MOUNTAINS ARE DANCING …diary of a pregnant dad-2

There is nothing really happening!
I mean Debbie is just getting a big tummy, or so it looks, to the untrained eye.  We’re all trained to notice pregnancy. We’re quite literally brought up with it, and we know the implications it has, it means a child is about to be born, and subsequently parents are also about to be born.  God is at work and yet, we don’t get to see his creative craftsmanship in any great detail, just a growing bump and an ultra-sound picture.  Yet we know He is very much at work. I had this thought a few weeks back when down at the sea with Debz, thinking on how there’s so much marine life in the ocean though we can hardly see it’s movement.  Then knowing that God is knitting a personality, gifts, muscles, eyes, soul etc in my child and yet everything looks so still.  The untrained eye could even say that God was doing nothing. 
I mean what if, with our seemingly still, slow church God is busy at work birthing something of abundant life and I have found that often it’s in the stillest, quietest part of the day that God does the most speaking.  Who knows what else in our lives looks still to us and yet God is working His will out through it.  Like the time at the end of winter, we think everything quit, we think nothing is happening, and then snowdrops, daffodils, primroses and the life of spring show us the life that was waiting to birth underground.  hey maybe even those mountains are dancing.

I went home with that thought in my mind and wrote this wee song.
Mountains are Dancing
Is there anyone who couldn’t be in love tonight
With the magic of the full moon that’s shining bright
There must be a billion and one stars God has set alight 
And the mountains go dancing on the skyline 

And the Girl that I’ve given my heart to
Seems quite like she’s thinking the whole thing through (might need to work on this line!)
I press my lips agains her hair and say ‘I, love you’
And the mountains go dancing on the skyline
Yeah those mountains go dancing on the skyline

Chorus:
God is creating us
God is creating a new heart in us
God is creating us
He’s creating a new life with us

You see God is at work in her womb tonight
Knitting together a brand new life
He’s planting a heart and a soul in behind my child’s eyes
And the mountains go dancing on the skyline
Yeah those mountains go dancing on the skyline

Chorus again.

The ocean looks so still
With the moonlight resting on it’s ripples
But there’s so much life beneath those watery shadows
And the mountains go dancing on the skyline
Oh even mountains can dance with the skyline

here’s a wee picture of our baby, and the shore out front of house.
standing on Grace.

GIRL or BOY …diary of a pregnant dad-1

Today we had a scan, like 22 weeks or something, baby looking a healthy wee thing with long legs!
Here’s the deal right, I don’t like keeping secrets from anyone, Jesus asked us to live in the light, not to hide in darkness or to keep parts of our lives hidden.  So, I don’t delete my browsing history, I don’t hide anything, open living.  Anyway.  At this scan you can find out if your baby is a girl or boy.  I wanted to, but Debbie says if we find out then we’d have to keep it a ‘secret’ (bad word for Andrew), so we decided not to find out… As the nurse put the gel and camera around Debbie’s tummy, and commented on the heart, lungs, brain I was on a mission, I was searching hard for a willy!  Thought I saw one at one point, but it turned out to be the umbilical cord! It did look a little oversized. 

Why do I want to find out? Well I’m a day dreamer, and a visionary, I dream of the ideal before looking at where we are. 

If it’s a boy, I dream of introducing my son to the world, telling him that beautiful and terrible things will happen.  That you can’t trust everybody but must always trust Jesus and choose to trust those close to you.  Showing him a way of life that honors God, relys on the spirit and focuses on Jesus.  I dream of him making me proud with his passion, I dream of Him following Jesus.  

If it’s a girl, I dream of protecting her from the world, showing her how beautiful she is. Teaching her to trust Jesus always but to only trust the most very very excellent and Jesus focused of men with her heart.  I dream of Debbie showing her a way of life that honers God, relys on the spirit and focuses on Jesus.  I dream of her making me proud with her compassion, I dream of her being in love with Jesus.

What do these differences tell me? The natural God made difference between male and female, or the cultural context that I’ve somehow dragged into my faith, I don’t know, bit of both maybe.
I do know something…  …I didn’t see a willy!

standing on Grace

Diary of a Pregnant Dad (blurb)

It took a lot of toothpaste but we got there, we’re pregnant!  So with Debbie’s permission I’m hoping to keep a wee blog diary about being a husband/dad for a pregnant wife.   I’m a Jesus follower. And many people who I respect greatly, tell me that the journey of becoming a parent teaches you so much about God (the father), your own parents and love.  So here’s an attempt to document this learning and experience before I know what I will learn or what will happen.
All I know is, Debbie’s preggers, I’m to blame and God is good.

Due date: 1st September 2013.  you can come and cheer us on!

2 great truths

I wonder do you, like me, often think, man, the Devil is always on my back, always there like this evil influence. Waiting, with a creepy smile that makes your skin crawl for you to walk into temptation. And then, pounce!, he’ll wrestle with your thoughts, make you do something, say something, hurt someone.  

Well, I’ve got quite good news, 1. Satan is not omnipresent! 2. Satan doesn’t know everything about you! 3. Satan is trembling at the thought of the power of the Holy Spirit who’s inside/part-of you.

If we took what we sometimes think the Devil is and flip it, you’ll find a great truth.
The Devil is not with you all the time, wanting to curse you.
But God is always with you, wanting to bless you.

Two great truths.

God is Omnipresent.  There is nowhere where God is not.  God is everywhere.  Think of the darkest most evil place you know, God is there, frustrated with the free-will of people I’m sure, but He is there, seeking to bring home His children, and establish His kingdom and glory.  

God is Love.  There is nothing that we have experienced from God which is outside of love.  Everything, and I write this knowing the suffering life can throw at us, but everything you have experienced and will experience from God is and has been love.

Put these two great truths together and you get one great reassuring confidence, one awesome companioning blessed truth.  

No matter where you are, who your with and what your doing, God is close, and God is always looking on you with love wanting, willing, cheering you in love to become more like His Son.  

“God is Love”
“I will never leave you nor forsake you”

Standing on Grace

3 words for mission.

I’ve got three words for the church in Ireland. Words I think we don’t include in our thinking when we endeavor to preach the Gospel with our lives together. Proclaiming the Gospel, in Ireland, we need to remember to be; Simple, Urgent and Flexible.

Simple.
The Gospel takes the greatest of minds to understand the complexity and fullness of it’s mysteries, however a 3 year old can accept it, and we must continually keep our witness simple enough for people to understand, and if asked or receive opportunity, we must, for Christ’s sake we must explain simply the Gospel message.

Urgent.
Mission is urgent. Why? Because there is a Heaven to gain and a Hell to loose for every single person you will ever; talk to over the shopping counter, be class-mates with, see through your car window, shake hands with, pass on the street.  It’s urgent, but it’s not to be rushed. When we’re in a rush we forget things, and do them half-assed but when something is urgent, we make sure it’s done right, fully and in good time.

Flexible.
Or proclaiming for the Gospel should be simple and urgent but flexible, not a one size fits all approach.  The Gospel is the same message for everyone, God has made grace available who whoever calls Jesus ‘Lord’. But you simply don’t tell a friend the same way you’d tell a stranger, you don’t explain it to a child the same way you’d explain it to your mum.  Jesus when talking to the rich man said, ‘sell all you have,’ when talking to nicodemus he said, ‘you must be born again,’ or to peter, ‘follow me and I’ll make you a fisher of men.’ The Gospel must not be diluted but we must make sure our friends/families etc understand the Gospel in their level of understanding. Using hip and trendy phrases wont make the Gospel any more understandable to a 60 year old bachelor farmer, nor will using big words help a child understand.   

Simple, Urgent, Flexible.

Jesus praying.

Listening to Jesus as he prays and tells stories about prayer, it’s just amazing how simple He allows it to be.  Jesus never addresses a prayer with ‘to whom it my concern’, and He expects God to listen.  Sometimes I think we talk to God like we talk to our dog, just tell Him what we’re doing for the day, then finish with ‘oh and who’s a good god, you are, yes you are.’ 

Is prayer more about listening or talking?
Is God our companion through problems or our rescue from them?
Can prayer be anything but personal?

Standing on Grace

Give us our Daily Bread (part-2)

“Give us today our daily bread,” is a prayer that acknowledges our need.
To live the life God gives means we need needs, we need to need. As it means not being in control of what goes on/in our lives. Intentionally needing.

When we think of Eden or Heaven, we think of God giving, and women and men receiving gifts of life.  And we pray ‘Your kingdom come on earth (or if you like, ‘in our lives’)as it is in heaven,’ and then we live trying to supply all our own needs thus dulling, even killing our capacity of receiving.
We prefer to live without needs: 

• So we buy (consumerism). Buy buy buy. This dulls our awareness of need. By buying what we need, we think we’re in control of our lives. ‘I bought this with my own money,’ is not the language of a daily bread recipient.
• So we control. We control our health, diaries, other people. This dulls our awareness of need. By controlling our lives, future, health and organisations we replace any sense of need we have in our lives, with the satisfaction of being in control.  ‘I’ve got that sorted,’ is not the language of a daily bread recipient.

We will never have to pray for daily bread as long as our money and management skills hold out.  Yet this is a heavy price to pay, as to care (or pretend to care) for our own need is a refusal to receive life as a gift, and “will dull and finally destroy our capacity for living, feeling, loving, enjoying. And praying.”¹ 

Call me simple minded for thinking so much about daily bread, but to ask for bread is to acknowledge our place in creation. We are not in control. We are recipients from a life giving God, we receive from a provider. 
Needs are not limits that deaden or reduce our lives, needs introduce us to a life of receiving and giving, of free grace, to a life that cannot be bought or controlled but can only be received as a gift from God.

Do you want to live without needs?.. Then you want to live without God!
To live without the need of daily bread is to refuse God’s dusty, wholegrain, real life, everyday, basic, earthy and heavenly Grace which is ‘on tap’ through daily faith and trust in an everyday provider God. 

Our daily need for bread is a daily reminder that we are in need. We live in a Grace filled world, may we keep this prayer active on our lips and constant in how we view our lives… “Lord, give us…”

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Luke 11

Standing on Grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 – Eugene Peterson, The word made flesh, pg. 184