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Found in the wilderness

There is a Lenten wilderness scene set up in the worship space (See worship sapce photo album). Hidden under stones are stars. After each reader has read their stanza they remove one of the stars and carry is away with them. The congregation sings “God made me as I am’ (Bernadette Farrell) after each stanza.

Voice 1 (Rahab)	My name is Rahab, and in my wilderness, I have found a promise: the city of Jericho was surrounded, the rams horns a-blowing. Me, a prostitute, caught in a wilderness of abuse and slavery, looked after the spies and was claimed by grace, and despite the destruction of the city, even as the walls came a-tumbling down, the God of promise spared my life and set me free to live again. I know promise is alive in the wilderness. Remove a star from the wilderness scene ‘God made me as I am’
Voice 2 (Sarah)	My name is Sarah, and in my wilderness, I have found a promise: in my barrenness, my future was barren too. Childless, we would be forgotten, but the God of the impossible took my life, and recreated it within me: a son, a future, and set me free to live again. I know promise is alive in the wilderness. Remove a star from the wilderness scene ‘God made me as I am’
Voice 3 (Ruth)	My name is Ruth, and in my wilderness, I have found a promise: I have travelled to the homeland of Naomi. My husband is dead, my own family left behind in a foreign land. Now I am stranger, an asylum seeker, an unwelcome guest in a land not my own. But the God of strangers renewed my life, and found a place for me once more, and set me free to live again. I know promise is alive in the wilderness. Remove a star from the wilderness scene ‘God made me as I am’
Voice 4 (Zacchaeus)	My name is Zacchaeus, and in my wilderness, I have found a promise: I was an outcast, a tax collector, too small to love. It was a lonely, selfish existence, but the God of the lost found my life, and rescued my hope, and with generosity called to the generosity so long hidden in me, and set me free to live again. I know promise is alive in the wilderness. Remove a star from the wilderness scene ‘God made me as I am’
Voice 5 (Mary)	My name is Mary, and in my wilderness, I have found a promise: I was a temple outcast, too friendly with those who would never acknowledge me, who use me as their own but never loved me as their own. But the God of the downtrodden, renewed my life, inviting those without sin to cast the first stone. No one did, and I was set free to live again. I know promise is alive in the wilderness. Remove a star from the wilderness scene ‘God made me as I am’

Stardust and sandgrains

A gathering rite for Sunday. Two jars: one filled with sand and the other filled with cut silver foil or shiny stars are carried by the narrators (who dialogue these words) and poured out together over the communion table during the last stanza mixing them together.

Where shall we find God’s promises?
scattered across the sky
and along the ancient lakeside
throughout the heavens
and between our toes
in the constellations of night
and the ebb of oceans

Where shall we find God’s promises?
in star fields and tide-marks
and birth chambers and rock-pools
in the rhythms of time
and the heart-beat of history
in the flow of tides
and rush of seasons

Where shall we find God’s promises?
In sand grains and stardust

DreamThinkBeDo

Wee reminder that we jump head long into the chaos of faith tomorrow evening at 7.30 in the Manse. Lots of questions, stories and insightful moments.

Last week we got 5 mins of the DVD watched because it just led to a whole lot of stuff to talk about.

Lent 10

This week in Lent we have the chance to stare at the sky and find our names written there, or feel the sand between our toes and know each is alive with promise. Abram is the journeyer who walks right into a promise. His DNA zings with goosebumps such is the energy of promise alive in you. So you are welcome to email here images, photos, symbols that connect with the theme of promise for the photo album this week to help us on our journey.

To look at this weeks images go to the Lent 10 Promise photo album.

Chocolate Teapots (February 28th 2010)

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Isn't this the way all epics begin? It's like the start of Star Wars: the words "Long ago in a galaxy far away" scrolls over a view of the universe teaming with stars, each with a life of its own and a name which could be mine. It's a great moment in the story of Abram: if you want to trust God, well then, look to the stars because see all the shiny-glittery-sparkling stuff flung across the heavens...? you're made of the same stuff: stardust. You have been made with the promise itself. You're very being is made of covenant. You can't get out of it. It's growing in you, alive in you, giving you life.

Stunning.

Which takes us back to the passage of the geriatric partiarch staring out across the night sky, hardly remembering when he last took any real notice of it. Only now he realises he can join them all up to make names for his own constellations: Isaac, Ishamel, Rebecca, Ruth, Jacob, David, Jesus, Dorcas, Roddy, Betty, Jean...

When the promise is spread across the sky like that, and when stardust forms your very atoms then promise becomes not something to hope in for someone elses future but becomes the way you live your life: always within the promise. And the energy of that is the trust and knowledge that God/Love must yet be up to something. It's always all to play for. There is no resting on laurels but generates the excitement that makes you always keep an eye out for fulfillment, a moment of revelation, and it could be any time.

And to lift that story with hymns and music and symbols, I'll leave it to you to suggest on this blog so we may shape our worship space to tell the story

A Litany of Forty

This has been written by our probationary minister as we reflect on the wilderness and the wilderness time.

1.    Life begins at
2.    Forty
1.    A quick sleep is
2.    Forty winks
1.    Ali-Baba and the
2.    Forty thieves
1.    St Swithun is known for
2.    Forty days of rain
1.    The flood in Noah’s story lasted for
2.    Forty days and forty nights
1.    The Israelites wandered around for
2.    Forty years
1.    Elijah heard God’s voice after
2.    Forty days
1.    Jesus was in the wilderness for
2.    Forty days
1.    Giving into temptation
2.    Adam
1.    Cain
2.    Moses
1.    Joseph
2.    David
1.    Jonah
2.    Peter
1.    Judas
2.    But not our Lord
1.    Hungry
2.    Thirsty
1.    Happy
2.    Sad
1.    Tired
2.    Lonely
1.    Hot
2.    Cold
1.    Fearful
2.    Angry
1.    Uncertain
2.    Tempted
1.    Tested
2.    Weakened
1.  Resisted                     
1.    Strong
2.    Assured
1.    Controlled
2.    Truthful
1.    Devoted
2.    To God

DreamThinkBeDo

Just a wee reminder we start DTBD tonight at the Manse, 7.30. See you there. I's what Lent was designed for.

If you found Saving Jesus and Living the Questions good, insightful, hopeful, interesting, then you'll find DTBD equally good, insightful, hopeful and interesting.

Lent 10

Now we are into Lent I thought we could do what we've done in the past, help interpret the season with images.

In this first week because there are so many ideas of wilderness, perhaps we can offer some broader ideas of what wilderness can be: physical, mental, relationships, geographical etc. I've posted some physical images that perhaps point in different directions. Feel free, indeed please do email some images of your own that we can post here and create our own 2010 Lent Album.

Each week will have a different theme leading towards each Sunday in Lent. We're in the wilderness this week. Step into it.

Chocolate Teapots (February 21st 2010) - updated

Luke 4:1-13

It's the wilderness. A meeting place where what is holy tangles with reality and it's not always pretty. It's certainly easier if you imagine the 'devil' is someone out there with his/her own strength and personality, but a little more difficult if that 'devil' is better known and rather familiar as our own selves.

But my question is about the temptations themselves. Surely this can't be simply a story legend about an event between Jesus and the Satan. That's very easy and quite clinical: hooray, Jesus wins against the devil (as he always does) and we're on Jesus side, so it's all okay then.

But could it be a bigger truth about handling our way in the world as holy folk. The temptations can be stories inviting us to trust God to provide what the world needs and it isn't stuff or immediate needs (bread and stones); stories that place God at the centre of our priorities rather than an option but choose things through the lens of God ie justice and grace (worship only God); and stories that call us to live justly in the way God longs rather that with power and wealth (all the kingdoms of the world). This is the way we follow God. God could do all this other powerful stuff (or could God...? Hmmm) but it's no where near the way of love and justice and renewal which is God's middle name.

This is a story about pilgrimage, giving up what does not belong to the journey and relying on what God is: a way of justice, a place of peace, a meeting in hospitality. And that can be kind of difficult for western churches and communities where we train people to be nice rather than holy.

We Christians are good at being nice rather than holy as someone has said and this wilderness time calls us back to be tempted by God's way of less rather than the worlds way of more.

For believing

A wee all-agey prayer for Sunday. We're singing a lot on Sunday: big words of glory on transfiguration Sunday recalling what's happened to lead us up this mountain.

We do not always understand, O God
sometimes we don’t have the words to describe, O God
often we cannot make sense of things, O God

How the sun keeps on shining
The countless umber of stars
The age of the universe
How yeast makes bread rise
How light travels
Where rainbows come from

Someone, somewhere knows
One day we might
Today, we don’t make sense of it all

Why did John baptise Jesus?
How did 5000 people get fed?
How did the water become wine?
Why did Zacchaeus change his mind?
What made the fishermen leave their nets?
What happened to Jesus on the mountain?

We don’t always understand
we don’t always have the words
we cannot always make sense

But today is just for believing

In miracles
In heaven in the ordinary
In you O God