financial security pffft!

Friday last week was quite a momentous day in the life of the Spybeys. Mark got his exam results; the verdict of which would have had ramifications on his job, our financial security, our lives, (also its the last day of my current job-share partner. I've only ever shared the job with her so twill be really very different without her - but that's an aside).

The last couple of months, pretty much since Mark told me a couple of weeks before his resit that he thought he would probably pass it 3rd time round (this was just before his second attempt!) I decided that I could live without the old financial security. I think in theory I could always say that but faced with prospect of insecurity I realised it was true. It was quite free-ing really. I realise I had absolutely no worries about having enough money because God has provided for me time and time again.

Like when my dad lost his job of 24 years when I was 16, when I spent summers unemployed until I got to the last few pounds and then got a temp job just when I needed it the most, getting a job in the tearoom when Mark and I got married and the two of us surviving on his earnings was going to be a stretch. I wasn't desperately in need any of those times. (when are we ever in our comfortable western society?) But still God was gracious enough to provide for us nonetheless.

Is this what it means to know the secret of being content...?

As it happens he did pass (!! - that was a total miracle just so you know, since he thought that exam had gone worse than his first attempt), but I'm not going to let the secret of being content slip through my fingers. Knowing Jesus, being loved by him, living life with him and all the adventures that throws up:- that's good enough for me!

Light not just for Christmas

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.

JESUS - "I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness."

empathy

I hate horror films, hate watching anything with gratuitous or comedy violence but always seem drawn to reading/watching the most depressing, traumatic, horrible real-life stuff. I had a good cry yesterday watching this documentary telling this incident from the perspective of the victim's friends while I sorted and folded clothes.

Sometimes I wonder why I crave knowing about all this stuff, know about all the hurt in the world, I avidly read books about/written in Afghanistan. I don't exactly enjoy it. But I want to know it, I want to be aware of it, I want my heart to break for it and for those people.

I was also thinking - what's the difference between sympathy and empathy? I've looked up a lot of dictionary definitions and these are the common ideas which surface: Sympathy seems to be about being understanding, supportive and feeling pity for a person's situation. Empathy is also that, but then there's also this other side to it that is about being able to relate or co-experience the emotions related to that situation. I want to sympathise yes. But I want to empathise even more, that's what real love is isn't it? Sharing burdens, getting alongside people and grieving with them. I always find it easy to empathise with people when I've been through a similar situation myself, like when I meet lonely foreigners because I have been a lonely foreigner myself.

I know empathy is a God thing - thinking of advent Jesus didn't only do sympathy. He was moved with compassion yes, but then he came and became human - now that's empathy in every sense of the word. He came and co-experienced our human-ness. He lived in poverty, weakness, shame. He experienced all wealth and depth of emotions - delight to despair.

But then he went and suffered and died and took our punishment - that was more than just empathy. What Jesus did on the cross - that was a sacrifice of great mercy, great love and great power. It made a way for us to be reunited with a perfect, just, enormous God - that's no small feat! It wasn't sharing our suffering, sharing our experiences or our emotions, it was going much further than that - taking the punishment on our behalf so we don't have to. There's not way I can empathise with what Jesus went through on the cross, my mind stumbles and falls flat when I try to grasp it even just a little bit.

I always come back to Him - Jesus. I didn't even intend to just there. An important tangent though I think.

Because sympathy, empathy - they are both good, important, wholesome, meaningful and sincere expressions of love but if they're just feelings, they become stagnant and pointless. They have to be lived out and about giving - but then that can be costly and hard, and how does that have any impact anyway? I don't want to just be "nice".

Hmmm... this is going to have to be a two part-er.

Grace - the beauty of love as it was made to be.

I love this song, especially the final building up bridge bit, everything about it, musically and lyrically strikes chords in my heart.

Love that will not betray you,

dismay or enslave you,

It will set you free

Be more like the man

you were made to be.

There is a design,

An alignment to cry,

At my heart you see,

The beauty of love

as it was made to be.

Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons

Been losing sight of that recently - "the beauty of love as it was made to be":- undeserved, always forgiving, forever persevering, bearing with me in all things *, not giving up on me, giving up all for me *, giving abundantly, nurturing and changing me *. And this in spite of the state of my heart. I can't earn it, I can't buy it, I can't strive for it, because I already have it. Absolutely Mental.

And true!

Hmmm... blogging is definitely good for my soul, I should do this more often!

Mustard seed loving

I got into an argument with a physicist at an aforementioned party a while ago. He was trying to persuade me to do a phD and somehow we tangented onto talking about what was more effective, changing a society from the top down, earning yourself accolades and affects millions of people for years to come or changing the society from the bottom up, making a small or large impact in the lives of individuals. I don't think there is anything wrong with the first option, I only know that I am called to the second. I used to think that I would and could change the world singlehandedly. Mainly I wanted to write books that had a massive impact on a lot of people. My 12 year old journals read like a cringe-inducing episode from Dawsons Creek!
I don't know when my attitude changed. I think it's been a gradual thing, in fact I would go as far as to say that it's been a recent thing and I can pinpoint at least one critical moment where I suddenly became more aware of it.

My time in Grenoble was a steep learning curve. It was amazing to be on the receiving end of so much kindness. I discovered firsthand how small gestures like being invited round for lunch or people wanting to share time with me and not just smiles could have such a massive impact on an individual. But at the same time I found it incredibly frustrating to always be on the receiving end. I wanted to be giving too. Yesterday I heard it put well that it's hard to be yourself in another culture and even more so another language. It took me months before I could truly be myself in the french language and of course this restricted what I could do. And I don't think I fully realised that until I experienced it firsthand. It was basically like being thrust from being mega-extrovert into introvert overnight and twas a bit of a shock to the system for sure! People wouldn't necessarily take my suggestions so seriously, wouldn't necessarily ask me to do stuff or help out or being involved in things because I was a foreigner and didn't really know/understand what was going on (which was sometimes true). It was incredibly frustrating. But I do remember, sometime later in the autumn, something clicking in my head. I discovered that I could love God and the people around me through doing small things, like cleaning the tables after youth group at church, playing with kids, or helping out the internationals whose french was even worse than mine when they didn't understand what was going on.

France has only been one small part of this learning/realisation/eye-opening process... I always envied my friends who had felt like they had a strong calling, vision or passion, friends who are passionate about certain countries for example and know they're going to end up there for a large part of their lives. But without my even realising it, I've started burning with a heavy passion too. I want to be someone who makes every moment of life count, who loves individuals practically, with everything I am and have. And though I have seemed to be laiden with a particular burden for a particular need, everyone needs that kind of love! And I don't want to miss people just because I have my eyes trained on a certain group or need. I'm beginning to realise and see for myself that the Kingdom of God starts small and in an understated way... and it's beautiful because it is full of Jesus and His character and it's what lasts. I just need to have my eyes open and be willing and ready to act on what I see... (easier said that done of course!)

I leave you with 2 quotes.
The first an extract from a book I love that has a lot to say about small things and mustard seeds:
Re: John 14:2 “… I began to discover “the greater things”. It was not just miracles. I started to see the miracles were an expression not so much of Jesus’ mighty power, as of his love. In fact, the power of miraculous spectacle was the temptation he faced in the desert – to turn stones to bread or to fling himself from the temple. But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus’ love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands, the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn’t that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers. And the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives inside of us. In the verses just after the one about the greater things. Jesus assures us that the Spirit now lives in us. Jesus says that he is going to the Father but will also remain inside of us and we in him. We are the body of Christ, the hands and feet or Jesus to the world. Christ is living in you and me, walking the earth. We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet…I know miracles are real, story after story comes to find. But beyond the miracles, what has lasting significance is love. We can do all sorts of miracles, but if we have not love, it is nothing…”

And the other from Mother Teresa:
"We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

Highly unimpressed by this billboard advert I read in the underground yesterday -
"You are my desire, you are my lust, Princes Square, I love you."

Other than the fact that it is an utterly ridiculous advertisment for a shopping centre, it makes the assumption that lust = love. Surely the people who make such advertisments know better than this?! grrrr I could rant all day about this, but realised that I'd written vaguely related thoughts about this before. Hmm... actually reading that again makes me feel slightly less angry and almost understanding... almost