Drama and difficulty… the cost of the call (2)

Mary and Joseph had already paid a high cost (during pregnancy) to be the earthly parents of Jesus. Little could they have foreseen that the birth itself would also be fraught with challenges: that a political leader would call for a census, forcing them to make a long journey, right at the time when Mary was due to give birth. How uncomfortable it must have been to be nine months pregnant, to be needing to go to the bathroom all the time, and to have to undertake this overland journey on the back of a donkey! Did that perhaps contribute to making them late, so that all the accommodation was full up by the time they arrived in Bethlehem?

Imagine how stressful it must have been to be there in the busy chaos of the town, knowing that you were supposed to give birth to the Son of God at any minute, and yet you could find nowhere to stay. What a pressure it must have been for this teenage husband: was there any sense of panic that  Mary’s waters might break, right there in the dirty street?

Maybe it was because Mary was already having contractions that a concerned innkeeper let them bed down in the stable with his animals. Did he feel any compassion, or was it just another business transaction? Did he let them stay there for free... or did business take priority and he made some kind of charge for letting them take refuge in the dirty, smelly animal shed? 

Was the stable cold and draughty - like so many of our Christmas carols that suggest a winter setting? Or was it hot, sweaty and stuffy, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing around? Was the baby swaddled in rags to protect him from the cold? Or to protect him from the mosquitoes? Or just to protect his soft baby skin from the prickly straw?

Did some woman from the inn come out to help with the delivery? Or did young Joseph have to rush around fetching water and being the midwife at the birth of this special baby? What a responsibility!

Amidst all this drama and difficulty, it was no doubt a relief that the birth went well and the newborn was healthy... but it must initially have been an added challenge when a bunch of strangers turned up, wanting to see the baby. Who were these excited and noisy shepherds, disturbing the sleep of mother and baby? What an encouragement it must have been, however, to hear these simple shepherds speak of what the angels had told them. Perhaps this was the first time in the whole year that anyone, other than Mary and Joseph themselves, had acknowledged the divine origin of this baby.

Perhaps things settled down again over the next week; perhaps Bethlehem emptied again after the census was over and everyone went back home again, freeing up a room for the little family to stay at the inn while waiting for mother and baby to recover from the delivery and be strong enough to make the trip home to Nazareth.

And so it happened that they were still in Bethlehem when the time came to present the baby in the temple, at eight days old. This is how they happened to meet a godly old man called Simeon and an elderly prophetess called Anna. God had given Simeon a promise that he wouldn’t die until he had seen the Messiah; perhaps that’s why the old man had chosen to live in Bethlehem (because of Micah’s prophecy.) Simeon would not have been around if the baby had been born and presented in Nazareth. But he was in Bethlehem, and the Holy Spirit prompted him to go to the temple at exactly the right moment.

The words of Simeon and Anna must have been further encouragement for the young couple that this child of theirs truly was who they knew and believed him to be. But the words were not all positive: while Mary and Joseph were still full of wonder at the things Simeon had said, the old man turned to the young mother and began to warn her of trouble and criticism that lay in the future for her son. “And,” concluded Simeon, “A sword will pierce your own soul too!”

What a shock for this teenage mum. She knew, of course, that there would still be challenges ahead, but she probably wondered about the meaning of the old man’s words. At this point in time, no one knew yet that the Saviour was going to be rejected and going to suffer a horrible, painful death. (Isaiah had prophesied about a suffering servant, but at this point in history most people were still expecting the coming Messiah to be a mighty Deliverer, perhaps a military hero.) And so the call would continue to have a high cost for young Mary. At the time when she had to watch her firstborn suffer a  violent and traumatic death, she was a young widow, still only in her forties.

Yes, Christmas today is perceived to be all tinsel and glitter, but the true Christmas, the first Christmas, came at a much higher cost than all the partying and credit card debt. And I guess it’s the same with any “call” if we’re willing to step out and do what God asks of us: there will be countless blessings and encouragements along the way... but there will also always be a price to pay, a “cost” of some sort. 

Are we... am I... willing like Mary to carry the cost involved in seeing God’s kingdom come to the world we live in?

Camels on the roundabout

The Christmas lights are up in Alhaurín, including some on our many roundabouts. This one, at the entrance to the town, has a nativity scene and wise men on camels. I haven't seen it lit up yet, but this is what it looks like in the daytime.

A challenge completed… a new year ahead

After two whole years of writing Bible-reading curriculum for young people and families, my vision came to completion last week when I uploaded the Christmas booklets for Challenge 2014.

The vision for Challenge 2013 was birthed way back in 2012, when I discovered that little or no Bible reading helps were available for Spanish teenagers and pre-teens. For twelve months I produced a Spanish booklet and an English booklet every month - challenging young people to read their Bibles 13 times a month and to read from at least 20 books in the Bible. Around 300 young people in several different countries participated during 2013.

For 2014, I was asked if I could spread the challenge to the French speaking world, including West Africa. Challenge Twenty Fourteen invited young people and families to read their Bible at least 14 times a month, and my personal prayer goal was to challenge at least 2014 young people to read their Bible regularly this year. Every month, I've produced and uploaded the simple little booklets in three languages: French, Spanish and English.

Amazingly, my two year curriculum writing challenge has come to an end, and the December booklets are being downloaded all over the world this week. Young people who've been following all year will have read their Bibles at least 168 times during 2014 and will actually have read in at least 25 books of the Bible. If you would like to download and use the Christmas booklet to read your Bible over the next few weeks, you can get it in English by clicking right here.  The Spanish and French versions are available from the Bible Challenge 2014 blog page.

I won't be writing any new booklets for 2015, but will be updating this year's books and making them available in an undated format, according to different themes. The French, Spanish and English versions will be available at the webpages listed below. (You can click on the picture to enlarge it and read it more easily.) Translations into Ukrainian, Russian, Malagasy and perhaps German are also underway, and will be available from the new KKI international website in due course.

Many blessings to you and your family this Christmas. Why not begin to prepare your hearts by reading some of the accounts of the very first Christmas?

Up close and personal

Many people today have Facebook “friends” that they’ve never met in the flesh... or perhaps they only bumped into them once at some conference, or on holiday. Then there are the people we feel we “know” because we’ve followed their blog or read about them in the newspaper… but haven't met them in the flesh either.

Today is the first day of December, the beginning of Advent. Everyone knows what that is about; it’s about God Himself coming to earth, to be born as a human being. For thousands of years, God had been giving His written Word - through Moses and the Prophets. Being a God who speaks is so much a part of who He is, that one of the Bible authors uses “the Word” as a name for Jesus. (Read John chapter 1 verses 1 - 14) The Word is eternal; He was there in the very beginning and is the Creator of everything that exists. 

But even God, the ultimate communicator, knew that the written and spoken word wouldn't quite be enough for people to really “get” who He is and what He’s like. He knew that, at least once, people needed to experience Him as a real person, with skin on. And so one day, John tells us, "the Word became flesh." Jesus came as a human being and lived among us - with the ultimate goal of dying for our sins, but before that, to demonstrate up close and personal what God is really like. And in verse 14, John highlights three aspects of that:

1. Firstly, Jesus was amazing (“we saw His glory”)
2. Secondly, He was kind, loving and forgiving (“full of grace”)
3. And thirdly, He taught and demonstrated truth (“full of truth”)

In subsequent generations, we don’t have Jesus with us in the flesh, but we can still know Him up close and personal. Even though He is not physically here any more, we don’t need to limit our experience of Him to superficial one-liners, like Facebook or Twitter. We can still know Him “face to face.” Like it’s said of Moses (in Exodus 33:11 or Deuteronomy 34:10), the Lord spoke to him face to face, as a person speaks to a real (not a Facebook) friend.

Let’s make time to deepen our friendship with God during this Advent season.

Blessings in Barcelona...

Click on the photo to enlarge it

Our KKI conference in Barcelona was a great success, with a wonderful sense of God's presence among us. You can read some encouraging news about that in my December newsletter and my two recent prayer updates.
In the meanwhile, if you have good eyesight, you might manage to spot me in this photo that was taken one day at the conference.

Back in Barcelona

For the second time this autumn, I'm in  Barcelona. This time the city is the venue for our all-Europe King's Kids gathering, attended by KKI leaders, staff, friends and families from West, East, North and Central Europe. Around 200 people have been arriving today from places as diverse as Azerbaijan and Armenia, Belgium and Belarus, Ireland and Italy, Poland and Portugal….. In fact they're coming from more than twenty countries, and we'll be running the conference with translation into multiple languages. Over the past three days, we've had leadership meetings with the national coordinators of KKI youth and family ministries in those nations, and today the larger group arrives for the start of our regional conference. We're holding it in a big conference centre near the airport (yes, those pictures on the left are two sides of the same building) and we're trusting for a special sense of God's presence over these next days of worship, prayer and strategising, teaching, workshops, etc. Thanks for your prayers over these next four days.

From dying to dancing...

This weekend, in my daily Bible reading, I was struck by Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 4. It says, “I will build you up again.... and you will be rebuilt.” In its context, God is promising to rebuild the nation of Israel after a time of exile.... but the verse stood out to me this weekend because it brought back such a vivid memory of a day three years ago when my Dad was dying in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Although doctors said there was no hope he would ever come out of hospital alive, I felt that God was speaking through this verse in Jeremiah, promising that my Dad would not die, but would be built up again. 

I looked out my old journal and read what I’d written on 4th November 2011. From verse 13 in that same chapter of Jeremiah, I felt that God was saying our mourning and sadness would be turned into joy. I felt a sense of God’s assurance that we weren’t going to lose my Dad to death, but that He would still be alive fifteen months later to celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary. I guess Father God knew how important that assurance would be... because the very next day the doctors called us into a little room and broke the news that my Dad was fading and there seemed to be very little chance that he would survive much longer.

But he did survive... and fifteen months later he was alive to celebrate his Diamond Wedding. You can read the whole story here, in a blog post that I wrote in March 2013. Not only was Dad alive and well for that special anniversary, He even got up and danced an anniversary waltz with my Mum. See the video by clicking here.

And so that’s why Jeremiah 31:4 stood out to me in a new light this weekend. I read the second half of the verse too, and it says this, “I will build you up again, and you will be rebuilt... and you will go out to dance with the joyful.”

I turned the page to verse 13 and found the same thing there: “Then maidens will dance and be glad; young men and the old as well. I will turn their mourning into rejoicing.”

How weird! It sounded like a description of my parents’ sixtieth wedding celebration: young people and old people rejoicing together... and even the old man himself getting up to dance. How could I possibly have missed, back in 2011, that these two verses not only promised life and healing; they also promised a dance?

Of course, at the time, we’d been told that Dad would never walk again; perhaps would never even breathe again on his own. We weren’t particularly thinking about whether or not he would dance. But I saw God’s faithfulness, and His sense of humour, this weekend, on re-reading those “promise verses” and realising that they spoke about a time of dancing to come.

My Dad doesn’t do much dancing nowadays... but three years after his near-death experience, I’m pleased to report that He’s doing amazingly well and enjoys working in the garden. He’s going to celebrate his 86th birthday on the first of December.