A church is a family and therefore there are all kinds of family occasions in its life to celebrate.

Last night we had two contrasting occasions. One of our families is moving to another place this coming week. That is both a sad occasion (they will no longer be with us) and a cause for rejoicing (God is leading them somewhere else, and His plans for us are always positive – Jeremiah 29:11). We prayed with this family and sent them forth with our blessing.

As with all families, ‘out of sight’ is not ‘out of mind’. We will continue to pray and keep in touch with these people, praying they will find a good local church to become a part of, that the children will settle into new schools, that they will find friends and continue to discover God’s will for their lives.

We also had a birthday to celebrate. All birthdays are wonderful, but this one will be full of special rejoicing as we celebrate God’s healing work in our brother’s life and continue to pray that he will be strengthened and know renewed vigour and blessing.

Partly inspired by Isaiah 58:12 (which is rapidly becoming a ‘theme verse’ for the church in 2013!), Dave spoke about Nehemiah this morning and his commitment to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah definitely could have been called a ‘Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.’ Born during the Israelites’ exile, Nehemiah had never even seen Jerusalem and yet when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down and the gates burned with fire (Neh 1:3), he was moved to fast and pray.

Nehemiah was a man of prayer. The work for which he is most famous began with prayer, continued with prayer, and the last words recorded in the book are words of prayer! He learnt to persevere in prayer: from getting the initial message to speaking to the king took about four months, during which time he was constantly in prayer. His prayer began with a confession of Israel’s apostasy and an identification with sin. Prayer always starts with a confession of sin, with an acknowledgment of our sinfulness in relation to God. When he started praying, Nehemiah probably didn’t expect to be the means through which God would answer his prayer. But as we align ourselves with God’s will in prayer, often we see things that we can actually do. Nehemiah came to the place where he realised that the rebuilding of Jerusalem mattered more than the luxury, influence and power he enjoyed with the king. He reached the point where, when the king asked him what was troubling him, he could send up an arrow prayer and ask the king for permission to go to Jerusalem himself (Neh 2).

When he arrived in Jerusalem – doubtless to the curiosity and excitement of the people there, for any royal official must have been newsworthy! – Nehemiah spent three days in prayer and reconnaissance before he spoke to the people about his plans. The God who had already worked on the king’s heart to grant safe passage and leave of absence had worked in their hearts too, so that they were eager to join with Nehemiah. Opposition came (Neh 2:19-20) in the form of ridicule and scorn. Opposition will always come to those who seek to put God first, for the offence of the cross makes no sense to those outside God’s plans.

Nehemiah dealt with the opposition by praying (Neh 4:4-6). When the enemy changed tactics and brought in actual fighting, Nehemiah showed wisdom in splitting his forces, putting half the men to work and half to guarding the work. When the enemy wanted to distract Nehemiah into ‘friendly conversation’, Nehemiah refused to be distracted (Neh 6:2-3). He was not deceived by false prophets (Neh 6:8-13). Instead, he kept his gaze on the work and thus, in 52 days, the work was completed (Neh 6:18). After that, he gave time for the reading of the law and reminded the people that this was now a time for rejoicing (Neh 8:10).

Nehemiah models for us whole-hearted surrender to God. Like Moses before him, he gave up the fame and comfort of his life to ally himself to God’s people, who were downtrodden and in need. The kind of fasting God requires from us is to loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, share our food with the needy and to clothe the naked (Is 58:6-10, see also Matthew 25). One person really can make a difference. One church really can make a difference. We need to stand up for the things we believe in and understand that we work for eternal rewards. Like the quizmaster in ‘Mastermind’, we need to finish that which we have started and continue to do the things God has called us to do.

When we started the prayer walks in January, I wanted a visual reminder of all that we had seen to act as an aid to prayer. Some of the resulting photographs have now been enlarged on canvas prints and have been hung in the main hall to help us to continue to pray for all we have seen:

Many thanks to Stacey (who took most of the photographs), to Garry (who took some of them) and to the leadership at church for their willingness to support this visual aid and for their spiritual vision.

William Henry Davies’s poem often speaks into my life when I am frantically running around trying to fit a thousand jobs into a day:

“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”

We live in a society which does not particularly like ‘time to stand and stare’, because we are conditioned to believe that activity and achievement are inextricably linked. The arts – poetry, art, music, photography, fashion and other forms of creative expression – are often viewed as time-wasting because they are ‘irrelevant’, because their effects and value cannot easily be quantifiably measured. We like measurable goals and targets that can be ticked off. As someone who frequently writes ‘To Do’ lists and enjoys the sstisfaction of seeing those lists completed, I am all too aware of the human tendency to put life into neat little boxes and measure success by how many of those boxes we have filed tidily away.

The arts are not like that. They are messy – anyone who has ever tidied up after a child’s painting or sticking session can verify that! – and often seem to yield little: a child’s scribblings are not often kept for ever. The amount of time put into them does not seem to equal what you get out of them, and our society is very utilitarian about time!

These musings came about from two separate but connected incidents. A photography student showed me a video on stop animation connected with pencils. She had had to do something similar on her course and was frustrated by how long it had taken to shoot seconds of action. Watching the video, which lasts 3 minutes and 24 seconds, I became aware that there were hours of work involved in creating something which lasted such a brief time. Was this a ‘waste’ of time? I don’t think so. I was stunned by the intricacy of the work, by the cleverness of how the pictures matched the lyrics of the song, by the colourful ideas whizzing past my eyes on screen. It was aesthetically satisfying and deeply moving. It had the ‘wow’ factor. It brought a smile to my face. Can those things be measured by time?
‘Against the Grain’, Hudson

The second incident came as I was reading the psalms, and in particular the psalms that David wrote in times of trouble (eg Psalm 57, written when he was hiding from Saul in a cave.) As God’s word reached into my own ‘cave’, I was struck by the thought that writing songs was not what the management gurus would recommend a would-be king to do in times of trouble! I had a vision of some business man in a suit with a flip chart outlining all the strategies David should be employing to get him back into Saul’s favour and out of the trouble he was in: it was all beautifully numbered, with flow charts and strategy bubbles filling page after page. And there David was, humming away to himself, writing a song.

Yet it was this song that was helping me now, in 2013. It wasn’t the fighting strategy anyone had come up with that was speaking into my life. It was poetry, God’s word, coming alive to me – all because David got his priorities right even though it must have seemed like a dangerous use of his time then!

The arts are often not highly valued in education because they do not seem to fit into today’s pragmatism. Even when their value is debated, it’s often debated in terms of what we get out of them: “Arts and Humanities subjects cause life-changing personal development, teach us to engage with ideas critically and independently, and equip students with the skills necessary to understand – and thus work in and manage – how complex organisations operate and change. They also ‘sustain and preserve the heart and soul of our civilisation’,” according to a debate at Sheffield University in May 2011. I think it’s hard to quantify the value of the arts, but I believe that they have value far beyond their appearances!

Saint Lucia is a Caribbean island situated between the Caribbean Sea and North Atlantic Ocean, north of Trinidad and Tobago. When it’s cold and dank in England in February (‘February’s ice and sleet freeze the toes right off your feet’, according to Flanders and Swann!), a Caribbean paradise like Saint Lucia seems an idyllic escape, well worth fantasising over:

The island’s ownership was contested between England and France throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries (changing possession 14 times); it was finally ceded to the UK in 1814 and English is the official language there. However, the original name given by the ancient Amerindian settlers was ‘Louanalao’ or ‘Iouanalao’ which is translated as ‘Island of the iguanas’. Igor’s home!

The first settlers from South America must have indeed thought Saint Lucia was a paradise island: green, fertile, uninhabited. Over the years, Europeans discovered this Caribbean paradise and the French influence is still seen through the place names, food and the Creole dialect that is still spoken.

So, as we endure winter in England, Igor reminds us of warmer climes and sandy beaches…!

And Paul reminds us, perhaps most importantly, that we have a glorious future awaiting us: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Rom 8:19) John also talks about this: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”(1 John 3:2)

“There will be a day with no more tears
No more pain, and no more fears
There will be a day when the burdens of this place
Will be no more, we’ll see Jesus face to face
But until that day, we’ll hold on to You always.” (Jeremy Camp, ‘There Will Be A Day’)

Kevin looked at James 5:1-6 in the Bible study last night, identifying 4 warnings to the rich:

1) the dangers of hoarding
Matt 19:16-23 talks about the rich young ruler who, though outwardly obedient to God’s commandments, still failed to enter God’s kingdom because he focussed on the wrong things and ultimately neglected God. Matt 6:19-21 reminds us that where are treasures are, there our hearts will be also. What we set our hearts on determine our ultimate goals. We need to hold onto the world’s possessions lightly.

2) the meanness of wealth
Rich people often withheld wages from their servants and were not fair with money. Lev 19:13, Mal 3:5 and Jer 22:13 all talk about the sins we can so easily commit with money. God’s character is just and He demands justice and fairness from all, especially those with wealth. Wealth is to be used wisely!

3) the dangers of hoping in wealth
It is dangerous to put one’s hope in wealth. Heb 13:5 urges us to be content with what we have, a sentiment echoed in 1 Tim 6:17-19, where we are urged to keep our lives free from the love of money. Phil 4:11-13 reminds us of the need to be content with whatever we have, content because we have found the ultimate treasure in Christ.

4) injustice
The rich took advantage of the weak. In Rom 12:17-21, we are urged not to seek revenge. There is far more to life than riches. Trusting in God helps us to live without an over-reliance on wealth and frees us from trying to take matters into our own hands. God is the just judge and we leave justice in His capable hands.