The ‘how much more’ God

We are beginning almost a month in France as I come towards the end of a Sabbatical –  a gift from the Methodist Church.

It’s a chance to do a number of things and here all the cliches could come out: recharge the batteries; rest from the fight; find yourself; do something different. In a way they are all true and all wrong.

A sabbatical can be a glorious waste of time – and that may be just what you should do. I know of at least one friend who decided that he would spend the time reintroducing himself to his family because he spent so long away from them working that he believed, rightly, that he owed them the best gift: time.

For me, two months into the three, I’m beginning to hear something clear from God. Whether it will translate into anything usable for work I don’t know but I do know that I can sense him speaking in the place where we are now.

We’ve begun our time in France at Spring Harvest’s holiday Park Le Pas Opton. It’s our fourth visit and this time we’ve brought our little caravan to the Vendee at the beginning of a trip around six different caravan sites from the West coast to St Tropez, via St Etienne.

This morning, Christophe the site manager, was speaking at the morning worship and talked about logic, or rather the illogicality of God choosing to work with people like us to share his love in the world. He quoted Jesus (always a good idea, I find!) who, in Matthew’s Gospel, encourages people not to worry:

^{Matthew 7:}

⁷“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. ⁹“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Christophe went on to talk about the logic of asking and receiving, seeking and finding, knocking and having something open but what struck me was the ‘how much more’ God. In this conversation where we can expect the obvious to happen – so doors open when you knock – comes a Father who surpasses the ordinary and works on the ‘how much more’ level.

I’m excited to explore more of this as the final sabbatical goes on. What does it mean to follow a ‘how much more’ God. How does it change expectations? What does it mean for ministry, for church, for the way church works?

Christmas letter 2009

A man decided to buy his wife a really special Christmas gift and visited a posh department store. The assistant showed him a bottle of perfume for £150. ‘I’m not paying that,’ he spluttered. ‘Have you got a smaller bottle?’

After rejecting the £75, £35 and tiny £10 bottles of the same brand he demanded to know the cheapest thing they had in the store.

The assistant reached under the counter and handed him a small mirror. She said: ‘I believe if you look in there, sir, you’ll see the cheapest thing we have in the shop.’

The Bible says that when Jesus came in the stable at Bethlehem he came as the ‘exact representation of God’s being’ … God’s mirror image, if you like. Our prayer is that you find time this Christmas to find the real Christmas in the middle of all the other great things that go on.

Joy and Gareth Well, we’ve had an amazing year. Not just getting used to being in our new home and Gareth’s new job, but three family weddings to enjoy and another one in the planning!

Siân and Damien married at the end of May (more of that below) but also both of Gareth’s sisters got married – and neither of those were expected when we wrote last year’s letter!

The first was Claire who married in St Ives at the end of March. She and new husband Dave Walter now live in Braunton, Devon. Youngest daughter Sarah is with them while Rachel and Hannah are in St Ives with their father.

Then Betsan married Steve at the start of August. She managed to begin the day as Miss Hill and ended it as Mrs Hill! Steve is a Methodist minister and within very few days Bee, Steve and Chloe had moved to Crosby near Liverpool where Steve is the Superintendent Minister of a Methodist Circuit. Gareth was thrilled to be asked to conduct the service.

The weddings meant that both Gareth’s sisters moved out of Cornwall within a few months of each other – he wondered whether it was something he said! – and contact is now through Facebook, text messages, phone calls and the occasional visits.

But we all work hard at keeping in touch and, during a holiday trip to Merseyside, also saw Gareth’s brother Mike and his family.

Gareth has had some preaching invitations this year including at Llanyrafon Methodist Church, which his parents helped to build, and at Park Road Methodist Church, Hastings, which meant that we could spend the weekend with Joy’s brother Pete and his family. That included the obligatory dip in the hot tub!

For Joy, the highlight of the year was her 50th birthday which featured a 70s disco. It was lovely to see friends from her childhood and from recent years coming together for the evening.

It also brought her back in touch with Lynny (pictured below), her best friend through the 70s, and they’ve been in virtually daily contact since through Facebook, despite Lynny spending many weeks out of the country.

In April we celebrated our Pearl (30th) wedding anniversary and went to London to see Les Miserables - an amazing show.

Next year Gareth has a sabbatical, the gift from the Methodist Church of three months paid leave. He’s aiming to do some more hymn writing and to try to build a book around some of the hymns he’s already written (you can find them on www.cybervicar.com). We’re also looking forward to taking our ageing caravan to France for an extended break.

Before that there’s still plenty to do at work. Joy is into her 11th year on the children’s unit at Treliske Hospital, Truro; battling with a new system for serving food.

There’s also more involvement in village life. We’re firmly established in the Clockhouse Players and rehearsing for next year’s panto with Gareth in the title role as The Wizard of Oz. And there’s pub quiz on Sunday nights.

Both of these are a key part of Gareth’s work – doing church for people who don’t do church – and led up to the pub hosting a link-up with the BBC in the South West for a interactive carol service in Christmas week.

We also now have a LIFE group that meets at our house twice a month and are looking at how to develop contemporary worship in the area. A very successful Alpha group has just finished in a pub in St mawes.It’s been a year of major change for our children in all sorts of ways.

Siân and Damien The end of May brought Siân and Damien’s big day.

They were married at Llanyrafon Methodist Church on the most perfect sunny day. Gareth had been asked to write a hymn for the day.

They had already made the decision to move back to Cornwall after their jobs in Wales ended around Christmas last year – but while they were with us for the holiday were both offered their old posts back!

So Damien is now Head Chef at The Pickwick in St Issey, near Padstow and in the final six competitors for the Great British Pub food awards 2010. Siân is working on the reception team at The Metropole in Padstow.

They now live in a mobile home in the grounds of The Pickwick.

Andrew and Rose It’s also been a momentous year, one way or another, for Andrew, Rose and the boys.

This time last year Andrew was effectively the number 2 at a kitchen design and suply company on the edge of Plymouth but it was becoming increasingly clear that there were money problems in the company – particularly when Andrew didn’t get paid!

Eventually, Andrew made the brave decision to go and it proved to be wise. Soon afterwards the company went bust.

After a while looking at what he wanted to do he decided to try his hand at his Dad’s old career and is now a reporter at the Cornish Times in Liskeard. He covers Callington but also writes for the West Country Sunday paper The Sunday Independent, which is published from the same office.

Rose is continuing her degree studies in Child Development and also working part-time for the NHS – we don’t know where she gets the energy!

They have booked their wedding for August next year and we are really excited about that!

Rhys is six next March and has been doing really well at school, regularly bringing home certificates for his spelling and being congratulated for his behaviour.

He is having swimming lessons in the same pool that Tom Daley started in – and is eyeing the diving board rather too keenly!Matthew looks frightenly like Rhys did at the same age and loves calling his Nanny and Papa on the phone; especially leaving messages: “Hello! Hello! Hello! Bye!!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandcastles on the beach

My wife and I were on the beach with our grandchildren a couple of weeks ago and five-year-old Rhys wanted me to help him make a sandcastle.

He’d filled up the bucket with wet sand so we patted it down and tipped it out for him to begin decorating with pebbles. As he pushed on into the side of the little castle it began to break down and I warned him not to be too rough with it.

Without even looking up he said: “I know. It’ll fall down because it’s built on sand. The Bible says that.”

I asked him where he’d heard that and he told me about his club at church in Plymouth. Then, within seconds he had forgotten all about his mini-sermon and he was off down the beach on another adventure: to get more sand or to try to dam up the river.

For Rhys the Bible, the sandcastle, the pebble and the conversation about God were all one big picture – they were all a part of the big excitement that was his life at that moment.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could see everything we are doing as part of one great inseparable God-inspired picture?

Those of us who are Christians try in different ways to make contact with our communities and show them the love of Jesus. The difference is that often when we’re asked why, we never quite make the leap to slip in the Jesus part of the conversation. We never quite get to tell people that we are providing them with a meeting place, giving them a meal, getting their prescription, running their children’s holiday club because we believe that God is crazy about them and sent Jesus to earth to die for them.

I now it’s easy to be over-sentimental about our children and as a grandparent I can fall into that trap all too quickly, but Jesus used the idea of childlike acceptance of God’s love for us as the measure of faith. The reason we are in communities is to be the Body of Christ, visible through loving service. As you read through the stories in this edition of TCN, just reflect on where in his great big exciting picture God has put you. And who can you tell about it?

Offerings that cost nothing

I’m not going to offer God, my God, sacrifices that are no sacrifice – 2 Samuel 24: 24 (from The Message*)

Last week’s Torchwood series on BBC1 TV was great fun for lots of reasons but featured a storyline of earth being visited by aliens who demanded the sacrifice of 10 per cent of all earth’s children. A tithe. That, of course, is just like the biblical figure that God expected his people to give in offerings although the connection was never actually made in the programme.

Among the great moral dilemmas running through the series were the questions of which children should be handed over: children from failing schools; troublesome children who wouldn’t be missed; surely not the children of government ministers?

At one point The Prime Minister instructs a senior Whitehall officer that his children will become “units” in the process … for the public good. A terrible outcome is inevitable.

The decision by the Prime Minister is one that costs him nothing. He has no children.

The conclusion to Torchwood: Children of Earth wove a satisfying thread around that dilemma, the deaths of some more of the main series characters and the character of Torchwood’s head Captain Jack Harkness, an undying time-traveller, whose daughter and grandson have been caught up in the madness.

In the Old Testament King David faced a desperate dilemma. He had done wrong and people were dying in his land. He came to make a sacrifice to God and was offered a threshing floor and ox by their owner. His response was “I’m not going to offer God, my God, sacrifices that are no sacrifice.” In other words, unless the solution had cost him something then it wasn’t a solution. So David bought the threshing barn and the oxen and the fuel for the sacrifice. Then his offering was heard by God.

The end of Torchwood involved a costly sacrifice.

It didn’t have the prospect of resurrection that Christians can hold onto with our Easter story but it showed again the truth that costly sacrifice is at the heart of God’s self-offering.

 

* The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible in contemporary language