Pilgrim's Progress

How Do You Want to Live Today?

I have lost two good friends over the last few weeks. One to cancer, the other in a road accident. Life feels so fragile sometimes.

In 2006 I want to do my best to make every moment count. And yet so much time and opportunity seems to slip through my fingers day by day. And I can't get them back. But that's my aim nonetheless. This a new year. This is a new day. This is a new moment.

Therefore watch carefully how you live, not as those who are unwise, but as those who are wise, seizing the opportune moment, because these days are evil. (Eph 5:16; my translation)

Written in another context maybe, but the thought is the same. Seize the day.

Translational Notes
1. "Seizing the opportune moment" = literally "buying back time". Time is "kairos" rather than "chronos" which more usually refers to the opportune moment rather than simply measured time.

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Where Do You Want To Go Today? Part 2

As soon as yesterday's meditation on Bethel hit home, I began seeing pictures in my mind, as often happens. Here's the result.

I pray that each of us can look at the place where we are right now, with our eyes wide open to its joy and pain, and say "How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven." That's what I've needed to hear ...

Where Do You Want To Go Today?

A day soaked with God-possibilities
Could lead anywhere:
Some bright new shore, some unbeaten track,
Some hidden way that ventures off the trodden way and into thicket.
Or it could lead back here
To this all too familiar place, these tasks and faces
These frustrations, joys, mundanity.

I want to go wherever his footsteps lead
And when he stops, to stop and bless the ground
And say, "this is my Beth-el".

Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. (John 12:26)

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set ... He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying ... When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven ... He called that place Beth-el.” (Beth-el means "house of God")
(extracts from Gen 28:10-17;NIV)

Moon image © BBC

Health Warning

This message popped up while I was using Napster music download software ... I didn't know that downloading music from the Internet could lead to spontaneous combustion :)

Into the Unknown #2: The Road Ahead

Returning to one of my favourite themes ... the way ahead, whose destination is the Father's house, but where from here to there? (Click here or on the icon for an animation - about 600K, Requires Flash Player 8)

I know that I am called
The message was quite clear
and yet I cannot see the how, the why.

I feel so small, so weak
so ill-equipped for such a task.

And yet I am prepared to say YES
and undertake the risk
and enter the unknown,
Responding to the call,
Trustfully treading my way
the only way that leads to life - to HIM.

(Sr. Theresa Margaret)

Into the Unknown #1: The Spider's Leap

I stood on St Cuthbert's Cairn and took this picture of Lindisfarne. Closer inspection revealed that the cairn had been colonised by tiny spiders whose webs glistened in the sun. As I watched, I noticed something amazing.

While spinning a piece of web, the spiders kept getting caught by the stiff breeze. They would be borne along for a short distance, land somewhere new, and continue spinning the web. These tiny creatures looked like pioneer adventurers setting their sails for unknown shores, while retaining only the most slender connection to their old lives.

It was then that I had a "Robert the Bruce moment" (if you know the legend from the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314). In other words, an inspiration ...

This is what the last decade of my life has felt like - a series of leaps into the unknown. In 1997 I moved to Oxford (where I had no connections). That led me into two years of training for ordained ministry in Bristol (where I had no connections). And then a move here to Liverpool (where I had no connections). And it's all about to happen again ... another spider's leap beckons, as my current post will end in the next few months. It set me thinking about this well-known verse:

Blessed are they whose strength is in you
In whose hearts are pilgrim pathways. (Ps 84:5, my "translation")

I know that one day, as the Psalm continues, I will "appear before God in Zion", at the journey's end, but where in the meantime?

What spider's leaps are facing you in 2006?

Notes
1. "Pilgrim pathways" translates Heb. "m'silah", which here probably means "pilgrimage, religious trek, formally, highway, i.e., the act. of religious, often processional, travel to a holy place or site" (Swanson 1997). Literal translation is "highways in their hearts".