The father's Love

The Father’s Love

This Sunday in the UK and many other countries, Father’s Day will be celebrated. For many it will be an opportunity to express appreciation for a good father, or an opportunity for some men to ponder that perhaps they didn’t do too bad a job.  Sadly for far too many it will not be a good day as their experience of a father was painful.  At times I have been aware of those who stayed away from church on Father's Day because of unhappy memories.

In my own life, Father's Day provides an opportunity for me to reflect on the love and support that our long-term foster son deserved, and still deserves as a middle aged man (we had no children of our own).  Could I have done better?  Wel, there is still a job to be done.  It also calls me to reflect on my own father, who came back from WW2 rather traumatised and finding it difficult to bond with my brother who had grown up without him, having been born just before my father was called up.

The impact of the war on my father’s health made him a rather angry man.  It was not until he experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, many years later, that he radically changed, and we developed a very special relationship.  His final words to me, as he lay dying in a hospital bed was, “Barry, commit me to the Lord.”  I took his hand and prayed with tears, giving thanks for all that God had done for him through his life, and praying for a deep sense of God’s presence and peace as he faced what were to be his last few hours.  He spoke once more, this time to my mother as he took her hand and told her all was well.

Most of us move into adult life realising how little we understood of all that our parents have done for us.  Being a parent brings joys but also many challenges.  Jesus understood this, as is evident in the parable of the prodigal son (or should that be the parable of the loving father?).

How hard it must have been for the father to accede to the younger son's persistent badgering to get his hands on that for which he considered he was entitled.  I suspect that, while he may have done some chores, he never really laboured with his father and older brother to grow the family’s wealth.  But he was ready to spend it on ‘having a good time’.  His father must have realised that it would be a terrible waste of hard earned money but, in accordance with the usual practise, one third of all that he had was turned into cash and he bade his sone farewell.

Clearly, he was not happy to see him go as Jesus informs us that the father saw his returning son even when he was some distance away,  I get the feeling that he searched that horizon every day.  But the alternative - forcing his son to stay home - would not have helped either of them.  Love is costly.  So it would have been in the heavens.  Have you ever stopped to think how the heavenly Father felt as he watched over his Son through 33 years of life on earth. How did he feel as his Son pleaded with him to take away that cup of suffering, knowing that he could not do so if we were to be saved.  While Jesus seems to have felt abandoned on the cross, I think that the hymn writer has got it wrong when he penned, “the Father turns his face away”.

And when the prodigal’s father saw his son coming home he ran to meet him. Words of regret and remorse were cut short by the father’s delight at his son’s return.  He called for shoes, a robe and a ring.  They were not a reward for coming back home; they were tokens of the father’s unconditional love. Doesn’t that make you want to weep and share in the hug that must have lasted a long time.

“This son of yours” was how the older son defined his brother.  Not much love there for the moment!  But there is no hint of anger at his elder son’s shortsightedness. Instead he reminds him that “all I have is yours”.  This father just keeps on giving.  This time giving words of loving assurance and gentle correction.

Our Online Bible Study on Tuesday evenings has been working through Ephesians.  Last week we came to chapter 3: 14-24.  Here, Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus to experience and engage with God’s love.  The language is extravagant, but he makes his request to a heavenly Father who has great riches of love and extraordinary generosity. Almost as a passing comment Paul states that to understand what family life is meant to be we need to understand the nature of the fatherhood of God. Now, that’s something to celebrate this Father’s Day.

Why not take 5 minutes to listen to this Graham Kendrick song.

Barry - 21 June 2020

Overwhelmed by Love

Overwhelmed By Love

Over recent weeks, and in various places, I have shared something of my experience of encountering the love of God, and the way that has changed my life.  These have been truly overwhelming experiences.  Sadly, the word ‘love’ is often devalued both by the over-sentimental use of the term and its use when ‘enjoy’ would be more appropriate.  For example, I enjoy chocolate very much.

My first encounter with the love of God took place on hastings Pier on the Saturday before Easter Sunday in 1963 where I attended a meeting where Sylvia Smith, a TES evangelist was speaking about the forgiveness Jesus showed from the cross.  I went into that meeting with a head knowledge of what the cross was about, and left with my first overwhelming sense of God’s love for me.  It was a real experience.  I felt that love.

My second encounter took place about 14 months later in a little AOG church where I was present as a visiting mission team member.  I had thought myself to be a truly dedicated Chrisrian and almost the epitome of Christian love.  I had thought that the person preaching that evening was preaching at me about an experience of the Holy Spirit I had not received, though I had sought it passionately for over a year.  While the preacher was an excellent evangelist, some aspects of his character were very unattractive.  So while I should have been listening, I rehearsed before God my colleagues hypocrisies and failings.

Suddenly I felt the Holy Spirit leave me, though I would have had difficulty in describing how I felt his presence before that moment.  I immediately knew the Spirit was grieved by my judgmental attitude (the very thing in my list of accusations against my colleague).  As I asked God to take away my bitterness and baptise me in his love, I received a powerful sensational experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit.  While I remained aware of my colleague’s failings, I found a very real sense of brotherly love towards him.  It was not a love inherent of myself; it was God’s love the Spirit had poured into my heart. (See Romans 5:5)

An overwhelming love for God

But wonderful as past experiences are, I continue to find myself feeling overwhelmed by this love.  I remain amazed at the love of God towards me.  First and foremost, the plan and price of my salvation.  I will probably never fully understand all that Jesus endured on the cross, and the emotional rollercoaster he went on through that time. But the love of God has for me, with all my failings also amazes me.  Despite my disappointing him he keeps loving me and proving that love with daily blessings.  I know that he loves me as I am, but too much to let me stay that way.  For all of that I love God.

Love of my friends and family

Doreen and I never had children, but we had the joy of fostering teenagers, all now middle aged.  Michael, who lived with us until he was 20, warmed my heart with his Father’s Day card and phone call in the past week. Regular phone calls and messages from my sister and brother, nephews and nieces, plus my sisters-inlaw make me aware of the treasure of love I have around me.  Added to this God has given me good neighbours and many good friends.  But all these are not here so that I feel loved.  They are here for me to love and seek to share with them God’s love

Love of myself

I have to say that I find some subjective comments about loving oneself hard to understand.  I am aware that I have failed many times and in many ways.  There are plenty of ‘if onlys’  but knowing how much I am loved by God despite my failings, enables me to accept and love myself.  I am his child, a co-heir with the Son.  I could not be valued more, and I revel in that knowledge.  I am not always loveable but I love the me that Jesus loves.

Love for the unlovely

There is a line in the hymn, “My song is Love unknown” that goes “Love for the loveless shown that they might lovely be.” There are many unlovely people in this world doing unlovely acts.  Sometimes people have done or said unlovely things to me.  But instead of feeling anger, God has enabled me to feel love.  That’s not normal and it never excuses bad behaviour, but I cannot deny the extraordinary love.  Do I sometimes feel hurt?  Yes, but there is always that response of love.  My late wife’s sad experience of Alzheimer’s Disease robbed her and me of the personality with whom I fell in love.  So, I asked the Lord to help me love the new person with whom I was living.  He did, and every day brought fresh challenges, but with them those overwhelming experiences of deep love.  Wonderfully, Doreen changed again at the end and showed very real love and affection to me and to her carers.

Love for this present world

I regret that early influences in my Christian life tended to present this world as a bad place, not to be loved. But, of course the “world” we are discouraged from is described as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” (1 John 2: 15-17)  This is not the created world, but the sinful realm.  When I was a young boy we used to sing a hymn in Sunday School that starts with the words, “The world looks very beautiful. and full of joy to me; The sun shines out in splendour on everything I see”  (Words : https://hymnary.org/text/the_world_looks_very_beautiful 

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuC-FINREgc)

The beauty of the created world is a real joy.  But I also love the beautiful aspects human beings bring to it.  Beautiful social interactions in real life or portrayed on the screen and in books, beautiful music, beautiful art - are all enjoyed and accompanied with laughter and tears of joy.

Love of scripture

I never tire from reading and exploring scripture.  Recent online Bible studies in Philippians and Ephesians has been like drinking fresh water from a pure stream.  There are vital truths tucked into the nuances in Paul’s letters that are fabulous.  I finish our online Bible studies excited and reinvigorated.  I just love God’s word - it is such an amazing book.  Furthermore, though written long ago, it speaks into my life every day..

These are just some of the aspects of the love that overwhelms me on a day by day basis. Paul writes about God’s love in a prayer in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus.  He prays that they might be able to grasp the immensity of this love, to know it experientially, and be filled with all the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3: 14-21)

I hope that my reflections on this overwhelming love for God and all he brings into my life, will deepen your own love for God and the beautiful things he brings into your life.  Why not take a moment to ponder this amazing love and revel in it.  I find it has a wonderful way of eclipsing those temporary experiences of physical pain and disappointments.

Stay safe and stay blessed.

Barry - 25 June 2020

Taking Reasonable Precaustions

Taking Reasonable Precautions

These days the words “reasonable precautions” is bound to make us think about the Covid-19 virus that has been taking away loved ones, generating fear, and rocking personal and national finances.  The important question is what is reasonable?  When the outbreak began I was still caring for my wife who had Alzheimer’s Disease.  At the beginning of March, a fall put her into hospital for three weeks, and by the end of that, the virus had moved to the top of the agenda.  Working with Adult Social Care and our main Carer, I managed to get her out of hospital and back home on a hospital bed with a lot of equipment.  I could see the dangers both in the hospital ward with five other very ill elderly patients, and the risks in Care Homes.  It certainly seemed reasonable - and indeed sensible - to get her home.

The past few days have seen an easing of the lockdown restrictions.  Unsurprisingly, it has also seen the outbreak of stupidity.  Some people have been acting as if there are no risks to life, like the 20 people clustered in a recreation field that I passed on my walk yesterday evening.  They were indulging in drinking alcohol and having “harmless fun”!  I gave them a wide berth, and emerged from the Recreation Ground just as the police were arriving. 

What would have been your reaction if it were you that had to walk past them?  I guess it might have been to think, “How can people be so stupid?”  But my reason for writing this piece is that there is an important spiritual principle, and the Bible also warns us to take reasonable precautions.  Here are two scripture references.

“Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1Thes. 5:22 KJV).  As a young Christian I was exhorted to guard my testimony.  “Even if it only looks bad”, I was told, “it could still ruin your witness.”  But this verse is not so much concerned about how things might appear to others.  Rather it is concerned about the risk to our own spiritual welfare.

As a teenager before God had got hold of me, another lad and I were chasing after some girls who had walked through some public gardens and were sitting in a bus shelter formed from a small concrete wartime air raid shelter. We planned to cross a flower bed to the top of the old shelter and lean over the top.  It sounded fun and in the fading light of day,  the apparently shallow layer of grass cuttings looked safe.  Unfortunately, the top of the shelter had been used for dumping grass cuttings for a long time.  Suddenly we were up to our waists in foul smelling slimy liquid.  

In this case it had the appearance of being safe and a lot of fun, but we should have taken a more careful look at where we were going.

The second passage of scripture that comes to mind is, “keep oneself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27 NKJV)  Some translations use the term unpolluted  but unspotted is the better translation in my opinion.  But this raises the question as to how the world could stain or put spots on our lives.

On one occasion when I was part of a team working in Devon we had been given excellent hospitality on a farm belonging to a Christian couple.  After a large Sunday dinner most of the team were relaxing in the living room, but I decided to follow the farmer who had gone off to milk his cows.

I found him in a herring-bone milking parlour.  The arrangement is that cows enter on either side into stalls separated by metal bars.  A chain is then hooked up behind their rear legs, presumably to make it safer for the person doing the milking.  As I arrived at one end of the parlour I could see the farmer trying to hook up a chain with one hand while having to hold onto something  with his other hand.  It was a long stretch and he was clearly in difficulty.  I immediately offered to help, but he knew my clothes were clean and was anxious they would get spoiled.

I assured him that I would walk carefully around the milk chambers and apparatus in the centre of the parlour.  So I wrapped my raincoat tightly around me with one hand, got to the chain and with finger and thumb carefully hooked the chain in place.  I then retreated the same way I had come in.  I managed to avoid brushing against anything dirty both times.

Then I looked down at the front of my raincoat and found it spotted all over with cow dung!  I had taken care, but I had gone into an unclean environment and suffered the consequences.  As  Christians, keeping unspotted from the world is not easy.  TV programmes, sexuallised commercials, the jokes and conversations of unbelievers around us, selfishness and greed, can all provide an unclean environment from which it is impossible to escape.  If we recognise the alien nature of this to holiness, we can then take reasonable precautions, and seek cleansing if we do get spotted.

Take care, and stay safe.

Barry

Rev Barry Osborne

CEO Rural Mission Solutions