John 17

13"And now I am coming to you. I have told them many things while I was with them so they would be filled with my joy. 14I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not. 15I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. 16They are not part of this world any more than I am. 17Make them pure and holy by teaching them your words of truth. 18As you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. 19And I give myself entirely to you so they also might be entirely yours.


From the htfilwg blogspot of the day. i don't know that i'll ever get my head round this one: i, you, we are entirely God's because of Jesus. we don't belong to this world. i've heard it said so many times and yet as i think about it, as i try to understand it my head just wants to explode. how amazing is our God? how awesome and incredible that He would do this for us. thank you Lord.
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i saw 'master and commander' the other day, and the thing that struck me (and it was also one of the main things that i took from seeing 'the passion') was just how easy we have. how sanitised our lives are. people are far braver and more resiliant than we give them credit for. how desipte living in conditions that most of us in the western world would not tolerate now amazing things were done and created (maybe its not despite but because). the colour and the dirt and the noise and the pain, if you can see it in your mind's eye bring so much more to the bible, whether you know the exact historical accuracy or not.

day to day we are so removed from this that we can barely imagine it. when i was about 14 i stayed in a mission hospital in tanzania for a while. there are alot of bright, colourful images from that time (it was so green and lush, and bright and manic!) but the image in my head today is of a 2 day old baby who had caught malaria in its' mother's womb, lying in the middle of an adult bed (there were no cribs) attached to a drip, with little chance of survival. in the next room was a maternity ward, full to bursting, women sharing beds and lying on mattresses on the floor.

and we dare to complain about the nhs. these women were so thankful for anything. the nurses busy, in their pristine white uniforms (no washing machines mind, they cleaned them themselves).

its so easy to lose touch with reality - both the reality of the kingdom of god, and the reality that 2/3 of the world live in, before we reach the end of the 'now' and get into the 'not yet' of the new heaven and earth. stretching that john wimber analogy about d-day and the kingdom of god ('the now and the not yet'): there may be some suffering on the home front (rationing and so forth) but the soldiers in the front line seeing true awfulness daily fight on.

God i'm sorry when i complain about my life here and now, for i know that really you have blessed me far beyond many of my brothers and sisters around the world. help me to keep myself living in reality - the reality of your kingdom, whilst remembering the reality of others.
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