Au revoir et à Dieu

'On the road again'

In various posts over the past few months I've made references to moving from Belgium, but I've not posted about it so here it is briefly for anyone who doesn't already know. I leave on 4th July. This period in Brussels was for a year, as a member of an IFES InterAction Team. I love Belgium, with all its quirkiness, friendliness, cultural mélange - with all its need of the gospel. I'm passionately committed to student ministry. And I also (in a different way to Belgium!) grew to love England and student ministry there during my time there. Here I could add only one more year of voluntary work. So it seemed wise to me, through God's direction, those advising me, and those resposible in the application process in UCCF, that I return to the Midlands to work for UCCF:thechristianunions as a CU Staff Worker from August. I'll be based in Birmingham and serving CUs down the M5 corridor. I'm really looking forward to serving students there in building them up in the gospel and encouraging and equipping them to share it on campus, and to growing through this myself. Very exciting, and a great privilege! I'll need loads of grace and wisdom from God. Moving does my head in (and helps me rely more on God) and this will be the 4th place I've lived in as many years, so I'm looking forward to settling there for 3-5 years, giving me more opportunity to get stuck in to the student ministry, church, make non-Christian friends, etc.

Au revoir

Plans are made with the wisdom of the time, and change as God wills. But for the present, it's only an au revoir I want to say to Belgium. No matter how good I am at packing in July, I think I'll leave some of me behind, and take some of Belgium with me which won't weigh in or show up in any security scanners for the Eurostar. Unless God gives me leave, this little country will continue to be in my prayers and plans.

A Dieu

The French only say adieu when they won't see the person again. Why? I object. I currently think of coming back to Belgium, but still the greatest thing I can do is regularly commit her à Dieu - to God.

So around here, expect more theological ramblings (I won't stop reading!), and don't expect me to stop mentioning Belgium. Perhaps, however, my reading list should change culturally from Proust and Rousseau to Douglas Coupland. Hmm.

A sleepy irony

Earlier this week I was preparing the seminar for IBS on the Lord's return.

"Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." [Mt 25.42]
"Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake - for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the cock crows, or in the morning - lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake."
"So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake
and be sober." [1 Thess 5.6]

I fell asleep.

Oops.

Time & tide

I would love to not care about time. I've tried to train myself in thinking of time as coming rather than going: lots to do? Time just keeps coming in which to do it. (A more African than Western European approach.) But this morning when I'd travelled 40min into town and then waited 40min outside a computer shop which was 'momentanément fermé', I was annoyed. The very kind and honest owner (and sole worker) of the computer shop may be Tunisian, but I'm not. I had work to do! I gave up and went back.

Belgian things that struck me while waiting (perhaps I'm supposed to learn from these!):

- I called his work mobile several times and by the time I gave up waiting, I'd been told by the voicemail in 3 different languages that he wasn't available to answer. But being multilinguistically unavailable is no better than being unilinguistically unavailable.

- A man stopped by and chatted with me, seems he knows the computer shop guy. Told me that I was lucky to have found this shop, as the guy is good - unlike most computer people who are fraudsters. This affirmed what I already knew of this computer guy, from previously. But an honest worker who isn't there was no better to me than a dishonest worker.

- Turned out (he asked me what my work is) that this guy stopping by is also an evangelical Christian. How wonderful, to meet another evangelical Christian where we are less than 1% of the population! What was his priority in conversation having just discovered that I was also an evangelical Christian? He asked me what church I went to, then, 'Is that Baptist?'. I said that although the churches of the 'Belgian Evangelical Mission' are united in the gospel rather than differences in baptism, as it happens, it is. 'The difference,' he immediately rejoined, 'between us, and you Baptists,'(!) 'is that we are more lively, have more music, and... joy!'

I laughed (joyfully, of course, and possibly even musically) and told him that styles vary from one church to another (& that as it happens in my church we sing a lot and I play the violin). 'The style of our response to the gospel isn't what's important!' I parried. 'It's the response itself!' 'God looks on the heart,' he agreed.

It just occured to me afterwards just how sad a thing it was, what had just happened. Christians are around 1% of the Belgian population, and that figure includes swathes of more liberal Protestants too. Yet he'd come across another one of that small number of not only self-confessing Christians, but Protestant Christians - and not just that, but evangelical Protestant Christians! And the one thing he thought to say on that occasion was to find/make a difference, pigeonhole, and assert how his church was better! How sad.

Would'yuh give me a lift like?

I'm looking for a lift back to Belfast from New Horizon on Monday 24th July, after hearing John Piper speak that evening - the trains don't run after 9pm. I have no idea if I've any Norn Irish readers apart from my lovely family who'll be away then, but if so, anyone know someone (in church maybe?) who's going and driving back that evening?

The Message of the Bible

Where did anyone get the idea that things 'wind down' towards the end?!


Day 1:
- Intro to the Bible,
- Creation (& character of God as seen in creation),
- Fall (and descent as far as Babel)

Day 2:
- Abraham to Exodus (inc. roles of law, priesthood & land)
- Sin, judgement, grace cycle in Kings & Judges (inc. role of king, prophet & judge)
- Life of Jesus (inc. fulfillment of OT roles)

Day 3:
- Jesus' death, resurrection & ascension
- In the meantime: the church, inaugurated escatology (now & not yet) etc.
- Jesus' return and final judgement (inc. challenge)

I've got the fall and the final session to do. Well, grace is seen most clearly against the darkest backgrounds! We'd all appreciate prayer for prep.

all of God

The gospel of God is that

"the love of God makes escape from
the wrath of God by sacrificing
the Son of God to vindicate
the righteousness of God because people have sinned and trampled
the glory of God."

- John Piper, in sermon on Heb 10.26-31

La musique d'une vie

I'm reviewing this novel for my French oral exam, and couldn't be bothered to think in English to say much about it here, but it's a fab book. Traces the way through a Moscow man's life as music traces its way, helping him to survive, preserving him from being fatefully homo sovieticus. I love reading French novels - where the language and literary skill is as important as the plot, character development, etc. Marvellous. Trouble is, I get too into it - this is my second time through, and I keep forgetting to take notes for the oral.

From near the end of the book, where, having been living for years under a stolen identity, he 'slips up' and reveals himself in music:

Quand il laissa retomber ses mains sur le clavier, on put croire encore au hasard d'une belle harmonie formée malgré lui. Mais une seconde après la musique déferla, emportant par sa puissance les doutes, les voix, les bruits, effaçant les mines hilares, les regards échangés, écartant les murs, dispersant la lumière du salon dans l'immensité nocturne du ciel derrière les fenêtres.
Il n'avait pas l'impression de jouer. Il avançait à travers une nuit, respirait sa transparence fragile faite d'infinies facettes de glace, de feuilles, de vent. Il ne portait plus aucun mail en lui. Pas de crainte de ce qui allait arriver. Pas d'angoisse ou de remords. La nuit à travers laquelle il avançait disait et ce mal, et cette peur, et l'irrémédiable brisure du passé mais tout cela était déjà devenu musique et n'existait que par sa beauté.

La musique d'une vie, Andreï Makine