Tag: Bible

Categories
faith growing

Mustard Seed

From benjaminharrismusings.blogspot.com and https://vamosarema.com/

On Sunday our vicar gave us all a small packet with a mustard seed in and used it to expanded on the story Jesus said about having faith the size of a mustard seed.

He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6

And we were all told to take this home, plant it and see how big it had grown by Christmas.

I worried the whole time I was going to lose it so as soon as we’d had lunch, and before taking the dog for a walk, I made sure mine was safely planted and watered.

When I pondered my attitude to this, it reminded me of when I first really met with God and how I knew from that moment on the The Creator of The Universe loved me unconditionally even though I was a single mum and not living the best life. The faith I got from that moment I was terrified of losing and so I did everything I could to water it, to grow it, to nurture it – reading my Bible, praying, going to Christian conferences, reading Christian books, going to church, being involved with church, going on mission, etc, etc. Ok there have been times when I haven’t done any of those things and have wombled on with God in a contented way still. I have never lost that faith, have seen it grow, have seen it tested, have seen it wobble, but, for the most part, have always trusted.

So I got to wondering what other people might have done with their mustard seed representing faith. [this is all speculation and not about anyone specific]

  • some left it at church – which is often where we can all leave our faith and do not take it home and use it at home.
  • some have it in their pockets still and will find it on and off when they put that coat on again – again a bit like we do with faith and find it and then forget it, then find it again but never really take it out.
  • some will keep it in their “going to church jacket” and will bring it out each time they are at church – which again we are all great at doing, of having great faith when we are with a company of other believers but struggle when we are on our own.
  • some will have lost it as they walked home – which again is what happens to faith often. The hassles of life get in the way and we lose our faith that God can.
  • some will have seen it as just another daft thing and won’t have engage with it – again that is what can happen when we talk about things like God working all things to the good of those who love him [Romans 8:28]. It can seem a daft thing and so we ignore it.
  • some will plant their seed but then will forget about it and it won’t grow, or it will grow a little bit but won’t be nurtured.
  • some might expect someone else to plant it for them, a spouse, friend or someone else they know – and again we all too often lean into someone else’s faith rather than our own. It is important to have friends with faith around us to hold us up but we cannot rely just on their faith. We do need our own too.
  • And some won’t have believed in it at all and found it all total nonsense.

Interestingly I was reading that the mustard seed is an easy seed to grow. It doesn’t need much to grow from this tiny seed to a plant that you can then use the leaves of in all sorts of cuisine. Though interestingly the article also says that economically there is no reason to grow mustard seeds, although the novelty value is good – being able to produce a jar of your own mustard to share with friends. Again this is an interesting point to take back to our mustard seed of faith. How many of us think what’s the point? Nothing will change, nothing will happen, or even “I can do it quicker myself”.

Maybe the “novelty value” has something to say to us about our faith, and about that inner feeling of connection with something higher than us.

Faith is the moving of those mountains of sickness, of poverty, of inequality, of war and aggression. But it is also that inner peace, inner, tranquillity, inner joy, inner trust, inner knowing that I am not alone, that I am love unconditionally by the Creator of The Universe. And that with that tiny bit of faith I can grow, I can flourish and maybe it is because of my faith that the birds can find shelter?

 Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”

Luke 13:18-19

Or as David Marks says in Garden Focused –  key reasons for growing mustard in the UK is to use it as a green manure on the soil. Now I’m all up for being a fertiliser for all things God!

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Categories
freedom new

Trusting The Flow

Looking across Red Wharf Bay May 2025 Photographed by myself

What do I miss since no longer being able to drive? It is the above that I miss most of all. I miss being able to drive to where I want to go on my own when I want. Actually it is that “being able to do what I want when I want” that I am finding hardest.

I’ve always struggled with being boxed in and needing the space to do what I want when I want. That is probably why I didn’t settle in office type jobs but went for hospitality or youth work because, even if the hours were set, what went on was so random. There is something for me about being tied in that makes me panic.

But during my QEC sessions and spending time journaling I’ve learned to work these issues through. Even with the not-being-able-to-drive thing I’m working out my own freedom with it. But then something happened and I realised how easily I [and probably you] can fall back into those old pathways, those known ways of being even if they didn’t fit back then and don’t fit now.

We’ve got a new vicar at our church. He called a meeting last week where he set out his vision for the church. There were lots of opportunities to volunteer for things and at the meeting I was really super enthusiastic and was frustrated that there were no sign up sheets. But then when I was on the bus I was really really tired, like exhausted tired. Then when I got to the beach and was pottering along with my dog enjoying the sea and that freedom I felt like I didn’t want to do anything and was moving into being cross. Yes even though one of the vicar’s main points was “don’t feel like you have to do anything” I was still cross at feeling like I “had to” do these things I was good at.

But this is where things have changed, where all that healing has come to pass. Or as an old YWAM leader once said – I’m learning to walk the new green pathways.

Somewhere in Scotland. May 2022. Photographed by myself

What he meant by this is that whenever we do something we create a known way of going and we stick to that whether it is right or wrong, helpful to us or not. When we get into healing we start to see how wrong those paths are for us, how they are not beneficial to us but we can only make the new paths by walking them. Too often, even when we’ve had healing of any kind we think it hasn’t worked because we are still doing the same old same old. Still walking those same old paths. We need to start walking across a new grass filled field and make new paths. We need to walk new ways. We need to mark out new pathways that fit with who we really are rather than who we think we should be. And we can only do that by walking them.

That first me after the meeting was the old “look at me and like me” me but I’ve changed and am now more willing to say “yes I could do that but I need time to write, to read, to walk alone [even if that is more complicated and needs more thinking about – and thus more time] and also to bump into friends and other random people to chat with as I feel God leads me. I can now be honest with myself and say I must be careful not to let myself take on too much as I’ll feel frustrated by it.

For each of us our new pathways are different, which is what can make it hard to walk them. We get so used to following the herd, of doing what makes others happy, of fitting in so we don’t have to think, that we often just following along. But then of course we either get tired, get resentful, get sickness and illnesses, get angry, and also don’t fulfil are full potential, are full who our Creator truly made us to.

I know The Creator of the Universe loves me just as I am and I believe my role in life is to know that fully and to share that fully. But I am beginning to realise that I can’t do that by being busy, by getting tired and resentful, etc. So I need to walk my new pathways – those I can choose and those, like with the driving, that have been foisted upon me – and trust what is really out there for me

Renly enjoying a “new path” April 2023 Photographed by myself

Interesting coincidence. This was the reading from Henri Nouwen on the day I wrote this blog piece.

Discerning God’s Will
Small, seemingly insignificant events, ideas, and life circumstances can become occasions to discern God’s will and calling in your life. Both inner and outer events and circumstances can be read and interpreted as signposts leading to a deeper understanding of the way the Spirit of God is working in our daily lives…. We have the freedom and responsibility to look at our lives with the eyes of faith and a heart of trust, believing that God cares and is active in our lives.
https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/ 1st October 2025

Categories
freedom unite

What Would You Unite For?

On the last day I drove my car [even though I didn’t at that time know it was the last day] I went to see a matinee of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It is story I’ve got a lot of affinity with because I read it many times to my children when they were little and then played Mrs Beaver in a Bath City Church version twelve years ago.

The musical is great, though challenging at the beginning because the Pevensie children are all played by actors with dark skins which got me thinking about how that could have been possible. We’ve all just assumed they were white. Although it does say Lucy has fair hair so …. But it is good to be challenged to rethink what we’ve just taken for granted.

From the musical came a few questions I’ve been pondering. One of which relates back to the Unite marches and the division that could be seen there.

There is a point in it that they talk of Freedom from the White Witch. The White Witch is seen as bad because she makes it “winter but never Christmas”. But interestingly she has a large following who don’t seem to be following her through fear but for other reasons we never get to know.

I wonder, if we really talked to those people on the marches, instead of just presuming we know what they think, but get allowed to look through their Truth window what we would really see.

Over the weekend we chatted with some lovely friends and we got on to the empowered/powerless talk and the “why don’t they just get a job?”. We are all educated, all well read, all reasonably confident. We’ve all been willing to get on and do and we see our kids getting on and doing. Theirs are 10 years younger but still you can see how they deal with life. My daughter is going through a tough time at the moment but she is proactive and walking through it. They, and we, are all empowered people. We would all probably unite behind someone who would give everyone their freedom, support all, bring everyone “up” in the world.

Yet I look at a friend’s family who are addicts, keep getting in trouble with the Police, keep waiting for someone to help them up but are not able to do it themselves. They are, for whatever reason, powerless. I could see them uniting around someone who would tell them they are in the situation they are in because it is someone else’s fault.

But then on Sunday I went back to church for the first time in ages [I have popped in and out but this felt like a coming back] and during a very interesting sermon one of the things that struck me was, firstly the whole thing of knowing Jesus, but more importantly than that it was knowing that we were loved and accepted just as we are. And we need to know that deep deep in ourselves before we take it out to others. This, I believe, is where true empowerment comes from. Yes many are blessed/lucky to have it within themselves and to know, whether through understanding parents, friends, or healing, that they are accepted powerful human beings. But I think, even those who lead and look powerful are deep inside hurting and are not really and truly free.

But how do we know we are loved? I think too often the Church sees love as the congregation doing things, not of being and being accepted but of doing things for the Church and for God. But I think we need to, as Christine Sine said Slow Down a bit and see the wonder, the wonder not just around us but within us. Each of us are amazingly created people if we only believe that, if we are only bold enough to let others see our Truth window, for us ourselves to see our own Truth window.

Here’s a poem for Christine that talks of slowing down, of seeing the wonder. And as she says it is seeing the pain and suffering as well as the breathtaking beauty. 

Walking in the fastest pace for noticing
Slow down,
Walking is the fastest pace,
For noticing,
For paying attention,
To the pain of our suffering world
And the breathtaking beauty
Of its wonder. 
Slow down,
Look, listen, touch,
Anchor yourself to the earth.
Absorb the input of your senses,
The details that speak
Of your aliveness,
In a world that seems consumed
By death.
Slow down,
Hold onto the sacrifices
Of love and compassion,
Be generous,
Embrace diversity.
Sit in awe and wonder
Of the One 
Who is making all things new. 

Christine Sine - Meditation Monday [22nd September 2025]

So how do we unite for Freedom? I think, we need to know we are loved and accepted for who we are not what we do, and need to slow down, see the wonder within and without, and work out what Freedom really means to us.

Categories
let go of fear trust

Mountains

Looking across Loch Katrine to a lovely Scottish mountain. Photographed by myself September 2024

Jesus said, “… Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17:20

I was journaling around something the other day and was thinking of how one can let things on top you and then keep piling upwards – like fear, anxiety, uncertainty, worry, etc. This is sample of what I wrote

…you take today and yesterday and all your yesterdays and carry them into tomorrow allowing the pile to grow and morph, to cast shadows across your world

Each day the mountain grows, bigger, more substantial, more present

It seems immovable.

Then the above verse popped into my head and it was like a light bulb moment. Jesus wasn’t talking about physically rearranging the topography of the world, not trying to move literal mountains. I think he was talking of those mountains we all build within ourselves – sometimes called walls. Walls are like mountains but more regular in shape – and how we think they are immovable, or even that we should climb them to get to where we want or to be who we think we are meant to be.

How often do we hear “I need to get over my fear of …” or “I need to push myself to not worry about ….” Always that “I” word. Always that doing word.

Firstly I think we need to be aware of our mountains. Even though they are lots of them are big we have got used to them and think they are just “how we are” and that we need to just, now here’s an interesting word we use, “get over it” or those around us need to “get over it”. We think it is just the way we are whether due to personality, to upbringing, to present circumstance.

So many fears and anxieties course through me on any given day that I sometimes scarcely notice them. They’re just part of my blood.

Grant Faulkner – Practicing Lectio Divina

But what if instead we slow down a bit and noticed we have an issue with, for example, fear of money, fear of the future, anxiety about what other people think, anxiety about the way the world is going, nervous about going into a new place, or asking for something. What if we were willing to acknowledge that we don’t want to live with this mountain that we have to keep climbing every day?

Jesus says we only need a tiny bit of faith to do that. A mustard seed is a very small seed but is really important in Middle Eastern cuisine, the plant reaches maturity very quickly and can grow almost anywhere. A great example of something that can take the place of that mountain we thought we had to live with, thought we had to “get over” any time we had to go beyond our safe space.

I ended my journaling by writing – that even though Jesus can dismantle any mountain and throw it into the sea he will always need our permission to do it. And this is why, too often, we have to keep climbing that self same mountain because we don’t trust Jesus/God/The Universe and so don’t give them that permission to get rid of our self build mountains.

Renly climbing a mountain near Aber Falls March 2025 photographed by myself.

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Categories
fulfilment repentance

Woman At The Well

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/ancient-draw-well-arabian-village-uae-71733394.jpg

I’ve always related to the Woman at the well story in John chapter 4 because when I met Jesus I’d had a couple of husbands and the man I was living with wasn’t my husband. He wasn’t even the father of my child. And I met with God in this amazing powerfully tangible way that no amount of scepticism can ever take from me.

But the bit I struggled with was the “living water” thing. It was often preached that this living water would go stale if we didn’t keep giving it away and that, so long as we kept going to church, hearing sermons, doing stuff that needed doing in church and in mission, telling people about Jesus, etc then this living water was always going to be replaced. And that if we didn’t, well then the living water would go stale. It did appear that to keep this living water flowing there was a lot of stuff for us to do.

But I’ve just read Tim Keller’s book Encounters With Jesus and he thinks it isn’t quite like that. This living water is inner healing for us.

[Jesus] … is talking about deep soul satisfaction, about incredible satisfaction and contentment that doesn’t depend on what is happening outside of us

pp 26-7

The woman at the well wasn’t getting true inner satisfaction with her relationships. What made the change inside her was when she let God “quench her thirst,” let God fully fill her up in her inner most being, in that part of er heart, our hearts, that are longing for unconditional love, to be safe being ourselves, that place where total contentment comes from.

So doesn’t matter what our relationships are like, what are jobs are like, what our planet is like, etc etc, we feel this inner peace, this inner joy, this inner contentment. And we don’t need to do any of those things that church says to keep that inner healing, inner peace, that “living water”. It is a total free gift from God. In fact doing those things that some sermons tell us so that we keep that “living water”, so that we never thirst for deep contentment again, are actually us trying to sort out the outer situations when what Jesus promised is that inner deep place of our hearts; to be healed of the traumas and neglects of childhood, of other people, of misunderstanding something and so getting hurt by it, of a deep felt need for something. This is the living water, this place where we will never thirst or chase for it elsewhere.

I think the reason that the people of the town came rushing out to see Jesus is not just the words the woman said, but that they saw a change in the countenance of the woman. They saw something deep had change within her and now their husbands, sons, brothers, male relatives, were safe from her because she no longer needed a man, a relationship, to find her deep inner peace, her inner fulfilment.

Like many I do forget or am aware of that “living water” and might at times be looking to other things – relationship, a good writing session, being noticed and heard – to fill those spaces but really I need to stop. I need to remember where I was 34 years ago, remember the encounter I had with God, and allow the living water to touch that place within me again, to heal me again, to remind me again.

One definition of repentance is to turn 180 degrees and be facing the other way and whenever I’m feeling like I’m looking for something else to heal me, to give me fulfilment, to fill that hole, then I just need to turn around and stand in that living water again, that acceptance of Jesus just as I am. And remember I am loved unconditionally by the Creator of The Universe no matter what I do say or act.

Categories
taking initiative underserving

But Do They Deserve It?

Red Wharf Bay May 2025

I was reading some reflections about The Good Samaritan story in preparation for youth group tonight. One of the points I came across that struck me was that the guy that got beaten up shouldn’t have been travelling alone along that road with wealth. It served him right that he got beaten up because he should have been in a group or with guards.

Taking that on board this means that the two people who walk past were not walking alone. They would have been in groups. So it isn’t just a priest travelling on his own or a Levite travelling on his own. It is highly possible these people would have been part of a larger group who all just walked on past. Maybe the others in the group, whether fellow travellers or guards, looked to the religious people for guidance and so didn’t stop. The people listening to Jesus’s story would have known it wouldn’t have been a lone priest or a lone Levite. Perhaps another point Jesus was making, that we have lost in our age because we didn’t travel that road, was about how often we look at those we see as “in charge” and follow them even if we don’t think what they are doing is right.

But also it was this man’s fault. He should have had protection but he didn’t. He brought what happened to him on himself. Again Jesus’s original hearers would have known that.

So what, I think, Jesus was trying to get us to hear in this parable is not just “would you help someone who isn’t of your tribe?” but “would you help someone who brought their problems on themselves?” and “would you be willing to step out of the crowd and do something rather than wait for an authority figure to tell you to do something?”

Most of us are willing to help someone who is in a bad way threw no fault of their own but it is different if it is say they made a bad life call and life has beat up on them but if we think they could have stopped it but they didn’t.

So who is my neighbour? Not just the needy person but the undeserving person. Not just the person I am told to help but the person I can see needs help.

Somehow that has been fudged out of the story. I hope I can bring that in for my youth this afternoon. I also hope I can bring it into my life and not just say “well that serves you right” or as I remember being told once when I was in mess “well you made your bed now you can lie in it”.

Categories
Feet hands

Why Wash Feet Not Hands?

Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels.com

I know why Jesus washed his disciples feet – because it was what servants did to everyone who entered the house. It was to wash the dirt of the streets off those sandaled [without socks] dirty, dusty, feet. It is something that is repeated across many churches on Maundy Thursday [yesterday] across the world, and sometimes used at other times of the year to signify someone, generally in leadership, desiring to serve others.

Back in Jesus’s day it was easy though to wash feet. I’m not sure if they did it with or without sandals but even if it was without then it was easy to slip off a sandal. I remember once being at a meeting where this woman wanted to wash all our feet. Great gesture I thought, but I was wearing long boots with buckles etc and I was worried my socks would be holey or something. For me it was a big hassle and I got grumpy about it. It would have been so much easier if she’d washed my hands instead. No faffing with taking boots off, no then having to get feet properly dry before putting socks and boots back on again. Easy!

Easy but actually doesn’t really signify anything.

I think the reason that it should still be feet is because it is more of a thing, more of a faff. And hands one should wash often.

Hands we wash ourselves on a regular basis – before eating, after the toilet, before preparing food, after craft activities, etc.

How often do you really wash your feet? Ok so you stand in the shower or lie in the bath and your feet get wet and hopefully cleaned off from the water around you. But do you really give your feet the attention that you give your hands?

Feet are really important to our daily health. Here’s a quote from the government’s Medline Plus website

Foot problems … can sometimes signal other health issues such as arthritis, diabetes, or nerve damage. Left untreated, they can even cause pain and dysfunction in other parts of your body, including your back, hips, and knees.

And this one

Our feet, containing a quarter of the bones in our body, bear the weight of our entire body daily!

Our feet, that so many of us take so little care of, look after us so much.

So I think, even though yes as I say again I know the Middle Eastern servant reason for Jesus washing his disciples’ feet but also I think whenever we are in a place that does the washing of feet Last Supper tradition that we keep it as feet and don’t turn it into the easier washing of hands. It is like remembering to say that we are going to care for those bits that get forgotten, that get hidden away and yet are so important to our whole well being.

Perhaps in this modern day when this is done as well as remembering backwards to Jesus we can also think about those people who get forgotten and often who are hidden but who are so important.

Duh that’s what servants were!

Look after your feet because they are your often forgotten servants. And look after those in your community who are hidden but important. And don’t try and skip to something easier.

Categories
Holy Week Yr Wythnos Fawr

Yr Wythnos Fawr

[Literal translation from Welsh to English is The Great Week]

Photo by JINU JOSEPH on Pexels.com

I love the Christian Holy Week, or as the literal Welsh translation calls it “The Great Week”, that week from Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday. I can see myself in so many of the characters – part of the crowd that gets excited because everyone else is excited on the Sunday. I often don’t need to know what’s going on to get emotionally involved – to cry at a single musical theatre song, to cheer when someone wins something even if I’m not sure of the event. People’s emotions connect with me, which means I could also see myself as part of the angry mob too because I could so easily get caught up with the moment.

I can understand why the disciples asked Jesus why he was curing the fig tree, why he trashed the temple, wonder what he was on about when he said the temple would be rebuild in three days; have traveled with him for so long and yet still not got the message.

I could so easily have been Judas, not so much betraying but trying to force Jesus’ hand in, what I saw was a safer or more effective way; could have been Peter who one day totally gets it and calls Jesus Messiah then later on denies him when he’s afraid of the consequences.

Knowing the end of the story I’d love to say that I would have just done the cheering, just done the Messiah acknowledging, not denied, not thought Jesus wasn’t sure what he was doing, would have totally got what was going on. But that’s because I know what happens next.

I realise, if I’m totally honest with myself, if I was there and didn’t know what came next I would be as fallible as the rest of those there. I would have slept when I should have been awake, would have run away when I should have stayed, would have hidden behind locked doors rather than have walked boldly.

So this year as I listen to the Bible Society read to me the The Great Week stories – I try to remember how fickle and fallible that I truly am. And then remember that God knows that anyway and loves me unconditionally anyway.

Categories
Uncategorized

What Sort of Slaves were the Hebrews?

This is what AI came up with when I asked for a picture of Hebrew slaves. This was its 5th attempt all of which featured men interestingly enough.

Today’s Bible Society Lent reading was about all the stuff given to the temple. Now I know there is a verse in Exodus that says about how the Egyptians gave gold, silver and jewelry, etc to the Hebrews after the last plague, but there is an awful lot of stuff here.

I think we have always been led to believe from various Hollywood depictions and various sermons, that those descendants of Jacob, Moses’ family, lived in appalling conditions of starvation and over work. But then early on in the Exodus they are moaning about not getting certain food types, which means they must have enjoyed those foods not just picked up scrapings from the ground. Then in the reading today it says

with him [Belalel] was Oholiab son of Ahisamak, of the tribe of Dan – an engraver and designer, and an embroiderer in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen

Exodus 38:22

Where did Oholiab learn to be an engraver and designer and embroiderer? Or for that matter Belalel learn all he knew? We are often made to believe that when the Spirit of God feel on them suddenly they were able to do these things. Or that as these dirty smelly lowlife slaves were leaving the city suddenly very rich people were thrusting their riches on them to get rid of them.

I think those people who gave the gifts didn’t just give it to get rid of the Hebrews and hope to stop the disasters [the plagues] that were going on but I think they gave them because these were people who had worked with and for them, who they knew and trusted and who were leaving them.

Too often we see slaves as dirty, mistreated, doing menial jobs, living in squalor because this is what Britain and other Western European counties in the 17th-early 20th Century did to Black Africans and their descendants, but if one reads about the ancient civilizations they had servants who ran their businesses, were in high standing positions, were respected though owned members of their households.

To me though this gives a very different impression of the Hebrews leaving Egypt and why they were so quick to moan as they crossed this bleak wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land. Maybe they weren’t going because the conditions were awful. Maybe they were going because they were suffering religious persecution for one, but maybe the big thing was that they believed they had been promised the area that became known as Israel. Maybe they left because they didn’t want to be slaves any more but wanted their own autonomy?

To me this fits in with thoughts on “Are Christians That Different?” and my own journey of following Jesus and learning that I am unconditionally loved by The Creator of the Universe. It was about a freedom from things that held me back from being free to be fully me, to have autonomy in my life, to not be held in slavery by having to fit in, etc, etc, etc. It is about learning to trust The Creator rather than myself.

For me now thinking that it is more to do with leaving something that was actually ok and going on a journey of trust and acceptance makes so much more sense to me than wondering why those Hebrews in the story moan so much in the desert. They were slowly learning to trust.

We’ve a friend who has long covid, is only in his late 30s, can only work 15 hours a week and isn’t able to socialise much because he’s exhausted, but says that now he understands about how “God works all things to the good of those who love him”. He’s had to go through that hardship to come to that place. He’s come from the good and being self-sufficient to walking with next to nothing but now believes he fully knows God’s love.

To me this fits in with the Hebrews being well-cared for slaves and leaving that behind to wander in a desert place trusting God for their next meal. Makes so much more sense to me.

I also think that whether we would say we are Christians, of other faiths or none I think there comes a point where we need to travel that road away from the comfortable, away from fitting in with the status quo, and need to be thinking our own thoughts, listening to our own hearts, having our own autonomy, and I think that will take a wander through things that are a bit dry and barren so that we can come to our Promised Land. [Richard Rohr calls it part of maturing in his book Falling Upwards]

Categories
Temptations Wilderness

How Do We Know It Is True?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’m ploughing my way through The Bible Society’s Lent course Ploughing not because it isn’t great but because I’m not great at having to do things daily. But I love the way things get highlighted for me.

Yesterday was Jesus in the wilderness and what struck me, especially as a storyteller, and having read something about a new book about some Christian movement being accused of exaggerated over the top retelling of tales, is how do we know these things really happened???

Now Jesus doesn’t strike me as someone who would have boasted about his 40 days in the wilderness, or boasted about how he dissed the devil. So how did the writers of the three gospels it is featured in know?

It is a bit like the angel talking to Mary or Mary’s song to Elizabeth or many other things that happen with just the person concerned and a godly presence or in the Temptations a not-godly presence. We don’t know. Or we know because they probably told someone else.

I’m hoping that maybe when Jesus was walking all those many miles with his disciples, all those miles we are never told what goes on, and all those nights they spent sleeping under the stars, that it came out in bits and pieces, which the storytellers then put into something coherent.

I think in my God journey I am reaching that point where I agree with this quote

The Bible is a true story but not always factual. The truth of the Bible doesn’t come from the facts of the stories, but rather from the spiritual meaning of those stories. The true ideas the Bible teaches have little to do with history, geology, or any matters of the natural world, but have everything to do with the spiritual world and the things that really matter in our lives.

Amos Glenn, MINemergent: A Daily Communique (March 27, 2012)

Does it really matter how long Jesus was in the wilderness? Or whether the conversation between him and the devil was recorded verbatim? I don’t think so. I think instead of trying to decide if this really happened like this, whether it is the Temptation story or any of the other stories is that we need to ask God what the spiritual truth is behind this.

I do like the idea of Jesus’ follower one evening over supper saying “Go on tell us what really happened after you were baptised. Where did you? What happened?” And Jesus giving what he recalls of that time.

I would love it if he said things like “I was so hungry and knew what I could do but I knew it would be better if I carried on being hungry so I could hear God clearer.” “I know how this story pans out and I know I could make it easier but I know that if I go as the Father and I have planned then it will be better for you.”

I think Jesus responded to those temptations that are so common to us all in the way that is recorded to show he put humankind first and wanted what is best of for us all.

I binged watched “Zero Day”, a latest Netflix series, over the last two days because I was home alone. It is a great US conspiracy series but the bit that struck me, that I think is the truth of all that Jesus did, was when the President says something along the lines of “we were voted in not for what we wanted but for the good of the American people” [I’m not even going to go down the ‘is this happening now?’ route]

These temptations of Jesus, I believe, may or may not have happened, but the story is told to say that often we can do things easier, we can take short cuts, we can find a way that means we don’t get hurt, but in the long run would that really help those people we are called to serve, to be with, to witness to?

I’ll finish with another quote that says so succinctly what I’m saying here, I think,

“You prayed “use me Lord” and thought God was going to put you on a platform to speak or sing. What you didn’t know was that He was going to have you navigating through a bunch of trials so you could bless people with your testimony of resilience and not just your gifts.” -Nate Evans Jr.

Jesus was willing to go through those trials for each one of us and, I think, that is what the story of the Temptations is telling us. And is what we are meant to emulate.