Deep Calls To Deep

"What is it that you fear? I don’t mean the everyday coming and going of life such as ‘I don’t want to be late’ or ‘I’m nervous about doing my presentation in front of my work colleagues…’ What I’m really asking is this: ‘What are your deep seated fears?’

There are the fears people have which you wouldn’t tell others, such as whether you made the right decision to get married or have children? There are those who may be considering whether you made the right decision to challenge your employer about your conditions of work or flirt with a colleague?

There are so many challenges in life which we manage day-to-day, that we become unable to endure them. We are anxious about and even fear situations we have no answers for and it is often impossible to process all of the emotions that these situations evoke.

Maybe it is something you have said to a parent or sibling which has caused a long term schism in your family? Perhaps it is self-doubt… you feel uneasy about the decisions you have made about the life you have chosen. You may have that nagging voice inside your head that your decisions are based on the wrong motives, from a sense of bitterness perhaps or an act of unkindness on your part? Maybe you made a selfish choice that alienated those you loved, setting out on your own path, with only your memory niggling away at your subconscious thought? So let's look into how we process our raw emotions and see what we can learn about our own nature and the nature of God. 

I experience from time to time, an emotional echo of the wrong choices I have made or the actions I have committed in the past. These memories can cause me to emotionally recoil from the perception I have of what happened. Whether I was the cause of the unpleasant recollection or whether someone else had contributed towards me re-living the emotions of the trauma that my subconscious mind had suddenly brought to my conscious thought, it leaves me with a feeling which can be almost as uncomfortable as the original thought.

This can range from a simple whimper where my emotions let out an uncontrolled sigh from a place I rarely visit, to a shudder of realisation or even a sense of panic and indeed, a sense of peril. The thought might last for a moment, randomly occurring at inappropriate times when preoccupied, or they wake me in the night when a recurring dream sequence jolts me awake due to the conflict in my emotions and the peculiarities of the dream state within our subconscious mind.

It has happened to me when driving along not thinking about anything in particular, perhaps because the act of controlling the car is a set of parameters I have learned to do without needing to use up all of my conscious thinking. It allows the sub conscious to bring up my past unguarded by any emotional control. I have learned to mask the conflict I have suddenly remembered, by offering an excuse for why I have made the sudden sound or the involuntarily flinch that sends a shudder through my spine.

I have let out these emotional ‘sighs’ quite a few times in the car, with my wife asking me what was wrong? I would always deflect the inquiry to my emotional well-being through miss-direction, preferring to ignore the comment and talk about something else, in order to explain why I had suddenly made such a distressed sound. When my subconscious thought causes me to shudder involuntarily, it is easy to understand why people use the old 18^th century metaphor, ‘I feel like someone is walking over my grave.’ In that short moment, the fear of the unknown is thrust into the harshness of our reality.

The modern-day scientific explanation for sudden unexplained shuddering and the appearance of goose pimples, is that they are caused by a subconscious release of the stress hormone adrenaline. This may be a response to feeling cold before the onset of a shiver or perhaps more poignantly, we release adrenaline into the blood stream in response to a poignant memory we might have, which leads to the emotional responses we experience. We each live with the reality that we die a little bit each day; perhaps we store up emotional baggage for our subconscious to sift through at a later date. It allows our conscious mind to continue without the reminder of the past, except for when we remember the emotional echo of what has gone before.

Why do we have these waking dreams? What issues have we encountered along life’s journey, to have them affect us so deeply that we are left with emotional scars? What is it about these encounters that we are left unable or unwilling to process the raw emotion? Sometimes it can be a sense of injustice or it can be when something we once believed in, which has come crashing down around us, challenging life’s delicate premise. When we encounter moments of such reality changing consequences, we can become emotionally unbalanced by the dawning revelation that we cannot go back to the way it used to be. Perhaps it is in these moments that we leave subconscious markers in our memory, to remind us of unresolved emotional tension.

We can seek help dealing with what has taken place, confiding in friends, or using a counsellor to help us process our emotions. These strategies help us develop a sense of well-being but they are often merely a sticking plaster on a more serious wound. The pain of the emotions we feel orbit around in our subconscious memory, on an eccentric course that crashes back into our reality on occasion but is often kept out of sight or out of mind. Those of us who are emotionally resilient can perhaps, shrug off the irregularity of the thought as being outside of our sense of self, while others become conflicted by the emotion as if they are trapped in a reality they cannot escape.

Perhaps our biggest fear is one of rejection? We each find our identity in the security of what we know to be true of ourselves. In relationship with our parents, family, peers, and the significant people in our lives who have helped to shape and form us in our pursuit of identity, we embrace the opportunities that life brings with relish or fear. I think even the extrovert would agree that underlying their seemingly endless outbursts of energy, is a fear of failure; a fear that they somehow do not measure up to the standard they set themselves. Despite their best efforts, they fear being rejected, driving them to act in the way that they do.

To compensate for any sense of failure on their part, the extrovert will use their gregarious nature to dominate social situations, trying to be the centre of attention in order to hide their own insecurities. For the introvert, the fear of failure restricts their ability to express themselves confidently in the public domain. Perhaps leaving to others, what they know to do, simply because the sense of ‘fight-or-flight’ battling in their conscious reasoning, would prefer the latter.

Our need to be loved and be loved is hard-wired into our core nature; to seek out love from a source of emotional empathy, is a basic human need. Facebook is full of people posting sympathetic statements about their love for someone in the present tense or their love expressed in grief as a past tense. Some even solicit agreement for their position on social media, seeking consolation through those that ‘like’ their statement. Society morbidly seeks out those in need, exclaiming their support to those willing to hear it, of the situation that their friend finds themselves in. We can also experience a sense of corporate grief when an unjust act or atrocity destroys the status quo of our collective will within society.

I believe that humanity is more than simply a product of circumstance. As a Christian, I believe that we are created beings, designed with a sense of purpose; designed to be good stewards of the planet and designed to honour the creator who formed us from the dust of the earth. When we read Genesis 1:26-28 and 2:7-8, we find that God in relationship with the Son and the Holy Spirit, wanted humanity to reflect his own nature: “Let us make human beings in OUR image, to be LIKE us…” we were formed out of God's desire to be in relationship with his creation, being formed in his likeness. We read in Genesis that God would walk with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and I wonder what that would have been like.

We are often sold a misconception about the nature of God and his relationship to us. It is common to think of a vengeful, judgemental, other worldly entity, calling us to account for our behaviour when we do not recognise his authority. How can we grow to love a distant figure who bears no resemblance to the God I need? The God I want, if he is indeed real, and if he is all loving, would not allow me to suffer or allow suffering in the world. If he is all powerful, why doesn’t he put a stop to what is happening in our world right now?

All of these questions may be considered by some to be justified criticism of a God who does not seem to care, is not bothered with my battle with cancer or the injustice of being trafficked, or the person being raped or indeed, any number of atrocities we have directly experienced, or have observed through the media.

In fact, the current state of affairs may offer enough evidence to prove that there is no God. Indeed, science has shown us that the origin of the world can be explained and that our reality is simply the one that worked from the multiple dimensional probabilities that could be observed. However, the odds that the life we have in all of its fullness, instigated through an evolving physical, chemical and biological game of chance, having any form of guarantee are very low.

Scientists have to exercise faith or have a certain belief in their own mathematical formula to be convinced of the truth of their convictions. Trusting in our own intelligence and in the theoretical modelling determined by our own premise, replaces the need of God in determining our place in the universe.

For Christians, we have faith not in the mechanisms of the universe but in the designer who coordinated the inception of the universe. It is interesting that scientific models help to uncover a sequence of events which suggest an order to humanities search for the meaning of life? Christians believe in the validity of the Bible in determining the role God has in orchestrating the inception of the universe.

This might be better explained if we were to read the Genesis account of the creation story. Whatever we might believe about the formation of the world, the Genesis story chronicles humanities early footsteps. Here, we find that within three chapters of the narrative, humanities fate is sealed not by Gods doing, but through humanities own misdeed. God looks upon the earth and judged that what he observed of the natural order was good and that humanity was very good. Paradise in the Garden was humanities to lose and lose it we did through our own indiscretion.

God commissioned humanity to be a good steward of the land, to care for it and to produce offspring so that the whole earth would be full of people who bear his likeness. This would be a people birthed in love and abounding in the character of God. This is sealed with a covenant agreement bound by one restriction; eat anything in the garden except for the fruit from the one tree which was forbidden.

Humanity was given authority to rule over creation but at the fall of humanity in Genesis 3, God brings judgement on humanity as a consequence of giving into the temptation to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree and go their own way; for both Adam and Eve were complicit in their actions, eating from the forbidden tree and in so doing, recognised that they were naked. How do you feel about undressing in front of another person or even standing naked when alone? Young children can run around with abandon in their ‘birthday suit,’ unaware of the implication of their nakedness but for us body conscious adults, unless we believe ourselves to be some kind of Adonis, we tend to want to cover up.

As we get older and more body conscious, we become more reserved and coy, particularly when we inadvertently reveal our body to someone. We all remember feeling apprehensive about having to get undressed in group changing rooms at school. There are some who can be quite uninhibited by their nakedness, happily flaunting their body shape to provoke admiration of their attractiveness or maybe even envy in those who do not share in their perceived good looks. We all like to look our best when going out in public, but there are those for whom dressing provocatively is attractive in itself. 

Our culture seems to champion celebrities dressing in sexually alluring ways in order to gain the adulation they seek, perhaps even loosing a piece of their dignity in the process of becoming an object of desire.

The naivety of Adam and Eve’s nakedness was lost in the moment of temptation, hence the difficulty that society has today in managing the dignity of human interaction and social norms when it comes to nakedness and sexuality. It is often difficult to separate the beauty of the human form from our sexuality and the lure of seeing the naked body. It is too easy to lust after the nakedness of the human form, resulting in all types of voyeuristic expression. From the seemingly harmless image of hunky fireman or the scantily clad girl posturing in front of an automobile, humanities lost dignity is far removed from the scene in the Genesis story, where Adam and Eve hid their nakedness.

Most of us though, have a sense of shyness about undressing when others are around, even those of us who are married; Adam and Eve covered themselves with a fig leaf! God does not immediately judge them for what they have done. If you read the story, Adam and Eve hid from God because of their nakedness; God calls out to them, searching for them in the garden. Adam and Eve were afraid of being found because for the first time, they understood what it meant to be naked. As a result, God cursed the serpent for what it had done and tells Adam and Eve, the consequences of their actions (Genesis 3).

Through this broken bond of trust, the relationship between God and his creation had to change because of sin. And so begins humanities struggle in the world. What was once perfect in the garden, becomes banishment and toil, with no guarantees that survival was certain. Death was to become inescapable.

Their nakedness became the outward expression of the shame they felt in the presence of God, beginning the chronicles of man’s struggle with knowing the difference between what is good and what is evil. God has the authority to judge Adam and Eve’s behaviour however the story I read here, is of God getting deeply involved in helping humanity understand its new knowledge, by sacrificing part of his creation to cover the wrongdoing that humanity had wreaked on itself.

Sacrificing something else to make amends for your own wrong doing is given the term atonement. If you read it out in syllables: At - One – Ment, you can derive it’s meaning.

The word ‘one’ is often used to mean ‘unite.’ The term ‘ment’ is a derivative of the Latin word ‘adunamentum’ also meaning unity… ‘ment’ is also a forming noun used to express an action. So atonement is an act of unity, an act of reconciliation and a sign of forgiveness.

For too long we have read the story of Adam and Eve and believed it was about Gods judgement and condemnation but as the apostle Paul writes in Romans 8:1, ‘So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to life.’

How could humanity, in such a short space of time, have forsaken the promise that God had made with Adam and Eve? Is this not also true of our nature today; we continue to do what we prefer, rather than comply with what we should be doing. We see it in our own children. We can tell our offspring the conditions of their play or the conduct we wish them to display towards others and as soon as we have said it, they go and do exactly the opposite of what we have just told them! Was it curiosity, intrigue or simple disobedience that led Adam and Eve to their actions or was it simply that Adam and Eve had not developed the emotional capacity to comprehend the gravity of their decision making?

‘Was God’s command to Adam and Eve considered to be an absolute condition with a black or white, yes/no choice, lacking any ambiguity towards what was requested, or was there room for interpretation?’ 

God’s statement: ‘Do not eat of the fruit; if you do, you will die’ seems pretty final to me. The serpent, being a metaphor for the devil or deceiver, suggested that: ‘perhaps you won’t physically die,’ opening up the statement to other possibilities, without referencing the fact that by eating the fruit, Adam and Eve would be harmed emotionally, socially and morally, they might not die physically. The phrase, 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating' can be applied here. Adam and Eve chose to make their own mind up. The absolute truth of Gods command was transformed into a subjective truth by transposing the question as the serpent did: ‘surely you will not die?’

When we are given a choice, we always consider the positive or negative consequences of our decision making in a subjective way because our emotions are involved and we want what is best for us. If we believe that God is trustworthy and has our best interest in mind, we will agree to the boundaries which God has installed for our safety in an objective way because we develop the faith to believe that what he asks of us is true.

If we introduce speculation or doubt into the integrity of the decisions we make, we develop a more relativistic opinion, subject to how we feel, rather than having a sense of moral or ethical truth. When we then look at a set of conditions that we think are imposed on us rather than chosen, we tend to challenge the reasoning behind it and go with what we think is right, as no one can tell us how to behave or limit our sense of expression... right?

This type of reasoning happens every day. In the UK, an amber light means in law, ‘be prepared to stop.’ Now let’s avoid deceiving ourselves car drivers. When the traffic light changes from green to amber as we approach the junction, we would rather accelerate, than stop at the light. It’s in our nature to push boundaries…

In Genesis, we read that God has an enemy. A fallen angel who challenged the authority of God and was cast out of the heavens (read Revelation 12: 7-9, Job 1:6, 2:1). In the Genesis story, this fallen angel is the serpent, challenging God in creation by subverting the purity of the world he created. Perhaps our naivety was our undoing? By placing the forbidden tree in the garden, it would seem that it was always God’s plan to test our relationship with him. We would choose to be obedient to God or we could choose to serve our own needs.

What we do find in Genesis 3 is that out of this brokenness comes hope. There will be a point in the future where Satan’s corruption of humanity, would be put right. As part of the covenant that God establishes with Adam and Eve, a prophetic message foretelling the events that would lead to humanities complete atonement is revealed. God puts enmity between the woman’s descendants and the enemy of God, Satan.

In this prophetic message, God reveals that he will provide a way for humanity to be saved through Eve's descendants. Jesus was the offspring God is speaking of in this passage, being born of Mary and taking human form. God left behind the security of the heavens and took the form of man. Jesus became the perfect sacrifice on the cross through the action of offering his own life to redeem the world back to himself; he became life so that we might live. Jesus understood what it was like to live in the world we all live in and be tempted by our human nature.

The Easter story reals to us that Jesus’ divinity and his humanity was questioned by all the authority given to men on earth. Religious, political and military leaders wrongfully accused Jesus of blasphemy, accusing him of inciting people to rise up against authority and to challenge the established order through his teaching. In an ultimate act of love, he took the punishment of humanity on his own shoulders, being put to death on a cross to make atonement for us. His sin free life could pay the price needed to break deaths curse, which is why we worship him today.

Christians believe that Jesus died to save us from ourselves; to save me from myself. By FAITH, I believe that Jesus has done a new work in me, a new work for each one of us and indeed, the whole world. Our relationship is restored through the sanctification that Jesus offers us all as a gift; for it is a gift of Grace that Jesus presents to us from the cross and with any gift, we need to accept it. ‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends’ (John 13:15). Jesus’ death paid the penalty for all. We are no longer cursed by Adam and Eve’s sin; instead we are given an Eternal Life with God in paradise.

When we become aware of our need of God, we recognise that as part of our struggle, we are inclined to question the sovereignty of God as in the Garden. It is often when we have no fight left in us that we stop to ponder our need of God. We are more ready to give up the struggle of trying to live out our lives using our own rules, when we realise that God loved us enough to save us from ourselves. Perhaps we would be wise to take up Gods offer of eternal life and put him at the core of our decision making.

It’s true isn’t it that when we argue with those we love; it is due to some misunderstanding or a reluctance to compromise? When we are being selfish and don’t want to give in, we can lose all sense of humility, selflessness and compassion, in the vanity of what we want to get for ourselves, rather than what we can do for them. When love has been rejected and our hearts are left broken by what we have lost in the relationships we have been in, our heart aches due to our knowledge of what we had. All of the things we had hoped for seem to have been lost or been taken away from us.

Often in the reality of the situation we face, starting again simply seems like too much hard work and yet God knew that such a situation was inevitable. Even as God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, he revelled in the relationship he had with them, even though he knew that it wasn’t going to last for long.

God allowed his creation to have the free will to choose to be faithful; to choose to be obedient to his instruction, or to be swayed by their own understanding of what they believed to be true of Gods commands. Satan challenged God’s authority, by rephrasing the command given to Adam and Eve regarding the consequences of eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Doubt and curiosity was introduced into our consciousness, and we learned to question what we once held true?

This new humanity, with the power to choose to do good or to do evil, was excluded from the garden of life because the purity of the relationship between God and his creation had changed. This wasn’t however, the end of Adam and Eve’s encounter with God. Through their offspring Cain and Abel, we see that God continues to be directly involved with humanity, although the relationship has changed.

The text suggests that God makes a personal request for the brothers to present an offering of their labour in recognition of his sovereignty and that perhaps, they had done this before. This is indeed significant as it is the first act of worship recorded in scripture (Genesis 4). Abel is the shepherd and Cain is the farmer. It appears that both brothers knew of the practice to offer God a gift related to their occupation, even if it isn’t fully explained in the text.

It wasn’t simply good fortune that Abel’s sheep produced lambs and Cain’s crops grew abundantly. God ordered creation into being and ordained the circle of life to become a self-generating source of sustenance for humanity. In recognition of this, the brothers were to offer gifts to God to reflect their gratitude towards his provision. I always read verse 5 with a feeling of trepidation. It is heart wrenching to read that Cain’s offering at face value, while seemingly appropriate, is rejected.

It is perhaps easy to see how Cain might get angry when we read the narrative because on first inspection, he doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong. We each fear the emotional turmoil of rejection and understand what it feels like to think we are being treated unfairly. As the reader of the story, we too are confused by God’s actions. Was God showing favouritism in the choice of Abel’s offering? How could that be so, as each brother brought to God a portion of their labour as instructed?

It is here where we draw on what we understand of the character of God from other books in the Bible. We can use Jewish practices for interpreting tricky passages, especially where there does not appear to be enough information to help us understand it. The Jewish term Midrash is a method of interpreting Biblical stories that go beyond the simple reading of religious teachings. It fills in the gaps left in the Biblical narrative regarding the events of the Bible and the personalities that are described in it. The purpose of Midrash was to resolve problems in the interpretation of difficult passages, using rabbinic principles of hermeneutics and the study of language.

For example, in 1 Samuel 16:7 we read that: ‘man might look at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart.’ We can use this verse from Samuel to help us to think about what God saw in Cain and his offering. Reading 1 John 3:12 gives us another insight into Jewish teaching about the heart of Cain: ‘We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous.’

An assumption is made that Cain had slipped under the spell of Satan through his approach to preparing his offering. We know that the offering of crops was not displeasing to God as Moses lists cereal offerings, as a 'pleasing aroma before the Lord' (Number 29:1-3). In order to grind fine flour, the miller has to spend a great deal of time refining the it. This made the cereal offering equal in value to that of preparing the meat offering. The time spent invested in preparing the offering for God, demonstrated the faith of the offering giver so with Cain, it must be something to do with the preparation of his offering, reflecting the state of his heart, which concerned God.

Moses’ instruction to the people of Israel was to present their offering as an atonement for the sin they knew they had committed. Through their obedience in observing the ritual the people offered their sacrifice as a substitute for the punishment they felt they deserved or to honour God because of his provision towards them. It is the same today. We bring an offering of worship to please the heart of God, because Jesus died for our sin. As his people, we look forward to joining together to celebrate what God has done for us. We spend time in prayer; we do what Jesus asks of us to heal the sick, feed the poor, and set the captives free; for freely God gave us his gift of grace, so freely we forgive (Matthew 10:7-8)

So, if God is indeed looking to the heart of the one who has made an offering, we have to assume that Cain’s heart wasn’t right before God. There is a little hint of this in the text. Abel chooses the best portions from his firstborn lamb to present to God, whereas Cain simply presented some of his crop. Perhaps Cain had grown tired of making an offering in this way and had little regard for it. Perhaps more seriously, Cain simply grabbed whatever grain came to hand, without thinking about what he was doing. Perhaps God already knew of Cain’s disregard for him through the disdain he displayed in the requirement to prepare the offering.

The toil of working the land, cultivating the soil, sowing seed, watering the crops and harvesting the grain had an effect on Cain’s understanding of Gods provision. Perhaps Cain had lost his faith in God as provider because he saw that it was his own hard work, rather than God’s bountiful provision, which sustained him. Abel on the other hand, working as a shepherd, had the good fortune of watching the circle of life give birth to new livestock with each season. His work was less physical and his toil gave him space to reflect on the natural order. As Abel watched each sunrise and sunset, he was able to recognise God’s hand in providing for his family, just as King David did as a young shepherd.

If we look at this explanation of Midrash in helping to understand the nature of Cain and Abel from a philosophical perspective, we could be minded to say that Cain believed in his own good works, whereas Abel had faith enough to believe in God’s favour towards him. Cain’s sense of rejection led to a disregard for his brother and his resentment of his treatment by the hand of God. This cemented Cain’s opinion that he no longer believed in God as sovereign or in his righteousness. Cain began to look at the situation he found himself in through the subjectivity of his own perception of God, and in his reasoning between what is right or what is wrong. This led to his belief that he could dispense judgment on another person through his own volition, as though he was equal with God.

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being, when he appeared in human form (Phillipians 2:5-7, NLT)

This inevitably took Cain down a path he should not have been going down and from which he could not return. Once he had unleashed his fury, his mixed emotions shaped his reasoning and determined a course of action. He created for himself a false set of assumptions about his right for justice, believing that he was justified in his actions. To help Cain do this, he first had to unshackle himself from the one thing that held him back, obedience to God. Setting himself free from any last obligation he felt towards God and his own conscience, Cain could justify to himself, the decision he had made to lure his brother away from the protection of those around him, and kill him in the field.

What I have only just noticed here is that God was not aloof and distant. He spoke directly with Cain in person, In Genesis 4:7 we read, “You will be accepted when you do what is right. If you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”

Before we consider this verse, let’s look practically at what we read. How did God speak to Cain in the narrative? Even though humanity was banished from the Garden of Eden, did God still walk freely among them, or simply appear to them on occasion? I had just assumed that God had withdrawn to heaven at the fall but it seems from reading the narrative that God met personally with Cain, warning him of the path he was on and offering Cain guidance out of his love for him.

This is puzzling because later in Exodus, when Moses went up to the mountain of the Lord, his face shone brilliantly as he spent time speaking with God. When he came back down the mountain, the people feared that they might simply drop dead on looking at Moses’ face. They were so frightened that the Hebrew people asked Moses to wear a veil. So what is happening here with Cain? In the first instance, it seems the text is written as a dialogue in the first person. Secondly, Cain seems to have been directly warned by God to consider his actions. The guidance God gives Cain, is left for him to consider by himself, being allowed the freedom to choose his own path.

God knows all of the different emotional paths that Cain could go down, hence the reference to sin crouching at his door but still, it was his choice to make. Would Cain be obedient to God or would he continue to sulk at having his offering rejected? We know the rest of the story… after murdering his brother, Cain lies about his actions before God, who knows all things.

It is clear that Cain has completely disassociated himself from the sovereignty of God, choosing to defend his own actions by lying. This indicates to us, Cain’s complete disrespect for Gods authority, especially during the protestations of his innocence when punished. We can see in this story, the nature of SIN fully worked out in all of its treachery and deceit.

It was God’s right to curse humanity with death because as creator, He alone has the authority to judge the fate of his creation. Only God could condemn Adam and Eve to death as a consequence of their sin, yet here we find Cain taking a life as though he had the same authority as God. It is not for humanity to decide on matters of life and death, yet for Cain, already believing he could disregard God, took the life of his brother into his own hands, revealing the heart that God had already foreseen.

So we are given here in Genesis, a caution. Worship is something that is offered in truth through what we do by way of our action and in the way we have prepared our hearts. In faith, we prepare the gift of our life in anticipation that He can do immeasurably more with it than we can on our own. The worship that comes from this place of faithful obedience, is considered by God to be true worship.

When we strip away all that we think we are, and offer him our whole heart, our whole self, He can do amazing things with us and through us. In worship, we offer Him our praise and adoration, celebrating what God has done for us and affirming our faith in Him. When we focus on the holiness of God, we recognise the journey we are each on, identifying where changes need to be made in our lives and commit ourselves again to receiving more of His grace.

So what about all of the thoughts we have floating around in our subconscious mind, pricking our conscience with doubt and fear? Are we willing to allow God to stir in us a desire to offer our whole self to His love? Jesus calls out to each of us who are burdened or heavy laden with the weight of the world on our shoulders, to find rest in him (Matthew 11:28-30).

 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (The Message)

We all want to be in rhythm with our body, mind and spirit. Whether we use Yoga, positive energies, mindfulness or Feng shui, we are seeking something, perhaps even outside of ourselves, which offers, to borrow a Buddhist phrase, a sense of karma, a sense of peace. Isn’t it amazing how many Eastern mystical, Taoist, Buddhist, and Hindu rituals regarding the natural world, have been incorporated into the many self-help ideologies we use today, yet we get weird when we mention God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit. But how can we help ourselves be the best we can be when we are not truly settled in our own sense of self?

What if I told you that we could draw on a true source of strength, far greater than what we think we know? A strength that existed at the beginning of time when humanity first set foot on the earth. In Genesis we read that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of creation. As God spoke life into the emptiness, His will was done through the work of the Spirt. What if we were able to depend on this same spirit, with the power to create the universe, in our everyday coming and going? What if this same spirit that helped to form the world, was available to us for our strength in time of need and a hope when things seem hopeless:

‘But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative--that is, the Holy Spirit--he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.’ (John 14:26)

What if I told you that the voice of God speaking to creation, also spoke to Cain in order that he might choose the right path to walk along, and also speaks truth to our own hearts in a voice that we can understand? That inner voice that calls out to our conscious thought, warning us of danger and pleading with us to come home, is that same voice.

We can understand the metaphor that deep calls to deep; when life seems stacked against us like the billowing ocean raging against us in a storm, in the depths of our despair, we can remember that God is with us in the storm. Meteorologists tell us that in the eye of a tornado, there is a sense of calm right in the middle of the storm. When the disciples were terrified of the storm which consumed the boat they were traveling in, Jesus was found in the bottom of the boat asleep. When awoken by his friends, Jesus, witnessing the terror they felt, went on deck and rebuked the wind (Luke 8:23-25), such is his authority and power. This is the same voice that spoke life to creation, whose power is also available to you.

There will always be times of trouble in this life. The nature of humanity practically compels us to live out our desire to serve our own needs rather than our original purpose to honour the creator through our relationship with him and each other. We can try to fill the void in our design through the purpose of career, family, relationships and love, yet each of these experiences bring with them, positive and negative emotions which can lead to destructive behaviours that are unbecoming of our nature. This is demonstrated in the story of Cain. We must bring to God our whole self, preparing our hearts and being willing to leave behind the storm, in order that we may find His peace.

It is all too easy today to ignore our consciences while we live for the now; preferring to live off our emotional energy, forever on a quest for more. The problem with emotions is that they are transient in nature, never lasting long enough to quash our thirst for more, yet possessing enough residual energy in our subconscious mind, to leave lasting scars.

These scars act like emotional echoes, the ones I said I experience from time to time, containing those lurid moments of our imagination, where our subconscious meets with our reality. These half-truths can create a cascade effect in our emotions which we cannot quite explain, leading us to experience those waking moments which disorientate our natural rhythm and cause us to question our significance and our own sense of self.

If we truly value our emotional wellbeing, we need to first stand on the rock, a firm foundation that can withstand the storms of life. This rock can only be Jesus. When our memory causes us to draw back with fear, when we battle with our emotions, we must cling to the rock of Jesus who endured the cross for our sake. He knows exactly what the nature of humanity is like, possessing the authority to calm the storm, bind the cause of our distress, and set us free. It is our faith in him to do this which is lacking.

When we are made aware of our disobedience in living the life God would have us live, going our own way and doing out own thing, we are alerted by the Holy Spirit of our need to make a radical change in our lives. We need to recognise that we have to turn away from the life we have been leading, seek God, and confess to him that going our own way has led us into behaviours and actions which do not honour him.

Recognising our need of God, we offer him our lives, our thoughts, our actions, our physical bodies and through Jesus, find atonement with God. We ask Jesus to fill us with his presence; the same Spirit that helped in the formation of the world, to guide us on the rest of our journey. There will still be difficulties in our lives, perhaps there is someone experiencing great hardship right now whom we love, yet we must cling to Jesus for without him, we would not be able to endure. There is nothing that we experience that God hasn’t got an answer for.

We need to learn that Jesus is the peace that we are looking for. Standing on the rock at the height of a storm means that our character is shaped by the Spirit of God alive in us; preparing us and reassuring us that in this broken world, we can endure; we can have the same sense of calm that Jesus had, when he slept in the bottom of the boat and all those around him were filled with fear.

We can bring all of our fears to Jesus. Whether it be those subconscious thoughts which make us restless in the night; waking us up in a cold sweat and leaving us with emotions that we cannot control, or the reality of our actions in the world. We need to offer Jesus our life. When we hold onto the emotional heartache that those actions release in us, we harden our hearts, believing that we alone have to endure. Yet it is not us but the Spirit of God that has the power to endure.

Woven within the tapestry of our conscious and subconscious thought is the emotional turmoil of the experiences we have had to endure; give these to God. Our reactions reveal how life’s experiences cause us to react to the different situations we face. Emotional guilt and the shame of what we have done goes before us, resurfacing in uncharacteristic exchanges and outbursts which we cannot explain… his love conquers all.

We have learned through Adam and Eve that our humanity possesses the knowledge to do good by people or to choose to bring harm on others. Our own selfish ambition determines how we respond. We have this choice to make at each interaction we have with those around us. Whether it be those in authority, employer, teacher, parent, spouse, lover, child or friend, we choose how we want to be. It’s the same with God.

We can invest time in restoring a right relationship with Jesus or we can ignore his love, ignore the purpose he has for us, and go our own way without the guidance he offers. Like Cain, we have the choice to honour God with our lives; reconnecting our sense of purpose to honour God; or we can reject Jesus as Cain did of God. Our actions either draw us ever further from that which we were supposed to be, or reunites us with the one who saw that what he had created was good.

It wasn’t the nails that held Jesus to the cross; it was his love. Recognising the pain of what his body, his emotions and his love for humanity was going to go through, he allowed himself to be abused by the evil of humanity, ultimately leading to his death. This fulfilled the prophecy in the Garden of Eden, that Eve’s descendant would crush Satan’s head even though Jesus would bruise his own heal through the atoning sacrifice of giving up his own life, to save ours.

The glorious thing is that death could not hold him. Jesus had done nothing deserving of death so was able to fulfil the obligation that humanity had in meeting the whole law that God laid out before Moses. No longer would we need meat offerings or cereal offerings or ritual cleansing because Jesus became the one true sacrifice for all humanity. Jesus brings life. He brings restoration. He brings unity with God something that we can have today. He offers us an opportunity to begin again, to let go of the guilt which floods our thoughts from time to time, and return to the one who knew us before we were even born. So let go of your waking thoughts, malevolent dreams and pangs of self-doubt and embrace life’s true calling to be in relationship with God.

As we finish this blog today, I invite you to join with me in dedicating our lives to following after God. You may want to read through the instruction before you begin so that it flows better, maybe even repeating the steps a few times if it doesn’t work for you at first, as we are complex individuals and have a long way to go before we can trust completely what God has for us.

Close your eyes, breath calmly and regularly so that your mind and your natural rhythm finds rest. Think about these following questions as you relax: How do you give thanks for what you have, when everything is as it should be? Who do you give thanks to? Who do you call out to when life is hard and there seems to be no hope?

Whichever question best fits with what you are thinking, invite the Holy Spirit to work in your heart, your mind, and your spirit. Give this some time until you feel at peace. Ask God to reveal in you, the things which are the source of your joy, your unhappiness or your pain. Whatever it is you are feeling, let the Holy Spirit’s presence fill you. 

Listen again to your inner voice. The Holy Spirit will inspire you to pray the right words, don’t rush. We may need to respond to our thoughts as we wait but do not let them distract you from simply waiting to sense his presence rest on you.

A way to respond to this is through asking God to forgive you when we have got so caught up in our own desire that we forsake all others. It may be that we, like Cain, believe that we are the source of our strength and our joy and we have no need of God. We need to ask God for his forgiveness in that. We may have done things which have harmed others at the expense of what we wanted. The Holy Spirit will illuminate these areas where we have made mistakes and gently encourages us to confess our wrongdoing, which we call sin.

As we continue to breath gently and stay in that thought, we may experience anger or disappointment at seeing those we love being hurt in some way, believing that God was absent and didn’t care about it. If this is so, then wait, give God time. Let the Holy Spirit dwell on what you have said. The Holy Spirit is a great healer of our emotional hurt when we are honest with God and are willing to wait for his presence to meet with us in that hurt. 

Take time to sense in your heart, the love and compassion that God has for your suffering, for Jesus knows suffering. God watched his own son die at the hands of humanity on a cross and we are not alone in our pain. Wait on him, give him time, allow the Holy Spirit to fill that emptiness, that bitterness, with the love he has for you. 

As you begin to sense the Holy Spirit, our emotions and our body react in different ways. You may feel your heart beat quicker or receive a sense of his peace. You may find your chest fill up with an energy or your hands get hot as the Holy Spirit fills you, as though deep talks to deep. We may feel our frustrations boiling over as though sitting and praying to God is useless…

I urge you to wait, he is listening. Ask God to draw close to you, tell him of your pain, what you have had to endure. He will understand. As you finish speaking out loud or in your mind, continue to wait.

Ask Jesus to reveal himself to you by offering your whole-self, seeking out the perfect love that washes away all of our sin and casts out all fear. As you start to sense that all you have wanted to say to God in prayer for this moment has started to come to a natural end, take up Jesus’ offer of life. 

Finish your time by committing yourself to a relationship with Jesus, turning away from the behaviours of the past and looking forward to the possibilities that a life in his loving presence can bring. It’s your call.

Melancholy

I am feeling very melancholic at the moment… a phrase that I love due to the rhythmic syllables that make up the word. It can be defined as ‘feeling pensive’ or ‘having a sense of sadness’. Being ‘pensive’ in and of itself, means to be reflective, thoughtful, or even prayerful. From the outside at least, my emotional circumstances could be considered by the casual observer to be ‘self-absorbed’, preoccupied… moody, or even gloomy.

I don’t set out to be this way but for a moment in time, I can struggle with the reality of what is expected of me and that which I can actually achieve. When I am feeling melancholic and try to make sense of my day-to-day experiences, it is often tinged with a sense of sadness; that my exploits have not really resulted in any significant gains in my life... My negativity means that my outlook on life, how I view my social status, my material wealth and my possessions, is tinged with pessimism, rather than viewing my achievements for what they are, but I suppose it all depends on the lens through which I want to view the various aspects of my experiences, which help to shape my sense of perspective.

A good example of this is the frustration I feel at the whimsical nature of the students I teach and the lack of focus they inevitably have, compared to the effort I have to put into the planning, preparation, and delivery of my lessons. It is easy to look at the world through the moving picture box in the corner of the room, see the suffering of many throughout the world, and then look at my students complaining when they cannot be bothered to write neatly, use the correct spelling or follow the rules of English grammar in order to complete their work, despairing at their indifference.

I despair at the student’s limited grasp on the reality of the world we live in and the relative ease by which they receive free education and health care. Their daily lives are so luxurious and safe, compared to the standards experienced by a large part of the world’s children and they don’t give a second thought for what they have. When children in other parts of the world suffer great hardship, are unable to attend school, or cannot afford medical treatment, surely when we see those images staring out at us from the television screen, we would redouble our efforts in the light of what we have seen, honouring those less fortunate than ourselves at least, by trying to be the best that we can be?

It makes me feel despondent when I see my students come into school in the morning via the convenience store, with armfuls of family size snacks and drinks, to be consumed only by themselves, filling their bodies with artificial sugars and chemical stimulants without any regard for those in the world less fortunate than themselves... or even those in the same room who have nothing. As they casually throw sweets and confectionery at each other in wasteful abandon, they have little regard for the orphaned children in Africa that we see on the television screen, possessing distended stomachs due to the malnutrition they experience, not knowing if they will ever eat in the week, let alone today.

“Do you have a pen to write up your class work?” I might ask the students in my classes. No they reply…. “I can’t afford one” mutters one student, “Mine broke yesterday” observes another. In my head I’m thinking: “Didn’t you get a pen from the convenience store or newsagent on your way into school, when you bought your family sized bag of Doritos, 2 litres of coke and can of Red Bull, family pack of skittles and chewing gum?” Some students have the audacity to challenge the teacher by stating, “Look Sir, just give me a pen. You’ve got some spare pens to give out, just give it to me and stop fussing about it!”

You might ask me, as Heath Ledger’s Joker did of Batman, “Why so serious?” The answer is simple really… life is serious. Every decision we make and every action we take, embeds within our collective consciousness, a determinism to repeat behaviours when the reaction we receive to our demands, attains the required outcome. We become self-absorbed, using emotional ploys to get what we want, often at the expense of others. We become self-centred, selfish, narcissistic, preoccupied by a sense of our own importance, antagonising others in the pursuit of our own needs, and lacking the emotional empathy to understand the needs of others.

That is of course, if we leave our human nature un-checked. We seem to be living in an age where there is an expectation in the West at least, that we think we have a right to a comfortable lifestyle; that we deserve it. We need to have that new iPhone 6s, the latest clothing; music, films, games, entertainment, all readily downloaded at the touch of a screen… yet, without having to earn it even. Where does faith fit into 21^st Century living, when values and traditions clash against the shock of the new?

How we deal with the bright new tomorrow is the ever challenging relationship that we have to manage in order for us to make sense of life as we know it. This is one of the reasons why I am feeling a little melancholic.

In the dialogue between Batman and the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation in ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008), there is a sense that the Jokers reasoning, in responding to the challenge of beating the Batman, reflects on society today. That is of course, the art of good film making. The dialogue below is a good example of what I am referring to:

JOKER: I wanted to see what you'd do...and you didn't disappoint. You let 5 people die. Then you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me, that's cold.

JOKER: Those mob fools want you dead so they can get back to the way things were. But I know the truth: there's no going back. You've changed things. Forever.

BATMAN: Then why do you want to kill me?

JOKER: Kill you? I don't want to kill you. What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No. No. No! No you - you complete me.

BATMAN: You're garbage who kills for money.

JOKER: Don't talk like one of them (the police), you're not. Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're a freak. Like me. They just need you right now.

JOKER (cont'd): But as soon as they don't need you, they'll cast you out. Like a leper.

The Joker looks into Batman's eyes.  Searching

JOKER: Their morals, their code; it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see- I'll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They'll eat each other. See I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.

JOKER: You have these rules, and you think they'll save you.

BATMAN: I have one rule.

JOKER: Then that's the one rule you'll have to break to know the truth.

BATMAN: Which is?

JOKER: The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you're gonna break your one rule.

In this scene you can see in the dialogue how each tries to justify their response to each other and the situation that they face. Every action they make provokes a reaction, escalating the tension, yet possessing an underlying logic that is intellectually sophisticated even though it is based in a subjective truth. No one side is prepared to take responsibility for their initial actions… the perception of truth being a relativistic reaction to circumstance. The Joker attempts to deny the Batman of his moral and ethical position by attempting to undermine the foundation on which he had based his decision making. While the Batman justifies his vigilantism through believing that he is the only answer to the Jokers threat.

A good example of this has been my work over the last few months, supervising a group of students in exam conditions. If I ignore the shocking behaviour and the disrespect of the conditions that the exam has to be administered under for the moment, there seems to be in the student’s attitudes, an underlying predisposition to be anarchic and non-compliant. Talking, shouting out, singing, and getting up out of the seat are common. Even though this behaviour is forbidden under the examination rules and could lead to their exclusion from all the exams they will take in the summer, the students persist in behaviours designed to circumvent the rules.

This behaviour is seen by students and their peers to be a great sport; to frustrate the intentions of the teacher; to undermine the moral authority that the teacher has in order to take control of the situation. Challenging the rules and avoiding responsibility for our actions whilst believing you are ‘fighting for a cause’, is something we have all done. The students are no different, being adolescents, fuelled by hormonal changes and sugary highs.

As a teacher, students are always pushing the boundaries, attempting to devalue my status, in order to elevate their own. It is my job to prove that I am able to manage the situation. For the students however, in order for them to comply with my wishes, it is often at the cost of losing face, which inevitably creates an uneasy tension. If the student believes that they are working on their own terms, then their reluctance to comply is abated. It is something of a ‘fools-errand’ for the teacher to attempt to bring order to some situations, particularly when it is inevitable that there is nothing I can do to make them stop misbehaving.

In reality, on both a conscious and subconscious level, each student is making a choice. “Do I do what I am told?” Will the student make a conscious choice to respect the situation and the protocols required to enable cooperation and mutual respect or will they challenge the social order to get what they want? If we challenge the status quo, for whatever reason, we subconsciously log into the memory and our ethical centre that certain behaviours elicit a response that elevates our sense of self. This gives us the false impression that our behaviour got us what we wanted. For some, we repeat this behaviour to reinforce our status and the aggrandised opinion we have of ourselves, relative to those around us, without recognising whether it was correct to do so.

Such was the student’s disrespect of the conditions of the exam that I was administering, the contempt that was being displayed for my authority as a teacher and dare I say, the student’s own limited self-esteem, that they perhaps felt the need to act in this way. The exam conditions curtailed their individualism and self-expression, giving them a sense that they had to deny their own needs in a culture that has lost formality. “How am I supposed to know what to do?” says one student, drawing attention to himself.

The other students in the class are now drawn into this public challenge, so with greater boldness he continues: “You are not a very good teacher… you don’t help us when we ask for help; you just ignore us when we ask for it, you don’t tell us anything, you just walk away.” Lowering my voice to speak directly to him, I politely remind him that all the learning that has gone on in the lessons before this point in time, has led to this moment.

I think some of the students thought that the day-to-day events of the classroom were merely a game, with lessons a form of entertainment whereby my efforts to educate them, just a means to pass the time. To cover up the gap between what was being asked of the student and what they could remember, the most vocal of them used their assumed status to shift the focus away from themselves, through accusing the teacher of poor teaching. Publicly listing the teachers apparent faults including being unhelpful, complaining about the students behaviour when they had done no wrong, picking on them for no reason, and failing to show the students respect, helped to solidify their position as being dealt an unfair hand.

As in any game of poker, a choice is consciously made to deflect the negative emotion of being unable to complete the examined activity by challenging the professional conduct of the teacher. The now public debate amongst peers, helped to build the self-esteem of the individual through the negativity that they all felt about the difficulties they faced. It was too late to do anything about it now; to alter ones approach to derive some notion of success. it always seems easier to apportion blame on the things outside of your control or onto the experiences you were forced to endure, rather than address the issue whereby you have simply misapplied yourself to the task you had been set.

In my melancholy, I feel like the scene from the Disney Pixar movie, ‘The Incredibles’ where Bob Parr, Mr. Incredible, has to hide his identity whilst working for an insurance company. His boss, who has small person syndrome (attempting to make up for a lack of height by controlling others), demands that Bob do as he is told because that is what is expected of him, despite the injustice of the system.

In one scene, Bob is seen wistfully watching a robbery take place out of the window, whilst his boss uses the ‘hairdryer’ treatment (shouting at full volume in someone’s face whilst invading their personal space), to demand compliance to his sense of due process. He could easily have prevented the robbery, he was a super hero but instead, having to deny his true identity, he was sat listening to the chastisement of his employer whilst wishing he was elsewhere, doing what he was destined to do.

I feel like this because I have felt for a while that I have been designed to do something more than I am currently doing. It’s almost as though God has been shaping me for something new. The experiences I have had and the character building conflict and resolution that I have endured, seem to have come together quite literally to form in me, a character that suits God’s purposes at this point in my life. I am way-off being the finished article, but I feel that there is something missing, that I am not yet complete. It’s always niggling in the back of my mind: "Is this all I am? Is this what I was meant to be; what I am meant to become? Is this what I am supposed to be doing? Is there nothing more?"

Later on in the ‘Incredibles’ movie, Bob arrives home and parks. He gets out of the car and slips on a skateboard in the drive. Grabbing his car for support, his incredible strength means his grip on the car leaves a handprint. He is unable to close the car door. His hulking frame tries to delicately close the door, knowing that in reality due to the damage caused, it was never going to close. In frustration, Bob slams the car door, shattering the glass. In a fit of rage he uses his superhuman strength to pick up the car to throw it away after all, his day couldn’t have got any worse. In a moment, Bob sees his neighbour’s son watching him and puts the car down. In a later scene Bob returns home to see the child sat on his drive watching him again: “What are you looking at?” he asks, to which the child replies: "For something amazing to happen."

I really connect with this sentiment. I don’t have the superhuman strength to pick up the car but like the little boy, I seem to be watching the coming and going of life and wistfully comment to my inner dialogue ‘I could do that’ or ‘I would love to do that.’ I suppose I am impatiently waiting for the time when I get to do something amazing with the gifts God has given me. Like the little boy who had glimpsed something spectacular, I too want to ‘do the stuff’ as we say in the Vineyard movement. I am often driven to distraction by the attitude of employers, badly behaving students and life’s idiosyncrasies, which leaves me feeling that I am sat ‘waiting for something amazing to happen.’

I believe that God works through each of us in order for his purposes to be fulfilled. His plan is being worked out through each faltering step that we take, as though we are apprenticed to him, much like the disciples. A few years ago at my 40^th birthday, a friend suggested that my wife and I cash in our endowment policy to pay off the remaining mortgage we had and make a new start. At the time, we shrugged off the suggestion, believing that we were to hold onto the endowment until its maturity where I would be over 50. Then we could do what we wanted with our lives. However, a number of God coincidences have transpired, for my wife and I to revisit this idea. At the end of October 2015 we did exactly what our friends suggested; we cashed in the endowment and are now mortgage free…

The casual interaction of two friends talking over dinner four years earlier, did not seem spiritual at the time but I believe it was divinely appointed. You might ask, “Do you really believe God was in that process?” Of course He was. The freedom my wife and I felt at paying off our debts, has released a fresh optimism in my heart but tellingly, the enemy will always attempt to unsettle our plans. When looking to cash-in our endowment, the stock market had previously taken dramatic falls as China had begun to cut production and the world’s commodities it bought, were now seemingly less desirable. 

This caused values to tumble and the resulting dividends on our endowment reduce. In three months, we had seen the value of our endowment drop, giving us a nervousness that we may not have the funds after all, tainting the economics of our decisions and challenging our obedience to God’s will for us. 



However, once we had made the decision that this was God’s plan for us and committed to the process, the value of our endowment returned to the level we were previously anticipating; odd that.

Alongside the financial decision, I also made the decision to step out in faith and resign from my teaching role. For years, as expressed through the blogs I have published on my page, I have felt the call to do something new for God. Recent events in school finally soured my vocation to teach children and cemented my resolve to follow where God was leading me. I went to school at the end or the summer vacation, firmly believing I would submit my resignation. However, I procrastinated, saying one thing to my close friends whilst being apprehensive in making the decision to resign publicly on the inside. In my delay, I could sense God’s hand had withdrawn from me whilst I dithered and went around the desert one more time. 



Every kind of professional trial was placed before me each day. I would say in my head, ‘I will put in my resignation letter today,’ but find some excuse not to. I would inwardly rue to myself that I had been so careless in delaying my decision. One time, I said to myself that I was definitely handing in my resignation this weekend because I could see that the Head Teacher (Principal) was absent and I could discretely place the note in his in-tray without being seen… but I put it off.

I finally made my play to resign in the Performance Management meeting I was set to have, where we would project targets for the coming year while reviewing the previous year’s performance. I re-drafted my resignation letter multiple times before the ‘crunch’ meeting with my line manager. 



It took a further three days before I received a confirmation letter from the Head teacher and found myself disappointed. Its short paragraph confirming acceptance of my resignation, summed up what I had come to believe was the schools regard for my services. Not one senior manager came to see me to ask why I wanted to leave, nor have they even spoken to me in the corridor to ask about my decision.

This morning, my wife and I visited the bank to pay off our remaining debts with the money we had borrowed to pay for the purchase of cars and home improvements. The sense of relief at being debt free, coupled with no longer needing to strive for acceptance in my career, has slowly filled my spirit with joy, giving us both a sense of peace and relief. I had worked in education for 22 years for this moment to be free financially to do what God has called me into. He has led us this far and taken care of us all of this time so we look forward to what He has in-store for us in the future... whatever that may be.

For the first time in my professional career and our personal lives, we no longer need to work to pay off debt. Sure, the day to day bills still have to be paid, from which I will go and join the thousands of others seeking work. But the terms and conditions for the work I do will be on my terms, rather than the unending workload of the classroom teacher. Even as I sit here on a Saturday afternoon, my mind flips to the box of marking sat in the hallway as I served the remainder of my notice and a pang of anxiety fleets through my being. Boy, will I be glad to rid myself of that psychological guilt trip each weekend and the emotional trauma that went with it.

What joy is to be found in freedom? When I watch the hysterical pleas of refugees trying to board transportation into Europe through the television news, you can sense the desperation to escape. The emotions overtake every aspect of their being, impressed in the anguish seen on their faces. The atrocities in Paris share these same scenes of bewilderment, the same sense of loss, and panic. 



We in the West have had peace in Europe for over 50 years. It is difficult to vocalise how we think or feel or how we ought to react. Blaming France’s bombing of Syria as justification for military action against terrorist activities could put countries who stand against IS on a war footing. Major European cities are on high alert based on the intelligence used to determine the level of the threat posed to their way of life by IS.

Just the other morning, my wife awoke with a pang of hysteria from nightmare images of IS terrorists searching our home to behead our children because of our Christian faith. Now that is a real fear fuelled by propaganda and a skewed reality from our subconscious dreaming, but Paris may have changed that. My anxiety over the omen of marking a set of school book’s has nothing compared to the terror my wife felt as she slept and the emotional echo that stayed with her throughout the morning.

I always wince inwardly when I hear of Christians praising God for answering their prayers for a parking space, when the atrocities of the world continue. I happen to believe that God inspires us to action in this world; to serve him by laying down our lives for the sake of those he came to save. We reveal God in what we do and say, inspired by what we think and feel, responding to the still small voice that calls out to us on the maelstrom of what we call life.

We each lead very different lives. The child born into poverty, sleeping on cardboard mats on the pavement, has a reality that they know to be true for them. It is all they have, chasing scraps of food, being left vulnerable and open to abuse by street wise adults who take advantage of their plight. I get frustrated by the consumption of products we have in the West. For everything we buy, we receive a polythene plastic bag that we cannot be bothered to recycle. The consumption of the West entraps those less fortunate than we are, living in countries we have never visited, in lives which seem difficult to escape from.

The irony here is that in the UK, we line our waste bins with polythene carrier bags that we used to get for free when shopping. We had so many of them that Ikea, the Swedish furniture retailer, designed a polypropylene basket with holes in the side, into which you would stuff the carrier bags, while being able to pull the bags from the sides for re-use. It is an urban myth that we all had so many polythene carrier bags that we would take one and fill it full with the spares. 





And yet today, as I buy goods in the high street, I have to carry my newly bought belongings in my arms. You now have to purchase those bags we used to get for free, due to environmental policies imposed by government. We want to save money so we are reluctant to purchase a bag for £0.05p on principle. The politics of why this is being done is lost in the hustle and bustle of the high street because as we all know, we are fickle, unable to see past our immediate needs.

The reality of life in the West is that we think too small; our reality is our home, our street, our businesses, our employment and our community. We connect with different cultures and nationalities from around the world by the food they sell us or the holiday we have been on. The ease of travel that we can all now afford, or the information we gain from the television news, feeds us with an edited view of the world that the broadcaster feels we might be able to digest. 

But even as you sit reading this, a child is searching through hazardous materials, living on the edge of a rubbish tip, to provide an income for his family.

I have been preoccupied by a situation within the worship team at church. It seems that I may have been the cause of an uneasy tension with a sharp remark I made in the business of setting up the sound system. My efforts to understand the problem went to no avail, resulting in feelings of melancholy at my apparent ineptitude. As much as I have tried to resolve whatever the problem was, the lack of communication has left me emotionally unsettled. 



In my limited way, I have tried to develop a sense of team, fellowship, and mutual support but it seems that my idealism does not match my actions. I am perplexed by how the situation has developed so quickly, fracturing what I believed to be the birth of something great in our church. I seek reconciliation to preserve the harmony of the team and to put-to-bed, any lingering sense of wrong. It is interesting that as we ponder our own problems, our attention is drawn away from those in need around us, making us less effective on our journey.

All of these experiences are real; they matter to us; they matter to God. Whatever our journey, the Holy Spirit whom dwells within us, testifies to us of God’s love, encouraging us to choose him over our natural instinct. A guy who I have met a few times Stuart, who works at our Storehouse facility, went to the French refugee colony lovingly named ‘the jungle’, near to the Calais Euro Tunnel entrance. In the days leading up to Christmas, in what he describes as being squalid conditions, he helped build nine shelters from timber frames and tarpaulin sheets and a shop for provisions. 

Another friend of mine Rob, who has a background in social work, has got involved in welcoming the refugees emerging from Syria, who are destined for the UK, and for whom Southend may be their new home.

Both men seek to apply in their lives through their actions, the will of God as it applies in their walk with him. There is always opportunity; there is always a decision we can make to act in faith. As Christians, both men believe that God is using their compassion for the refugees, to offer hope to those less fortunate than themselves. They are not doing anything dramatically different to what they do every day in Southend. The difference is that in following the Lord, their imaginations are illuminated by the potential to share the love of God beyond their circumstances. These men are not doing this to receive some form of acclaim or recognition, or even to feel good about themselves. It is more that they felt compelled to do what God was impressing on them to do, in order to please their Father God.

"When we get caught up in ourselves, we can be easily distracted from what God is drawing us into. If we hold onto grudges or dwell on the wrong that we feel has been done to us, we are made weaker by the emotional energy we consume trying to maintain the grudge. Understanding the true meaning of love and forgiveness, helps us to let go of the negative emotions, seeking to build up one another through compassion and companionship, on a journey into freedom."

It is up to us to take the first steps towards reconciliation, as we are the ones being led by the spirit into confession and repentance. We look for the opportunity to reach out to those who feel aggrieved and make peace because there may not be a better time to do so and we don't know whern the opportunity may come again. We need to be thankful for what we have, asking God for his mercy, by staying close to his heart in all that we do.

What vision do you have for your life and is it the same vision that God has for you? 

How you get on in life, is not the same as getting from A to B. Google maps may put the journey as a short and fast route but as we know from the Israelites traveling in the desert for forty years, we are not always reliable in keeping to the route we are given. We all serve an apprenticeship in learning to lay down career, the plans we may have, and the securities we hold on to, for the sake of serving God.

Joseph journeyed from knowing prophetically as a young boy, what his purpose in life was to become; to enslavement and a period of humbling in captivity; to purposely serving God in a way that his experiences allowed, revealing the sovereignty of God. Joseph’s dependence on God for escaping jail, being elevated in status into the service of Pharaoh, to relying on the gifts that God had given him, provided a way for the people of God, the Hebrew people, to find safety from famine. Demonstrating faith is about being obedient to following the will of God.

When you think about starting a car or boiling water in a kettle, in order to begin the process of moving or heating an object, energy is put into the inanimate object, to begin to stir the water or rotate the wheel. We might call this energy the Holy Spirit, sparking us into life through what He has taught us through reading the Bible and applying it in our lives through our action. God is really interested in how we react to this new energy. Do we go with what God is stirring in our hearts and minds to do or do we react as though we are hostile to it? 



The Bible is a great place to start fuelling our desire to press into what God is calling us into. We build momentum by reading around the topic and through study. The amount of energy we invest into our vision for what might be, the things that piqué our interest, or those challenges which fuel our hunger for more, is an indication of how our faithful obedience responds to the will of God.

Challenge arises when we step into the will of God. We can be overwhelmed by what we need to do in the natural, struggling to match the day-to-day events, with our desire to serve God, free from these distractions. But what stands before us is what is necessary, to help us determine what we need to do; to become what God has planned. So we start the ascent of our journey, with our limited grasp of what can be achieved, free in the knowledge that ‘God has got our backs’.

When we think this is too difficult, we can withdraw, free falling in our emotions, ruefully cursing that we ever started out on this path in the first place. When we feel out of control, even those things we thought we were good at, are now harder for us to do. But in the descent, as we accelerate towards the point at which we need to make those important decisions we keep putting off, we need to put on faith so that what we believed were unrealistic choices now, might come to fruition in the future.

The tension exists between the now and the not yet. Maintaining the status quo does not guarantee any more success than that which we fear. So we make a decision to begin the ascent into the vision God has allowed us to have a glimpse of. So what areas of our lives do we need to surrender to God? What is holding us back? What is stopping us from taking that step of faith?

Being attentive to the road ahead can help us to plan a way forward. We seek the Father’s heart in all that we are doing. We draw around us, those we can be accountable to, those who share our vision and those who are willing to go with us on the journey.