For Lolly

There is something wonderfully magical about being in love… not that dreadful, dutiful, attractive, sensible kind of love, not that hideous “we can achieve so much”, “go so far”, “are a perfect fit” kind of love but that wushy, lie in the sun all day just to feel its warmth, staying up at night anxious, stomach flipping, energetic kind of love. The kind of love that makes you want to leap in the air and spin and spin and spin and spin.
“Puppy love” they call it, as they try to belittle and pack it away neatly into the past, “Ah, childish love” followed by a sigh, a shake of the head and a gentle smile… “it will pass”…
Ha! Should we tame our love? Should we placate it, cut it square and squeeze it into a box, store it on a shelf behind weary Christmas decor? Or freeze it in frames to display neatly on a mantle? …Let’s feed it daily with sweet words and little kisses! With smiles and laughs and hugs and whispers! With chocolate truffles and winks and glances! With flowers and notes as little reminders. That one day we can smile at young love from behind think wire glasses; and know that Love is not sensible or organised, it is not challenging or complicated, it runs to no wrist-watch, keeps no schedule and follows no guide; that it comes at no cost, with no mortgage and no monthly repayments. Love is …God’s greatest gift to the world and you the little piece he has set aside for me.

Anyone for Sex?

I was sitting round a table having a drink with some mates after rugby game this evening. The conversations drifted over Golf and Mountain Biking and I was shaking my quads to try and stop the lactic acid settling down when in a brief lull in conversation a voice addressed me directly… “Mike, you don’t believe in sex before marriage, do you?” It was pointed but not malicious and I lifted my head from contemplating the stiffness setting into my legs and looked into the dark eyes from where the question had come.

There are these moments in every Christian’s life when after building up a friendship with people they question you on some issue of your faith. These are tough moments as it seems your entire credibility hinges on the answer that you give: Give a quick seemingly thoughtless hard-line answer and you are branded a religious zombie, give too wishy-washy an answer and your faith is shown to be without substance.

I took a deep breath, “No Bradly, I don’t believe it is right.”
“What about oral sex?” I shook my head. That’s not right either.
“Well then how far can you go?”

Many people think that Christianity is essentially a code of moral requirements which Christian’s desperately try to fulfil and that a Christian’s only reward is to feel more self-righteous than, and look down upon, those of slightly less steeped religious and moral convictions. It takes most by quite some surprise when you tell them for the first time that “Christianity is not about rules, it is about heart”. Don’t get me wrong, that does not mean that there is no “right and wrong” or that right and wrong are relative to me and how I feel (two views that seem quite prevalent in the today’s circles). Rather, it means a Christian’s actions should not be motivated by a set of standards but by a desire to love and honour God and love and honour other people. Right and wrong still exist but the standards, if we could write them down, would be far too high.

This means that sexual restraint before marriage can never be about “how far are we allowed to go”- we step over that line every time that we look at a woman in lustful way! More importantly, it is about honouring people and by so doing honouring the God we serve. I don’t remain a virgin for remaining a virgin’s sake but rather to honour those involved.

Who do I honour by not getting sexually involved before marriage? Firstly, the person that I might potentially get sexually involved with is a daughter of God, his precious possession, not mine to use to serve my own physical desires. Any earthly father gets protective over his daughter when men seek to use her to serve there own needs, however the very same father will happily lead his daughter down the isle to a man prepared to promise that his only intention, from this life to the next, is to honour and uphold her. So too, God loves all of his daughters and we have no place getting involved with them unless we are fully committed to looking after them and seeing only the best for them. Even a prostitute that offers herself willingly is still a daughter of God and should not be touched.

Next, I am trying to honour her future husband and more importantly my future wife. I believe that I will be married one day and when that day comes I would like to be able to say to my wife that as a sign of the importance with which I regard our marriage I made provision for it in choosing to forgo sexual relations with other women. My marriage vows, to treasure her from our wedding day forward, are not words flippantly spoken but are written in choices I have made before we even met. I really believe that one of the greatest wedding gifts you can offer is the simple fact that you knew that you would be married at some stage and lived accordingly. I would not like to be embarrassed introducing my wife to previous girlfriends or have her feeling insecure when I go to a school reunion. Is it easy…? If it was then I don’t think it would be the statement of devotion that it is.

Finally, I choose to avoid premarital sex to honour God. It was his design from the beginning that “a man should leave his mother and father, and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” One man. One woman. One flesh. He designed man for one wife and considers sex a union of flesh, something not simply revoked. Above all else I will honour him.

Edited - 30/10/2006 See comment below...

Arandis

Well finally back in Swakopmund after a week out in Arandis (near Rössing Uranium Mine) …it was quite a quiet week as you will probably guess from the view out of my room window.

No dunes here…. just desert. In that direction it looks like that for some 100's of kilometers. Sometimes it amazes me how people will form settlements in pretty much the middle of nowhere for the single purpose of mining minerals from under the soil – thousands of people will spend the majority of their lives out here where there is little water (and little else) just for work, just to dig up uranium. And there will be even more soon – there are several more mines planned for the area.

Course went reasonably well. Some of the guys struggled a bit, but we are getting used to seeing folks surprised at the technical nature of what we are trying to teach them. Still they were a great bunch of guys and the training centre at NIMT certainly has a good sense of urgency about getting their training programmes up to scratch so that they are producing industry friendly candidates.

Nice thing about visiting these locations is that there is plenty of time to think and to do some of my course work. It is amazing my ideas far out strip the time I have available. Just sitting in a place like that I start to order some of the wild thoughts that run around in my mind and I start to realise just how short life really is.

Well, enough philosophy! Went sand boarding today and it was awesome – we except for the walk up the dune after every run! They produced a DVD of the morning’s activities and I had to laugh - we really were going quite pathetically slowly. I can’t wait to actually get out on a real snow slope some time (with ski lifts)

Finding God in the Glitches in the Matrix

Had the interesting thought that other day – that we learn the most about God not from looking at the sensible and the obvious but rather in the unexplainable and completely unobvious.

I think that all would agree that God’s perspective must be somewhat bigger than our own and that we cannot possibly hope from our current positions and prejudices down on earth to understand the meaning behind life and the creation of the universe… However, God lives in the reality of the “bigger” picture and all his efforts and actions are carried out in light of this. Surely where careful investigation can reveal common threads in the way God acts and where these can be reconciled to their ultimate motivation we must gain for the briefest instant of a glimpse of things outside the reasoning of this world, before they earthly thoughts come rushing back to cloud the view?

I guess what I am saying is that it is very easy to look at a beautiful sunset and think “God created this – God must be Great” and it makes sense that God should love us because …well, love is good and God should be good. So it is all too easy to come up with simple general statements like “God is Great” and “God loves us” – they make general sense. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to look at the God of the Old Testament striking down Uzzah for preventing the Arc of the Covenant from falling off an Ox Cart and draw from it a statement about the essence of God’s character. Is God really harsh and judgmental? Yet, I truly believe that it is in these moments, when God makes the least sense and his actions are most difficult to reconcile with our minds image of him that we learn the most about his character; it is in these moments when the there is no immediately obvious answer to “why?” that we are forced to look God in the face can really discover something of the mysterious heart that holds the reasons why he created us.

Many Christians take a stance of “we shouldn’t ask why” whenever it comes to something that is difficult to answer. We shouldn’t ask why natural disasters occur, we shouldn’t ask why people die. I would like to challenge this. Not that I believe we will actually be able to solve everything - in our own wisdom that would never be possible - but we might make a few startling discoveries along the way!

Jesus says a couple of times in the new testament that the “truth has been hidden from man” and that it is only by knocking and keeping on knocking, asking and keeping on asking and seeking and keeping on seeking that we will discover some of the truth about God and Godliness. Perhaps it is the very questions we avoid that the most important answers exist.

Dunes...

Dunes beautiful dunes! For the second most sparsely populated place on earth Namibia has a unique beauty to it… sure, how beautiful could a desert ever really be? Well I have been pleasantly surprised! Been here two days now and it has been quite a bit of fun (outside of the 4 hours we spent at customs trying to get them to release our training equipment so that we can actually carry out our real purpose for being here – training Namibia’s technicians to deal with modern technology) Anyway the end of the Friday afternoon saw us retiring that quest until Monday morning and focussing on finding something interesting to do on the weekend.

So what can I tell you so far? Well there are plenty of places to stay in Swakopmund. It would seem that it is a tourist destination of sorts and as such offers quite a bit of accommodation. June-July tends to be one of their busiest seasons with Summer Holiday visitors from Europe (especially Germany) roaming around in abundance. Any ways… we ended up in a little hotel called Deutsches Haus (Swakopmund was founded by Germans and there are still very strong German influences) and everything seems pretty pleasant – we have 2 English and 4 German channels on the television but a permanent wireless internet connection – thank you technology.

Anyways if you are in Namibia a trip into the dunes is well worth while – I can seriously recomenda "Living Desert Adventures" tour to find the little five: Sidewinders, Dancing White Lady Spiders, Namib Chameleon, and an endemic species of lizard and one of gecko (luminous little fellows with bulbous eyes) Every now and again the tour guide leaps from the vehicle, shoves his hands into the sand and comes up with some prize, legless lizards (no they are not snakes, gigantic beatles) – absolutely brilliant! …for the less cultured four-wheeler trips “rollercoastering” of the slip-faces of the dunes is ball.

Death of a dream

There is something wonderfully magical about being in love… not that dreadful, dutiful, attractive, sensible kind of love, nor that hideous “we can achieve so much”, “go so far”, “are a perfect fit” kind of love but rather that wushy lie in the sun all day just to feel its warmth, that stay up at night anxiously wondering, that stomach flipping, energetic kind of love. The kind of love that makes you want to leap in the air and spin and spin and spin.

“Puppy love” they call it, as they try to pack it neatly into the past, “Ah, childish love” followed by a sigh, a shake of the head and a gentle smile… “it will pass” And true to word so it does, as sunlight dims and flowers fade, all too soon that radient first love is a distant memory, only a fragrant hint of something so sweet if you had drunk your full on it you may well never have let go for air. And then, finally, it is gone and only a few shed a tear.

...Christian?

Hmmm.... Been missing for a while, guess that it is just a reminder of what is like to try and keep a regular journal up and running. You can sit down to write on an evening but if all that you have been doing with your life is work, you really don't have anything interesting to say. And if you don't have anything interesting to say - well don't bother trying to say anything because it comes out all wrong anyway!

So it is with some surprise that I find myself sitting here this evening bubbling with something. I am not sure how to word it but it goes something like this…

“What is a Christian?” ...I mean what really defines one person as a "Christian" and another as a "Non-Christian". The textbook answer that I hear all you budding young bible scholars reaching for is "Someone that believes that: Jesus, the Christ, a man and God, who came to earth and died on a Cross as a sacrifice for sins and rose to life again conquering the power of death and opening the way to eternal life for all. Blah, Blah, Blah"

Ok. That makes sense, there is a phrase and you can have an opinion about it: true, false... “you is or you ain’t” how hard can that be? Trouble is, not even Christians seem convinced that this is the defining line. They seem terribly confused as to who from their own ranks is in and who is out! I have been into numerous churches in my time and I think almost all of them have the same message at their core, however it always seems to come with numerous strings attached. Put someone from another church there and they feel compelled to check that their doctrine is sound. It would appear Christians treat other Christians with more suspicion than non-Christians that "make life simple by just acknowledging that they don’t believe"!

So …What does believing the statement above mean? How would someone that believed that statement act? Why would they be any different to someone that did not believe that?

Now this is the more difficult and challenging point of defining a Christian and is where the old Pharisaic law book gets pulled out – "If you do this" or "Don’t do that"… truth of the matter is, there is an unbiblical pride that wells up in people that love to be right where others are wrong... what should be little issues of discussion quickly become bones of contention as religious bigot-ism and pride overtakes genuine faith.

Ultimately the only thing we can say this: “If you really truly believe that God came to earth incarnate in his son Jesus, who suffered died in your place that you might be released from your sins, your life must change. How great this change will be is then dependant on how much you believe that you are a sinner, how much you believe that there is a resurrection to come and how strongly you believe that it will be accompanied by a judgement based on your performance on earth.

It is only in the context of these issues that Jesus’ death will really make any sense. Obviously, if you don’t really believe that you have ever done anything really wrong you are less likely to be fascinated with the idea of a repentance from sin or an atoning sacrifice for sin and if you don’t believe in a resurrection or judgement then the long term consequences of what Jesus did on earth will never really have an impact on you.

This is probably why it is often those that were the worst of sinners (take the apostle Paul as an example) that turn into the most radical Christians, while those that have never really strayed from the beaten track seem to be more stayed and steady “plod along” Christians. It seems almost comical that this sometimes results in those that come from the worse place start doubting the salvation of their less outspoken brothers of less dubious history. All of a sudden we are back to performance based evaluation of what was an unwarranted gift of grace in the first place! It is perhaps unsurprising that world sees Christendom as muddled and hypocritical.

So who can we verify as a bona fide Christian? Well, as we started out it’s someone that believes that Jesus came to earth and died for them that they might not suffer in judgement for their sins, but be released to eternal life with God. How do you know when someone believes this or not? Truth is not up to us to make that call, and the devil is sidetracking the real work when we start to focus on this – what is more important for the meantime is that to be an effective Christian you must believe that this death made a radical enough difference to your eternal future to make you want to do something in return without having to manufacture religious effort to please those around you.

“For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast”

God Bless you all.

Malawi

It has been almost two whole months since I up posted an update to this online journal of my own thoughts... so what have I been doing? Obviously not thinking too much!!

To tell the truth I don't think that I have given up thinking altogether rather that I have suffered from a period of either thinking of things insufficiently interesting to warrant permanent record or of subjects to which no sensible conclusion could be drawn and therefore there was no sensible reason to attempt to articulate them!

Fairly harmlessly, I can begin by saying that I have been out of the country on another excursion... this time it was Church not work related and turned out to be absolutely fascinating...

There is something youthful and electric about a group of people setting out purposefully to do God's work in the world outside of their usual context. It hung about like a cloud as we gathered together outside New Covenant Church Bryanston at Midnight two Fridays ago. Roof racks were stacked with Gerri Cans of diesel and camping equipment and wide-awake eyes peered out through misted up glass as Six 4x4s and one unsuspecting C-Class queued to leave the premises. “Tight fit” would be an understatement; I had been squeezed into one of the 4x4’s with some folks from Ebenezer Christian Fellowship, my Guitar was remaining in my boot in South Africa for next week and the bag with my clothes in was somewhat smaller than when I had packed it at home.

Of the trip two things are worth mentioning – Firstly the sheer lack of any noticeable infrastructure on the African landscape; as one watches baobab after baobab fly past the window and any buildings that you do see have that eyrie déjavous of a 70’s film about life in the colonies. Secondly the uncannily good company provided by my companions from Ebenezer, Brad and Chirissa (pronounced Sher-ee-sa) a young couple on eldership at the church and Bruce a youthful, old, missionary minded chap with a head full of interesting facts. The usual awkwardness that besets meetings of Christians one Church with Christians from another Church as you way up whether the books in their Bible are all in the same order as your own was happily absent and we chatted merrily away as we move from toll gate to toll gate along the N1. Bruce at 44 still had a surprising youthfulness that made him seem more like a jovial older brother than a chap nearly as old as my father and he kept us intrigued with information on various trees and birds, local customs much more…

Our convoy would take two days to cover the long road to Malawi, three boarder crossings would eat at least 5 hours of that time. The potholes in Mozambique I am sure would have had the owner of the Mercedes close to tears – but there was a good spirit in the tired group that limped into the camp in Blantyre 42½ hours after leaving Bryanston.

The intersting thing about outreach trips (from my vast experience of two) that no matter how much you come prepared to give it always seems that you end up taking far more away with you – I could probably rattle through all the things that made an impact on me over the period of the trip but I am not sure if they would mean anything at all to anyone else… it’s the same when you chat to other people that have just had a revelation – and they point out what seem to be the most pointless and mundane things that they found “completely mind-blowing” and you sit and nod your head and try to look enthusiastic and interested… never-the-less for my own records I will try and make a brief account of what took place.

The ultimate goal of the outreach was to get unsaved / backslidden Christians to three large meetings to be held in the gigantic tent that a team had set up on the mission premises the previous year. The plan was to go out by truck into the residential locations around Blantyre with some of the local Malawian Church leaders and to speak to people hand out flyers and invite them to the meetings. The trips were done in groups of about 40 to 60 people which were transported by trucks that only in Africa could escape as roadworthy!

Being primarily involved with the worship team meant that I only got opportunity to make one trip on the trucks but I it was certainly an eye opener. African people have a love for music that is enviable, a simple rhythm and few words and off you go …I doubt if we had a moments silence during the drive to and from our drop off points. The youngsters get it going but soon the old people are clapping and stamping their feet in time as truck negotiates (ramps over) the speed humps on Blantyre’s dirt roads. To cut a long story short the site of white faces wondering around on foot between the ramshackle buildings certainly generated a lot of interest and people that we approached would listen keenly to whatever I or Henry my self appointed the translator would say. Malawi has been described as the warm heart of Africa and this was all but evident in friendliness of the people. Our only bad experience was one older gentlemen who told us that their were already enough churches in the City and went ahead of us proclaiming us false prophets but then I guess it would be foolish to expect to preach the gospel anywhere with absolutely no opposition.

As things went their must have been over 3 thousand people at the first outreach meeting on the Thursday and the Malawians showed again that they have a far greater appreciation for worship, music and dance than we in our civilised westernised Christianity do. A local gospel singer with nothing more complicated than a simple jazz bass and drum backing track had everyone up and dancing from the front rows to the back soon even we caught the actions and rhythm – incredible!!! Worship was followed by a sermon from Hennie Keyter. Hennie has been the leader of a team of guys that has been working into the nations of Africa for more than 30 years. Quite, unassuming and slightly hunched I will count myself blessed for the rest of my life to have watched him preach. The picture of humility became and animated and impassioned red face – his passion was matched by the enthusiasm of the translator by his side whose expressive gestures brought murmurs of agreement from the crowd. The message itself was beautiful in its simplicity aimed at young old alike yet the response was phenomenal, a quite reminder that the gospel was never intended to be complicated!

By all accounts the trip was a success… by the end of the 3^rd meeting over 1900 people had taken Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and given their names to the group of local church leaders to follow up. And as usual far more than anything contributed was the deposit left in the hearts of those that attended: from the servant heartedness of the ladies that prepared meals to the passion of the worship leaders to the devoutness of the local church leaders that really have given up everything to do the work of Christ it was an experience that left one revitalised, invigorated and humbled.

“He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in all the world, was taken up in Glory”

1 Tim 3 v 16(b)

God bless.