“I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

It's clearly been a month since I posted on this blog because yesterday morning we were back in St Andrew's Church, Cullompton. Once again we were down visiting Jane's parents. We have developed a routine which means we drive down to Sidmouth on Saturday morning, spend the afternoon with the in-laws after I have ascended their Everest of a path and stay the night at the very convenient and comfortable Park and Lodge at Westcott.

Somehow we usually manage to arrive in Cullompton when they have "all-age" worship. This time it was a beautiful day. It had brought the tortoisehell butterflies out of hibernation in the church, around the windows and under the barrel roof. When Jane had manoeuvred me down the ramp, we were both given a pebble.... It became clear why soon. Jo, the children's worker, explained that members of the school's Kidzone Club of whom there were a lot present would be involved. And they were! She was telling the story of the two houses built on rock and on sand. When the rain came down, the water pistols came out and we got wet! And the house on sand went CRASH! The pebbles of course were symbols of the rock, and we'd written our names on them. They were also linked to Jesus renaming Simon as Peter the rock.

When it came to the prayers we were told to look under the pews where there were small containers of bubbles. "Now quietly think of someone about whom you're concerned or a worrying situation you're in. Then as a symbol of releasing those worries to God, blow those bubbles into the air." What a good action prayer! Since I can't blow bubbles anymore, I held the stone in my hand as I committed friends to the One who is the Rock. Somehow, for me at least, it was a more engaging form of prayer than the usual intercessions led from the front.

There is much more that I could comment on. They obviously have a talented writer of original worship songs - including action ones for children. I always like churches writing their own songs and singing new songs to the Lord, as the psalmist urged. And of course they sung one of my current favourites, My hope is built on nothing less (Cornerstone). I have been reflecting on why an old grouch like me should actually be so touched and helped by a service packed with all ages, but particularly children. I mean it all makes for a fair amount of chaos and "toing and froing", not exactly the passive reverence of much worship. Yet perhaps that is the point. It is very much worship. It is clearly surrounded by prayer. It's carefully prepared (160 pots of bubbles for a starter!). And it all focuses on God - and I suspect the presence of the children is a means of grace. "Unless you become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven": I have a feeling that in such services we are privileged to follow the kids into that Kingdom and receive from the King.

Thank you again, Cullompton!

Less Eeyore

You may have gathered I have, for the moment at least, decided to maintain both my blogs. I'm glad there's some consistency between them but I think they're different. Anyhow, I've decided to try to be brief!

The final quote which I can remember from New Wine came, I think, from Simon Ponsonby, the Oxford theologian and preacher, and it went something like,
"We have too much Eeyore and not enough 'in awe' in our worship."
Eeyore, you'll remember from A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh was constitutionally glum in diametric contrast to the irrepressibly bouncy Tigger.

Simon clearly wasn't recommending we adopt Tiggerish immaturity in our worship, that we should bounce around with never a care in the world. If the galaxies in the night sky elicit a reaction of awe in us, how much more should the God who brought them into being! He is a mystery beyond our comprehending. AWE is the right response. BUT that doesn't mean miserable.

It doesn't mean singing everything in a minor key; it doesn't mean singing only hymns; it doesn't even means keeping your hands down by your side and standing to attention. Yes, our God is an awesome God, BUT He loves us. In fact He loves the whole cosmos - and He loves you. As a child might say -  "Wow!" That's awe, and it should make us celebrate wildly. The Jubilee crowds in the Mall and the Olympic Stadium on the Saturdays didn't have as much to cheer about! God is love!

However, it's not just about Sunday services that Simon was talking. As they say at Bethel in California, "Worship is a lifestyle." We are loved and we have hope. We should be filled with the Spirit of worship every day. That should keep us from being like Eeyore!

I'm just back from praying outside a psychic fair. People drifted in looking depressed and walked out again looking equally sad. They clearly had not found peace or joy. There's better on offer, folks! "I have come to bring you life in all its fulness" (Jesus).

Psalms of complaint

We've just had Pete and Jane round, and, as always, had a lovely evening. They became good friends from soon after we moved here to Grove. We enjoy eating together. Jane (of Pete and J) makes rather good cakes; so Jane (of Michael and J) makes the first course. Pete and I do our bit by showing appreciation. We usually end up reading the Bible together, discussing and praying for our shared concerns.

Today we were talking about psalms of complaint (or disorientation, as Walter Brueggemann called  them), like 74, 79 and 137, and thinking how little real honest pain we express together in our worship services. We're always so polite and afraid of offending God's sensibilities - as if he doesn't already know exactly what we're feeling! I mentioned the song by Graham Kendrick which we'd had in church last Sunday, "For the joys and for the sorrows" sung here in Coventry Cathedral on Pentecost 2007. Here are the words:

For the joys and for the sorrows
The best and worst of times
For this moment, for tomorrow
For all that lies behind
Fears that crowd around me
For the failure of my plans
For the dreams of all I hope to be
The truth of what I am

For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus, I have Jesus
(Repeat)

For the tears that flow in secret
In the broken times
For the moments of elation
Or the troubled mind
For all the disappointments
Or the sting of old regrets
All my prayers and longings
That seem unanswered yet

For the weakness of my body
The burdens of each day
For the nights of doubt and worry
When sleep has fled away
Needing reassurance
And the will to start again
A steely-eyed endurance
The strength to fight and win

Graham Kendrick
Copyright © 1994 Make Way Music,
www.grahamkendrick.co.uk 

I have to confess this is a song which brings tears to my eyes when it's sung in church, where in fact so many are experiencing some or all of the song. But the refrain, "For this I have Jesus", is true in a profound way, because he also experienced the whole gamut of the song and more, and he knows and feels with us.

Pain hurts

I know I might seem a sucker for every new song I hear, but really I'm not! True, I'm not a stickler for every worship song or hymn being a theologically coherent statement, as I reckon they're primarily poetry. I'm not one of the school which wants to censor "Hark the herald angels sing" because of the phrase "veiled in flesh" or to change the line about the wrath of God being satisfied in "In Christ alone". On the other hand, I'm not that keen on songs that seem to have been written from no experience of the reality of life - ones that are full of religious cliches or pious platitudes.

So when I heard the words "In thy service pain is pleasure" in the Walking by Faith cd which I got for my birthday, I must say I was not too impressed, especially as the performance seems to relish the words "pain" and "pleasure". It just isn't true. The psalmists never pretend that pain is anything but painful; Job made no bones about his suffering. I seem to remember he cursed the day he was born. Paul wanted to be rid of his "thorn in the flesh". Jesus himself didn't find his pain pleasurable. To the modern ear, that line is misleading nonsense. It isn't true that being a Christian makes pain a pleasure. It isn't true that faith turns one into a masochist. Pain hurts. Pain is still painful.

I did a bit of digging and discovered that the lyrics are not in fact modern. They were written in 1824 by Henry Francis Lyte - vicar of Brixham in Devon and author of "Praise, my soul" and "Abide with me" - who was quite a remarkable man. He had a far from easy life. Abandoned to boarding school by his soldier father, his mother and brother dying when he was young, his daughter dying in infancy, he must have known about emotional pain. In his late forties his health was declining and he underwent a range of Victorian "remedies". "Lyte complained of weakness and incessant coughing spasms, and he mentions medical treatments of blistering, bleeding, calomel, tartar emetic, and "large doses" of Prussic acid. (Yuk!) Yet his friends found him buoyant, cheerful..." (Wikipedia). 


Actually the poem isn't about how easy the Christian life is, by some sort of magic; quite the reverse, it's about the cost of "taking up your cross" and following Jesus. But all the cost is worth it, because of his love for us from beginning to the end. I get what Lyte is trying to say about counting suffering as "all joy", but that's not the same as pain being pleasure - well, not in the language I speak. I see that some versions leave out the verse with "pain is pleasure". That seems sensible to me, since its plain contemporary meaning is so jarring on people who know real pain. One doesn't analyse songs when singing them, but one does retain the memorable bits. And that's memorable for the wrong reason. Don't give me that.


Here instead is a prayer by Sheila Pritchard which I read in today's Closer to God, based on Ephesians 3.
Loving Father,
I pray that out of your glorious riches,
you will strengthen me, so that I may rooted and established in your love.
By your Spirit
let me know how wide and long and high and deep
your love is for me...
Show me what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God.
Thank you that you will do even more than I can ask or imagine.
Through Jesus your Son. Amen.