'Cheek to Cheek' Kind of Close

As a child do you remember having a favourite teddy or doll or a cuddly toy that you loved? I had a few. There was only one that stuck out for me. I remember a cuddly ‘Tigger’ that I had. I suppose of all my cuddly toys, this was possibly the most memorable. It was quite small and I used my own money to buy it from the post office. I can’t even have been that small because I remember going to buy it myself. It was £4.99. I loved that Tigger. It was the only toy I went to sleep with, it was with me when I was poorly and he was always there for a cuddle.

When my Grandma got sick I let her borrow him. She seemed so glad that I had lent him to her. She would hold him to her cheek when I was nearby to show how grateful she was and I think it brought her comfort. I was a teenager by this point, but I still felt like Grandma appreciated Tigger. I suppose it reminded her that she was loved. As she got more sick my brother bought her her own Tigger. It was a Christmas one, with reindeer ears. She gratefully received it and I was grateful to get my Tigger back! Again, she held this Tigger to her cheek and made us feel like she loved it. Really she loved the fact that my brother wanted to buy her something that would bring comfort to her in her darkest hours. When she died my brother kept the Tigger and I still have my Tigger at home with my girls.

Those Tiggers have been at many cheeks. They have been held and cuddled and squashed to our cheeks in hard times gone. There is something about holding something that close. There is nothing more precious than a loved one at your cheek. A newborn baby, just minutes old, as you bring them close to you to kiss them. Watching children hug a sibling or a close friend cheek to cheek. A lover holds you in a warm embrace and you dance cheek to cheek. And how about God? How about Jesus, the wounded God at our cheek? That’s something you don’t always feel everyday, but you can: He’s there.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”- Psalm 34:18

When your heart is broken it is hard to feel anything but pain, but it is in those moments that our wounded God is close by. Not just standing across the room from us; not just reaching out to us; not just with a hand on our shoulder but cheek to cheek kind of close; the kind of close that not even air could come between; the dancing kind of close. His wounds say, “Come into me. I’ve got you”.

In our times of brokenness there have been moments where I have not felt God at all. I knew that Jesus had not gone anywhere, but I just couldn’t feel him. There have also, however, been moments where I have been swept away by God, I have danced with God and been held cheek to cheek. Those moments are the most precious of my life.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted”, says the Psalms.

And He is.

His wounds have made such a way that we are able to encounter Him in this intimacy. He is the very air that we breathe and that air fuses our cheeks to His as He holds and comforts us. I needed to feel Him like that. And He knew.

You may find it strange that I am talking of God in such an intimate way, but that’s how I see it. He is the lover of my soul. He is mine and I am His (Song of Solomon 2:16).

If your heart is broken: He is close by.

If you need to be held: rest in His embrace.

If you want to dance: let Him sweep you off your feet.

So take your broken heart, your wounded, cracked and desperate heart and place it in the hands of Jesus. Imagine Him at your cheek and dance again to His whispers, to His melodies over you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J3h04W84cc

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted”. ‘Cheek to cheek’ kind of close.

Keeping it Real

Life isn’t perfect but it is what you make it.

The world keeps revolving whether you fail or not.

Get up and try again.

Don’t even try to lie to God, there’s no point.

Even if you fool others you can’t fool Him.

Tell the truth… always.

Be open but wise.

Be just but show mercy.

Don’t try to be anyone but yourself.

Make fair and honest decisions in business, it matters more than you think it does.

If you are happy be happy.

If you are sad be sad,

But don’t be so sad that you forget about joy.

Fight for joy like your life depended on it.

Cling to hope like your life depended on it.

Love people.

Show grace.

Change somebody’s life with a little act of kindness.

Praise God always… even if it’s hard… especially if it’s hard.

Don’t let people tell you ‘you can’t’ when God tells you ‘you can’.

Be noisy sometimes.

Be quiet sometimes… in fact make room for silence, you will find God there.

Learn from people.

Encourage. Protect. Enjoy.

Children are everything. Invest in them.

Move mountains.

Make waves.

Make a difference.

Don’t ‘fake worship’ there is no point.

Don’t fake humility there’s not much worse.

Be kind. Be courageous.

Tell ‘fear’ where to go!

Read the Bible, it is your sword and your food.

Fall in love with Jesus… over and over.

Breathe in God, He is your source.

Encounter the Holy Spirit,

Make room for Him everyday, don’t shut Him out.

Think on God often.

Stop talking sometimes and listen.

Stop being busy and rest.

Learn verses by heart.

Talk to friends and love your enemies.

Ask for help.

Go out of your way to help.

Don’t do nothing… at least try something.

Listen to music that inspires you and have fun with friends to re-energize you.

Host dinner parties.

Welcome people in.

Welcome change.

Keep growing.

Keep dreaming.

Keep ‘keeping it real’.

Don’t believe the devil’s lies.

He will always tell you what you are not: believe the opposite.

Most of all be you: The real you. Not who people think you are, who you really are. Not who you are trying to be… just who you are. Try to be better but stay you. You are perfect in your imperfections: A gift to this world. And you have been loved since before the world began. 

Interior Adoration

Sometimes this world is full of noise. Who can shout the loudest? Who can make their point the clearest? Who can prove that their version of faith is the right one? We over complicate the simplest of things and when it comes to faith we try to work out a formula for it that can sometimes be about getting God to do what we want Him to. The truth is, for me, that the more I see of Him the less I understand but the more I am in awe of the wonderful mystery of who He is.

I figure that we would be best to simplify things from time to time; to rest in His presence and learn to understand how to adore Him in the most intricate and everyday details of our lives. We need to understand how to practice the presence of God everyday, as we would practice medicine if we were a doctor or a nurse.

This concept is unpacked in the beautiful writings of Brother Lawrence in his book The Practice of the Presence of God. What this man saw is beyond me. His relationship with Jesus is simple but strong and so powerful.

This quote is one way to simplify how we adore God but at the same time take our relationship with Him into new depths where our ability to adore Him runs through our bloodstream, like our very breath adores Him and our minds are set to ‘adore’:

“A little lifting up of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, an interior act of adoration, even though made on the march and with sword in hand, are prayers which, short though they may be, are nevertheless very pleasing to God, and far from making a soldier lose his courage on the most dangerous occasions, bolster it. Let him then think of God as much as possible so that he will gradually become accustomed to this little but holy exercise; no one will notice it and nothing is easier than to repeat often during the day these little acts of interior adoration.”

When no one is looking: lift you heart to Him. When you are going about your day: remember Him, as you would a loved one that you are longing to get home to. These ‘interior acts of adoration’ will bring strength, depth and power to your relationship with God. If something is ‘interior’ it is inside of us, not visible to others. These interior acts are about our thoughts. The effects of these things in the long term might be visible to others, but that is not the point, the point is that the motive of these acts are not for others to see, they are just for Jesus.

I find it refreshing that he tackles the idea of being ‘on the march and sword in hand’ in this way. When we are in battle we tend to think that we need to be shouting out prayers, making noise to motivate us and promote faith. Sometimes this is true, but I am learning to understand faith as a quiet confidence that God is going before us. Our little thought prayers are just as powerful. If we can tame our thoughts so much that we don’t have to convince them with ‘shouting’, this quiet confidence brings real courage; deep courage that is already convinced of who God is rather than a feeling that, if we declare or shout things, God might be more likely to hear. God is not so far away that He can’t hear unless we shout. He is in fact so close that even our innermost thoughts can be heard by Him.

We must also be careful that we don’t mistake passion and noise. Sometimes passion is an ache that can’t be heard. Passion is powerful and compelling, driven by emotion and, in this case, love. Sometimes we love loudly and that is good, but we don’t have to. Adoration doesn’t have to be loud, it can be quiet and contemplative. It is a gaze, a moment of dwelling on our thoughts of Jesus. There is nothing superficial or manufactured about it. This passion is strong and deep.

Jeanne Guyon, a 17^th century catholic mystic, says this:

Some persons, when they hear the ‘prayer of quiet’, falsely imagine the soul remains stupid, dead and inactive. But unquestionably it acteth therein, more nobly and more extensively than it had ever done before, for God Himself is the Mover and the soul now acteth by the agency of His Spirit… instead then of promoting idleness, we promote the highest activity, by inculcating a total dependence on the Spirit of God as our moving principle, for in Him we live and move and have our being…Our activity should therefore consist in endeavouring to acquire and maintain such a state as may be most susceptible to divine impression, most flexible to all the operations of the eternal word.

In other words our quietness can promote the highest level of activity because God moves our soul into action by the power of His Spirit stirring our passion and this instills a total dependence on the Holy Spirit as we seek to adore Him. If we look to our inner health and enter the quiet we become ‘susceptible to divine impression’.

Oh that God would imprint His heart onto mine and that His word would shape me and change me!

Another thing that occurred to me is that if we think of ‘interior design’ it is all about what our rooms look like inside our homes or buildings. We think about fabrics, wall coverings, ornaments. We think about what things will work together to make our ‘interior’ look beautiful. Often it doesn’t take much to just add those touches to a room that make it work. Maybe we need to add some touches to our interior: those thoughts of Jesus, thought- prayers of thanksgiving, those internal gazes and moments of remembering Him in the quiet. Just to think on Him for a few seconds is making our ‘interior’ better. When we think on Him we encounter Him and he touches us and leaves His ‘divine impression’.

Brother Lawrence says this:

“He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.”

The fact is God is not making demands on our time. He deserves our attention but it’s our choice to adore Him, He is not forcing us. And as we choose to gaze on Him, we can’t help but fall in love with Him. When we thank Him for our food at meal times He is pleased by it and, if we think in human terms, He feels our love from even ‘the least little remembrance’.

So every day remember Him. Remember Him until your thoughts are quietly dominated by your adoration of Him. Think on Him often. As you go to work remember Him, in your lunch break remember Him and gaze on Him from time to time. No-one but God will know, and how good it is to please Him.

What beauty is noticed, what courage is given, what rest is found in our little acts of interior adoration.

The Laughing Man

The book of James is straight talking. I love it because I’m pretty straight talking too but I have to confess that I find myself so challenged by the things that it says. Sometimes so challenged that I skip over the details because it is such a challenge that it seems out of reach or even irrelevant.

It is not irrelevant.

It just feels that way because I am not spiritually mature enough to understand it. Take James 1:2-4,the very opening verses of the book. I have looked at these verses before in Ouch! That was uncomfortable but the uncomfortable-ness of these words still remains. I haven’t got it yet!

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind consider it joy because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have it’s full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

Consider it joy?!!! JOY?!! Some translations actually say ‘pure joy’.

Everything that is human about me cannot align myself with this verse but everything that is spiritual about me desperately wants that to become my natural (super-natural perhaps!) reaction to it. It might seem far off but it is a challenge to me to get to a place where this is true. It is the word of God. I believe it is true so I want to get there.

We can look at people’s situations and see tragedy around us and think ‘How will they ever laugh again?’ The truth is, it is their choice whether they laugh again. Joy is our choice, no matter what our circumstances are. There a very few people I know who’s first reaction to a trial is to ‘consider it joy’. I do know a handful of people who have worked hard to feel that way, but human nature does the complete opposite of that. I am not saying don’t feel pain, you must… you must be honest about your feelings but what if, in the midst of tragedy, you are able to chose joy. There is freedom in it and a life of joy is what we were intended for.

Give yourself permission to live a life of joy.

If I go back to thinking about those people that I know who are an example of understanding pure joy in trial, the only perfect example is Jesus. Kay Warren in her book ‘Chose joy, because happiness isn’t enough’ (which is so brilliant and I highly recommend) opened up something to me that in all my life I had not dwelt upon. It was the idea of Jesus being a man of joy.  The Bible tells us in Isaiah’s prophecy that Jesus was a man of suffering or sorrows but she opened up to me the man of joy.

How Jesus has been depicted in art throughout history has had so much influence on the way that we view him. I don’t know about you but until I watched The Passion of the Christ I did not understand the suffering of the cross. Having seen paintings and films where Jesus is shown on the cross with maybe one scratch on him, with his face in tact but showing a solemn expression, wearing a covering and a crown that looked uncomfortable but gently resting on his head, I saw just that… I thought the cross was uncomfortable. I thought I was grateful that Jesus had done that for me. When I saw The Passion of the Christ I was traumatised. I was so affected by the horror that as I walked out of the cinema everything seemed so insignificant that I accidentally stepped out in front of a car. I was so moved by that portrayal of Jesus that the whole world looked different.  I can’t bear to imagine the real scene. In fact as a write my eyes well up and my heart aches that He suffered unimaginable horror for me. I am more grateful having had a deeper insight and having seen another person’s interpretation of that day, and my understanding is enriched because of it.

Over the years people have read the Bible and interpreted what they have read through paintings, art, poetry and film. And these observations have subconsciously built us a picture of who Jesus was and what he did. We can do nothing but use our imaginations.

He was a man of sorrows and suffering but sometimes, because of how heavily we are influenced by the things around us, we struggle to see him as a man of joy.

Kay opens up in her book the verses that give us evidence that Jesus too was a man of joy. He knew he was sent here to die but yet he was someone who people wanted to be around and follow around. If you knew that your purpose on earth was to be mocked and scorned and brutally murdered what would your face look like everyday? Mine would not be one that drew people to me. Most people would steer clear of me because I would’ve been such a negative influence, but not Jesus. People were drawn to Jesus; they wanted to be around him. He changed the atmosphere and brought light with him. I know that my countenance sometimes does not lift an atmosphere. You could argue that there are times when it is hard just to get up in the morning never mind take joy with you wherever you go. That is true, and I am not for one minute saying that you are not allowed to feel sad or be in pain…  of course you are, but there are times too when we must look at the life of Jesus and say to ourselves, if he can do it then I am going to try too.

I had an experience recently where I was in church. I was worshipping and singing to Jesus. I felt I could enter in to his presence. My heart had been very heavy, but in His presence it was lighter. I, however, decided that I didn’t want to feel the lightness, I wanted to feel the heaviness. so I entered His presence feeling a bit sorry for myself. I chose not to show my true reaction to the presence of God and God told me off! He said ‘How dare you enter my presence like that?’

In that moment I saw a glimpse of the holiness of God and I felt a conviction in my spirit that I will remember for the rest of my life. I feared Him and I had to say sorry. When my spirit acknowledged my sin I then felt the love of the Father, whose grace stood me up again. There is great joy in God’s presence and there was great joy in the presence of Jesus while he was here on earth too.

Jesus was and is a man who smiles and laughs. I believe He smiles over us. 1 Chronicles 16:27 tells us that ‘Splendour and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his dwelling place.’ If joy is in God’s dwelling place you can be sure that, not only is there joy in His presence, but that this was true of Jesus while he lived on the earth. My home is my dwelling place and it has seen sorrow but it is full of joy. The two things are inseparable. Where there is sorrow you cannot help but acknowledge joy in things around you and where there is joy you cannot help but acknowledge the sorrow in this world. Kay Warren describes them as train tracks that run parallel to earth other, when you are on one you cannot help but see the other.

Children see joy better than we do and they experience it more than we do. Children see people who exude joy and want to be around them. The Bible tells us in Mark 10 that people were bringing children to Jesus that he would bless them and the disciples tried to stop them. But Jesus said ‘let the little children come to me; do not stop them’ and he took them in his arms and blessed them. Children are often a good judge of character. If Jesus were forlorn and solemn would they have wanted to be with him? We must remember that Jesus is also our father and, as a Dad, children would bring so much joy to him.

Let’s think back to art and how our view is affected by the things that we see. How have we seen Jesus with children in our imagination? Are we influenced by images like this:

We see a serene or somber Jesus blessing the children. Is this how we see this moment as told in the gospels?

Or do we see this:

Until now I have never seen Jesus like this. Not even in my imagination. Look at the face of the boy on Jesus’ lap. That is joy. This is the joy of a father blessing his children.

This is Jesus, the laughing man.

This is a man who endured sorrow and suffering but this too is a man who understands joy. He is our role model for the verse in James. He understood what it meant to be lacking in nothing while he was here on earth.

So today, however you feel, whatever your situation, chose joy. That doesn’t mean your pain is any less but it will help you to endure it. We are His children. This mighty man, this man who suffered more than we will ever understand, this man whose faith was tested, this man who laughed and brought light to the earth.

And in your time of trials consider it joy to run into the arms of Jesus, the man of sorrow and of joy and ask him to help you endure until you are complete.