I’ve decided to write a personal journal. Why? Because my heart is being changed.
It’s quite a journey, life! There are ups and downs, struggles, battles – the deepest battles sometimes are within our own hearts.
I’ve found an ally in that kind of warfare: a powerful ally, so I’ve found – so I’ve experienced, to the depths of who I am.
There are times in our lives when we find great treasure – and we can’t help but want to pass that treasure on. Jesus Christ has become that treasure for me: the pearl of great price! The taonga.
I want to make that treasure known.
Come: join me! Find out who this person is! Let me share how Jesus has made my life, and my heart, so much better.
For any comments, visit the corresponding blog post: The heart of a kiwi Christian blog post
18/2/17 The best things in life cost our all.
There is a saying that the best things in life are free. The idea here is that we need to pay money for treasures like pearls, or diamonds, while more important than these is love: and love is for free. But is love really for free? They say true love is unconditional: but is true love really unconditional?
I’m not talking about a kind of love that expects results: a parental love, say, that is only given if the child succeeds, or a romantic love that is only given on payment of sex. The idea of unconditional love says no to these: a good parent will love their child irrespective of their achievement; a good partner will love even in the absence of sexual pleasure. But there is a higher kind of love than this: a higher calling into Love that requires the payment of a price in order for it to reach its true realization.
Jesus is calling us into that kind of Love.
Are the best things in life for free? No: the best things in life demand our all. A parent staying up all night for a sick child. A spouse remaining sexually faithful with an incapacitated mate. True love sacrifices: true love costs. And, in response to paying the right and necessary price, true Love beckons for us to do the same in return.
This is what Jesus means, when he says, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ He offers his life to save our souls: to carry our darkness, our flaws, our human frailty – but does it end there? It does not. Love beckons: ‘I’ve done this to show you what real Love is: now, go and do the same. Be like me.’
‘Take up your cross and follow me.’
Love costs. Love demands. Love beckons us to be more than we are.
The best things in life cost our all.
25/3/17 Mortality
I’ve been reflecting on my own mortality, and suddenly realized: mortality is a gift! Wow: that’s radical! As Solomon wrote in Proverbs in the Old Testament, there is a time to live and a time to die: and I’m beginning to become grateful for it.
In our lives, we track down a path of different seasons: birth, childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age – that’s me now – older age, and then comes death. We’re wired for it, these different stages: our lives flow out in a pattern of the seasons. The reality of the seasons changes us: we are different in middle age, more formed, more complete, than in early adulthood, and a grasping and accepting of our own mortality changes us too. It brings a freedom, the acceptance of death – a greater and deeper freedom to live.
What would it feel like, I wonder, if we were not wired for perhaps 70- 100 years: if we were, rather, wired for 500- 1000 years, like some of the figures of the Old Testament? What would that look like? Two hundred years of adolescence? Two hundred years of early adulthood? Or would it be full development for hundreds of years: a full offering of oneself over a long period of time for the sake of others?
I don’t know what it means to live a thousand years: but I do know what is has meant to live forty years. I’m grateful for life, but now, suddenly, I find myself also grateful for death. The reality of death can forge us: it can form us. The acceptance of death can free us: the awareness of our own mortality can inform us and release us into a deeper expression of our own humanity.
I’m glad to be merely mortal: I embrace my own mortality. Death, now, has become my friend, in setting my life free.
There is a time to live and a time to die.
23/5/17 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?
2/7/17 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?