Category: Blessings

I’m currently reading “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Philip Yancey. It’s inspired me to rethink about Jesus the man.

I have never connected with the pictures of Jesus that a fluffy white haired, white bearded and wearing white. Likewise the Jesus that is clean shaven with children sat on his knee looking all sweetness and smiles. All these pictures suggest to me is that Jesus isn’t real.

I believe Jesus was real and I have found it a real blessing to try and think about some of the things that are common to us men and hence were also part of Jesus.

As Jesus was a carpenter did He get nerdy about the latest a greatest tool or was He more of a heritage man who revelled in restoring something old? These tendencies are common to a huge number of men, just look around at the number of gadget magazines and vintage clubs. I’m sure these things are not unique to our age but reflect something deep about manhood. If there had been a Screwfix catalogue I’m suspect He would have subscribed.

While He was in the carpentry shop how did Jesus react when something went wrong? Firstly, I am sure that Jesus did not produce perfect furniture, making perfect furniture takes too long and the family needed feeding. Secondly, I’m sure things went wrong. Jesus was working with imperfect tools and imperfect materials so I’m sure that He hit a piece of wood too hard and split it from time to time. If that was the case, where did Jesus have a scar. I can’t imagine anyone working as a carpenter and not having some scar or other it’s inherent in the job.

How goal oriented was He? All men are oriented to the goal whatever the goal is. We constantly set ourselves new goals in order to reach them. I’m sure Jesus was the same, but I’m intrigued what the goals would have been. Did He seek out adventure?

I often wish the Gospels included hints as to the tone of Jesus voice when He was talking. Was the Sermon on the Mount said in a constant monotone or was there places when He was shouting, was there places when He was talking more gently. When was that, which bits was He most passionate about?

So why is this a blessing to me – because it makes Jesus more real and in so doing brings him closer.

I seem to spend a good deal of my life in a state that can best be described as hanging on. Sometimes I’m hanging-on for the ride, other times I’m hanging-on with gritted determination desperate to not let go.

Climbing Helvellyn bought this home to me again, in a couple of ways.

I am no longer a mountain goat, I’m not sure I ever was, climbing is now something that requires a good deal of determination. Jonathan, on the other hand is a slim young man who wasn’t out of breath the whole way up.

For much of the initial climb I was talking to myself; “Just hang in on it will get better soon”; “One more step and then rest”; “Four steps up is another metre climbed, and there’s only 800 of them”. I was hanging-on determined to reach the summit even though my body was telling me the opposite.

There are a number of routes up Helvellyn. Striding Edge is the famous one because it is a long sharp ridge with steep falls on either side. In places they are sheer cliffs. for most of it the path is only just wide enough to walk on, and it’s all rocks. Part way along the ridge, with the mountain goat in front, I stepped from one set of rocks to another. Unfortunately my back foot became wedged in between the two rocks where I had placed it on my previous step. With my body weight moving forward and my foot staying put I lost balance and fell over. Because my step was slightly sideways I didn’t fall flat onto the path I fell off the path onto a steep hillside which didn’t stop until Red Tarn some 200 metres below. it was one of those slow motion moments. I was no longer thinking about the aches of walking up I was thinking “it doesn’t matter how much it hurts just hang-on to something”. As it happens I fell onto some rocky grass, clung on and stopped. Jonathan had stopped to talk to a man making his way down and they both came over to make sure I was OK.

I now have a scratch on my face, a graze on my hand and a bruise on my knee but apart from that I am completely fine. A few metres either way and I would have fallen onto some very sharp rocks. If I’d been moving any faster I could so easily have ended up a lot closer to Red Tarn, and a lot more damaged. If I had fallen the other side I would have fallen straight down a cliff.

The top, as with all mountain peaks, was a time of elation. Restrained English elation, but elation all the same. Sometimes hanging-on is all you can do, sometimes hanging-on is all you need to do.

That is why we have a great High Priest who has gone to heaven, Jesus the Son of God. Let us cling to him and never stop trusting him. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same temptations we do, yet he did not sin.

Hebrews 4:14–15

All of my blessings posts seem to be prompted by something I am reading or by an event that happens in my life. This one is now exception.

The title of this post – “views that will last forever” – is something that Jonathan said after a special day for the two of us and it really struck me.

This last week has been a holiday week for the Chastney family, one that we spent catching up on family primarily. First to Graham’s Mum and Dad’s and then on to Sue’s Mum and Dad’s. Sue’s Mum and Dad live in the beautiful Lake District town of Keswick and while there I try to take in some of the countryside. This time I felt a real need to break out of the mold a bit and do something a bit more dramatic. I didn’t really want to do this alone so pulled Jonathan into the plan. And the plan was this; whatever the weather we would climb a mountain, preferably one of the big ones. My personal dream was that we would climb Helvellyn and do it up Striding Edge because I had never been up that side.

The day of the climb came and in true Lake District weather fashion it was raining, but we had made our plan and we weren’t going to change now.

There are two thing I have learnt about Lake District weather. The first is that you should always stick with your plan because it can change in minutes. The second is that Sue’s Mum is rarely wrong and she was expecting it to brighten up.

So of we go around to Glenridding and up Striding Edge. I’ll probably talk more about that another time because there are all sorts of things that come from it. But so as not to give too much away; we made it up Striding Edge and down Swirral Edge. As a taster for a future post; I have a bruise on my knee and a scratch on my face as war wounds.

Just as we are heading back into Glenridding I say to Jonathan, “Well it’s a good job we didn’t let the weather stop us isn’t it”.

“Yes it is because I would have missed those views that will last forever”.

Anyone who has ever achieved something will know what he means.

When was the last time you created some “views that will last forever”?

Yesterday I left the house on one of my regular walks; down the road, right onto the path into the woods, down the hill and along onto the lane at the back. Just as I stepped through the kissing-gate a Kestrel burst out of the long grass opposite. I had obviously disturbed its breakfast, which it carried off with it. Swooping majestically into a nearby tree.

This morning when driving back from the morning prayer meeting at church I pulled into our road and turned the corner. There in front of me a Grey Heron was stood majestically silhouette on the roof of the house in-front of me.

There isn’t a single square inch of land in England, where I live, that hasn’t been touched by man in some way or another. There isn’t a place that you could go to that is truly wild. I doubt that there is anywhere you could go where you couldn’t see a building, a road or a wall. There are very few places where you can go and not hear the sound of vehicles. But the wild isn’t happy with that situation and is just waiting for man to turn his back before it begins reclaiming what it has lost.

The Kestrel and the Heron are symbols of that reality which touched me, and enabled me to touch the wild.

People seem to react in different ways to the wild. Some people have to dive in and get closer, others seem to spend their entire life getting as far away from it as possible. I’m closer to the ‘dive in’ side than to the ‘getting as far away’ side.

I live in a suburb and go to work for an employer in a large organisation. It would be easy for my life to be relatively safe, but not safe in the good sense of the word, safe in the dull, predictable, monotonous sense. Touching the wild reminds me of past adventures and challenges me to new ones. These little glimpses of the wild are like seeing a gate to a secret garden. They are like going through the wardrobe. They are calling me out of the safe and into the wild.

The wild isn’t neat and tidy, it’s wild. The wild isn’t sure and reliable, it’s wild. The wild is out there, not in here. The wild is beautiful. The wild is magnificent.

When was the last time you reached through to the wild. I’m not talking about reaching through to nature, I’m talking of reaching through to the wild and the wild can be found everywhere, especially in peoples lives.

Today is one of those Lancashire days when you need to be constantly changing your clothes. The clouds are skipping across the sky bring rain, then sun, then hale, then sun, then thunder, then rain and then again sun.

I actually like days like this, they make me feel strangely closer to nature than days of full on sunshine.

The other week we bought some flowers to go in the garden but hadn’t had chance to put them out. So in a few minutes in between the showers I put them out. It makes a lovely difference to the way the garden looks.

At 6 o’clock last night while driving home from a conference last night I was well and truly into a routine. I have BBC Radio 4 on and waiting for the 6 O’Clock News to start, and then it happened.

I have heard it a thousand times before.

It’s always the same.

It isn’t even that remarkable.

The news started in the same way as it always has, and hopefully always will. It started with the chiming of Big Ben.

The chime is one of the few things I miss about the evening commute, perhaps that’s why I like it, because it does symbolise the evening commute. But I think that it’s perhaps more than that. It also symbolises that the world has survived through another day. It’s reassuringly dependable.

When I started this series I thought it would start running out of interest quite quickly, not because there wasn’t things to be grateful for but that each topic would get more and more cryptic. But then I had this idea about sharing and was surprised that I hadn’t already written something, amazing, 55 posts and not one about sharing.

Sharing is a sub-topic in many of my posts, but it’s never been the headline.

I often start with a dictionary definition of the thing I’m talking about, so as not to disappoint:

sharing

adj 1: sharing equally with another or others 2: unselfishly willing to share with others; “a warm and sharing friend” n 1: having in common; “the sharing of electrons creates molecules” 2: using or enjoying something jointly with others 3: sharing thoughts and feelings 4: a distribution in shares

There are so many parts of this that I love. I love the words “equally” and “unselfishly”.

As humans we are wired to interact with each other. Much of our art and most of our music is focussed on these interactions. But these interactions only truly work when they are true interactions when people share “thoughts and feelings” and they “enjoy something jointly with others”.

One of the most repeated jokes on the Internet goes something like this:

A young man saw an elderly couple sitting down to lunch at McDonald’s. He noticed that they had ordered one meal, and an extra drink cup. As he watched, the gentleman carefully divided the hamburger in half, then counted out the fries, one for him, one for her, until each had half of them. Then he poured half of the soft drink into the extra cup and set that in front of his wife. The old man then began to eat, and his wife sat watching, with her hands folded in her lap.

The young man decided to ask if they would allow him to purchase another meal for them so that they didn’t have to split theirs.

The old gentleman said, “Oh no. We’ve been married 50 years, and everything has always been and will always be shared, 50/50.”

The young man then asked the wife if she was going to eat, and she replied, “It’s his turn with the teeth.”

Why does this work? The main reason is because we here about the old couple and immediately something inside warms to the way that they are so bonded together that they share everything.

One of my favourite books in the Bible has always been the book of Ecclesiastes , it’s probably the book I quote from the most. Ecclesiastes is the journal of a man who decides that he is going to take in life and experience it all. He is determined not to rule anything out-of-bounds. He is determined to live completely out of the box. He tries all the pleasures that life has to give; he build great riches; he works and strives; be gains great wisdom. Right in the middle of talking about toil and work he says this:

“I turned my head and saw yet another wisp of smoke on its way to nothingness: a solitary person, completely alone–no children, no family, no friends–yet working obsessively late into the night, compulsively greedy for more and more, never bothering to ask, “Why am I working like a dog, never having any fun? And who cares?” More smoke. A bad business.

It’s better to have a partner than go it alone. Share the work, share the wealth.

And if one falls down, the other helps, but if there’s no one to help, tough!

Two in a bed warm each other. Alone, you shiver all night.

By yourself you’re unprotected. With a friend you can face the worst.

Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped.”

Ecclesiastes 4:7–12

How many people in our current culture does the first part describe “completely alone–no children, no family, no friends–yet working obsessively late into the night”.  Did you know that divorced people are better paid than married people because they tend to work obsessively, but the writer from Ecclesiastes says that it’s a “way to nothingness”.

The contrast is stark – greed or sharing, getting or partnering.

Avoid nothingness practice sharing.

The other day someone pointed out to me how privileged I am when it comes to sharing. They did this by pointing out how many people I have who I could call upon to help me in a time of need; people who are willing to share what they have with me and my family.

On Saturday Sue was at a Ladies Conference all day. Ladies Conferences are one of those things that men are intrigued by, but would never dare to venture into. They are a bit like Toddler groups. Sue used to run one and I called in a couple of times, since then I have had a huge amount of respect for men who are house-husbands and go to these things every week. Imagine sitting there in that alien culture as an outsider, because I don’t think men can ever truly be members of the female culture.

Sorry, just went off on a sidetrack there, anyway Sue was away for the day so I phoned up my very good friend Dave and we decided to spend some time together and go and enjoy the Lakes for the day. We shared the day. It was great. Emily joined us, but Jonathan was off sharing the day with the a few of his friends. For a brief time we shared time, we shared the same air, we shared our opinions, we shared our feelings, we shared our lives.

How did I get to be in the privileged position? There are two answers to that. The first answer is common to everyone. Everyone who shares has people who will share with them; it’s the way it works. The second part of the answer is that I am a member of an extended family, I’m not talking here about my blood family, but about my church family. No member of Sue’s or my blood family live locally, but we still have our church family around us and we thank God for them.

Is anyone’s life ever “a bed of roses”, I don’t think mine ever is. Having said that, I’m not sure I understand the phrase, it’s one that I have used all my life, but I’m not sure I would ever really want to lie down on a load of roses, especially ones with the thorns still attached. As the phrase comes from a poem I’m assuming they are talking about something more akin to a bed of rose petals, but perhaps I’ve completely missed the point.

Anyway, life isn’t “a bed of roses” it has its moments, but normally life has its highs and lows. In the middle of a high or a low seeing a smile is fantastic thing.

There’s an Irish saying which goes like this: “It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears.”

When I was little someone once said something similar to this to me: “A smile is worth a million pounds, but costs nothing”. It’s stuck with me through the years.

Job said this, speaking from a place of desperation and commenting on how people’s attitude to him had changed: “When I smiled at them, they could hardly believe it; their faces lit up, their troubles took wing!”

There are thousands of quotations about a smile. The last one from me for now comes from William Shakespeare’s Othello: “The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.”

A smile is clearly a very powerful thing. They cost nothing. There is no limit on their use. The government doesn’t tax their use. They don’t require any special training or even a weekly work-out. Smiling takes some effort on our behalf, but not that much.

Smiles are also infectious, how many times do we give someone a smile and not get one in return? How many of you looked at the picture of Emily smiling in the snow and didn’t smile yourself?

Go on give a smile today and make someone’s day.

Knowing that you have made someone smile is a double blessing. I’ve recently had a number of people contact me saying how Jimmy and Grandad have made them smile. These comments come from all sorts of people in all sorts of places around the globe and that just makes the feeling better.

At the end of a business meeting someone smiled at me an thanked me for the smiles that these little wooden dolls had given them. It was a bit of a surreal experience where my work life and my private life intersected in a way I hadn’t expected.

Get over there and have a look, it will make you smile.

As we look at a horizon we are looking at the end of the visible earth and the beginning of the visible sky. This isn’t the beginning of sky it’s just the beginning of our view of it.

If we drop our eyes from the horizon we see all the high-points of the lands laid out before us. Lots of different layers; trees, houses, hills, mountains even, all the things that stand above everything else between you and them. As we drop our eyes the number of layers that we see reduces until all we see is the layer we are standing on.

If we lift our eyes from the horizon we get a completely different experience. At any point as we lift our eyes we see another new set of layers and strata. It doesn’t matter how high we lift our eyes we still see a full set of strata. Sometimes the strata that we can see are a long, long, long way away. Sometimes the strata are very close indeed. The strata that we see are never the same there is always something new going on up there, especially in the UK where the weather changes by the minute, not by the season.

Just before we went on our skiing holiday it was so mild that Sue and I sat out in the garden and had lunch, a very surreal experience for February in Lancashire. We were already looking forward to our holiday and we sat there and watched the sky being criss-crossed by plane after plane. Some were obviously huge jumbos, others smaller. Each one housing people on a journey, each journey a story. We sat and imagined what those stories might be and looked forward to the story that our own planned flight would soon be creating. Every now and then a micro-light would fly over making us realise how high up those planes were and how far we could see.

Lyndon Johnson said “A clear stream, a long horizon, a forest wilderness and open sky—these are man’s most ancient possessions. In a modern society, they are his most priceless.”

While we were on holiday we experienced the sky in many different ways. On the first couple of days it was blue and there was no wind. Para-gliders took people on trips around the mountain and again I imagined what it would be like to float up there with them. On the third day the sky changed, in the morning we again had glorious sunshine, by the evening though the sky had come down to meet us bringing snow. The two pictures are taken from the hotel in the morning as we left to ski and in the evening on our return. Our close encounter with the sky continued for another day, but was followed by another different sky with fluffy clouds but not above us, below us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes”.

The sky is something we live under every day, we can ignore it if we choose, we can even choose to hide away from it in our houses, but for me the sky keeps calling. But what is is calling?

King David wrote these words in Psalm 19:

The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. 

Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. 

They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies; yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world.

I’m not sure whether a ‘milestone’ has the same meaning the world over so here’s the definition from www.dictionary.com.

“milestone”

• A stone marker set up on a roadside to indicate the distance in miles from a given point.
• An important event, as in a person’s career, the history of a nation, or the advancement of knowledge in a field; a turning point.

We still see milestones dotted around the UK countryside and within some towns. Many of them have fallen into disrepair but some are maintained by communities as beloved objects, but I’m not talking about that type of milestone.

The life milestones have come thick and fast in the Chastney family over the last few weeks, and there are a number still to come. There is phrase from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that goes like this:

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

I feel that milestones deserve a similar saying:

We are born into some milestone, some milestones we achieve, and some milestones are thrust upon us.

We all have birthdays, we are born into them. Three of us in this household have birthdays within a month. Jonathan is the first, followed by Emily and then myself. Birthdays are always milestones because they demonstrate the end of one year and highlight the start of another one. Jonathan is moving through his teens and is going through rapid change that will see him transform from a boy to a man. The young man who had his birthday last week was significantly different to the one who had a birthday twelve months ago.

Being a man I am in nature oriented to achieving goals; aiming for a target; seeking to pass a milestone. The other week we chose to go on a skiing holiday. Part of making that choice was subscribing to a goal of taking the first steps in being an accomplished skier. I can’t speak for the others in the party, but for me there was a level of competency which had to be achieved.

As parents Sue and I have our children’s milestones thrust upon us. As Jonathan transitions through adolescence we have to face our own milestones. We are no longer the parents of child, our role has changed. Sometimes life contrives to thrust other milestones upon us, because that’s life.

Every milestone brings an opportunity to look both ways. We have an opportunity to look back at how we have reached this milestone. We also have the opportunity to look forward to the next milestone. Sometimes a milestone is so big that looking forward from it is difficult, even painful. If all we do is stand at a milestone and look back we can’t move on to the next one. A milestone is meant to mark a point on a journey which is not yet complete, it’s not there to tell you that you have arrived.

As a Christian I see my faith as a journey, with milestones. Sometimes I manage to reach the milestones, sometimes I fall short. It doesn’t stop me trying to reach the next one. The Apostle Paul said it like this:

I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward–to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

Philippians 3:12–14

I thought about leaving this post until tomorrow being Valentines day and all; but actually I’m not talking about the romantic type of poetry. The poetry I like is the type that paints a picture in your head that draws you to imagine.

Today someone pointed out a web site with lots of the type of poetry I really like. This type of poetry takes you out of yourself and shows you the bigger world and even beyond.

I suppose it must be fairly self evident as a blogger who mainly writes that I like words. I actually see words as a means to an end, I don’t love words because they are words, I love words because they have the potential to communicate something that takes me to somewhere else. I’m not talking about escaping, I’m talking about travelling and in travelling experiencing something new that broadens who I am.

The other thing that poems can do is to express something that we struggle to express ourselves. Last night one of the young guys in my Cell Group got baptised. In our church people who are getting baptised say a few words before-hand. It’s a daunting task to stand up in-front of a few hundred people and talk about yourself. So what does a young guy do – he reads a poem; it was great.

Anyway, here’s one that I really liked:

Performance for an Audience of One by Gerard Kelly

If you had been the only one:
Yours the only ticket sold;
Your solitary bottom
Spoilt for choice
In an ocean of empty seats.
If you had been
The only one:
He still would have staged
The whole show.

The brooding, hovering chords
Of the overture
Unfolding
For your ears only:
Stars spinning out like Catherine wheels
Across a dark but lightening set,
Until dawn was uncorked
On green home.

Act 1: the building of a nation:
A people wooed and won
And lost
And won again.
For you alone the whole cast
Weaving and turning through dances
To fill a joyous expanse of stage.

Act 2: the cry of a child
In a vastly empty universe;
The adventure of hope and betrayal;
The seat-gripping climate:
Triumph diving, death defying,
Through the fiery hoop of tragedy.
The clamour of the crowd scenes
Building
Toward an unimagined finale –
A cosmos, purged of guilt
Restored,
Dressed for dancing.

If you had been the only one,
Your grimy pounds
The total take:
He still would have staged
The whole show
And wept for joy
At the warmth
of your applause.