Reflections
from The Hill – Being Born, Again?
from The Hill – Being Born, Again?
There are two kinds of people who
travel on airplanes: those who talk and those who
don’t.
Many, like me, are happy with
their own company: they can read a book, listen to their iPod or gaze at the yet
unlit strip of lighting that apparently comes on when the cabin fills with
smoke. I’m still to test that.
There are two other sub-groups of
air passengers: those who go for the window seat and those who prefer the aisle.
Hardly any like the middle.
I prefer the aisle because it’s
easier to get to the ‘loo from there. Otherwise it’s “excuse me …” “excuse me …”
while climbing other people’s knees, all the time trying to ease pressure on
one’s Unmentionables, a mind-distracting circumstance if ever there was
one.
On a recent flight, one suited and
brief-cased forty-something businessman sat in the middle seat on the other side
of the aisle from me. A nondescript, jeans-and-tee-shirt clad fellow sat beside
him on the aisle.
This was going to be an OK trip:
one would get out his dossiers, the other the airline magazine and I would bury
myself in Janet Evanovich, a writer eminently suited to airline
travel.
We were climbing through 20,000
feet when I became aware of an animated conversation happening between The Suit
and The Tee-shirt.
"Well, have you?" is what I heard
The Suit ask. "Wouldn't you … eternal significance … Bible … magazine?” Even
with the aisle between us, I got the drift of what was going
on.
Ever on the lookout for examples
of Friendship Evangelism, I looked across and saw an earnest man holding a tract
of some sort, waving it in the general direction of The Tee-shirt. I felt a bit
like an intruder.
I needed to make an informed
decision. Was I going to eavesdrop on what was shaping to be an interesting
spiritual chat or was I going to bury myself in Janet’s latest tale of
Stephanie, Morelli and Grandma Masur? I needn’t have
bothered.
There was animation from The
Tee-shirt but it faded when The Suit turned to the unsuspecting traveller by the
window. I suspect Tee-shirt and Suit had come to some mutual agreement, with
some speed, but I digress.
From time to time, I think about
those two characters and try to contemplate this: if what was going on what I
thought was going on, what might my answer have been to “Well, have
you?”
Being ‘born again’ is not a phrase
that I warm to. I know we can’t avoid the meaning of the Greek word which is so
translated but it’s only one of its shades of meaning. There is another that can
be instructive, too.
This much I know: being ‘born
again’ is not what Nicodemus took it to mean, that is, a lightning strike that
can be spoken of in the past tense once it's over, like, now that's finished, we
can tick the box.
Being ‘born from above’ (the other
shade of meaning) has more of a participatory sense about it. It’s almost like
saying that this experience is a life-long process in which we are called to
participate.
According to John, the Gospel
writer, being ‘born from above’ is a daily pilgrimage from darkness to light, a
journey from belief as the recitation of a creed to belief as opening the door
to our spirit and letting Jesus in.
It’s a daily process of flipping
over the notice on the door of a life from one that says to the Lord, “Please do
not disturb” to “Please change the room.”
Of course, the wind comes, too;
not destructive like Yasi, but powerful to work at the depth of our lives to
forgive sins, to give us and our community the courage to live with joy and
purpose for others; to give peace and the assurance of eternal
life.
By letting the wind blow through
us, our church and our families, who knows what might happen? For starters, the
resentments and prejudices we have cherished for years might be blown away; joys
and peace might well be blown in.
Humour
of the Week (courtesy Rowland Croucher):
Dear
Tech Support, last year
I upgraded from Boyfriend to Husband and noticed a slowdown in overall system
performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications, which
operated flawlessly under Boyfriend.
In
addition, Husband uninstalled many other valuable programmes, such as Romance
and Personal Attention and then installed undesirable ones like
longer runs, and Housecleaning simply crashes the
system.
I’ve
tried running Nagging to fix these problems, but to no
avail.
What
can I do? (sgd) Desperate
Dear
Desperate, keep
in mind that Boyfriend is an Entertainment Package, while Husband is an
Operating System. Please enter the command: ‘http: I Thought You Loved Me.html’
and try to download Tears.
Don’t
forget to install the Guilt update. If that application works as it should,
Husband will automatically run the applications Jewellery and Flowers, but
remember – overuse of the above application can cause Husband to default to
Grumpy Silence, Garden Shed or Beer. Beer is a very bad program that will
download the Snoring Loudly virus.
DO
NOT install Mother-in-law (it runs a nasty program in the background that will
eventually seize control of all your system
resources).
DO
NOT attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend program. These are unsupported
applications and will crash Husband.
Husband
is a great system, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new
applications quickly. It also tends to work better running one task at a time.
You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance.
We recommend Food and Lingerie.
Good
Luck,
One
Liner of the Week:
Attempt something so
great for God it’s doomed to failure unless God be in it. (John
Haggai)
Quote
of the Week:
Whether it’s a
pebble, a rock, or a brick, God wants to get through to us, but that’s not so
easy when we are all so competent, goal-oriented, and efficient. It isn’t easy
for God to get some time on our calendar, to get our full attention, to get us
to take a chance on a deeper, different life. I believe that deep down most
people would love to have God change their lives, but they either don’t expect
it, or are afraid that if that started to happen it would ask too much of
them.
When God
throws a brick, anything can happen. The wind blows, the Spirit moves, people
start getting born from above into whole new lives.
From “When God Throws a
Brick” by the Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd,
2008.
Jane’s
Story
Jane
Rodwell lives in Ravenshoe with her husband, Paul. This is only a brief (and
edited) version of the article she wrote for Reflections.
(Ed.
- Perhaps she might share her recent testimony of healing with us sometime soon.
I hope so.)
‘The Church’ and I
had very little to do with each other when I was growing up. There were brushes,
of course. Like wanting to go to Sunday School but my mother soon talked me out
of that. And the brief time in my later teenage years when I defiantly went to
the village church; I was confirmed, too, but don’t remember what that was about
except there was a boy called Clive that I had a crush on
…
It’s really only in
the last twenty years that I became a serious seeker of spiritual
things.
First I looked into
‘the east’ and was found sitting cross-legged on hard floors of different
ashrams “Ohming” away …
I did a year-long
transformation course and learned about the “peace that passeth
understanding”.
I went to St
Stephen’s Anglican Church near the
were intelligent and interesting and who expected to take an active part in
their services. We were a family and we went out for meals and to the pictures
in
other on week-days as well as Sundays.
After this came the
Quakers; they talked about ‘God within’ and of ‘walking the earth gently
answering that of God in everyone.’ I felt I had come home
…
Paul and I were
building a house on the edge of the rainforest near Ravenshoe and started to be
part of our new community in the early nineties … We went to our first service
at St Barnabas’ Church and found, then and over the years since, true fellowship
and fun by becoming part of the St Barnabas’ church
family…
…Let us be a church
where people from all walks of life find spiritual nourishment. In these
troubled times, worldwide, may more and more people turn to God to find comfort
and strength (we’re going to need more churches). May we be able to open our
hears to strangers, remembering that ‘God has no other hands but our
hands’.
Keep well. Do good.
Laugh heaps. Love extravagantly.
In His Grip and
Making a Difference
No comments:
Post a Comment