The past couple of weeks have seen our immediate surroundings transformed into a picture-perfect landscape.  The traditional dreich weather characteristic to this time of the year was exchanged for what is normally associated with more northerly parts of the world.  I remember how for the past eleven years we have been in Scotland, every December, the media was trying to predict (read, hoped for) if we were going to have a ‘white Christmas’ or not and the disappointment which came year after year, when the weather refused to conform.

Because of this adversity, which we all had to face, we have also experienced an unprecedented sense of community.  4*4 owners knocking on their neighbors doors asking if they need a lift down to the shops, neighbors clearing each others driveways of snow, giving each others cars a push and phoning regularly to check that all is OK.  I reckon that our communities have seen more of each other during this difficult time, than throughout the rest of the year.

Notwithstanding the beauty and sense of togetherness, the frustration this recent snowfall caused drivers, parents, homeowners, and generally those who have to travel in order to get to their work, is felt during casual conversations as well as in the media and on the Internet.  Temperatures plunging to -16.5C (in our village) and below, significant amounts of snow to be shoveled away everyday, regular stocking of food and the general sense of uncertainty over plans and the possibility of traveling to and from work are only few of the many challenges this weather front has brought with it.

While this was going on around us, I used the time to flesh out our next summer’s youth mission project.  From the possibilities available to us, and at the risk of turning away potential volunteers, I could not dismiss another trip to Romania as the strongest possibility.  You see, all the projects we have undertaken previously involved building houses for poverty stricken families.  All of them lived in shacks (mud brick houses, with broken and fallen roofs), without double-glazing (or no windows at all), no electricity, no central heating of any sort (some were heating themselves by burning tyres), no running water (let alone hot water), outside long-drop toilets, and most of them were families with at least one child.  And if you can remember what it felt like to wake up to -5C during this past week, I wonder if you can imagine what it must be like to face winters when the temperature drops to -30C on a regular basis.  Every one of our projects placed poor families with children, in a watertight building with running water, electricity, double-glazing and insulation.

The needs around us are huge in comparison with our capabilities, and yet, I am hoping that we could:

• Spare a thought for those significantly poorer than ourselves, and put some money aside for the upcoming project to alleviate some of these stringent needs;
• Show our gratitude for the greatest mission project ever undertaken by the Son of God, Himself, who left His comfort behind so that He could give us a hope and a future, by volunteering ourselves to share this hope in a tangible way this coming summer;
• Pray that the Lord will use us to help those who constantly have to face the uncertainty of not knowing where their daily bread will come from.

May you be grateful for the small things in life e.g. the running water, the kettle, the supermarkets, the opportunity to work and the (many) clothes available in our wardrobes!

May you show your love in practice, to your nearest neighbors as well as those further away!

May you live to the fullest, what it means to be a child of God and love your brother and sister (near and far) as much as He loved you!

Love,

M

Anybody who ever attempted potty training a child will understand the frustration Josh experienced recently when we tried to potty train him without much success, largely due to our inconsistency.  More painful is the stagnation in his growth, this brings about, at least for a while (I know, I know: by the time he’ll go to school, he’ll have all his teeth, talk, walk and … do all the other things children his age do).

This week I read an article by Thom Rainer entitled Three Root Causes of Stalled Spiritual Transformation, which focused my mind on our own spiritual growth.  The author makes the point that in life, individual believers as well as churches stagnate \ stall in their growth and looks into the situation in Corinth for solutions.  Here are a couple of excerpts which I thought are interesting for my own life but, possibly, for the life of a church as well:

Many of us live, work, and worship in cities similar to Corinth. Sadly, the moral code of the city became the moral code for many of the Corinthian believers—and the same happens in our day the outcome being outlined in 1 Cor. 3:1-3. Our job is to remember the war within us (Rom 8:8-9), he argues.  Three possible causes are worth noticing:

1. Transformation Stalls Without Spiritual Exercise – Time in God’s Word is a necessity for our spiritual exercise. Church members must not fall into the trap of thinking that group study (Sabbath School) is enough. I think everyone should be involved in a small group Bible study and be exposed to strong Biblical preaching, but leaving out their personal time with the Scriptures is a quick path to stalling their spiritual transformation.  Exercise begins with prayer (Phil. 4:6). Remaining active in sharing the Gospel is also important in staving off the stall that often occurs. I believe that losing the sense of what the gospel can do in the lives of others has a powerful effect in our lives. The work of evangelism has the side effect of reinforcing its own power in the life of the one who does the sharing.  Serving others keeps us on track as a spiritual exercise leading people toward transformation. Service lifts our eyes from personal needs to those who are needy right around us or in a different culture.

2. Transformation Stalls Amidst Envy And Strife – Obsession over the lives of others brought about by envy and strife distracts from a focus upon the life of Christ.  Envy (we want someone else’s life more than we want to be like Christ) and jealousy (we want what others have more than we want Christ Himself) are extreme forms of selfishness.

3. Transformation Stalls When We Live Like The World – One of the greatest condemnations that can come into the life of a Christian is that he/she has settled for an ordinary life. In C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, he wrote: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (Lewis, C.S., The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 26)

He concludes the article with this remark: What if each morning, your church members prayed something like this: “Lord, I choose to be sold out to you today. Let me cross paths with those who need to see how your power transforms a life. Let me put others ahead of myself. Rejecting the feebleness of this world, help me to live like Christ.” Churches and individuals experiencing transformation all went through a cathartic moment in life. At some point in time, they looked around and decided that more was possible. Some came to this conclusion because of negative circumstances and others because of a great victory, but the principle was clear: a decision must be made.

May we choose actively today not to be satisfied with our situation in Christ, but strive for growth, painful as it may sometimes be!

May we remember the basic spiritual disciplines upon which we are dependent in our Christian life and practice them faithfully!

May Jesus be the beginning and end of every day!

Love,

M

• We needed a name which is not so hard to pronounce
• We looked for a name which can be spelt with ease, given that the wee lad’s surname will always require spelling (and people will still get it wrong)
• One of us wanted a name which can be shortened, and therefore, used as a form of endearment
• One of us insisted on a Biblical name which will allow the baby to identify with that Bible character, when they grow up!  Enough bad characters all around us!
• The meaning of the names should be positive – for when the baby will bother to check
• The initials of his names should not spell anything embarrassing
• All members of the family should be in some sort of agreement with the choice
• We wanted a ‘connection’ between Josh’s name and the baby’s – at least starting with letter ‘J’

Now, I hope you understand why it took us so long to decide!?  In fact, we registered the baby one day after the 21 legally allowed days and we still asked the kind registrar to leave the room in order to allow us time for the final decision.

Tiresome, but worth it!  Not that we managed to fulfill all criteria, or that we satisfied all the parties involved, but at least we made a decision!

I supppose, now you will understand why Melchisedech would never make it, nor would Judas, or Abelbethmaachah or Chepharhaammonai ….

And that is why the wee man shall be called Jason (Jays) David (Dave) Ghioalda.

The delivery went without any problems and Claudette is amazingly well.

We are BLESSED!

Thank you, Father, for your Presence with us throughout these past 12 hours! M

Picture 1

When last did you read these verses?

As Christians, we look forward to Jesus’ second coming and are ready to spend eternity with Him in a world that knows no more death, or pain, or tears.  That readiness involves two elements: the first one is knowing what is happening and the second is doing what we know we ought to do in order to be ready.

I understand all of that really well.  We’ve been told that baby no. 2 is due on the 26^th April.  I can tell you that we’ve been ready for him \ her for the past two weeks.  I really mean it:

• All the baby clothes are washed and packed away,
• All the prams \ cots \ baby carriers had their covers washed and are in full working order,
• All the necessary bags  (for C, for the new baby, for Josh) and medical files have been loaded in the car and carted around wherever we go for the past week.

They call it a nesting instinct – I call it readiness.  I mean, I even read the book (Ready, Steady, Baby!) outlining all the labor steps (pictures and all included) and now have nightmares relating to each one of them.  We brain washed J into saying ‘Dad take Mom to hopital to take the baby out’ and ‘Joshy stay home with Maia’.  We paid all the bills to give us at least a two-week break from worrying, insured and repaired the cars, stock-pilled food to last us through a natural disaster, cut the two-toned weed-infested grass and called out the boiler engineer, charged the batteries for the camera and even got me off the preaching plan for two weeks.  Call it nesting or paranoia, we ARE ready!  Though, I reckon that by the time the baby comes, we’ll realize how short we have fallen of being ready!

The question is, how long can we keep this level of readiness without slacking?  Two weeks?  A month?  A year?  Drop the comparison, as by then, the baby will be well overcooked.

2000 years ago Jesus said that He would come back.  Since then, generations of Christians have come and gone, holding on to the promises with righteous faith in spite of dire circumstances.  There is, however, a unprecedented and growing movement in our world today which splits our society in two: those who consider this attitude of God-wardness to be sheer stupidity, and those who realize that the time is coming for all those promises to be fulfilled.

Christians today are not alone – they stand in a prestigious line of faithful promise-holders!

• In Noah’s time, they called him insane for spending 120 years building a water-floating device large enough to swallow a zoo!  And yet, he lived!
• In Moses’ time the Egyptians laughed at the slaves getting ready to up and go, until the day arrived!  And yet, the Jews were the ones to get paid off to leave and gloriously crossed Red Sea, ate the bread of angels and heard the voice of God speaking to them!
• In Jesus’ time, they called the disciples a sect and cut them up in pieces and threw them in their amphitheaters to fight lions and gladiators!  And yet, they shall live to be with their Savior for eternity!

Christians today are not alone in going against the current – as long as we do not give up our hope (the only true hope there really is out there)!

May we apply ourselves just as conscientiously to being ready for Jesus’ second coming as parents do with their preparedness for the arrival of their babies.

May we never loose sight of the great promises we have that soon and very soon, we WILL see the King!

May we not stop serving, reading the Book, dreaming about it and being ready for that Great Day!

Love,

M

It appears that logic is the instrument we use to make sense of the world around us, and to a large extent, rightly so.  It has been more so, since the great Descartes, who declared the triumph of reason over anything else, in the 18^th Century.  What intrigues me is how we choose between reason and faith.

Take the example of the above-mentioned debate: creation vs. evolution.  Using reason and logic, one is able (to an extent) to make sense of the world around us.  And since it seems that the scientific theories stand to a certain level of logical scrutiny, this is the right course of action.

And yet I have a couple of observations that I’d like to make:

• Firstly, science itself is limited.  Actually, over the centuries (according to Thomas Kuhn), science has not developed in a linear and continuous way, but rather experienced periodic ‘paradigm shifts’ – a developmental bump: it used a certain set of theories and pushed them to their limits, while sidelining those things it could not explain – anomalies – until their weight forced the working paradigm to collapse and the scientists were forced to drop them and develop a new set of theories.  This in itself indicates that science is very much limited by its working theories and should be willing to accept that its understanding of the world is subject to those limitations, thus making space for newer and very possibly, different explanations.
• Secondly, religion is most times rational as well – so, reason is not wrong.  If it was not the case, we would be practicing witchcraft.  However, we are faced with rational conundrums just as science is.  Take the core Christian doctrine of Trinity: it is one of the fundamental understandings of our faith that God is One and yet it is three persons.  This three-in-one (not one in three, though) mystery defies any logic and yet finds its roots in the very heart of the Bible.  It is in such circumstances that religion has to make a choice.
• Thirdly, and following on from the previous comment – the real choice is between revelation and logic.  This is the true choice we have to make in a number of instances in our faith: the doctrine of the Trinity, the creation account, the heavenly sanctuary, the Incarnation itself, the Sabbath.  Because we are a community of faith, we are open to the fact that some things are known by revelation alone and look forward to the day when we shall understand it by reason too.

I would like to re-affirm those who use and exploit reason as far as reason allows itself to be pushed.  But at the same time, I would like to encourage all of us to remain open to the continuing revelation of God.  No one knows the mind of God and all of us ‘see through a glass darkly’ (1 Cor 13:12).  However, an understanding of ourselves and the world around us which starts with revelation (from above) is always going to be superior to a humanly (from below) constructed divinity.

Love,

M

When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value. Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content impressed the staff in the hospital.  I would like to humbly suggest that if we were to view each person through this perspective, we would draw that much closer to understanding how Jesus sees us!

What do you see nurses?  What do you see?
What are you thinking when you’re looking at me?
A cranky old man, not very wise,
Uncertain of habit, with faraway eyes?

Who dribbles his food and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice ‘I do wish you’d try!’
Who seems not to notice the things that you do.
And forever is losing a sock or a shoe?

Who, resisting or not lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding the long day to fill?
Is that what you’re thinking? Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse, you’re not looking at me.

I’ll tell you who I am as I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, as I eat at your will.
I’m a small child of Ten with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters who love one another

A young boy of Sixteen with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now a lover he’ll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows that I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide and a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty, my young now grown fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me to see I don’t mourn.
At Fifty, once more, babies play ’round my knee,
Again, we know children my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me; my wife is now dead.
I look at the future and I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing young of their own.
And I think of the years, and the love that I’ve known.

I’m now an old man and nature is cruel.
It’s jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles; grace and vigor, depart.
There is now a stone where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass, a young man still dwells,
And now and again my battered heart swells
I remember the joys, I remember the pain.
And I’m loving and living life over again.

I think of the years; all too few, gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people, open and see.
Not a cranky old man! Look closer: see ME!!

I pray that we may see others for who they are in God’s eyes!

I pray that we may not allow the outward appearances to skew our appreciation for people’s inner beauty!

May we love others, just as Jesus did!

Love,

M

What is the most influential picture of God that you have in your mind?  The Bible definitely paints a couple of possibilities on the canvas of our imaginations:

• A powerful force hovering over the dark earth (Gen 1:1)
• Magical and Powerful ‘God said… and it was so!’ (Gen 1, 2)
• The vengeful God – liberation from Egypt and possession of Canaan
• The personal God – every patriarch, prophet and (some) kings.
• The ever-present God – pillar of fire and cloud
• The meek and lowly God – Jesus in a manger
• The self-sacrificing God – Jesus on the cross
• The seeking God – Luke 15
• The coming God – Creation, Incarnation and 2^nd Coming
• The eternal God – the New Jerusalem and heaven

I believe that all of the above are justifiable images \ pictures of God and at times different scenes speak to us more than other times.  I wonder if this is not the case because they resonate with our current experiences.  This week, for example, I could not stop thinking about how God let His Son, Jesus, to come down to earth to be with us.  What it must have been like when they agreed that Jesus will leave heaven to risk His life and dwell on earth.

However, what prompted my thinking of this particular image of God, was our voluntarily choosing to send Joshua to nursery for what was meant to be a four hour trial on Tuesday afternoon.  Josh is a social child and surely enjoyed his time with the other children.  What was hard to bear, was how I felt about this experience.  For the entire two hours Claudette and I stayed out of sight, either on the stairs or in the car.  We hid behind outdoor buildings watching him interact with the other children and listened carefully for the slightest indication of a cry.   Needless to say, he didn’t even hint at being upset by the situation.  However, my heart was torn to pieces throughout the two hours he was there.  The staff kindly encouraged us to be on our way, promising that they will call if something was the matter.  They even took pictures of Josh playing with the toys provided, just to assure us that he was OK.  However, I could not leave the car park!  My child was there, among strangers when he could have been with us – that is why he only spent two hours instead of four!

Of course, this is just a slight parallel situation with the one mentioned earlier on, nevertheless, it makes me wonder what God must have felt like!  This is how someone pictured the decision Jesus took to become incarnate:

Soon I saw Him approach the exceeding bright light which enshrouded the Father. Said my accompanying angel, He is in close converse with His Father…  Three times He was shut in by the glorious light about the Father, and the third time He came from the Father, His person could be seen. His countenance was calm, free from all perplexity and doubt, and shone with benevolence and loveliness, such as words cannot express. He then made known to the angelic host that a way of escape had been made for lost man. He told them that He had been pleading with His Father, and had offered to give His life a ransom, to take the sentence of death upon Himself, that through Him man might find pardon; that through the merits of His blood, and obedience to the law of God, they could have the favor of God, and be brought into the beautiful garden, and eat of the fruit of the tree of life.  {EW 149.2}  God suffered with his Son. Man cannot comprehend the sacrifice made by the infinite God in giving up his Son to reproach, agony, and death. This is the evidence of the Father’s boundless love to man.  {5Red 20.1}

May you re-discover this week, the love of God for you!

1. Congenial Relationships – when a congenial relationship exists between an adult and a young person, the youth tends to adopt the values of the adult.

2. Modeling – by being a mentor (someone whose life, attitude, accomplishments, training will be an inspiration for the young person)

3. Gentle reasoning – by using discussion to explain the reasonableness of a moral teaching and appeal to the child’s internal resources for controlling and monitoring behavior

4. Personal witness – the verbal sharing of beliefs and values

5. Written word – this relies on the fact that throughout history people’s value orientation has been changed by what they read

6. A grace orientation – a focus on the love, promise and presence of Jesus Christ inspires youth to internalize the values and lifestyles associated with a Christian life. This attitude (as opposed to a restrictive orientation) makes all the difference even in the way in which we use the previous 5 suggestions.’

Question: what are you prepared to do in order to further encourage our children to love Jesus Christ and adopt a life style consistent with a graceful Christian?!

Promise: it will take time, commitment and courage! But it will be the greatest investment you would have ever made. Worth it!