Conflicted mind

For nearly three weeks Gillian and I have enjoyed spending some time with our son, Peter and his wife, Malia in Seattle. To make it more sweet we came to meet our first grandchild, Jack, who was born on the 6th January 2013 six weeks premature. When he was born he weighed just over Four lbs and now he is over ten lbs.

His arrival into this world was more than a little traumatic so seeing him and spending time here has been very special. He shares my name and I also had a traumatic Christmas. Just a few days before Christmas I was taken into hospital and had surgery on the 21st December. While I lay in my bed he was making a bud for freedom and his mum was struggling with a collapsing placenta so there was no way they were coming to see us in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Al in all we have shared bounds. So it will be difficult saying goodbye come Friday knowing we will not see him again until next Christmas when he will be nearly one!  We will be full of contradictions as we get on that plane. Thankful fir his safe arrival into the world and for his mother' safety also but part of us will die within.  We will be happy that he has family around him but envious that his other grandparents will be able to drive to his house and share his life as we will not. We will be conflicted, as my son was at Christmas when he wanted to with his father but also with his son and wife. We will be conflicted because we have a daughter in Dublin whom we also love and two other sons. Since my illness I been made aware again that I am greatly blesssed by my family for their love and support. As we leave Seattle we leave part of us behind, no longer able to walk the floor with Jack when he needs comforting, no longer able to help his parents but looking forward to seeing the rest of our family and very grateful to our heavenly Father for His incomparable love.

Being a father teaches you about God's love but being a grandfather and watching my son become a loving father reinforces those lessons and makes me appreciate the circular nature of life were the man becomes father. Now I can appreciate some of the cost of being a parent from my parents' point of view. I think I was a better father than I was a son but I am hardly the one to make that judgement call.

How much more has it cost my heavenly father to be my father! In that respect there is no conflict.

Weak or Deep?

                                               
I don't know about you but I get confused and a little irritated by the deep desire so many church experts have to pigeon hole people. They used to talk of,  protestant and Catholic and then it was Charismatic but that was not enough as there always were liberal and conservative churches and some who were millennial and pre-millennial or even post millennial.

Today we could add missional, gospel-centred, seeker friendly, emergent and emerging and now we have Deeper Churches. When will it all stop?  I want to make a plea that we stop putting people into boxes and let them develop their relationship with God.  Don't let yourself get side tracked by trying to be like some other church even if it has been successful.  Just be true to yourself. The truly authentic church will not copy others but will carve out an identity and ministry like no other. The truly real church will be Christ-centred and people - orientated. Every Christian is called to be a witnesswhere God has placed them. It frustrates me no end when every church in a community, even when there are many churches in that comity feels the irresistible pressure to compete with each other. If one church has a youth club, senior citizens club, Sunday School and day care then my church has too also. It seems very sensible to me to say that the principle is that we should not have a program unless we can do it better than everyone else or if no one else is doing it. It seems clear to me that 

Christians and the churches they belong to should be community involved and should be without walls.