Lent 2016 - 40 Acts

So, since Lent is a Thing, and I have been a terribly lax blogger of late, I am going, yet again, to try and get into the swing of it and join the folks at 40 Acts in doing 40 things before Easter.  You get Sundays off, is Tradition.

Today is about circles.  I have sketched mine as suggested.

V. sketchy, back-of-envelope styley.

And what it shows me is that my life is firmly based around Scottish Dance.  Which shouldn't be that surprising, and isn't.  It does emphasise how my family is largely removed from my everyday life.  That's what living 500 miles away and being replaced by foster children will do for a person.  That's what happens when siblings grown up and grow into different life seasons at different rates.  That's what happens when your conservative christian relatives don't know what to do with your same-sex fiancée.

I have been able to keep some friends from our previous church, but only really because we do other things together as well.  Current church is super-supportive.  Friends in other circles are supportive too, even if they can't figure out which name belongs to which of us.

I am also thinking of attempting a buy-nothing Lent, even though I am not prone to much excessive buying, but I haven't figured out the rules yet.

Now to go pray for all my circles and think of ways to practice generosity to them...

Advent post II

Tuesday

#Imagine

Imagine what's over the horizon.  That's part of the hope of advent, isn't it?  Looking forward to something.  To the world being changed.  What might Mary and Joseph have been imagining would happen following the birth of their baby?  And did the events of his birth and the flight to Egypt blow their wildest imaginings right out of the water?

Everyone's in there.

This Sunday was Easter Sunday.  I was in the singing group so wound up sat at the front, all keen-like.

And the scripture was, unsurprisingly, John's account of the resurrection.  And we were asked to consider why Mary was crying.  She cried for the death of her friend (who is a saviour if not a friend of sinners).  She cried because his body was not there.  In that, I think perhaps she cried for herself.  She had been deprived of the touchstone for her grief.  If we deal with death by dealing with our dead (which I hope we do) then not having a body to grieve over hampers our grieving.  Like the families of soldiers blown to smithereens in the trenches, where there wasn't enough to identify or bury.  Like the friends of teenagers who disappeared and were never heard of again.  Like the relatives of the victims of the recent air crash and ferry capsizing.

It is good to notice when experiences or people we can relate to show up in the Bible.  And I like to think that we are all included in there without too many stretches of the imagination.  Of course, I also like to stretch my imagination.

We don't make the guestlist.

This has been a bit of a refrain in my life recently.

It's a reminder to set aside pride and remember who's actually in charge of the feast.  It's a reminder to set aside judgement and to love mercy.  It's a reminder to set aside control and have faith.

Jesus loved a party.  Jesus loves a party.  And invites us to party with him.  Not just in the hereafter (but that's a topic for another post).  It dampens a party when there's someone sitting in the corner humphing about the other partygoers.  But perhaps it only really spoils the party for the humpher.

We are none of us invited to the party in our finished state.  We are all works in progress.  Which means that no-one is at the party by virtue of their present state.  So we are all wrong about something.  And it won't be until the end of the pre-party that we'll figure out who is wrong about what.  And realise that we're all family anyway and we shouldn't let these petty differences come between us.

Also,  the phrase has come up in a 'we don't get to decide who's on the guestlist' context, but perhaps there's some room for 'we do not deserve to be on the guestlist'.  I don't want to beat my breast and lament my unworthiness, begging you to tell me that I'm quite nice really, but if I'm on any list it's not because I earned my place on it.  I was put on that list by the one planning the feast.  The feast is about him and what he has done to deserve it, not what I have done or who I am.  And because I've taken up the invitation extended to me, I start to become who I truly am and start to do what I am truly here to do.

At least, that's the theory.