A sense of story

The Olympic torch relay which began its journey around the UK this week hasn’t been without its controversy. But what has captured my attention, and then my imagination, is the sense of story. Among the torch bearers are celebrities and sporting heroes, but the majority are ordinary people who have been noticed because of something out-of-the-ordinary. There was 16-year old Ben Fox from Swindon, who only has one leg and wants to win an Olympic gold in wheelchair basketball in 2016. Then there was Hayley Mowbray, 26, from Cheltenham, who teaches at a school for young people with severe behavioural problems. She has been recognised as having an exceptional ability to inspire others and provide hope when all seems hopeless. Twenty-eight-year old Mark Ormrod lost an arm and both his legs when he stood on a landmine in Afghanistan. He was told he would never walk again, yet two years ago he completed a 3,500 mile charity run across the US. And Louis Gill, at the age of 15, cycled 300 miles on an old bike to raise money for an orphanage in Uganda. His nomination story says that ”he represents everything that is good in our teenagers and young people”.   All these stories capture something inspiring about the people who live in this land. Together, they remind us that, in the words of John Donne: “No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.” We succeed or fail as our individual stories connect to the whole. The Olympic torch relay has reminded me of this. It celebrates diversity, it reminds us that we’re connected and it celebrates how the story of one person, can improve the story of another. However, it’s bigger than this. The Olympics, as athletes from all over the world gather to compete, connects us to the global story. Again, diversity is celebrated, and we are reminded that we are all connected. The torch relay also connects us to a historic story. The Olympic flame traces its way back to the stories of the Greek gods, the ancient games were designed to conjure images of the divine, and the relationship between humans and the gods. The Torch Relay, itself, a modern invention, is steeped in a historical story, not least because it first took place in the run-up the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, that were organised by the Nazis. So there are many stories, within a story, within a story, within a story. My story, and your story, are being woven into the story of the UK, within the story of the world now, within the story of humanity past, present and future. It reminds us that there is a meta-narrative running through human history, it’s the story that our stories are being woven into, and that’s God’s story. A story that meanders with purpose from creation to new creation. A story about destruction and restoration, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, sin and salvation. A story with the reoccurring refrain of: “They will be my people, and I will be their God.” When Paul was in Greece, the source of the Olympic flame, he walked around the Areopagus in Athens looking at the Greeks’ objects of worship. He said: “I…found an alter with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”He was taking one of their stories to point people to the one true God. Today, as people are desperate to make sure their story is connected and it is significant, we need to be pointing them to God and His story, so they can connect to it and find significance in Him. Phil Green, Programme Manager for the Evangelical Alliance 

Moving on

Perhaps I am fond
  of another eyes
A sweeter taste
   has entered my mouth.
Richness flow from
   speech poured forth,
Gently smiles 
   my listening mind.
Like the butterfly
   butterflies around
My body bodies
   like a dance.
Sleep to dream
   another dream
Wake to live
   another sunrise stream.


K.Oni

Jancis the Moth murderer

Good Nature, I’m sorry for your loss
Give ear unto my words
And if you find it melancholy short

It will apprise, and Alas!

Good Moths of every sort
Good birds of every kind
Hear the name of her who killed
Kinta, your dear beloved moth.


Before her name revealed to hate 
Her heart I’m sure was an icy cake.
No remorse, none I saw 
Not even a rueful awe.


Poor Kinta flew into a plaster-grey church
To pray and pry the saint’s good deed
To carry back the incense for thee
To fill your houses with smiling May.


This Errand was poor Kinta’s Last
Jancis* unseen suddenly clapped her hands
Kinta flew coldly down
Jancis could not even lend a frown.


“Alas! A creature of the worst Kind
Jancis must know our grievous loss.
Wrapped forever in his quiet grave
“Poor Kinta is gone, oh, what difference it is to us.”


K.Oni


*Jancis is a very lovley kind girl - this was all for the sake of the poem. 

Miscellanies 44 - A usual Sweetness

I feel an unusual happiness, a divine sweetness in my soul - or I should say I feel a usual happiness which has been made unusual by my running away from God. Instead of lingering and showering myself under the overflow of his love and grace for me, I runaway, becoming an absentee, a fugitive of his love and grace but now I am present, present under the divine yoke of Christ which is forever easy and light. I feel life in its absolute richness. O, what colours now colour the greyness of my life which once sat beneath the black horizon. But now I run on its horizontal wings breathing in the warm wind of grace. O for more of this usual sweetness, O for more of this divine errand that bids me to wake up the violet and water the lilies - Call me my Lord, call me at sunrise, for my feet are primed, my eyes awaits the timely visual of my beautiful Lord, my ears are impatient to hear that soft, majestic, heavenly voice. O speak my Lord and do not delay. 


K.Oni

Is this all there is?

This week has been Dying Awareness Week, a campaign supported, to get people talking and thinking more about death.
 
Linda Woodhead has commented in theGuardian that “the churches’ hold over birth, marriage and death has weakened dramatically”. Funerals are difficult for everyone, but young people can find them particularly disconcerting. I was standing at the graveside as the coffin of a 21-year-old whose life had been cut short by a particularly vigorous cancer, was lowered. Very quietly, almost under her breath, one of her friends whispered “Is this it? Is this all there is?”
 
There is nothing like death for focusing the mind on the purpose of life. This is when Christian hope needs to be strongly articulated, not weakened. It is a hope in which we think of time and eternity as largely continuous and, more importantly, as being related to one another as dimensions of reality, both given by God for our existence.
 
This is not all there is, this material world we see around us.  Indeed, it has a past, a present and a future. But that past, present and future do not stand alone, disconnected.  They stand in close relationship with another life, with eternity, and with death and resurrection. At the centre  of all life is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, an event both in history and transcending history, of such a character as to open up to us the eternal view on the world. And it is from that point of view —namely from eternity — that we want to see everything that happens here on earth. Jesus is the integration point of what has been, what is and what is to come and he is the Way to be followed, not a goal to be achieved.
 
His death and resurrection become, for Christians, the beginning, centre and end of all our attention.  Here begins, in a way unknown even in earlier Judaism, a story of life being restored, of this life not being the sum total of all there is, of life beyond death.  The eschaton - literally  the last in the series - almost seems to reach back into time and into human history and in Jesus’ resurrection, shows itself for what it is, namely another dimension to things that goes beyond the material and the physical, which actually gives the material new meaning: a richer, deeper texture than it had before. And it was as world changing for the apostles as it is to today.

Tom Torrance put it powerfully in his book Space, Time and Resurrection. 
 
He writes: “That God Himself had become man was an offence to the Jew and folly to the Greek; that Jesus Christ rose from the dead was deemed to be utterly incredible. Yet the incarnation and resurrection forced themselves upon the mind of the Church against the grain of people’s convictions, as ultimate events bearing their own intrinsic but shattering claims of the self-evidencing reality and transcendent rationality of God Himself and they took root within the Church only through a seismic restructuring of religious and intellectual belief.”
 
Strangely, then, the death of Jesus is not the end of all that is, but proves to be the door that opens on to a new realm, a new world, a new dimension, which changes everything that has gone before, and that is and is to come.
 
Around Easter, we usually remind ourselves that following Jesus means following him on the way to glory and that means via the way of the cross. The redemptive work of the cross requires for us a renewed sense of vocation here and now.
 
We live the whole of life purposefully and in hope now because of what has been and is to come. “We are but shadows of our future selves,” comments Tom Wright. What answer to “Is this it?” might my young mourner observe if she were to examine the realties of life and death in the shadow in your shoes tonight? How will you take part in the conversations about dying in such a way that not only are we preparing young people for life but also for death?
 
Ann Holt, Director of External Relations, Bible Society - Evangelical Alliance 
 

Defending Jesus Podcast - The historical Jesus

Ken and Adam discuss the Historical Jesus on their latest podcast. Adam talks about his debate with a Muslim on this topic. Have a listen.

K.Oni

Miscellanies 43: Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

Is it nothing to you all, all you who pass by? Look and see if there was any sorrow like his sorrow. Look at him. They call him the man of Sorrows, what a name for the Son of God who came eating and drinking. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? That this man of sorrows bearing shame and scoffing rude is standing in your place. Look! It is all for your pardon. Will your souls not look back to see the burden he bears for thee as he hangs on that cursed tree? Will you not believe and rejoice, will you not mourn that it was your sins which caused the heavenly Father to inflict his wrath on his precious Son on the day of his fierce anger? Is it nothing to you all, all you who pass by that Jesus Christ, lifted up to die should not have your gaze? Oh ruined sinners it was all for you to reclaim- If you pass by this road and never look to gaze on his sacrifice, it shall never suffice for you. Stand like a penitent and confess your sins. Pause and linger, linger long enough until his blood trickles to your soul and you begin to sing of his bleeding love. On this day Jehovah lifted his rod and how mightily it fell on Christ, O see how bruised he is by justice, he is innocent but you are guilty. He covered you with his back and took the lashes upon himself. There is not one stroke for you, none at all. O Loved sinner, come, come quickly and see what Christ has done for you; leave your business at once, forsake the television, flee the parties, depart from your friends, kiss your family goodbye. Run beloved sinner, come and climb up the hill of Calvary, climb with endurance, climb with all of your might, and see him whose face is marred with sorrows. Look how he pities you, look how he cries, ‘Father, forgive them.’ Look how they crucified him without mercy, and yet, he offers you mercy. Look how he looks to the heavens and said: ‘it is finished’. Have you this day said thank you Lord for giving your life for me?

K.Oni