Lent 26 -mothers

It is Mother's day. 

Mixed feelings about these commercialised Hallmark sponsored events.  On the one hand it is nice to have the chance to spoil someone and/or be appreciated a bit.  On the other hand it is a) way too plastic and expensive and b) really quite hard for all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.

So if you are a not-yet mother, or a trying to be mother, or a seriously dont want to be a mother or an unable to be a mother .... let me assure you that today above all days you are valued and respected and loved.  Being a mother is not the be all and end all.  Its a job, and an important one, but it is not an identity.  Really, it isnt.  The world needs people like you.  Mothers need people like you who have the time and the energy to come alongside. You are a great friend and colleague and daughter and sister .  Thank you

If you are a mother to babies and tiny ones - well done and keep going.  It's tough at times and the sleepless thing can drive you nuts, but there are many joys and you will make it out the other side with your sanity intact   (mostly).  Trust me.  Been there, done that, got the t-shirt

If you are a mother of older kids and teens - well done, they have made it through the infant years and you have got them to be somewhat independent.  You have homeworked and sports culbbed and cub scouted and girl guided and birthday partied and survived!   Well done you.   Keep up the good work.  You are doing great


If you have older teens or are teetering on the brink of an empty nest - congratulations!  You have fed and watered and washed and shopped and nurtured and taught and exampled and led them through to a place where they can now go out on their own.  And they will be fine.  Seriously.  And you will get your life back.  Remember that?  The life you had before kids??   No?  Well you did have one.  Honestly.  :)

If you have kids away, abroad, distant, disconnected, lost or in heaven......  HUG HUG HUG,  It is tough.  But God is good and He loves those kids and knows where they are and how to keep them safe for you.  So trust them into His hands and accept all the help and support He sends your way as you navigate your way through these difficult days

If you are a grandparent...  congratulations!  Enjoy the grandparenting but also keep an eye open for those young women who might be really desperate for a hug and a listening non-judgemental ear and a helping hand.  The world really needs the wisdom of age and experience so dont shut yourself away and think your time is over.  There is plenty for you to do!

If your relationship with your own mother is difficult.... keep on bringing it to Jesus and look out for the mothers He is sending you to fill in the gaps.  We can't change our history but we can invest into the future to change it for those who come after us.

If mother's day is sad for you then my prayer today is that God speaks to you in that sore place and pours His healing in.    If mother's day is a joy to you then I pray that the handmade cards and makeshift presents and burnt toast in bed bring you every happiness 

this is what mother's day in my house
usually looks like :)

lent day 25 - hope

'Hope is sometimes a bad thing.'

I heard someone on a news report say this today and it really made me stop and think.  I dont think Ive ever heard anyone talk of hope as being anything other than positive.   But this was said in the context of Kim and Donald's prospective meeting in North Korea.  And that whole scenario turns what is ' normal' on its head.


The thing is, people in North Korea are being offered the tantalising hope that just possibly there might be the tiniest chance that something might be about to change in their desperately poor and oppressed society.   That would be amazing wouldn't it?  Wonderful to think that there might be a chance for North Koreans to finally be a part of the rest of the world.   Hoping for this should be a good thing right?

Well maybe not, because as the Bible says, hope deferred makes the heart sick.  Hope is only a good thing if the thing hoped for is a) genuine and real and b) possible to achieve.
Kim and Donald are both such unpredictable and volatile characters that it is just not possible for anyone to predict what might happen in the next few weeks.   Any hope that we all might have for a good outcome could turn out to be misplaced.   The reporter on the news last night who said that hope is sometimes a bad thing, said that it was quite possible that Kim was staging an elaborate show in order to meet his own ends.  It is extremely risky for his people to hope for a good outcome.  Because hope involves an emotional investment, energy and focus and risks huge disappointment if it is unfulfilled.  And and the Kim dynasty have proved themselves to be incapable of putting their own people first.  People can change - but the track record doesnt look good

Which is why we are told to put our hope in Jesus.

Hoping for change, hoping for peace, hoping for freedom, prosperity, happiness......  these things only come in the shape of a person.  And He is trustworthy and true.   He is the embodiment of all that we hope for.  Kim and Donald cannot bring change and peace and joy and love because they don't embody those things themselves.  Jesus does.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  His very essence is life and peace and love.  So we can hope in Him and not fear disappointment .     Hope in other things can sometimes make our hearts sick.  Hope in Jesus is always good.

lent 24 - international women's day

In August 2014 there was a lot in the news about female genital mutilation.  Somehow it had come to the attention of the world's media and a cry started to go up demanding an end to this barbaric and cruel practice.   It seemed to come from nowhere and stayed in the news for weeks and weeks.   I was listening to yet another broadcast when I was in the car one day and I felt a huge surge in my spirit as though God was saying ' ENOUGH'.    I got the sense that it wasnt just about FGM, but it was about the status of women across the world.  It had not been long since the Boko Haram kidnappings and other things were rising to the surface to highlight the plight of women.   I felt really strongly that God was about to do something.  He was about to turn the tide for women in the same way that He dismantled communism and the Berlin wall.   I wrote a poem

The Emancipation of Eve

If you hit me I will bruise
If you cut me I will bleed
If you refuse to educate me
I will not protest your creed
I'll comply through brute coercion
or through subtle cultural norms
Second class, invisible
teach me tricks and I'll perform
But know this : I am worth more
And one day you will realise
Soon to be unshackled I
shall manifest before your eyes
my strength and beauty, power and wisdom
Intellect and mettled grace
bone of bone and flesh of flesh
is stepping up to take her place.
Adam you are incomplete
whilst I am tethered to your bed
We are destined to be equals
me, your glory - you, my head.       (28.8.14 © Caz Hamilton)


Since that time three years ago I have watched as God has started to move across the globe to change something fundamental in the way that women are viewed, respected, treated and recognised.   It is really a powerful thing that is going on.  It is a seismic shift in attitudes and behaviour and it is going to have a huge impact going forward.  We are so culturally acclimatised to everything being geared to male dominance that I think we are all going to find it hard to adjust to a new order of things.  But God is no longer going to allow more than half the population of the world to be undervalued and not allowed to reach their God given potential.

In the past couple of years we have seen a move towards closing the gender pay gap.  The abuse of women in the workplace has been exposed.  FGM has been brought into the open and is increasingly being outlawed.  Even yesterday the Saudi Prince said he was considering allowing women to drive.   China has abandoned it's one child policy.  More and more women are standing for office in governments around the world and more and more countries are placing equal value on educating girls as well as boys.   Small changes are happening everywhere - I listen to a programme called The Life Scientific on Radio 4 every week.   Until recently the people interviewed have almost always been men.   The past few weeks all the scientists interviewed have been women.  And they have been women doing groundbreaking and extraordinary work in many cutting edge fields of science and engineering.   Watch carefully in the next few months - there are changes coming in the media which will reflect the changes society is now demanding.   Less objectification, less airbrushing, more older women on television, more female voices, less gender stereotyping.


This is all good for men.  When God created Eve He took her out of Adam and made her his equal.  Together they were supposed to tend the garden and walk with God.  It was only after the fall that the relationships got skewed.  God ascribes different roles to men and women but not different values.  We have allowed the snake in the grass to shame us into ascribing blame, abrogating responsibility and deceiving each other.   When women throw off the shackles that have held them back they will be able to walk beside the men in their lives and together they will finally be able to do the job that God has called them to do.

As Im typing this I can feel God saying that He is going to bring a parity and a unity between man and womankind which will elicit from Him a huge blessing to achieve tasks.  As men allow women to take their place alongside, they will suddenly find that two heads are better than one.  Because that is how God always intended it should be.  Businesses will prosper as boardrooms become equally shared between men and women.  Churches will experience new blessing as they start to lay down some of their traditions and weak theology and allow women to function in their gifts and callings.   This is not a small or local thing.  This is a worldwide shaking of the foundations.

As we move into end times the church is going to come into her own.  God needs every person to be fully operating in their appointed roles in order to meet the huge needs of our hurting broken world.  People are going to turn to Jesus in great numbers and we are going to need all hands on deck.   Girls who are being born today will grow up and wonder what on earth was going on for all those centuries past.  They will become women who are in every way seen as, and treated as, equal to men.  Gender discrimination will be viewed with the same sense of disgust as slavery is viewed now.   Exciting times to be alive.  Exciting times to be a woman.  Come Lord Jesus.

Lent day 23 = children

I met a newborn baby yesterday .  Well, he was 17 days old and teeny tiny and so cute.  He was 6lb something when he was born and was only 7lb something yesterday.  My boys were all nearly 10 lbs when they were born so I always marvel at the size of small babies.  Their fingernails are so amazingly tiny.   Everything is perfectly formed but in miniature.  Amazing.

When I work for Jo Jingles I spend most of my time in nurseries working with pre-school aged children.   I usually start off in the baby room, then go and do a session with under 2 yr olds and then end up with the 3-5 year olds.   The walls of the rooms are always covered in ' art work'.  The other day I noticed that the paintings in the under 2 rooms were mostly just daubs of paint whereas the paintings in the 3-5 rooms were starting to look a bit like something.  My son Ben is 12 and he can now produce a very passable likeness of any object put in front of him to draw.    We are born with practically no ability to do anything at all and it takes us an awful long time to develop the skills we need in adulthood.  Human beings are pretty useless at being independent really.  We need to be looked after and nurtured and instructed for years and years before we are capable of doing anything useful.   I suppose in other cultures children are expected to take on adult roles at a younger age than ours are, but nevertheless a child's brain is under developed until it is well into its teens regardless of where it grows up.

It always amazes me to think of Jesus coming as a baby.   He was a tiny scrap with miniature fingernails, a toddler who kept falling over, a three year old who couldnt hold a spoon properly, a  five year old who got his words muddled up, a seven year old who struggled to learn his Hebrew, a ten year old who wasn't physically strong enough yet to help his Dad in the workshop.   He was a teenager with spots and growth spurts and social awkwardness.   It is a long drawn out process, growing up.  And Jesus didnt skip any steps - He wanted to fully identify with us, so He became a baby and a child and an adolescent.    I love that.  He knows what its like to be a child - and He can therefore relate brilliantly to children.

Small children have open spirits and questing souls.  They hear God so clearly and understand spiritual things because they accept them on faith.   In the same way that they can learn how to draw or read or ride a bicycle they can learn the ways of the Holy Spirit from a young age.   A friend of mine who has a five year old son was telling me the other day about a dream/vision the child had had.  In the dream he had been taken to heaven by an angel.  He met various people there who had recently died and had conversations with them.  He appeared to know facts about those people which his parents say he could not have known.   He told them what the angel was like and what people in heaven were doing.  And then he said he woke up.    And whilst your adult brain is already trying to find explanations for that ,  this five year old was content to know that he had been to heaven and that this was something perfectly normal and reasonable.  Why wouldn't it be?  If Paul went, why cant my friend's 5 year old ?

It is our job to nurture our kids not only in the life skills they will need to be adults in this ever-changing world but in the ways of Jesus.   Just as their brains are plastic and growing at an amazing rate their spirits are blank canvasses ready and waiting for the Holy Spirit.  Let us pray for the children we know, take every opportunity to encourage them and teach them spiritual things.  Let us model to them what it is like to live an exciting God adventure and never pour cold water on their experiences.  Some of theirs might be a lot more authentic than some of ours. 
                                               
                                                         

Lent 22 - a century

Yesterday I spent some time sitting with Gladys as she gets ready to step into eternity.   She has stopped eating and is asleep most of the time.  She knew I was there and she even made a joke when I arrived, but she was dozing on and off an I put on some worship music and just sat with her.   It was peaceful and nice. I was praying that she just goes quietly and quickly.  She isnt in any pain - she is just very old.

Gladys was born in 1925.   I started wondering at the amazing changes she has seen in her lifetime and thought Id take a look on the internet at the edited highlights of the past 93 years.  A pretty extraordinary timeline.
            
In 1925 - between the wars -  most women still didnt have the vote.  John Logie Baird created the first televisual image. Penicillin wasnt discovered until 1928.  Gladys lived through the creation of Mickey Mouse, the Great Depression and the establishing of Vatican City.
By the time Gladys was ten years old FIFA had instituted the first World Cup and Hitler had risen to power.  Over the following few years she witnessed the abdication of Edward VIII , the start of the Spanish Civil War and then lived through the second world war.
In her lifetime the Hoover Dam was built, the Empire State Building went up, the Hindenburg crashed and Superman was born. In the 40's the sound barrier was broken and the atomic bomb was tested.  In the 50s the Queen came to the throne, Eva Peron died in Argentina and Everest was climbed for the first time.  In 1957 Sputnik was launched and the space race began.  In the 60s Martin Luther King gave his ' I have a dream' speech and the civil rights movement got underway. In 68 the troubles began in Northern Ireland and Gladys then lived through 30 years of war in her homeland. Men walked on the moon
In the 70s the microchip was invented and  the first mass produced computer appeared.  By this point the population of the world had doubled since Gladys was born.  It is 1978 before insulin is manufactured.  And Smallpox isnt eradicated until 1979.
In the 80s we have the space shuttle, AIDS, famine, Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin wall.
In the 90s the internet is invented and Dolly the sheep is cloned.  Princess Diana dies, the sound barrier is broken on land, Google comes into being and the population of the world has gone up from 2 billion in the 1920s to 6 billion.
2000's see the end of hostilities in Northern Ireland but an awful lot of hostilities everywhere else in the world.  First black president of the USA elected.  The launch of the iphone
2010s the population of the world is now 7 billion and climate change becomes a headline issue.   80 million iphones are sold per quarter.

The world today is staggeringly different from the one into which Gladys was born.  So many of the changes she has lived through have been amazing and wonderful.  People no longer die from infections and broken bones and childbirth.  The world is in our living rooms and outer space is beamed back to us via satellites and space telescopes.   I wonder if there will ever be another generation which will live through the amount of change that the Billy Graham generation has lived through.   It is hard to imagine.


Jesus said something which I always think about every time Im on a plane.  ( see left)   Im sure that Jesus wasn't talking about flying or indeed about going to the cinema or phoning a friend or driving a sports car.  Im sure He was talking about performing signs and wonders and miracles.  But nevertheless, every time I get on a plane these words of scripture come to me and I get the sense that Jesus is smiling and nudging me whispering  ' You are so blessed to have been born in the 20th Century.  I never got to fly in a plane when I was on the earth!'    It really is the most amazing privilege to be alive in these days of monumental change and progress and invention.  Generations of those who have gone before us would not believe what humankind has managed to achieve over the past century.   I know that for every good and wonderful innovation there has probably been a terrible and destructive application but we have taken more steps forward than backwards.  We've eradicated diseases, taken millions out of poverty,  invented any number of useful and helpful gizmos and gadgets and pushed the boundaries of knowledge and experience.   It is easy to look around and see doom and gloom.  But actually we have done some truly amazing things over Gladys's lifetime.  Because God has been in and above and through and over it all.

If I live till Im 93 I wonder what the world will look like then.

lent day 21 - half way

We are half way through Lent.  So how's it going?   If you opted to give up chocolate or swearing or alcohol or wearing lycra have you stuck to your guns, wobbled a bit, or did you give up on day three?

I made two ' resolutions' for Lent.  One was to write this blog - and as you can see, so far so good.  It is a daily challenge to tune in and work out what to say..... but mostly, even if its right at the last minute as Im actually sitting at the keyboard, I get there.   The second one was to try to talk less.   I know I talk way too much.   Haven't been doing so well on that one 😊

The thing is, it can be a bit of fun to give up something like chocolate for 40 days.  And it can even be a tiny bit of a challenge to resist the feelings of temptation which may occasionally confront.   But the things we usually try to tackle over Lent are not the deep character flaws which really merit our attention.   Those things, our deep fears, our proper addictions, our seriously destructive habits can't always be cut out of our lives by willpower in a matter of a few weeks.    Those things can be a lifelong battle.   How many of us struggle with putting on weight as we get older?   We know what we need to do to shift it - but doing those things somehow defeats us.  Or if we have some success for a while it is so easy to slip back into the old habits and end up back where we started - or worse off.    We might not all be alcoholics or drug addicts or food addicts but we definitely all have the ability to become addicted.   We all have areas where our willpower is weak.  We can all be led into temptation.   Lord deliver us from Social Media  !! 😃

Jesus knows this.  He knows that willpower alone will not break the ties that bind us.  Which is why He became a curse for us when He died on the cross - and why He sent the Holy Spirit who is the only one who can lead us into TRUTH, and bring FREEDOM to captives.    Jesus told us to pray
'deliver us from evil and lead us not into temptation'  precisely because He knows that evil and temptation crouch daily at our doors.   

Lent is a time when we reflect on Jesus submitting Himself entirely to the will and purposes of God.  This enabled Him to resist temptation and stand firm in the face of the taunts of the enemy.   Our small sacrifices at Lent merely serve as a reminder to us that there is no other way to truth and freedom than by complete submission to the Father.   So at the halfway point let's re-focus and keep looking to Jesus.  As we discipline ourselves in the small things we can ask Him by His Spirit to deal with the really big issues which go beyond the ability of willpower alone to resolve.

Lent day 20 - credit

Barely had a moment to think today but finally I cleared my brain for ten seconds to ask God what He wanted to say for the blog today and He said  ' credit'

Romans 4

18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”[d] 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22 This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” 23 The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, 24 but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

That word ' credit'  is  funny one isnt it?  It has to do both with matters of finance and also matters of reputation.   If your account is in credit you have more than you need.  You have enough.  It's a good thing.   If your children are well behaved and pleasant people might say they are a 'credit to you'.   If you  have credit with someone else it means they trust you to take goods now but pay for them later.   And if someone credits you with something they confer reputation on you for having done something good.   Even if they havent actually done it.   You can take the credit for something you dont actually deserve credit for!   Which is sort of what Abraham was up to in the above passage.

Abraham wasn't righteous - nobody since Adam had been righteous because of sin and the fall.   Abraham was a sinner like you and me.  Jesus had not yet died to atone for his sins and therefore there was no way that Abraham could really be righteous.  The best he could do was make animal sacrifices to cover over his sins.      Abraham didnt have the right currency at that time.   He had faith in spades but  he didnt have righteousness so he wasnt able to pay anything into God's bank account called ' righteousness'.  ( or ' right relationship with God' )   But God looks at Abraham's utter and steadfast belief and He decides to confer on Abraham all the benefits of righteousness.   He takes the currency Abraham does have - faith - and accepts it as a payment into the account called ' righteousness'.  So Abraham is now in credit in his righteousness account. 

Generations before Jesus died to make a way for man to be in a right relationship with God, Abraham's great faith put credit into his account such that he was able to be called ' a friend of God'.  And as Paul points out , what was available to Abraham under the old covenant is available to us, and so much more , under the new.

When you accepted Jesus as your Saviour and Lord God credited your account with all the righteousness - right relationship with God - that Jesus has.  You might not feel like it, but the truth is that you are wealthy beyond all imaginings because your faith in Jesus has filled your account to overflowing with everything you need to live a life in relationship with the Father.

Cool eh?