Month: August 2018

James’s Blog: It’s True.

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James’s Blog: It’s True.

Dear Reader,

I’m writing to you because there’s something that I want to tell you. It’s something that I overheard once, and although it wasn’t originally meant for you, I thought I should pass it on, because it is meant for you really.

You are God’s favourite.

Knowing you, there are a few different ways you might react to this news, but all of them are saying the same thing: “I don’t believe it.”

You might find it hard to believe because you don’t think you should be God’s favourite. You’re not good enough. How can you be God’s favourite when you’re such a terrible person? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I certainly don’t think you’re a terrible person, but you’re probably right that you don’t deserve to be God’s favourite, and yet you are.

You might be wondering, what about everyone else? Well, I’m not writing to everyone else, I’m writing to you, and I am telling you that you are His favourite.

Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes right now, because you think this is typical of the rubbish that I come up with. Maybe it even makes you angry, that I would dare to write such a thing. That doesn’t change anything. You’re still His favourite.

Maybe you’re worried about what might happen if you really believe it. Would you get too big for your boots? Would you start to look down on other people? Now, don’t be silly. Do you think God is happy when we settle for a lie because we’re scared of the consequences of believing the truth? If His biggest concern was us abusing or misunderstanding His words then He’d never say anything. No, the truth is that you’re His favourite, and He wants you to know that.

And surely that’s got to mean something, right? That’s got to change the way that you think about yourself, and the way that you think about God, because it’s true. It really is true. You are God’s favourite.

Yours faithfully,

James

James’s Blog: Bad Examples.

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James’s Blog: Bad Examples.

One of the problems with having written a weekly blog for nearly three years is that you begin to lose track of what you have and haven’t already written. I’d love to not repeat myself, but the chances of that are pretty small. For example, have I written about motivation before?  I feel like I have, but I can’t rightly recall in what context, and even after three years I still don’t know WordPress well enough to do something like a keyword search of all my previous blogs.

I was thinking about motivation because I was wondering (again) how much motivation matters if the outcome is something good and worthy. I’ve written before about what a lazy writer I am, but if there’s one thing guaranteed to motivate me it’s reading a bad book that has been well received. It’s happened to me on countless occasions; I pick up a book with the ‘New York Times Bestseller’ seal of approval and find that it’s a bad book. I don’t just mean a book I don’t like, I mean a BAD BOOK, as in it’s horribly written. Nothing motivates me to sit down and write like seeing someone get paid lots of money for doing something I think I can do better. I think that all I really need in order to actually write a thousand-page novel is a steady supply of poorly-written bestsellers, though I’ll probably have gone insane by the time I have written chapter 6.

What I was wondering is, does it matter anyway? If I actually sit down and get something constructive done, does it matter if my motivation is hardly noble? Perhaps it’s actually God’s way of subverting my laziness, cheekily harnessing my own pride and greed? Maybe it’s really a self-destructive base for my writing – after all, can I really claim that my work is worthy if it’s initiated by something unworthy? And having thought about all that, what if my motivation is not really “I can do better” but actually “Readers deserve something better”? No answers today, just thoughts, but I can’t shake the feeling that God would rather I wrote than didn’t write. That’s enough for me at the moment, and I’ll let Him sort out the tangled weave of my motives when He gets round to it.

Hmmmmm. This definitely all feels familiar…

James’s Blog: For The Quiet Ones.

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James’s Blog: For The Quiet Ones.

I was sad to hear that Hayward’s Heath Baptist Church has lost another faithful servant.  Les Ridd, another who served on the leadership team with me, died at the end of last week.  Like Dick, he had been ill for a while, but it doesn’t make it easier.

I was thinking about Les and Dick, and what they gifted to the church, and found it simplest to put my thoughts down into one of my occasional not-poem things.

 

There are plenty of noisy servants.

“Where there are many words,” said the Teacher,

“sin is not far behind.”

(Loud men and women, we know who we are)

Many words booming from the pulpit,

or clattering onto the page

like a skip full of scrap metal.

“I tell you the truth,” says Jesus.

“They have received their reward in full.”

 

But there are also the quiet servants,

whom you have never heard,

and will maybe never even see,

(certainly not in a photo on the back of a book)

doing what they do on tiptoe.

Stacking chairs, cutting and sticking with children,

giving lifts and clearing out guttering silently in the background.

“I tell you the truth,” says Jesus.

“For them, the best is yet to come.”

 

James’s Blog: Lost in Translation.

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James’s Blog: Lost in Translation.

There are lots of different translations of the Bible. At the time of writing, the online Bible resource BibleGateway has 59 different English translations available. That’s a lot of Bible, and unless you read Greek and Hebrew yourself, you’re stuck with someone else’s interpretation.

The fact is, all translations have strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think you can argue convincingly that any translation is the One True Version, especially as – and some of you may find this hard to believe – Jesus didn’t actually speak English.

In my last sermon, I referred to Malachi 4:2. The King James Version goes with “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings…”, which is a fairly literal translation of the original. Some copies of the New International Version plump for “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays…”, which is, I suspect, much closer to what the original author was trying to convey. However, in the context of my sermon, I needed the more literal KJV translation. Something was lost in the dynamic equivalence of the NIV, even though it is arguably the ‘better’ translation.

When I first made the decision to follow Jesus, I read from The Good News Bible. No-one reads it nowadays, but I will always have a soft spot for it because of the role it played in my early spiritual growth. Plus, I still think its translation of Proverbs is first-rate. When I was at university, the New Revised Standard Version was recommended to us as the best mix of readability and scholarly accuracy, so I have a copy on my shelf for that reason – but I rarely ever use it. For over two decades now, the NIV has been the translation I use in my everyday life. The Message gets a lot of stick in some circles, but Eugene Peterson’s version of the Psalms is excellent, and those who turn their noses up at his scholarship might want to check out his translation of Galatians 3:23-24:

“Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.”

In terms of Paul’s argument, that is, hands down, the best translation of those verses I have ever read, and should certainly knock all talk of ‘prisoners’ and ‘school teachers’ on the head. If you delve deeper into the concept of ‘Greek tutor’ then you can truly have your mind blown by what Paul goes on to say from chapter 3:25 to chapter 4:7…

Anyway, what I really want to ask is what your favourite translation of the Bible is, and why. Is it because it’s objectively the best translation, or is it because it’s the version that you grew up with, or the one that had a particular translation of a particular verse that you found especially helpful in a difficult time, or is it because someone you respect told you that it was the ‘best’ translation? Thankfully, the Holy Spirit is big enough and gracious enough to be found in those words, regardless of how good a version I think it is.

James’s Blog: In Memory of Dick Vesey.

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James’s Blog: In Memory of Dick Vesey.

As I sit here and type this I genuinely feel like the world is a poorer place. I don’t think I’ve ever known a calmer presence and a more gentle gentleman than Dick. Some eventful things happened to the Veseys over the years, but I don’t need many fingers to keep track of the number of times I’d seen Dick anything other than serene and unruffled. I don’t often write about my time at Hayward’s Heath, but you shouldn’t read anything into that. It’s been a key part of my journey so far, and I am thankful for the experiences that I had there, and very thankful for the people that I met and worked with. The leadership team at the church was a fantastic group, and that included Dick, the ubiquitous elder, first at Sussex Road and then at Harlands.

Dick and Hilary have been generous and supportive of our family over the years. It was Dick, with his giant pastoral heart, who took it upon himself to keep me informed about the people whom we loved, and who loved us, back in Hayward’s Heath while we were sunning ourselves in Australia. At Hayward’s Heath, I was blessed to be in a church that sometimes tolerated but often appreciated my experiments in preaching, but in writing this I have realised that Dick was probably one of the most ardent supporters of my pulpit adventures.  I don’t want anyone to feel left out, but when I think about the people who were most encouraging and positive as I wrestled with my gifting, Dick is one of the first faces to come to mind.

As is often the case, heaven’s gain is our loss. We will meet again, but in the meantime we carry on. This is what it means to be the church of Christ, the body of battling believers striving to bring the Kingdom to the Now, but dreaming of the Not Yet.

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