There are also many different types of mustard seed, as this picture above shows. There are those that are made into mustard, those we put on salads, black mustard seeds, yellow mustard seeds, and there are ones that grow into those big trees. But that is like our faith. We all have many different types of faith. Some are different types of faith in different people and some are different faiths in the same person.
For instance you can have faith for healing, for people to come to know Jesus; faith for a peaceful death, for a word of knowledge for someone; faith in trusting God that they will lead you the way you are meant to go, that you’ll have enough money; etc etc etc.
When I was with YWAM on mission I had faith that it was the right thing for me and my children, that we would always have enough money for what we needed [actually I had that in general every day life which made being a home schooling single mum much more peaceful because of the faith that God would provide – and we never went without]. Now my faith is a different shape and size and I have faith for different things because life is different now I’m married and my children are over 30!
So like the mustard seeds faith comes in different shapes and sizes for different people and for different seasons in life. Someone once said that more people get healed by prayer in developing countries because the people have to have faith in God and prayer because they do not have the medical services we have – which we often come to rely on more than God and prayer.
Sometimes the better off we are the less we rely on God and our faith can be wobbly and falling over because we think we can do it ourselves. But there is so much in our Western world that we need faith for – God to provide the right leadership for a start because it is often the decisions made in the West that affect the developing countries more than it does here.
But each of us must take our faith the size of a mustard seed and, I think, ask God firstly what we need to have faith in and secondly who we need to be leaning against
first snowdrops. Early Feb 2025. Photographed by myself
I’ve had the above question buzzing round in my head since a post came up on Facebook from someone I admire who slipped in about her parents being stressy, angry, not wanting to heal of their trauma, but also of how she was “dragged” to church every Sunday. And I was like “how can I show her that Christians are different?” And I’m not sure that I can because every thing that I’m told Christians should be – kind, generous, supporting others, at peace, filled with joy, sure of their direction and decisions, know they are totally loved, know they are fully forgive, fully forgive others, etc – I see in those who are not Christians and often’ don’t see if Christians.
This isn’t a crisis of faith but I think that is because I had the most amazing conversion experience where I was totally swamped by God’s love for me even when I was a total mess and didn’t even like myself. There have been many times over this 33 year journey where I’ve not stayed under that safe motherly wing of God’s love, of where I’ve not given God all my sh*t to deal with, where I’ve been afraid, angry, totally out of order, but always known deep down that I was loved.
So what is my issue?
Well I think what I want is so that people like this person on FB, others that I know, will be able to see the difference in those who profess to being Christians but I don’t think that will happen.
Like I say it has been 33 years since I had that first amazing God encounter and I’ve been lucky enough to have others since but I’ve been on this Following Jesus journey for over half my life, have loads of Christian friends of all different persuasions. I think I’ve “got used to it”. It is now my norm and I often forget where I was beforehand. Perhaps I also want to see a bigger difference in my life???
I think I have to go back to why I became a follower of Jesus and it wasn’t because of any person but was because of meeting with God in a way that worked for me. I know others who it has happened to differently. Just last weekend one of our Upper Room ladies said she’d taken a woman to church who had gone up to make Jesus her Lord and Saviour at that church meeting. The Upper Room lady is amazing but also she was faithful to take this woman to church at the right time.
And the more I ponder this the more I think that there is nothing noticeably different about being a Christian – even the “having Jesus to talk to/to know how to follow” is a bit tenuous at times and I know others, including the FB person who started my line of thought, who would say they listen to their heart or to the Universe for guidance, for peace, for healing, etc.
But what I do think is that we need to be faithful to God’s leading and be willing to do things to help put people in the way of God. It is actually quite egotistical to think we have to “lead people to Christ” even though that is how a lot of us were brought up in evangelist/charismatic traditions.
In these traditions, a lot of the time there is either openly or subversively that idea that we have to be different to draw people to Jesus. I think that’s why there can be so many “don’t” rules, because there is that underlying idea that it is our responsibility whether people want to follow Jesus or not.
Jesus told his followers to heal, to cast out demons, to share the good news [though that can be vague at times] and to make disciples. We should be making disciples not converts too. We should be putting in the hours to help people heal from their traumas as well as their physical issues, helping people work out their journey with God, walking with people as they stumble, even calling them out when they do and say and act a certain way, and be willing to be challenged ourselves.
So as I’ve pondered it, as I’ve wound up my lovely Christian friends by throwing this into as many conversations as I can, and now as I write it, I believe we need to get out of the way and let God in.
So how will I respond to my FB friend? I won’t. I won’t try to argue God’s case for them. I will step out of the way. I will keep on praying and keep on hoping that one day God gets them to turn and face God’s way. Also I will live out the good news of God as best I can, will continue on my own healing journey with God, will be willing to disciple others, and be the fallible human being I am.
This is a regular beach walk of mine but often, when there have been big storms, of which we had many over the last few months, the stones and gullies have been changed. It can be a very different walk. I need to remember that we are all different as people depending on our personalities and maybe too the storms we have ridden.
Last night was youth group night. It was a new group and I didn’t want to presume that just because they had come to a church youth group that they all believed in God so our first question of the year was “Would you identify as a Christian? If yes why? If no why?”
Only three young people came and all said they would tell their friends they were Christians or that their friends knew this already. It was the “why?” question that challenged me the most.
For myself, I had a very powerful experience which brought me to really want to follow God in the big way. I would say I “became a Christian”. So for myself it is all about the experiential experience. One of the group said that when she prayers she can feel a presence sat beside her. But the other two, and the vicar, all said they just believed and struggled to say why they believed. The answer from all three of them was “I just do”. No wavering. No changing.
When we talked about what things it meant to be a Christian the main one was that God was centre of our lives. We didn’t get into tenants of faith. Nothing about what you had/had not to believe or do to be a Christian but just that God and Jesus were a major presences in our lives who encouraged us to think and behave in a different way.
The first church I attended, and many others I have been to that have shaped my beliefs, have been very much of the ilk that to be a Christian one had to do and say certain things, believe in certain things, accept certain things.
I’ve also studies not just the Reformation but many of the points in history where Christians have persecuted Christians because they have done things in a different way. Things we would now see as trivial. But as the vicar reminded me, even now [and I experienced in other churches] though there may not be actual burnings at the stake, there can often be judgements against those not have “prayed the prayer”, been “properly” baptised, and also the issues of gender and sexuality, care for the planet, who leads the congregations, etc, etc.
What struck me greatly was that we are all different in who we are but that makes us all different in how we approach God, how we behave about God and with God. For me I needed that experiential experience, something tangible to hold on to as I unraveled and rebuilt my life. But for others it is just that believing and that knowing that that is enough.
But what came out of if for me is that however we experience God and however God is out worked in our lives, that important bit is that we keep God and Jesus central and trust them enough to lean on them no matter what is going on around us. Through that can we show God in our lives to others. Then when we take God’s love to others it is something tangible not something we are just saying.
churchyard at Porth Padrig, Anglesey taken by myself Jan 2022
Living in a county crammed with history it is easy to get nostalgic for a past era. In fact my daughter and I were messaging last night and were saying that we missed lockdowns, though at the time when I look at my diary entries no one enjoyed them at all. But we can look back and miss those quiet times with nothing to do – even though we were chomping at the bit to get and do things.
In 2018 I did some work with a local high school based around WWI and was amazed how we sanitised it and looked at it as a time when people banded together to help each, of heroism, of being united. We are distanced from the death and horror by 100 years.
I wonder with all that is going on, and has been going on over the last few years – Brexit, pandemic and now the Russia/Ukrainian war – how history will view it. One cannot even guess because we are living through it.
But even things that we lived through, like lockdowns, we look back on in a different light.
So I think this means we need to be careful as we apply comparisons from history to what is happening across the world – whether Ukraine, pandemics, Yemen, etc. It is said that people don’t learn from history but I think that is because each time something happens the world is different and so history can show something but not enough or too much to help stop wars, stop abuse, stop things from happening, or make things happen.
As Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544 B.C., is alleged to have said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” which means that the conflicts, issues, problems, projects, that are going on at the moment are not the “same river” so we must not expect it to be. And also we are looking at things with through a nostalgic lens – whether rose-tinted or not.
So let us be careful as we make comparisons from history – yes history can lead to a conflict but there is much more going on in this present day. Perhaps we need to just focus on the here and now.
Photo by myself – Reykjavik Iceland early morning Oct 2016
One of the big things that is taught about how to look after your mental health is not to compare yourself to others because your trauma, your issues, your situation, is yours and it is hard for you. It may appear easier than someone else’s but that doesn’t matter. As lockdown has eased there have been more articles appearing about how those born from about 1990’s are struggling with lockdown and those born before 1965 are wondering what all the fuss is about.
I have been trying to write a blog post about rights and privileges but it hasn’t been coming. I did do one just after the Brexit vote which flowed but this one was not coming. Lots of drafts but nothing that made sense to what I wanted to write. Then, after receiving a forwarded article from a friend from her local vicar, and going for a long walk on the beach with the dog, it all fell into place.
In this article, from my friend’s vicar, he talks of all the major historic events that happened for those born in 1900 compared to those born in 2000. And yes those born this century have not had to deal with 2 world wars, plus 2 minor wars that the West was involved in, major economic crashes, and the Spanish flu, amongst other things. And yes those things are horrendous and are not comparable to not being able to go to school, not being able to hang out with friends, not knowing if you can go abroad on holiday, of having to wear masks, of being confined at home, miss out on growing and developing as an adult at university. No they do not compare but they are the issues that young people are having to walk through and it does not make them any less traumatic.
As another retired friend of mine said that even though she misses her friends and her clubs, etc, she has had a life that she can look back on when she’s at home on her own. There is the phone to call people and she’s getting the hang of video calling too. But as she says, she’s had her life. Even for myself, I missed seeing people for those first couple of months but now I can go visiting and am even off to England to see family. I’m even restarting horse riding today. I have reached a stage in my life where I don’t want much but that is because I have done things, travelled, partied, had freedom to come and go as I like, in my teens, 20s and 30s.
Also I believe our media has spent that this century pumping anxiety into us from climate change to Brexit to terrorism. We live in fear and are constantly in flight or fight mode but can do nothing to change it. So our young people have been born into this high anxiety media storm with social media and image over riding so much. So no it isn’t a World War pr any of the things listed above, but this lockdown is riding on the back of traumas, anxieties and much more. As well as the media portraying the pandemic as possibly never ending.
So let us be kind to those who look at some of things that we might see as privileges as their right. Let us try and understand why they feel this way and not just tell them that “it was harder in my day“. That really isn’t helpful. That piles on the guilt which makes anxieties even stronger. It becomes not just “what is wrong with the world” but “what is wrong with me“.
I’m sure Jesus would have listened to both the young and the old and all those in between without judgement or condemnation. Shall we give it a go?
Aspirational Adventures 