Michelle – Page 2 – Kiwichurch

Giving Life

Why is it more of a blessing to give than to receive?
Giving is the essence of our life and souls – our purpose; our fulfilment.

But to really give, we must first receive.
The baby must suck from his mother’s breast;
The child must grasp her daddy’s stronger hand.
The youth must wrestle with his father’s guidance.
The young adult must stand in vulnerable freedom, cheered on by her mother.

The independent adult must think, and feel, and test, and know that he and she is loved by her brothers and sisters, amidst the testing.

The middle aged adult (That’s me, folks!) must give.

It’s more of a blessing to give than to receive, you see:
It is the realization of all of the life that came before.

Life is to be passed on, in all its fullness: in all its beauty, and struggle, and profundity.
So, then: why not pass it on?

Family

I’m struck today about family.
Family is a powerful force: we can make or break each other, just with a few words.
We can bring life or death, simply with the way we choose to spend our time.

Family is potent: family is strength, or weakness;
the roots of our identity, or our downfall.

But I am also now being struck by time.
Is time really money? Is time not also love?
Our most precious resource: the outworking of our very lives?
The evidence of our most precious treasure?

Time is the currency of our souls.

So, then: on the one hand family; on the other hand, time.
Family, the potential of a life-giving force;
Time, the price paid to be that force.

How will you spend your time today?
Who is your family?

Why God, and not simply humanity alone?

Why God, and not simply humanity alone?
Because it would seem that humanity is not alone.

But why would I say such a thing?
Need? Upbringing? …
Dependence?
Not really.

In my own independent thought, I perceive truth:
there is a microscopic world inside my own body, with billions of cells doing their own coded co-ordinated thing, keeping me alive largely through no doing of my own;
there is a mysterious Universe out there, vast, and ordered, and beautiful, and mostly utterly beyond our reach.
Is humanity alone? No: I don’t think so.

There is a reality greater than us: yet, from time to time, we are given a glimpse into that greater reality, like a glimpse into another dimension.
Jesus gave us a massive glimpse.
Power, beyond us. Knowledge, beyond us.
Character, beyond us.
Leadership.

Humanity is capable of great good and profound evil,
but there is a kind of leadership beyond humanity:
a kind of authority that transcends our kinds of authority.

Why not simply humanity alone?
Because we are not alone, and neither should we be.

We can reduce things to dust, but we can’t form ourselves from it.
We can save life, but we can’t create life from no life.
We can run away from death for a time, but we can’t resurrect ourselves into new life.

We are humanity.
Let God be God.

The Race

As I wait for the delayed coverage of the America’s cup, I think: it is true, what Paul said, life is like a race!
Going for the finish line, giving all of our effort to reach that final goal.

But what is the goal?
I’d say the goal is Life. Love. Connection, with God and with each other.
Purity. Beauty. Strength.
Innocence, regained.
Guilt, released.
A full realization of our own humanity in the entrusting of ourselves to God.

What kind of cup are you competing for?

Grace

What do we do when we fail?
We’re only human, after all: and failure seems to be an inevitable part who we are.
Jesus’s approach was something like this: go for gold, and at the same time trust in grace.

But what does it mean to go for gold?…
To aspire to be as good as we can be: to seek to be like God.
Faithful. Pure. Wanting justice. Pursuing what is right, and true.
Fixing things, when they go wrong.
And what does it mean to trust in grace?
Grace is a child reaching up to his mother’s trustworthy hand, when he’s accidentally wet his pants.
Grace is a father holding his daughter’s scared eyes without reproach, when she comes home late after a date.

God calls us into perfection, and simultaneously reaches a hand out to us when we fall, to lift us back up again.

Wow.

What can we do when we fail?
Get back up. Trust in the outstretched hand. Keep aspiring to walk, and then to run.

Failure is only the beginning, not the end.

Nature

Why not leave the hustle and bustle, and take a stroll amidst the beauty and wonder of creation? It’s great for the soul!

Life

Life is a gift to be passed on.

Grief

Grief is the deepest, most pained outpouring of love.
For how can we grieve if we have not first loved?
And how can we love, without knowing in our heart of hearts we may yet one day pay the price of grief?

Grief is a stroll in the valley of the shadow of death,…
and yet this is a place we need not fear to tread.
The valley is green: there are blossoms, there is light;
There are many coloured rainbows of memory erupting in our hearts.

Grief can change us, by making us more thoroughly human than we were.
Death can be swallowed up by a more vibrant grasp of the precious value of life.
The end of one season can pave the way for the beginning of something new.
The treasure of the past can forge a greater determination for the future.

Grief can reveal to us where our true treasure lies,
its pain fuelling us ever onward, toward the joy of restoration.
For is death the end? No, death is not the end.
Death is only the beginning.

I see Love standing over the grave, beckoning, waiting:
A greater Love, a truer Love;
A Love of beauty, and passion.

The Light is overcoming the shadow,
forever.

Time

It has been said that our most precious commodity is not money, but time.
In my forties I now wholeheartedly agree.
Some say, ‘Time is money,’ but I say, ‘No.’
Time transcends money.
Time can be spent in many ways: the pursuit of money is but one of them.
A lifetime can be defined in many ways.

In what way do we want our lives defined?
How should we spend our set time?
What is of most importance in life?
Where does our true treasure lie?

The clock shows us that we are finite.
Our mortality shows us there are choices to make: priorities to establish.
What are your priorities?
What is of most importance, when time has run out?

What to make of Humanity?

What to make of humanity?

We are children, sometimes, groping in the dark;
Groping, and clutching, and owning, and fighting.
Beating, and bullying, and insisting that we are the best.…
For what if we’re not the best? What if we don’t own?
What if we can’t win?

There is a vulnerability to the heart of humanity that is the heart of a broken child.
Desperate for love, dead without it, fighting tooth and nail to hide the lack that is within.

And yet with all of our flaws, with all of our brokenness, with all of our battling for self defence, and for personal victory, there are other realities too.
A capacity for love; a capacity for healing.
A capacity for sacrifice.
A hand reaching out to a higher Way.

I can see now why God loves humanity:
even a humanity that robs, that rapes, that murders the chance of another for life.
I can see why God bears with our failings.
There is a seed of the chance for change, even admist the deepest failing;
There is the chance for a new kind of life, even out of the ashes of the old life.

The child within can still reach out to the higher Way.
And while that chance still exists, while that possibility still breathes,
God waits, and beckons, and stretches himself out on a cross in death, to carry the full cost of giving us another chance.

Redemption comes at a high price,
but life after death is sweet indeed.