I am alive

I am alive

The body that was sunk in mortal earth has been reborn.

Grabbed gently, by nail-scarred hands that made the world,

Reborn in water and Spirit; raised up joyfully,

To have a personal relationship with the God who made me.

Breathed into with a holy fire, that gave me power to speak,

To tell the world of one who made, then remade me,

Rescued from a million deaths and reborn into His immortal presence.

I sing, I breath, I live His life, my Saviour, friend, eternal lover

Ian Hempshall 5 6 2019  

Inspired by a sermon by Steve Daughtery 2 6 2019 https://trinitylewes.org/media/talks/

Resurrection joy.

Beethoven's " Ode to Joy" tune from his ninth Symphony must be one of the most joyful tunes in history, so I thought I would add my own lyrics.

Sing loud songs of exaltation, Christ is risen from the grave.

Gladly bring your adoration, Jesus Christ has power to save.

Satan’s power has been defeated,

Death and hell have lost their sting

Christ’s redeemed rise up together

Joyful alleluias bring.

Now there is no condemnation, Christ has taken all my sin

Gladly on the cross he bore it, fallen humankind to win

Now we have the living Spirit

Giving life to mortal flesh

Filling us with full assurance,

Clothed with Jesu’s righteousness

We are filled with Christ’s own Spirit, clothing us with risen power.

We shall walk the road with Jesus, day by day and hour by hour

We proclaim the gospel message:

"We are saved by Jesus’ love"

Bringing many souls to Jesus,

Linking earth with heaven above.
Tune: Ode to Joy, Beethoven

Water into wine

...here and now, amidst your daily  living,

Where you can taste and touch and feel and see,

The spring of love, the fount of all forgiving,

Flows when you need it, rich, abundant, free.

Better than waters of some outer weeping,

That leave you still with all your hidden sin,

Here is a vintage richer for the keeping

That works its transformation from within.

‘What price?’ you ask me, as we raise the glass,

‘It cost our Saviour everything he has.’

Malcolm Guite.Epiphany at Cana

...I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly John 10:10

This morning Mary and I were awoken bleary eyed by the alarm, Mary raised the blind to reveal a beautiful wonder; two planets between a sickle moon, shining resplendent against a sky of the clearest darkest blue.     

Such moments of revelation point us to the beauty and generosity of a God who not only created the world but enters into it, to bring an abundance of life and joy to all who want to enter into a loving relationship with a generous and all giving Saviour.

The first sign that John reveals in his gospel is the turning of water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

It is indeed a signpost to everything that follows in his gospel.

As Steve said in one of his recent sermons, if we think that Christianity is just about "going to heaven when we die" we have totally lost the plot of what living life as a Christian is all about.
Living the Christian life is entering into that wonderful, outrageously self-giving love that exists between the three persons of the Trinity. It is about living life on a totally new dimension in a love feast with an all giving, all loving Saviour.
The miracle of turning water into wine is a expression of the outrageous generosity of God's love, we are talking in the region of a thousand bottles of wine. This is all about a God who can never be out-given; there is no possibility of a reciprocal gift, only the humble acceptance of Grace given.

In the gospel of John there is no retelling of the final love feast that Jesus had with His disciples which we celebrate as the last supper, but the message is played out all through the gospel and is very present here at this first recorded celebration. A thousand bottles of wine do have a cost and it was the sacrificial love of the blood of Jesus, which was freely given for us, flowing freely, at the greatest price of all for Jesus.   

So how do enter into this wonderful life of abundance which Jesus freely offers? As we gaze in awe at what Jesus has done for us, our only response can be to fall into a reckless love affair with Him. A love affair which is life consuming but also totally life transforming, being a Christian is nothing about outward purification with the cold waters of religion but all about being totally intoxicated and transformed by a life lived in love with our beautiful Saviour.

Emmanuel: God with us.

Loves furnace in a little room.

Forget not Trinity holy and glorious

That heaven’s bright prince came down to bestow on us

His love, as babe, into Mary’s fair womb

For nine months, he who is angels lord

Was hidden, love’s furnace, in a little room

Humbler than all, who all adored.

A pure lamb, he stole down to earth

To free us from our sin so blind .

No city home will shield his birth

His mother a stable for bed must find;

There poorest of the poor she lay

Nor wine nor meat for hungers sting

In the rude confines of the cattle bay

Where God was born apostle’s king.

Cold and exile He did not scorn

In the donkey’s manger that holy morn.

Tadg Gaelach O Suilleabhain.

 Time zero, matter zero, energy zero, a darkness of nothing.

Yet there was everything, an eternal caring community of mutual worship and love.

A pent-up furnace of beauty and joyful creativity, waiting to pour themselves into the dark chaotic meaningless nothingness.

The loving shout of command went out. Light poured into darkness. Rainbow colours of joy creating and illuminating our dark world.

The dark nothingness hated the light, but the light was joyfully triumphant.

So, this light created every one of us but we did not have the loving enlightening knowledge of this light in our hearts, many people had had glimpses; many prophets right up to the time of John the Baptist, but we were still living in the oppressive darkness, unaware of the light.

So that furnace of creative love was hidden as a tiny embryo in Mary’s womb.  We carried on oblivious to the miracle of uncreated light, living and breathing amongst us. We were unaware of the person of the creator, living in the world that he had created.

He was living in our street, just down our road and we were too busy and preoccupied to notice He was there.

Quieten your heart this Christmas you may hear him knocking on your door wanting to come in, to your life, demanding your heart, reclaiming the life he created to fill it with peace love and light.

Listen carefully He is here, even now.

 John 1 paraphrase

I wish everyone reading this blog a very blessed, peaceful and Christ filled Christmas

King of Creation

O King of our desire whom we despise,

King of the nations never on the throne,

Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone,

Rejected joiner, making many one,

You have no form or beauty for our eyes,

A King who comes to give away his crown,

A King within our rags of flesh and bone.

We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,

For we ourselves are found in you alone.

Come to us now and find in us your throne,

O King within the child within the clay,

O hidden King who shapes us in the play

Of all creation. Shape us for the day

Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

Malcolm Guite.

Jesus can often seem a very inconvenient king. There are many more attractive idols which we can set in the throne of our heart. Sex, wealth and power are the usual culprits, together with the all pervasive worship of self.  However these glittering objects of desire prove very cruel masters in the end, as we are entrapped and destroyed by their fatal lure. 

Jesus is no glitzy king, no Hollywood superstar, he has no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief:and we hid as it were our faces from him;he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Yet this is a king who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, a king who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. A hidden king revealed to us this Christmas season as a helpless baby, a king ready to receive us, a king ready to be very close to us if we are prepared to make room for him by throwing out all lesser kings and making a humble home for Him in a contrite heart.

For if we make room for Him he is willing to reveal himself, as lord of all creation, the risen Lamb, to whom eventually every knee will bow and every tongue confess that, he is King of glory now.

   

The day spring from on high. Christ the light of the world

This night is the long night

When those who listen await His cry

This night is the eve of the great nativity

When those who are longing await His appearing

Wait with watchful heart.

Listen carefully through the stillness;

Listen; hear the telling of the waves upon the shore.

Listen hear the song of angels glorious-

Ere long it will be heard

That His foot has reached the earth;

News- that the glory has come!

Truly his salvation is near

For those who fear Him,

And His glory shall dwell in our land.

Watch and pray that the Lord shall come.

Those who are longing await His appearing.

Those who listen await His cry.

Watch….

Wait …..

Listen….

This night is the long night.

Author unknown.

the dayspring from on high hath visited us,
 to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1

It is little wonder that the peoples of the Northern hemisphere would have chosen Dec 25th as the day to celebrate the birth of Christ. Slowly they had watched the light disappearing from the land as the days grew shorter and the nights grew longer. In a time before artificial light the nights would have seemed long and dreary. So the coming of the Winter Solstice and the eager anticipation that in the coming weeks and months, the days would slowly lengthen  and Spring would again come; the time of resurrection and new birth.

Shepherds in the hills above Bethlehem would have eagerly awaited the dawn, the sight of the morning star heralding the end of their long night vigil. One night they experienced more than a bright dawn. They were frightened by the blinding glory of the very presence of seraphs of God heralding a new dawn for all of mankind. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. That uncreated light that spoke into the darkness and blazed forth a cosmos of light was coming as a small baby, to grow up into the man, who would take the whole world's sin upon His shoulders by His death on the cross. However the darkness could not extinguish the light so He blazed back into glorious life, to shine into the life of everyone who accepts Him into their life.

So once again this Christmas, as we light the Christmas candles, let us allow the light of Jesus to shine into our lives, to drive out anything that is dark and hidden . Then we can enter the New Year, enlightened and on fire with all that Jesus wants us to do, to shine His light of love into a sad dark world.

Release to the captives

O Clavis

Even in the darkness where I sit

And huddle in the midst of misery

I can remember freedom, but forget

That every lock must answer to a key,

That each dark clasp, sharp and intricate,

Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard,

Particular, exact and intimate,

The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.

I cry out for the key I threw away

That turned and over turned with certain touch

And with the lovely lifting of a latch

Opened my darkness to the light of day.

O come again, come quickly, set me free

Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

Malcolm Guite.

Each one of us to some extent is still in Captivity. Enslaved in our own private Egypts. The old habits, which refuse to die, enchain us, We may be stuck in the miry swamp of depression, fear or guilt; each one fearsome gaolers . Or perhaps in some more tangible prison like the citizens of Bethlehem walled up by a regime where fear has extinguished compassion.
So how does Jesus release the captive? Perhaps Thomas Lovelace had the answer.

Perhaps the greatest  freedom that Christ gives is the freedom to forgive. The freedom to embrace your enemy.
Christ held out His arms of love on the cross, to empower us to be able to embrace the stranger, the enemy, the unlovable other.