Thoughts on Life

In a nice little play on the old Paul Simon song, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove have released a book on 50 ways to love your neighbour.

Some of their ideas are listed below. You may be doing some of them already. I think they’re brilliant, and many of them are so simple.

• Mow your neighbour’s grass.
• Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
• Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
• Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
• Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
• Write to one social justice organiser or leader each month just to encourage them.
• Go through a local op-shop and drop $1 coins in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
• Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
• Buy only used clothes for a year.
• Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
• Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.

In a world of ungrace, selfishness and random acts of violence, some of the above will further the advance of the kingdom of God. As someone else has said, some of these could be called random acts of kindness.

Selwyn Hughes comes across as one of those beautiful people who wanted more than anything else in the world to be closer to Jesus. He also had some hard words for the church. The piece below reminds me of another great truth which says that God is more concerned about our character than our comfort.

Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. - PSALM 16:8

Selwyn Hughes - Every Day with Jesus

These thoughts came to me one day when I was sitting in the car waiting for my wife. It was a rare time for me to sit, be still and reflect. This is what I came up with:

The older I get, the more I realise how much I don’t know about the Christian life. I feel like I’m still searching. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve found the answer. But I believe in a God who, when I give myself to Him, slowly conforms me into His image, transforms me into His likeness.

I’m quite content with being like this. A former pastor of mine called it a holy dissatisfaction with life. It’s like when we spend our whole lives scrambling to the top of the mountain only to find there’s nothing there anyway.

Life is not about the destination. It is about the journey. The journey matters more than arriving at the destination.

Christian psychologist Larry Crabb wrote a book some years ago called The Safest Place on Earth. In it he talks about the fact that the Christian community is ideally one where people feel safe to be themselves, to express honestly their hopes, joys, frustrations and dreams.

Life is rich. I have been fortunate to know what it is to be part of a community where people are free to express their hurts in an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance and non-judgmental concern. This is what we all hope our families to be. It is also why it is such a tragedy and a travesty when that sense of trust is horrifically betrayed by those in trusted positions.

The Christian community is so much richer when people stop being ‘nice’ in the sense of trying to please people, and instead love one another and are free to speak into each others’ lives. This of course takes alot of time and building up of personal relationships. It can also be easily abused. However a healthy family and community is one where people can express their true feelings and know that they will be heard and that their relationships with others in the community will not be endangered because of what they said. This is what love is.