Open Doors

We were done at three.  We were happy in our house, just the right size for us, in just the right place.  Wouldn’t change a thing.

But sometimes life throws up some unexpected things.  Sometimes God has other ideas.

On 27^th August our fourth baby, and our third little girl, was born.  Avril Faith.  Her name is about new beginnings, opening doors and trusting God in the transition.

That’s the story of our lives in the season in which she’s joined us.  We’re a family of five becoming a family of six.  Ezra, our boy wonder, is starting school.  After five happy years outside Cambuslang we’re moving to a new house in a new town.  And we’re doing it all at a time when it literally makes no sense.  Who would move house and take on a bigger mortgage just as interest rates are being hiked?  Who would buy a big old brick-build just as energy prices go through the roof?  Why shift the kids into a new school when they’re only just getting used to the first one?  And why do it all at once?  I mean…. we’re moving in a week and a day.  We’re going to have a babe in arms not 6 days old when our movers come to start packing up our lives.  Why on earth are we doing this?

These are all questions that confront me in my darker more anxious moments.

It doesn’t make sense.  Or rather, without faith, it doesn’t make sense.

But we’ve got faith.  We don’t believe in accidents, but in providence.  We don’t believe in random chance, but in a sovereign God.  We don’t believe that, as Forrest Gump wondered, “we’re all floating around accidental like on the wind”.  We’ve got faith that what we’re doing is for a reason.

Sometimes people talk about faith as if it’s the opposite of evidence.  I don’t see it that way.  I see faith as a choice to trust your weight to the strength of the evidence you’ve seen.  And this season has been a season for faith.  Not blind, reckless or baseless conjecture.  But choosing to trust because of what God has said and done.

Like I said, we were done at three.  And I was never going to move.  “Bury me in that back garden” I used to say to Roxy, not entirely joking.  I hate change.

But then change marched into our lives.  Biology doesn’t always go to plan, and there we were looking at a positive pregnancy test.  Roxy began talking about a bigger place.  She felt like we needed to push on some doors and see what happens.

A house came up just a few streets away – our dream house, in many ways.  “Would you move for the right house if it was only a few streets away?” she asked.  Maybe.  We did our sums.  Pushed on the door.  It didn’t work out.

Another house came up.  Even better, in some ways.  A little outside of our neighbourhood, but in the same town.  “Would you move for the right house if it was just across there?” she asked.  Maybe.  We pushed on the door.  It didn’t work out.

But by now something had changed.  It felt like we were moving.  Were we?  Were we actually going to leave this area?  We love this area.  We had big dreams for this area.  We had a vision for what our lives would be like here.  Was it all for nothing?  I went on a run, asking God for a sign.  Just occasionally God answers your prayers very literally.  He showed me a sign.  I run there every week.  It wasn’t a new sign.  But I’d never noticed it before.  And as I stopped and stared, the words burned themselves into my eyes: work undertaken and complete.  Our work here was done.  We were moving.

Rox had the feeling that pushing on this door meant putting our own house on the market.  Before we’d sold.  Not only do I hate change but I’m naturally pretty risk averse.  So you can imagine this is pretty much a nightmare for me.  But, she’s very pretty, and she knows how marriage works.  So she got her way.  We were told the figure to expect on our home report.  But a different number niggled at us – a number that was important to us because of a random gift we’d received at a significant moment in our lives years ago.  That was the number we based our sums on.  And on the morning where it was do-or-die for putting the house on the market, and all the reasons why not to do it loomed large, we got the home report through.  It wasn’t the number the agent had told us to expect.  It was the number we’d received through the door all those years before.  To us, it was a sign.  A sign that was the plan.  This is what we were meant to do.

I won’t write the whole story… it would take too long, and probably isn’t as interesting to anyone else as it is to us!  The long version is a story of a hundred little answers to prayer, a thousand little coincidences, a word of encouragement here, a dream there.  A million things that we’ve clung to as reminders that God is with us in this, that He’s leading us through this, and that He’ll be with us on the other side of it.

Fast forward to August 2022.  We’ve sold.  We’ve bought.  We’re waiting on missives concluding.  The economy is crashing.  The cost of living is exploding.  And we’re 40 weeks pregnant and about to move house.  There’s lots to stress about.

But something prompts Roxy to have a look back at a message she’d sent someone about a dream she had.

She had this dream a year ago – August 2021.  A full 12 months before.  Pregnancy was the last thing on our minds.  Moving home wasn’t on the cards, not even close.  But in this dream, we were moving house with a new born baby.

Coincidence, right?  Dreams can be crazy I guess.  These things happen.

But we’ve got faith.  Faith that when everything seems up in the air and thrown together and like it might fall apart at any second… God always knew what was going to happen.  And he’d told us a year in advance all about it.

Welcome to the world Avril Faith.  You were part of the plan long before we knew it.  And your name, and your precious little life, encourages us to press on and trust in God as He opens the door to this next season for us.

Ch ch ch changes

 Macintosh Day 2022.  Three years since we established our little tradition of taking our wedding anniversary and making it bit of a big deal with the kids, like Christmas in the middle of the summer.  A day to celebrate together with our wee clan, sharing stories of our family journey and treasuring the time we have together just us and our kids.

 

This year has been quite a year.  As I write this Roxy is just days away from giving birth to our fourth baby.  And we are also, God willing, just weeks away from selling up our lovely little home and moving on to a new place.

 

It’s been a year of disruption and unsettling change.  Some people thrive on change.  I hate it.  I like routine, the reassurance of consistency, the comfort of the familiar.  But what helps to keep me grounded in the midst of big changes in life is the knowledge that some things are unchanging.  On Macintosh Day especially, as we think back through the twists and turns of our lives thus far, I’m struck once more by the realisation that when everything else shifts and flickers, God’s faithfulness remains firm and unflinching.

 

I guess sometimes God needs to shake things up in order to remind us of what we actually depend on.  Sometimes He needs to make us a bit uncomfortable so He can push is to grow.  In this process of moving house and having this new baby, we’ve been very clearly reminded of how dependant we are on God.  And how He just never lets us down.  I’ll write the story properly when it’s all concluded, when we have our new baby and we’re sitting in our new home.  This entry is very much just a place holder.  But already, beyond doubt, we know that God’s hand has been at work in all that’s gone on this year.  Remarkable.  Prophetic words at just the right time.  Signs and guidance.  Surprising favour even in the nuts and bolts of offers and finances and all the back and forth of buying and selling houses.  Dreams and visions.

 

It’s not been easy – these things never are.  And it’s not over the line yet – who knows if there may be twists and turns yet to come.

 

But what is certain is this: 

 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

    and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him,

    and he will make straight your paths.

 

This Macintosh Day we’re celebrating God’s faithfulness to us past and present.  And as we do so, He strengthens our resolve to trust and know that He will see us through.  After all, yesterday, today, tomorrow, He is the same.

Good Friday (Again)

I should say something on Good Friday, right?  After all, I’m a card-carrying bible-basher, a signed up member of the God Squad.  I’m “one of them Christians”.  Since I was old enough to talk and walk, I’ve been – in my own fickle and faltering way – trying to talk the talk and walk the walk of a follower of Jesus.  And Easter?  That’s peak season for anyone who loves God and has been heart-captured by the Christian gospel.  I should be on a spiritual “high”.  I should have spent all of Lent deep in prayer and fasting.  I should be as close to God as I’ve ever been.  Move over Theresa: there’s a new Saint in town.

 

But, friends, that ain’t the reality.  Not for me, not this year anyway.  It worries me sometimes that as a relatively visible leader in our little church – people see me up front leading worship and preaching – those who don’t know me that well in church assume I live that sort of life.  That I’m always “on”.  That my private life matches up to my public presentation.  Of course, those who know me well are under no such illusions.

 

The truth is, Lent has been a complete wash out for me.  I started it with good intentions – I’ll fast every Wednesday, start a prayer meeting on Wednesday mornings, and make it a season of really “pressing in” (there’s one for your Charismatic bingo card).  But life took over.  Work was stressful.  I have an ill-advised and increasing number of children who, notwithstanding my occasional cute Facebook posts, are usually not lined up perfectly like the Von Trapps.

 

Roxy’s pregnant and, as miraculous and glorious as that whole process is, even fourth time around, it’s particularly unsettling this time because it’s pushing us to consider moving house, and one thing you need to know about me is I hate change.  I like my comfortable and familiar foundations.  And all of a sudden I’m thinking about someone else tending to my garden; someone else’s family sitting in my livingroom; someone else marking their kids’ heights on the doorframe of my kitchen cupboard.

 

So this Lent I’ve been distracted.  I more or less stuck to my Lenten vows (allowing myself one break whilst on holiday, comforted by a Catholic pal of mine who used to remind me that “Jesus stumbled three times on the way to the cross, so…”) but it was more ritual and rule keeping than empowered and life-giving.  More just “not eating today” as opposed to “fasting and praying today”. 

 

Rather than coming to Easter fit to burst with spiritual energy and fresh life, I’m actually in a place of feeling quite shaken up and insecure, in a sense.  Not insecure personally – I am, mercifully, not someone usually troubled by self-doubt.  But insecure in the sense that foundational things in my life have been shaken.  I’ve mentioned the possible house move.  That’s unsettling.  I had a couple of really stressful weeks at work where my professional confidence (and perhaps competence) was knocked a little.  That’s unsettling.  Our youngest had a health and safety incident in the house – she’s absolutely fine, just one of those freak accident near-misses that keep you awake as a parent.  That was unsettling.  It’s been a tough season in church, saying goodbye to some people who moved on, trying to plug gaps and be there for people, trying to set an example and cast a vision and lead well whilst spinning all the plates that need to keep spinning in our own lives.  It’s not been easy. 

 

And so, on Good Friday morning I’m not really, if I’m honest, at the peak of my spiritual powers.  I’m distracted, unsettled, mind-occupied, overburdened and lacking much margin for reflection.  Disappointed, in a way.  With myself – maybe I could have made more of it this year, done more with this season.  Frustrated.  Some big ideas, hopes and plans I had aren’t coming to pass.

 

And as I sit and reflect on Good Friday I realise that, though on a different scale, that’s not a million miles away from how Jesus’ friends were feeling around this time.  They were disappointed.  Their Messiah hadn’t ushered in the overthrow of the Romans, far from it: He was a prisoner in their custody and about to be executed at their hands.  And they, His followers, hadn’t arisen as a revolutionary force for good, they had scattered at the first sign of trouble like the cowards they always feared they truly were.  They’d staked all their hopes, invested their prime years and the entirety of their credibility on the God-man Jesus and there he was hanging on a cross – every bit a man, nothing like a God.

 

There are two things that strike me on this Good Friday morning.

 

The first is this: the way things seem in the moment is not always how things will be seen in the end.  As the disciples mourned that Jesus was being killed by the Romans rather than overthrowing them, they didn’t realise that in that very moment King Jesus was overthrowing not just the empire of Rome but the power of death itself.  As the disciples wept tears of grief as their friend died as a victim of injustice and cruelty on a cross he didn’t deserve, they didn’t realise that the victim was The Victor, that His undeserved death was their undeserved salvation, that the cross that took His life was the means by which God would give them life eternal.  God has previous on this.  He has a track record of bringing His Greatest Hits out of our darkest hour.  His light shines brightest when the darkness is at its deepest.  As Paul taught, His power is perfected in our weaknesses.  As Hosea reminds us, He turns the valley of trouble into a gateway of hope.  So on Good Friday I remember that in difficult moments, stressful days, hard weeks and unsettling times, God is surely at work – working all things together for the good of those who love Him.

 

The second thing that strikes me this Easter is the reminder that Jesus didn’t come for us at our best, but at our worst.  He didn’t die for the picture perfect but for the bruised and the broken.  He died in place of His friends in full knowledge that they had rejected Him and abandoned Him.  As the Good Book says, it was when we were still sinners that He died for us.  Though we are faithless, He is faithful.  Perhaps Easter weekend is a time to remember that it’s never been about our faithfulness, our obedience, our saintliness.  It’s never been about our Spiritual High.  When we’re at our best we can be tempted to forget our poverty before the throne.  But when we stumble into Easter, like I am this year, we find ourselves praying a prayer which has the explicit approval of our Lord: have mercy on me.  And day after day, month after month, year after year… He does.  His mercies are new every morning.  And His grace is sufficient for today.

 

If you’ve read this far, maybe you’ll read on a couple of lines further.

 

I opened my bible this morning to my favourite passage when it comes to Good Friday: Isaiah 53.  Written centuries before Jesus lived and died, it was a word from God which helped Jesus’ first followers, raised to memorise the Jewish scriptures, understand what they had seen and heard.  It goes like this:

 

“He was despised and rejected.

A man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.

He was despised and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried.

It was our sorrows that weighed him down.

And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins!

But he was pierced for our rebellion.

Crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us like sheep have strayed away.

We have left God’s paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.”

 

Here’s the exchange.  If He carried my weaknesses, I don’t have to carry them anymore!  I can walk in His strength.  If He was weighed down by my sorrow, I don’t have to be weighed down anymore.  I can walk free of that weight, following Jesus who promised that his yoke is easy and his burden light.  And most gloriously of all: if he was pierced, crushed, beaten, whipped for all of my shortcomings and failures, then there remains for me no condemnation, no pointing finger, no judgement and no fatherly disappointment.  All of that was soaked up and satisfied on the cross.  All that remains for me, before God, is love: pure, unflinching, unmitigated and unmerited love.

 

And that, when you think about it, is pretty good news this Friday.

 

Divine Romance

It was pretty much the last week before the summer at the end of the first year of my degree when I met the love of my life.  I’m not sure whether love at first sight is the right description, but I certainly noticed her.  Couldn’t take my eyes, or my mind, off of her in fact.  After dancing around the issue a bit, eventually the stars aligned and we started going out.  But that’s a story for another day.

A few months after we started going out, I was at a small group gathering connected with our church (shout out to Glasgow Vineyard) where we were praying for each other, and a guy I barely knew told me he felt like God had given him a vision to share with me.  The short version was that it was a picture of me, as a wee boy, looking after a fragile flower, and asking God for help because I had no idea how to look after it.  The message, he told me, was that God would help me.  I pulled out what is a time-tested and well honed “smile and nod” reserved for these moments where someone has stepped out in faith in a well-intentioned manner but ultimately it sounds like nonsense.  “Thank you”, I whispered, encouragingly.

Some months later Roxy’s Dad died.  Those were hard days of tears and prayers and talking and sitting in silence, feeling the weight of it all.  Out for dinner one night as she talked, tears in her eyes, I prayed silently: “help me, I feel like I’m just a kid and I have no idea how to look after her”.  In that instant I remembered the picture, the flower and the prayer.  And vividly the promise came to me that God would help me.  And he did.

By God’s grace, we got through that season and we often said that it accelerated the deepening our relationship’s roots.  We were stuck to each other like glue.

A few months went by and I got the opportunity to take a few months to study in New Zealand.  Roxy made me promise I would go and that she’d be fine and – though I cringe now at the timing – off I flew.  It was during my time away in New Zealand, reflecting on life going by, graduation approaching in 18 months or so, that I realised that we were meant to be.  There was no-one else – the very idea of anyone else seemed utterly ludicrous – I had to marry her.

She agreed to come out and travel to New Zealand with me that summer before returning to Scotland together.  But as it turned out, she’d been struggling by without much in the way of spare cash.  One month to pay the rent she had actually pawned some of her belongings.  She scrolled through flights and airlines and found the cheapest return to New Zealand.  £600 and change.  There was no way.  She prayed.  Effectively cut a deal with the almighty: if this is the man for me, then you need to get me over there.  The answer which came shortly thereafter wasn’t encouraging.  Not a cheque but a bill – unpaid student accommodation.  She shuffled up to the university option with her letter, to pay her dues with her last pennies and to put the rest on credit.  At the desk, the attendant tapped away on her computer and frowned.  There must be some mistake.  Panicking, Roxy wondered how much more she owed now.  But instead, with a smile, the attendant told her no: we owe you.  How much?  £600 and change.

So out Roxy comes to Auckland, New Zealand.  But things weren’t all rosy in the garden.  It was odd.  You may call it anxiety, oversensitivity.  To us, it seemed deeper – something spiritual.  For both of us.  We talked around it, ignored it.  We went for a walk on the beach and it was all small talk and superficiality.  Then we realised as we tried to find the car, that we were lost.  So it became a substantially longer walk.  And then as we walked and searched for the path and wondered where on earth the car was, we began to talk.  Really talk.  Both of us started pouring our souls out, what we’d been thinking, how we’d been feeling.  We felt our spirits lift, the skies brighten.  And then we stood and hugged and prayed.  And as we finished praying we asked Jesus, with a giggle, to show us where the car was as we didn’t want to die out there on the dunes.  I kid you not.  We opened our eyes, and there before us was our borrowed Toyota Starlet.

From then on it felt like someone was watching out for us.  At every stage, we found favour.  We nearly missed a ferry – and then ended up being at the head of the queue avoiding the traffic because they snuck our car on at the very end.  We ran out of fuel in the middle of the night only to grind to a halt outside an antiques shop of all places, where the owner just so happened to be standing outside and had a jerry can of petrol behind the till.  We landed up in Dunedin, unplanned, on a festival day with a big local event on that made it the best day of the year to visit.  We parked up in a layby in the pitch black to get some sleep in the car, lost (again) only to wake with the dawn looking at the most incredible waterfall.  These were magical days.

Home we came, and minds were made up.  I bought a ring.  I hid it in my room.  I was sure, of course I was.  But still – it’s a big deal this, getting engaged, getting married.  How do you know that you know?  I prayed a prayer.  I said “I won’t go down this road unless I know for sure that you’re with me in this – because this is a big deal, and I’m terrified”.

At this time I was flatmates with my sister.  I know.  Lucky her.  She was unaware of any of this, and in particular knew nothing about the ring, or about the prayer that I’d prayed.  We were chatting and she said something to me about an email.  She had signed up to some “bible verse of the day” email mailing list, and she told me she’d forwarded it to me today as for some reason she just thought it might be good for me.  I thought nothing of it until later on when I checked my emails and read it. My jaw hit the floor.  Remember that prayer I prayed?  God sent me his answer in an email.  The verse my sister had sent to me was Joshua 1:9.  It says this:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

I had my orders.

On the top of Ben Lomond, with the Trossachs beneath us and the sunshine above us, I asked Roxanne Ridler to be my wife.

And, to add to all that had gone before, despite barely seeing a soul on the whole walk, it just so happened that at the very moment I proposed there was an older couple on the summit ready to take our photo.

Speaking of miracles, that she said yes when I had that hairstyle is further evidence of a benevolent deity.

There are so many other stories I could tell of prayers answered, things coming together at just the right time, just as we needed them.  Unnecessary generosity, the goodness of a God who loves us just because he does.  But I need to stop this blog somewhere.  So I’ll stop it here.  Me and my fiancée, stumbling down a mountain, tired, giddy, two daft kids in love.  And 11 years on, with three daft kids of our own, by the grace of God... we still are.

Life Stories

 In a couple of days it’s the 2^nd annual family celebration of Macintosh Day.  Rox and I got to thinking last year about how, with our oldest about to start school, we wanted to embed in our kids a really strong vision of our family values and identity.  Since Jolie and Ezra both have winter birthdays, a summer celebration on our anniversary seemed a good idea.  Hence, on the 6^th of August every year we shall spend the day just with our little clan, good food, giving gifts and building our own traditions to make the occasion special.

One of the things we want to do is to tell our story.  You may have a mind for facts and figures, but stories have a way of sinking far more deeply into the memory.  We want our kids to understand that they are a part of the story God has been writing in our family.  We want these stories of God’s goodness to us to outlive us and outlast us.  And we want our kids to grow up to be storytellers too – to know that every new age and stage of their lives are stories waiting to be written. 

I’ve used this space to record some special stories – stories of God’s faithfulness through long years, stories of His providence and care for us in the mundane and the miraculous.  And I thought I would take the opportunity to add to the anthology.  There are of course things I won’t share here.  We believe in a God who engages with us in every area of life, from the private to the professional, and not everything is for public consumption.  Frankly, some of my favourite stories – of God’s favour on my career, of his kindness at work in friendship and family relationships – are best shared one to one.

So with all of that said, you can feel free to read on.  It may feel like a slide show from a holiday you weren’t on.  Things that mean a lot to those that lived through them, that lose their impact with a little distance.  Or maybe it’ll prompt you to think about your own stories.  If you’re a follower, maybe you’ll be reminded to look back and trace the grace of God at work in your own life.  If you’re not yet persuaded about all things Jesus, maybe you can just count these stories as the accounts of witnesses to things you’ve not yet seen and heard.  But if so, I’d invite you to bear in mind that God has no favourites.  Or rather, we’re all His favourites.  He loves the Macintoshes, of that I am sure.  But I’m also convinced that stories like ours are not just celebrations but invitations.  An invitation to give over the movie rights to your life, and to watch on in awe as the master director work wonders with the ordinary stuff of your every day.

What's in a name?

A long time ago, we fell in love and got married.  Then we decided to start a family.

We two became three with the arrival of Jolie Liana - our beautiful answer from God.  You can read the twists and turns of her little story here.  Her name, we hope, captures something of that story - the beauty of new life, longings fulfilled, God's faithfulness revealed in the fullness of time.

We three became four when our Ezra Michael popped out on the kitchen floor.  His story we wrote about here and here  And we hope his name describes something of that story, too - how God is our helper in everything, big and small.

You may think they're a little "out there" (and, with all affection, I honestly don't really care) but we love those names.  They described the story of our lives at the point of each of their arrivals, but they also set a tone and a direction for our family life as the kids have grown and their colourful and vibrant characters and personalities have emerged.

And now four have become five, with the arrival of Shiloh Hope.

The story of our lives relevant to this new baby is of course tied up in the remarkable circumstances we've all been navigating these past few months.  Shiloh is our lockdown baby, born surrounded by people in masks, limited in who she will meet and for how long and at what distance.  She's being born into a world where people are living in fear of death and disease, in fear of economic collapse, or indeed both.  She's also being born into a world bubbling with discontent, marches in the streets, protests and counter-protests.  (The astute among you may have noted that Shiloh in US History was the site of the bloodiest battle of the civil war - we chose her name before these protests started but its relevance to this cultural moment is curious to say the least!)

The world Shiloh is being born into is dramatically different to what we imagined when we first looked forward to her arrival.  But of course, there is nothing new under the sun - history repeats.  This virus seems shocking to us but our ancestors knew waves of plague and pestilence as just a part of life in the world as it is.  These marches and all the spin-off and ripple effects seem new to us but uprisings of the oppressed and movements for change and even civil unrest have equally been a cyclic feature of human history.

When in first few centuries AD plague ripped through Rome, the rich and the powerful ran for the hills - self isolating in comfort.  The people who stayed behind were largely those too poor to have anywhere else to go.  But rumour had it there another group who stayed.  A small Jewish sect whose adherents believed fervently that this life was not the end, whose hope was founded on something other than their health and wealth in this life, who stayed behind to care for the sick and the dying who had been abandoned.  These peculiar people, who came to be known as Christians (initially as a derogatory term) appeared to have an ability to endure all manner of trials whilst maintaining hope - you might even call it an infectious hope. 

This Christian hope transcended the tragedies of plague and disease and even death.  And it transformed a misfit band of followers of a dead rabbai into a movement which today stretches to every corner of the world.

It also had a unique power and persistence in reaching outcasts and outsiders.  No barrier was too high for Christian hope to scale, no chasm too wide for Christian hope to bridge.  The first non-Jewish convert to Christianity was a man called Simeon - black, of pagan religious origins, and a eunuch (i.e. a sexual minority, of sorts).  And yet where human nature would emphasise difference, distance and division, the Spirit of God moved heaven and earth to bring unity and diversity.  (One might even put it that, from the very start of the Jesus Movement, "black lives mattered".)  The hope of the gospel was, and always has been, for everyone.

We all need hope - especially right now.  Hope is a virtue which is only necessary when things are hard.  You don't need hope when things are fine.  When you have all you need, maybe even all you want, you don't need to hope for anything else.  You need hope when the alternative is hopelessness.  

And hope is and always has been one of the things which should mark and define someone who has had their life shaken up by Jesus.  When St Peter wrote to some of the first Christian believers in the first century AD, he was writing to people who were being persecuted - people for whom financial ruin, physical punishment, imprisonment or even death were daily possibilities.  And he said that they should be ready to give an answer for the hope that they have.  In other words, this hope that they had in the midst of sorrow and suffering was a hope so luminescent that it was inevitable they would be asked to explain it.

In this time of upheaval a lot of things on which we tend to rely are suddenly revealed to be less stable than we had thought.  Particular jobs and indeed whole industries have disappeared, almost overnight.  Public services and cultural norms that we thought would always be there because they always have, all of a sudden look completely different.  Relational networks that keep us emotionally and mentally healthy are all of a sudden filtered through a screen and a wifi connection, straining friendships, separating families and distancing us from our colleagues and acquaintances.  Even our health, which we don't even think of until it's gone, is suddenly up in the balance.  We find ourselves calculating our odds, mortality rates, co-morbidities, risk factors.  These circumstances - tragic and painful though they are - allow us to see what it is we depend on.  What is it that we can't bear the thought of losing?  What is it that we can't cope with being unable to rely upon?

For us, we've been sharply reminded that when all else could be lost - hypothetically for most, but very tangibly for some - our hope remains.  Our hope is not in our health or our wealth.  Our hope is not in the fragile idolatry of particular politicians or popular movements.  It's in Jesus.  He is our "Shiloh Hope".  He is our hope that won't disappoint, our hope that assures us even in delay and deferment, our hope that finds us even in displacement and dislocation.

Shiloh was a place in ancient Israel where the people went to worship long before the temple was established in Jerusalem - it was a makeshift place, a temporary location for God's presence.  In this season where our rhythms of gathering in community to worship have been disrupted, and we've had to adjust to new realities of distance and separation from spiritual and biological family alike, Shiloh reminds us that though the "where" and the "how" might change, God is always seeking to connect with His people.  Seek, and you will find.

Shiloh was also a word spoken by a man called Jacob to his son Judah, which pointed forward through the generations to the coming of the great Hope of the world - Jesus.  It's meaning holds in tension the reality of waiting in the "not yet", longing for a Kingdom not yet come, together with the certainty of the Hope that will be realised "when Shiloh comes".  The promise of Shiloh was a promise that though there might be twists and turns and unexpected detours in the story, Jesus always comes through.

Our Hope is not generic.  It's not well-intentioned but groundless optimism.  It's not nebulous and unsubstantiated confidence in human progression.  Our hope is not in ourselves, far from it.  If anything these months have been proof again of both the fragility of our lives and the fallibility of our legacies.  Our hope is in a saviour who rescues us, in spite of ourselves.  Our hope is in the one who will one day draw all of history to a conclusion where every ill-effect is redeemed and every day of sorrow subverted.  Our hope is in Jesus, who calms the storms, raises up the downtrodden, binds up the brokenhearted and meets our sin and sickness not with condemnation but with reconciliation and redemption.  Our hope is in the one who stands in the middle of the plague and, with all authority, says "all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well".

Shiloh is coming.  Hope is here.  

Good Friday

It’s not good, is it?  There’s an understatement.

Death after death after death after hundreds of deaths.  Ominous clouds of fear and anxiety cover the world.  Vital signs on medical devices and financial spreadsheets crashing in tandem.  The lonely and the lost, the unseen and the unknown confined to their homes, to be seen even less, known even less.  A society already disconnected, having what few bonds of brotherhood that remain, forcibly severed by the necessity of separating our lives in order to preserve them.  It’s not good in the slightest.

And yet the calendar insists this is Good Friday.  Though the upheaval to our daily routines has caused the days of the week to lose all meaning, I’m willing to be convinced it may well be Friday.  But it’s not good.

I catch myself thinking this is no way to celebrate Easter.  And yet, as my mind wanders down that rabbit trail, I wonder if that’s true at all.

All of us, including the healthy, the young, the fit, the strong – those we’ve come to describe cautiously as “relatively low risk” – are sacrificing simple pleasures and freedoms we’ve taken for granted our whole lives.  And we do so not principally for our own sake (though in part, we do) but mainly for the sake of the sick, the old and the already-weakened.

Maybe, in some way, we can understand something of the Good Friday sacrifice by the one who had it all, who gave up his freedoms for people in desperate need.

Families are keeping themselves separated, parents from children, sibling from sibling, grandparent from grandchild.  Though it breaks our hearts, we’re putting distance between ourselves and those to whom we feel the closest bonds.

Maybe, in some way, we understand something of the Father and Son who, on Good Friday, turned their faces from each other and separated themselves for the sake of the world.

Frontline workers, carers, doctors, nurses and many others who receive even less adulation are putting themselves in harm’s way to serve and to save those who they don’t even know.  Not their mother, but yours.  Not their brother, but yours.

Maybe, in some way, they’re a modern parable of the Good Friday saviour, who could have chosen safety but instead chose suffering, to protect and to rescue even those who misunderstood, misrepresented or mistreated him.

Some of those frontline workers are not those who would have considered themselves heroes.  They are paid many times less than some others.  They are in jobs less sought after, careers less craved.  Yet when push comes to shove they are the ones deemed essential to our collective survival.

Maybe, in some way, they remind us of the rejected one, the discarded one, who on Good Friday became the cornerstone, the keystone, the foundation on which our lives rest.

Maybe, on reflection, this is a pretty apt way to mark Good Friday.

Good Friday was a day of mourning, where the spectre of death loomed large.

And as Friday spilled into Saturday, the noise faded, the people dispersed and all that was left was the stone dead silence of the tomb.

And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Easter Saturday stumbled, grieving, sobbing, into Sunday.  Resurrection Sunday.  Where from the tomb – the very notion of death itself – burst out life, bright and breathing.

Life out of death.  Victory out of the jaws of defeat.  A new way forward, when all hope had seemed lost.

In our home we’re a few weeks away from what will – probably – be a lockdown labour.  Our third child will be a daughter of the quarantine.  A CoronaBaby.

This Easter we’re constantly reminded in the most physical and visceral of ways that even in a time of death and despair, life bursts forth.

This Friday might not seem very “good” at all.  But on the other side of every tearful, fearful Friday, is a Resurrection Sunday.  

So even amidst the chaos this Good Friday, have a happy and above all a hopeful Easter.  There is always hope.  Always.  Friday is never the end of the story.

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