear of spiritual infection as much as anything else. In our story, both the woman with the bleeding and the dying twelve-year-old girl fell into this category. The woman’s blood made her ritually unclean. Anyone touching her would also be unclean. The same was true of a dead body – and remember that by the time Jesus arrives at Jairus’ house, the girl is dead. Neither should be touched. Not unless you wanted to be isolated for a period of days before having a check-up with the priest.
And what does Jesus do? He welcomes the touch of the bleeding woman, and he touches the hand of the dead girl. Jesus disregards any thought that he would become ritually contaminated, because he knows that through the touch, God has healed the woman and he will heal the girl. Jesus sees the power of God to heal as greater than any contaminating power. To Jesus, God’s power and love are not equal opposites to sin and darkness: they are greater. The ‘Don’t touch’ rules put both the woman and the girl outside the orbit of help and healing: Jesus, by embracing the need for touch, brings them within that orbit and they are made whole again.
This is good news! If there is something we feel unclean about, Jesus wants to touch it with healing. If it is something that ostracises us, or we think will ostracise us if others know about it, again Jesus wants to heal it with his touch. Perhaps there is a secret we harbour, one that we don’t feel we even dare share with friends at church, because we think it will lead to us being cut off socially from others or spiritually from God.
Obviously I have a privileged position as a minister, but it never ceases to amaze me just how many such secrets exist in congregations. Well, Jesus says, be ashamed no longer. Fear not. In his presence the risk of contamination is zero. Come to him, even if you tremble like the woman with the haemorrhage, because his touch will heal you. No longer need you struggle with shame or rejection. In the grace of God, wholeness is yours. Fear no more: Jesus’ only desire for you is healing.
This good news also creates a challenge for the church. If Jesus wants to touch untouchables with his love and healing, then we are called to be a community that accepts people. We truly need to be a safe space for folk. It might involve people who don’t know the usual social graces, or those whose background is unacceptable. It might be their appearance or some other socially unacceptable feature or condition.
By way of just one example, I read these words last Saturday in the TEAR Fund prayer diary:
Similar to many countries around the world, stigma is one of the biggest challenges for people living with HIV in Ireland. Pray for Tearfund partner ACET Ireland, who provide practical and emotional care for individuals affected by drugs. Pray that Christians in Ireland will demonstrate the unconditional love of Christ to all those affected and that local churches will become the safest places for people living with HIV.
Wow. What a challenge: ‘that local churches will become the safest places for people living with HIV’. But if our faith is in the healing touch of Jesus to restore those whose conditions have severed their social and spiritual links, then this is just the sort of aspiration a community centred on faith in Jesus will have.
Tension
I don’t know whether you’ve ever engaged in a practice such as Ignatian Bible Study, where you are invited to imagine yourself as one of the characters in a biblical story. Whether you’ve done that or not, perhaps you recognise that in certain stories you instinctively identify with one person.
In this story, I identify with Jairus. It’s not his position of influence and authority: it’s the fact that he is the father of a little girl. Ever since I became a parent, stories like this one tug at my heart strings much more than they used to. I can’t read about Jairus without thinking, what if it were my Rebekah? It gets me every time.
And I think that if I were Jairus, I’d be emotionally all over the shop when Jesus stopped to identify the woman who had touched him. Jesus, that’s nice but there’s no time to waste, I’d say. Every second counts if you’re to heal my daughter! Can’t you come back later and speak to this lady? Frankly, my desperation would reach warp speed.
But when the bearers of bad news come with the news that the little girl has passed away, Jesus says to Jairus, ‘Do not fear, only believe’ (verse 36). He’s got to be kidding, hasn’t he?
Except Jesus views the girl’s death in the light of what he is going to do (which is why he says she is only sleeping and why he later dismisses the mourners). And he takes Jairus on an extraordinary journey of faith. It’s one where Jairus holds together two things in tension: one is trust in Jesus, the other is that he unflinchingly stares at the darkness. His faith doesn’t lead him to ignore the darkness or pretend it isn’t there. And the darkness doesn’t extinguish his faith.
The other day, I read a piece by Michael Hyatt, the Chief Executive Officer of the American publishers Thomas Nelson. He was reflecting on the euphoria in many quarters when Barack Obama won the Presidential election last November, contrasted with the perilous economic situation the new President would inherit, typified by his election being followed by the biggest post-election decline in the American stock market. He said that the glass was both half empty and half full, and went on to say this:
In times like these, leaders must do two things simultaneously:
- Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.
- Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
You see it again, just like Jairus: prevailing faith and an embrace of the darkness.
Hyatt went on to recount a story that the business guru Jim Collins tells in his famous book ‘Good To Great’. Collins refers to ‘The Stockdale Paradox’, and tells about a man called Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war for eight years during the Vietnam War.
After his release, a reporter asked Admiral Stockdale, “How in the world did you survive eight years in a prisoner of war camp?”
He replied,
“I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that we would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event in my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
The reporter then asked, “Who didn’t make it out?” Admiral Stockdale replied,
“Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. They were the ones who said, “We’re going to be out by Christmas.” And Christmas would come and go. Then they’d say, “We’re going to be out by Easter.” And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Collins then goes onto state that an attribute of truly great companies and great leaders is that they are able to embrace simultaneously these twin truths of their current reality and their ultimate triumph.
Jairus had that kind of faith in the best form: a Christ-centred form. Jairus had a desperate plight and a deep faith. Neither escapism nor despair.
Is that what we need? Often I think it is. Perhaps it is a circumstance in our own lives – our health, or troubles facing a family member. Jesus calls us both to look into the abyss and also trust him for ultimate victory.
Perhaps it is about the state of the church. Numbers keep going down. We find it harder to cover every essential task in church life. Jesus calls us to admit honestly the difficulties we are in, and at the same time to trust him that we know the final outcome, which is not the obliteration of God’s people but the final victory of Christ. It may be getting darker, but we are heading towards the dawn.
It was the same for Jesus himself. On the one hand he embraced the darkness. The Gospels tell us he set his face resolutely towards Jerusalem. He warned his friends he faced betrayal, rejection, suffering and a cruel death. But he did so, knowing by faith in his Father he would prevail in the conquest of death, leaving behind an empty tomb.
Conclusion
Friends, we are the community of faith – faith in our crucified and risen Lord. Let us embrace that faith to receive the touch of Jesus that heals our woundedness and shame, and let us offer that touch to society’s rejects as we make church a safe space for the hurting.
And in crying out for that touch, we acknowledge we shall travel on a journey filled with tension. We shall hold in tension both the darkness and the deepest faith. It is the way Jesus himself walked. Let us have the courage to walk that way, too, knowing it is the road to his triumph.
Michael Jackson: Death Of A Child-Man
I was no fan of Michael Jackson. His Off The Wall album was popular with friends whose musical taste I hated. I could admire it but not love it. Although I have to admit I still turn up the radio every time the Jackson 5′s I Want You Back comes on – it has an extraordinary energy:
I first learned of his cardiac arrest via Breaking News on Twitter. Going over to the BBC News site, I saw live streaming of BBC News 24 with tickertape along the bottom of the screen saying that TMZ and then (more reliably?) the LA Times reported he was dead. From that moment on, it was unusually difficult to reload the BBC News front page – something that seems to have been a problem across the Internet.
I sincerely hope we won’t hear too much of the stand-up comics who gained laughter by cruelty towards Jackson (a.k.a. Wacko Jacko). His actions were disturbed and disturbing at times, but in a righteous world there would have been compassion for such a damaged man. The one who first came to fame in childhood never, it seems, outgrew that childhood. Abuse from his father and the pressures of extraordinary fame were all loaded on a fragile person. Time and again in ‘ordinary life’ I have encountered people who were damaged as children, and who did not deal with it. As a result, they were left as emotional children in adult bodies. It would never surprise me if that had happened on a large scale to Jackson.
Indeed, you wonder how much of the bizarre behaviour arose from the wounds inflicted by his father’s abuse. Is this why he acted inappropriately towards children and even his own son? And the quasi-messianic we-are-the-world/heal-the-world/earth-song stuff such as this infamous occasion?
Plenty of entertainers have been so cocooned they’ve lost touch, but this was the phenomenon in extremis. Had he so protected himself from possible pain that this was the result? What was he thinking – the white clothing and the crucifixion pose around seven minutes in? And what was Jarvis Cocker thinking, not only to protest (fine) but to ‘moon’ in front of small children? I might not have wanted Jackson near my kids (had I had any in 1996) but neither would I have wanted a Jarvis near them. Too many Britpop drugs, by the look of it. I can understand the criticisms of Jackson and children, but why not of Cocker, too, and not simply from Jackson fans?
No: while I’m not totally sure about the old maxim ‘Never speak ill of the dead’, I have always been moved by the fact that one of the things the early Christians did was to ensure that people had a decent burial, especially those who would not have had one. Financially, I imagine that even with the debts Jackson racked up, a ‘decent burial’ is not a problem from that angle. But from another angle it is a problem: we could all give him a decent burial by being restrained and compassionate in our comments about him at this tragic time.
School RE Week
It’s been hard to blog anything this week, having returned to duty on Tuesday following my convalescence. I’m finding it very tiring, and the diary is full.
In particular, I have been contributing to RE Week at Broomfield Primary School. I have welcomed all ten classes from the school to our church premises in Broomfield, three on Tuesday morning, four this morning, and three more this afternoon.
Mostly, I haven’t had a set spiel (although certain things developed in the week). I invited the children to look around the building and ask questions. They had a lot of questions about the contrast between our plant and the traditional village parish church. Most classes noted the absence of stained glass windows. It turned out they were all making their own out of paper during the week!
Two comments, though, stuck out, that were nothing to do with the contrast. We have a carving of the Last Supper hanging on our communion rail. I asked the children if they knew what the picture was. One delightfully called it “The Last Dinner”. A good paraphrase, I thought.
The other was when I showed them the small individual communion glasses. Twin brothers who lived in a pub looked at them and said, “Shot glasses”! The last thing they would be in a Methodist church!
Back Home
I’m back from hospital, and now have two weeks’ convalescence where I must not mix with many people for infection control reasons. I have been ordering Bob Dylan CDs from the library to keep me occupied, along with my books.
Things began well yesterday morning. I was one of the earlier patients taken to theatre. The modern anaesthetics are amazing. One moment I was talking to the anaesthetist and his assistant, the next I was waking up bright as a button in the recovery suite. I have suffered no pain or nausea after the surgery, either.
Not everything was straightforward, though. The bleeding from my nose took longer to halt than expected. The nurses decided this was connected with the fact that my blood pressure was misbehaving. So instead of coming home last night, I was kept in, just in case a nasty nose bleed started up.
As it happens, all that occurred was that I didn’t get a single second of sleep. The operation leaves patients with highly bunged up noses, largely with congealed blood. You are not allowed to try to remove it, because you could expose the work of the surgeons underneath. It would be like a child picking a scab on a knee before the new skin had formed. This left me finding it hard to breathe sufficiently deeply for sleep. Breathing through my mouth didn’t work either, because I had a sore throat from the tube that had been placed down it during the surgery.
However, at least the blood pressure was a little more co-operative this morning. Combined with the fact that the only bleeding I had in the night was the result of a sneezing fit, my discharge today became routine.
So I phoned Debbie and arranged that she would pick me up outside the main building at the drop-off point. We agreed on 9:15 am. Come 9:20, she still wasn’t there. My mobile vibrated in my pocket. “Where are you,” she asked, “I’ve driven past the entrance and you’re not there.”
“I’m outside the pick up and drop off point.”
“But I’ve been past A and E and didn’t see you.”
A and E? St John’s Hospital doesn’t have one. She had gone to Broomfield Hospital, eight miles away.
But before I leave this topic, I must include praise for all the staff on the ward. Their advice and care was first class. The NHS may be far from perfect, but give me that system ahead of a national private insurance scheme any day.
The rest of the day has included some joys at the children’s achievements. Mark won a special effort sticker in assembly today for always getting on with his work straight away, and at swimming after school he swam a width without armbands for the first time. We have promised a family meal out when he managed that, and with Friday being a non-pupil day at the school, that will probably be our day. Rebekah, too, has done well, going up another stage on the reading scheme today.
It will be an early night tonight. Goodnight, all.
Personal Update
Just thought I’d include a quick personal update, because blogging over the next two or three days is going to be tricky. Tomorrow sees another trip to the vet for the new cats, an ECG at the GP surgery as part of the background checking on my blood pressure situation, a family haircut crammed in between the end of school and Rebekah’s weekly Rainbows, then out early evening to Bishops Stortford for a meeting in the Methodist District for those ministers and circuits where a minister’s current invitation runs out next year (as mine does). Then it will be up early Tuesday morning for admission to hospital and the nasal op I keep droning on about.
So with that in mind, if I don’t get to post tomorrow and Tuesday, please understand! (I think you will.)
Today also has been one of those times where The Two Ronnies would have said, ‘In a packed show tonight’. On the surface, not a demanding day: two communion services, one at 11 am, the other at 6:30 pm. However, we always try to do something with the children on a Sunday afternoon, to maintain some pretence that Sunday is a family day. So when I arrived home around 1:15 pm, Debbie had sandwiches ready, they had to be gobbled, and it was off to town with the little monkeys.
Mark (who is still storming ahead at home and school with his reading skills) had been given a book by his teacher on Friday about art. He had got into the notion of ‘public art’. That seemed to mean – er – graffiti, and I don’t mean Banksy. So he and Rebekah were excitedly pointing out all sorts of public art as we walked along the river into the town centre. Thankfully, they didn’t notice the ‘art’ I saw which featured words beginning with ‘f’.
Rebekah bought a Princess Diana doll at the church May Fayre yesterday, and we found her a cheap book to help her understand who she was. (Diana died 1997, Becky was born 2003.)
BBs didn’t have any ice cream so our usual treat was out – the kids opted for combined red and blue slush puppies instead, and we took some bread to feed the ducks.
Back home for me to cook, Debbie to have a bath, and when I’d gobbled my pasta, salad and garlic bread, it was time for evening service. Back home afterwards, it was all domestic tasks for an hour or so before finally sitting down.
I’m typing this while wifey watches the double-episode season-closer of Lost.
I guess it’s been a typical minister’s Sunday?
See you soon.
Sabbatical, Day 88: Body Image, Self-Esteem And The Gospel
“When I grow up, I want to be slim like Sophie, not fat like Louise.”
That was Rebekah (aged six, if you’re new here), at bath-time tonight.
She had said the same during the Easter holidays when she returned from a two-night sleepover.
Six years old and worrying about body image.
The other day, she’d been telling me she was stupid.
“Who tells you you’re stupid?” I enquired, knowing that we might get frustrated with her but we never call her that.
“I do,” was her reply.
So tonight when she came up with the slim versus fat line again, we reinforced all we’d said before (to no avail). The most important things are to know you are loved, and therefore to be happy and want to be healthy. Yes, slim is better than fat, but only if you are loved and happy.
But with it not having worked before, we explained further. Big mistake. We explained about how some get so obsessed with being slim they make themselves ill, and even die.
Whoops.
At this point, Mark starts wobbling and dissolves into tears. “Am I going to die because I’m not eating?” He never eats much when he’s ill (as at present), and we’d totally put the wind up him.
It took a lot of reassurance. No Mark, remember how we’ve been saying that you’re heavier than your sister, even though you’re younger? This sort of thing generally happens to girls. Etc.
I think we got out of jail alive. But were we both devastated to have that effect on our son.
It’s one of our major goals to build up our children’s sense of self-esteem and self-worth, not for any pop psychology reasons, but because we believe that’s a consequence of the Gospel. It’s in creation: we’re made in the image of God. It’s in redemption: God loves us so much he gave up his Son, and even wants to dwell within us by the Holy Spirit. We even build something into our nightly prayer with the kids, where we pray that they will know how much God loves them and we love them, and that this will have a positive effect on them psychologically and spiritually. OK, we don’t quite use that language, but that’s a summary for grown-ups.
In my work as a minister (to which I shall be returning in an active sense on Sunday week), I find there is an epidemic of low self-esteem in our churches. It isn’t just the obvious theological causes, where people have been brought up to live in permanent fear of divine wrath, or with ‘worm theology’ (“I’m just a worm”). There is also the damage so many carry around from various life traumas, not least their upbringing. These damaged people then damage others, both within the church family and in the next generations of their biological families.
And yes, I know that a central component of the Gospel is that it addresses the problem of human sin. And yes, I also know that ‘grace’ makes little sense without an understanding of why we need it. And yes, I’m aware it’s easy to turn talk of God’s love into ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ slogans. But – without losing those things – I want to share all the more the knowledge of a God who is passionately committed in love to his creation, who doesn’t stop with weeping over human sin but who also, in the words of Zephaniah, rejoices and dances over that creation.
Of course, I could be crazy. What say you?
Sabbatical, Day 87: A Nothing Day
It’s difficult to know what to report today. With both children off school, interruptions come thick and fast, especially from Rebekah our extreme extravert. She thinks the job description of parent is ‘professional entertainer’.
Mark, on the other hand, can enjoy company providing he’s offering the entertainment. He has a developing line in cheeky humour, and few things please him more these days than making people laugh. That included the doctor yesterday. However, sustained periods of company drain him (yes, he’s an introvert like me), but the flip side of that is that he can enjoy his own company and occupy himself.
Last night proved rough, with him waking several times. We all slept in today, and I postponed going for my annual fasting blood test at the hospital. Mark was chirpier today when he woke up, but needed more sleep later and also complained of various headaches (which could underline the scarlet fever hypothesis) and other aches and pains. He went to sleep quickly tonight, but has already been awake coughing a couple of times.
So there has been little I could achieve today. The thought of concentrating on some serious reading is out of the question on days like today. Debbie gets behind on tasks she wants to accomplish, too.
We’ve also not heard back yet from the lady with the animal rescue clearing house about the two pairs of cats we’d like to consider.
Probably the main thing I finished today was my batch of Cross Rhythms CD reviews. The last one was not my normal taste in music, but highly commendable if you like hip-hop soul. He’s called Stanley Porter, he used to be a school teacher in the States and I think he deserves a deal with a major label.
Finally, on the music front, a very pleasing arrival in the post today. Lately on the MP3, I’ve been listening to new stuff by the wonderful Irish singer Juliet Turner. She is multi-platinum across the Irish Sea, but barely known here. Perhaps she is best known for her version of Julie Miller‘s ‘Broken Things’ that she played at the memorial service for the Omagh bombing victims in 1998:
She refused to release it as a single, although she did record it for the ‘Across the Bridge of Hope‘ CD that supported the cause.
Last week, I spotted a bargain on Amazon Marketplace. Her debut CD from 1996, Let’s Hear It For Pizza, has become difficult to find. The website for the record company, Sticky Music, seems to have disappeared from the web, and new copies sell for around £20. But this used copy was £4.99. It came today.
If you like what you hear of her above, her Live CD is a good place to start.
Sabbatical, Day 86: Scarlet Fever
Not time to report much today, and here’s why. Since early last week, the children have both had rashes. They were puzzling, but not looking sinister. Having followed flow charts in a medical book and from past experience, we thought that either they had slapped cheek or it was just something viral that would pass. They both still had them this morning, but Mark’s was worse. We kept him off school for a doctor’s appointment and sent Rebekah in.
Well, Mark entertained the GP with his comic timing and his wry replies to rhetorical questions. By the end, the doctor said it was probably viral, but had we heard of a condition called scarlet fever? There was just a small chance it was that. He advised us to watch out for the symptoms, and gave us a penicillin prescription in hand, to obtain should things develop.
Tonight, I drove to the midnight pharmacy to get that prescription. During the afternoon, Mark had complained of various pains, which Calpol relieved for a few hours but then returned. This evening, he didn’t want his dinner, despite it being sausages, a favourite of his. He went to sleep unusually quickly, but woke an hour later, spewing huge quantities of vomit. Debbie was out at a meeting to plan a church fun day, but Mark wanted Mummy. A quick call to her mobile, and she was home in record time.
So with all that and more going on that it wouldn’t be wise to talk about here, I’m just going to leave you with a couple of links that grabbed my attention earlier in the day.
First, here is a laughably bad example of a church taking a blatant biblical metaphor literally: Smells like Holy Spirit? Well OK, they may be going for effect, but how is it going to be perceived by non-Christians?
Secondly, a controversial article – I think it’s a partial truth but there’s more to it – nevertheless well worth reading: How the digital revolution might affect the Church.
