you go first

In my ongoing efforts to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest, I decided to watch the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year final on BBC 2 on Saturday night before heading out to see The DaVinci Code with friends. (Note the lack of post on DVC; it’s not worth a post.) Whilst watching the musicians perform, one in particular, I realised something about myself.

I’m a reactionary, but not in the “opposing political or social progress or reform” sense. Rather, my actions are heavily influenced by others. That makes me sound terribly impressionable and easily led but let me try to explain…

I play sax. I love to play sax. Playing sax is easy – anyone can do it. Playing a sax well is a but more tricky, but again anyone can do it if they take six months to learn. It can be mastered.

But there is a difference between playing sax and making music. Music is something more fundamental – more base – than most people give it credit for. Music is something beneath words, supporting them. Music is more articulate that words. Music expresses emotions that cannot be accurately articulated in words. Music is something common to all mankind and is something that can affect all mankind. Words are limited; music is limitless. Music, like art, is a glimpse of the Infinite compressed into something small enough and understandable enough for us mortals to grasp and feel and take something from.

The tones a sax produces are little more than words… there is something missing from a tone if it doesn’t have feeling behind it. This is easy to hear: ask some eegit to put a sax in his mouth and play a C#, then ask a sax player with something he wants to communicate to play a C#. There will be an obvious difference.

I love to make music with my sax; I love to communicate, express and emote through my breaths making tones through my sax.

I’m babbling… back to the insight into myself. When I play sax with others in a “free” setting – that is, improvising – I don’t take the lead, I don’t direct the music. I listen to others and to where others are going and then I follow. I add colour, texture and timbre to the overall sound but I never influence the direction directly. I react to the direction of others.

I learnt this whilst watching clarinettist, Mark Simpson, on BBC YMOTY recite Carl Nielsen’s [1865-1931] Clarinet Concerto. This piece of music is a real bugger to play. It’s meant to represent the composer’s personality, which could go from light and wispy to loud and in-your-face in the same breath. It’s a piece that requires much interaction with the backing orchestra – much reacting.

I was thinking about this reactionary idea in areas of my life outside of music and I can see it there, too. I don’t really like to lead. I prefer to influence the leading, yes, add my voice and ideas and thoughts, but not do the actual leading.

This may be stupid to everyone but me. I found it fascinating.

when God feels distant

A while ago I mentioned that I was reading a book by James Emery White. Well, now I’m reading another one. Wrestling with God is all about loving the God we don’t understand. Chapter three is titled “The Distance of God” and I’ve just been struck by a couple of things he said. So struck that I want to share them here.

We tend to put the distance we feel from God squarely on his shoulders, as if the burden of the relationship is on him. But our relationship with God, like any relationship, requires that we do our part to maintain the intimacy…

When people tell me that God seems distant in their lives, “What are you doing to stay close?” is often my first question. A spiritual malady is at hand, and we need to seek out the cause of the trouble.

• Are you praying?
• Are you spending time reading and reflecting on the Bible in order to apply it to your life?
• Are you involved in worship?
• Are you connecting with people whose relationship with God challenges and encourages your own?
• Are you engaged in some kind of ministry to others?
• Are you carving out time for spiritually oriented reflection?

Wrestling with God, Inter-Varsity Press, 2003, pg 51-53

The big lad is a genius!

damn our cursed world

I came across these statistics today:

In 2005,

• 40.3 million people were living with HIV (only one in ten knows they are infected).
• 4.9 million people became infected with HIV (3.2 million of these were in sub-Saharan Africa).
• 3.1 million people died of Aids (more than half a million were children).

Source: Global summary of the Aids epidemic, December 2005, UNAIDS (found in Summer 2006 edition of Tear Times)

messy faith

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve kept meaning to post here but things have just got in the way and when they haven’t I’ve just been too sleepy.

Good news on the work front: we got signoff on the web app that’s been causing us so much grief. I have to work over the weekend to promote it to Production but that’s no biggie – I’ll be glad to see the back of it to be honest. There’s a heap of things happening over the weekend and I’m on Production Support, which means it’s my job to look after it all and make sure everything goes smoothly. Sucks to lose this weekend (and probably next weekend) but the weekend pay for being on support is unbelieveable!

All this work has left me wrecked, though…

… and once again my discipline has weakened.

Man, I’m such an eegit. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: I’m so like St Paul. I find myself doing the things I don’t want to do and not doing the things I should be doing [c.f. Romans 7:15, 19]. It sucks. I suck!

You know what I think my problem is? I think too much. I overcomplicate my faith by trying to think about things too much… it probably stems from my training. I mean, I solve problems for a living - I get paid to fully understand matters presented to me. The last time I spoke in church I talked about how I approach my faith the same way I approach a problem. Which is crap because that’s not how faith works.

Christianity is not a set of theological truths and doctrinal dictums; Christianity, as I spoke about in church, is entirely relational. It is not “neat” and ordered, even though our God is not a God of disorder [1 Corinthians 14:33]. Relationships are complicated, messy, complex, changing; not simple, ordered, easy to understand and static. Since seeing this, I’ve been trying to work on my relationships with people to help me gain an insight and get help for relating with God.

This relational-view of Christianity would explain my longstanding problem with prayer.

Anyone any tips? And please don’t simply say “just talk to God and He’ll help you” – from experience, it doesn’t work like that.

a more private thought, shared

It is Sunday afternoon and, once again, I am thinking about what I should teach to my cell group this evening. For those of you that don’t know, I lead a group of young guys aged between 14 and 16 years. At the start of the (academic) year – that is, back in September – there were five guys in total. Over the course of the past few months that number has decreased, with the occasional week when none of them turned up. More recently, I have been blessed with two of them who come regularly.

I got pretty depressed when some of the guys stopped coming. What made it worse was that when I’d phone them up to ask how they were and see if they were still wanted to come to the group, they said they’d be there but then wouldn’t turn up. They lied to me because, I presume, they were too scared (is that the right word?) to tell me that they weren’t enjoying the group or whatever their reason was for not coming.

At one point I felt responsible for their lack of interest in the group… and more, I felt responsible for their lack of interest in spiritual things. I really beat myself up about it because I know that some of the guys don’t get any guidance at home about spiritual things. I got scared for them because I really care about where they are spiritually at.

Standing back from it all and taking a look at the past year of the cell group, I can see good come out of it all. God has taught me a lot and, for one of the young guys in particular, I can see a new-found interest in spiritual things.

God has opened my eyes to the blood, sweat and tears of real-world youth ministry. To the awful feelings of fear, dread and frustration that come along with caring so dearly for people so easily influenced. It has given me a very small insight to what it must be like to be a parent. It has given me an even smaller insight into what God must feel when I go off and do stupid things.

But God has done more than that. God has allowed me to be witness to a new start, a new hope, a spiritual growth in one of the lads. Tiny though it is, it still is. And I believe – with all my heart – that with continued nurturing, prayer and time, that young lad will have a faith that he knows to be real and in which will rest all his hopes, dreams and desires. (God let it be!)

So, it’s still Sunday afternoon and I’m still wondering what I should teach to my cell group this evening. Last weekend when I was thinking this exact same thing, I came across the following verses in Titus. Chapter two, verses six to eight in the NIV say:

Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

So there’s what I have to do. I am to encourage the young lads that God has given me to be self-controlled. Now how do I do that? Well, it’s simple – I need to show them how to be self-controlled, show them what it is to be Christian. (How humbling is that?!)

In ancient Greek society, the role of a father was a functional one rather than a nurturing one. This goes against Christian teaching where fathers are to take the lead in the family with regard to spiritual things. So, in this passage, Paul was encouraging Titus to be a spiritual father for these young men. By the things he does and the way he lives, the young men would learn to imitate him and the things he does. Furthermore, if Titus lives and teaches things that are correct, the young men who imitate will also learn to live correctly and pass on the correct teachings of Titus.

That’s an incredibly arduous and responsible task, but one that can bring eternal good to the lives of young men. God help me live right, speak right and think right so that those you’ve given me will equally live right, speak right and think right.

writing

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating day can be “redeemed” by writing about it. By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others too.

Henri Nouwen

(Thanks to Redemption Junkie.)

another reason to learn greek

Check out hopefulamphibian’s look at Exodus 25:5. Very funny.

why do you seek God?

In John Bevere’s book Draw Near he writes:

Over this time I’ve discovered two major groups within the church … the first are those who seek God for what He can do, while the second seek Him for who He is.

Be honest: which group do you fall into?

a confession

Nick wrote a post today that reminded me of something. It’s something I’ve been meaning to confess. I’m sure I’ve done it before on here but it’s something I need to do again: I’m a poor leader.

Recently I have been so caught up in work (regular readers will know!) that I haven’t been spending as much time with God.

God opened my eyes to this on Sunday evening when Andrew Mullan came to preach. He is a guy who is the same age as me and he is the son of one of the previous assistants to JD at my church. He was giving a quick introduction into how he got into training for the ordained ministry. (He’s currently studying at UTC.) He was saying how during his quiet time he was hearing God tell him to go into the ministry, etc. He said he was involved in the usual church activities. He said was invited to other church activities. Etc. etc.

Where am I going? Well, it’s just the opposite story for me as I sit here and reflect. I used to be involved in lots of church things but now I’m not. I’m now seeing lots of doors close and a lack of invitations and frustration. In my heart, I know that this is because God doesn’t want me leading His children when I am ill-prepared and when I am not listening to His voice and following His lead.

I need to wise up and get back to it. Recently I was reading 1 Timothy and verse eight of chapter four has stayed with me.

For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

I haven’t been training myself – disciplining myself – in godliness as I ought to be. A poor shepherd who knows not the way can quickly lead his flock to a pack of wolves. God, forgive me for my lack of discipline. Forgive me for letting down my spiritual guard and opening myself up to attack. Forgive me for not taking the responsibility of leading your children seriously. Holy Spirit, forgive me for stifling your work in my life – forgive me for not submitting to your movements in my life.

To use Nick’s metaphor: too often, lately, I have been stepping onto the field, dressed for the big match but having not put in anywhere near enough time to prepare and to get fit and to learn the game deeply.

I thank God that he is a reponsible and wise God, and that he substituted me out of a number of the games early on. I know it’s going to take a lot of work on my part to be allowed to get a touch of the ball again, but I pray that I’ll be match fit when I do.

things are looking up

I went to the conference “The Christian voice in the public square” on Tuesday night but it wasn’t what I expected. Rather than being given difficult social issues and presented with a reasoned and biblical response, we were instead just given an introduction to various organisations who are the “Christian voice in the public square”.

Oh well… Lost was fantastic, though!

Work isn’t going too badly these days. However, I was so tired last night that when I came home I lay on my bed at about 7:30pm and slept straight through until 6:45am when my alarm went off. Nice!

There are seven people in the development team I work on, plus a Project Manager. Five of the seven people have been on a three-day UDB training course, which left just me and another. Susan, the “other,” has recently been promoted to Project Lead for three other applications (congrats Susan!) and will be moving off her current application (the one I work on) shortly. So while she has been busy finishing off stuff for her current app and learning new stuff for her new three apps, it left me at the forefront of everything else.

The current project that has been causing us grief was continuing to do so these passed three days, but we think we’ve got all the issues sorted out. The biggest issue was deadlock.

For those of you out there who understand computing (or those mathematicians out there who understand automated termination analysis), you will understand that deadlock is not a trivial issue. For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about, here is a quote from Wikipedia:

This situation may be likened to two people who are drawing diagrams, with only one pencil and one ruler between them. If one person takes the pencil and the other takes the ruler, a deadlock occurs when the person with the pencil needs the ruler and the person with the ruler needs the pencil. Both requests can’t be satisfied, so a deadlock occurs.

It is something that, in general, is unsolvable – it cannot be avoided or prevented. It can, however, be detected and handled. Fortunately, we deployed a fix this morning that now better handles deadlock, leaving our database in a stable state and maintaining data integrity.

So fingers crossed that all will go well and we’ll get signoff from the business tomorrow or early on Monday.