Pilgrim Soldier

One of the problems with college life is that it raises questions that make you ponder but then another question crops up in the next lecture and you forget what you were pondering as you ponder anew! Sometimes though a thought breaks through the morass of ponderings and takes up residence in the forefront of your mind. On those occasions it suddenly seems that everything points to that same thought and its just that you are seeing it from different angles! This is one such thought!

It’s a couple of years ago now that I suddenly realised that Jesus passed the mantle of being the “Light of the World” to us, his followers. It seems like quite a ‘thick’ thing to say because I’m sure everyone else had already grasped this. However, I wasn’t quite as quick on the uptake as others. I knew it but had never made the link to the same phrase being used about him. This isn’t the thought though, its just background!

What has come to me over the last few weeks and is something that I am desperately trying to work out in my own mind is what us being the “Light of the world” actually means. And what I’ve realised is that all too often we don’t use it correctly!

What happens when you turn the light on in a dark room? It illuminates the room of course and you see things as they really are. Of course there are shadows and we can see the dust on surfaces, but the light doesn’t point it out, it simply lightens the darkness! All too often we, and I include myself in this, go into dark places and start pointing out all the dirt in those places. Instead of simply lighting up the room we take it upon ourselves to show how dirty and dusty and shadow-filled that room is!

But if we look at what Jesus does in the Gospels we see a man who simply goes into the dark places of the world and sheds the light of his presence. He doesn’t point out the sin in the lives of those people he encounters, well he does but normally only when they are supposed to already be living in the light and are the religious people. Instead he simply allows people to see the dirt themselves and allows them to decide what to do about it themselves.

I’m beginning to realise that this is what we’re supposed to do as well. It’s about us taking God’s light out in the world’s ever increasing dark places and lighting up the room. We don’t need to point out the dirt because if our light is being truly effective, people will see it anyway. All we have to do is spread God’s light and give people the chance to see their lives in the light of God!

I can’t believe that it’s been 2 months since I last wrote anything on the blog. Time just seems to be disappearing these days and sitting down to write just hasn’t been high on the list of priorities.

Zoe & I are coming to the end of our summer placement at Thornton Heath Corps and on 1 October will be back for our 2nd year at College. The 3 months have gone really fast but at the same time it seems ages ago that we last in the classroom. Why does that happen?

Anyway, I’m hoping that I will at least be able to write a little more this year as I have lots of thoughts that I’d love to try and write on.

At the recommendation of Gordon Cotterill I’ve been reading Alan Jamieson’s Chrysalis, which is about those times in our Christian walk that St John of the Cross called the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’. It’s an excellent little book, only 112 pages long, which gives some valuable insight what can be a very difficult period in a person’s faith journey.

One of the things that jumped up of the page at me was a definition of what faith is. Jamieson writes:

…faith is far more than a set of beliefs, a creed or a set of doctrines. The faith that Jesus modelled involves our whole intellect, our passions, our convictions and our willpower. It is an intrinsically relational endeavour. It is not something we could ever do, or could ever sustain, alone.

…Christian faith is also far more than just making meaning; it is living fully within the meaning we make.”

I think this is one of the things that I have been challenged most about during my time at the college. If my faith was simply a set of beliefs then quite simply my time here would have torn it apart because my ‘belief system’ has been challenged. However, the reality is that my faith is not only a set of creeds and doctrines, instead it is a living reality that makes an ever increasing difference to the way I live my life.

Looks like Zoe & I will be missing a fair bit of college over the next few days as Abigail appears to have finally succumbed to the Chicken Pox outbreak that has been going around College! Not the best time for it to happen, although better than if it was in a few more weeks time and hit us around the commissioning of the Witnesses for Christ!

You never know I might even get sometime to finish the several post I’ve got sat in my Drafts folder!

Well we woke up this morning to see that the snow that had been falling last night had continued, as promised, to fall and life here at the college has descended into a series of snowball fights!

It’s really strange to have quite so much snow as it’s the first major fall we’ve seen since getting back from Latvia almost 18 months ago! Of course, unlike Latvia the roads are virtually empty, the schools are shut and people are slipping and sliding all over the place! It’s great to see it all though and it’s made me feel more than a little homesick for Riga!

It’s hard to believe that we’re already two weeks into the new term at College and that already deadlines are fast approaching! Have to hand the first sermon in this coming Thursday before I preach it in a fortnights time!

I really don’t have a lot to report, although this week has been a week of seeing friends. Sarah has been over from Latvia and Lisbeth was at the college for a course earlier in the week. Henrik was also sighted for a coffee but we didn’t see him! So all in all it felt like a Latvian reunion for a few days!

One thing that has happened is that I have started to try to keep a little more fit! As part of that I’ve joined with a group of cadets to attempt the feat of rowing around Lake Victoria on the rowing machine here at college. The aim is to build up sponsors in aid of the Army’s ‘A Cry in the Darkness’ campaign. Not sure how far I’ll actually be able to row myself, but I’ll work out a widget in the sidebar (the bit to the left) for those who might be interested. Once I know how the sponsoring will work I’ll let people know who might want to sponsor me/us as well.

We’re now nearly at the end of a 2 week break from college! It’s been nice to have, especially after the handing in of 5 essays in 5 weeks that we had at the end of term. Thankfully, I’ve managed to pass both the two papers that we have had handed back! The next stage of the process will see a return to preaching and leading meetings as we will be having 7 Sundays at Chalk Farm corps over the coming weeks. Both Zoe & I are looking forward to this, even though it’s not quite what we’ve been used to in recent years as far as worship is concerned. It’ll be good to spend some time at another corps though and get to know some new people.

The break has been a time of family, friends and travel! For the first time, we were able to get round all the closest family. We spent Christmas Eve and Boxing Day at Zoe’s mum’s and on Boxing Day got to see our rapidly growing nephew, Oliver. It was then off to my family for a couple of nights which culminated with an invite to our eldest nephew’s 18th birthday party in April!! Despite the amount of travelling we’ve had to do, it was well worth the effort to spend Christmas with the family!

We’ve also managed to get some time with friends as well, which is always good. In fact the last three days have been spent with either friends who’ve been to visit us, or amongst the college community now we’re back in London.

And so we’re back! Still quite a bit to do before we restart lectures on Monday, but its been a great Christmas and a nice end to 2008. Here’s to 2009!