There are just so many compartments in my mind.  At the start of every week I write three lists over a double page spread in my notebook.

On the left hand side I have a whole page under the heading CHURCH (which for me is work)

Then on the right two headings: COLLEGE and PERSONAL.

Under each heading all the major tasks for the week ahead get jotted down, then at the end of the week, stuff that hasn’t been done, gets moved onto the next week’s list.

Its a system. Not particularly brilliant or original but it works for me. Most of my life falls into one of these three categories.

CHURCH – small group, baptism prep, sermons, services, visits, meetings, agendas, email etc etc

COLLEGE – assignments and reading

PERSONAL – hair cuts, arrangements for dog, dentist appointments, triathlon training, keeping in touch with kids/family

But of course every sub-heading can come to require a drawer all of its own and when life flows smoothly the drawers slide out and back with appropriate ease and frequency…. but when does that ever happen?

Mostly life gets messy and sometimes it feels like I have a unruly set of filing cabinet drawers that throw themselves out at me and kick me in the shins if I so much as go near them.  Several drawers choose to slide open and closed spontaneously and discharge their contents most alarmingly.

In the ‘filing cabinet’ that is my life I have two very deep and commodious ‘drawers’ (no sniggering please, these drawers represent my children not my undies).  Although fully grown adults whose lives are fully their own, I know they are more than a  sub-set of mine but they still take up a huge amount of space in my consciousness.

Right at the back of these two drawers are ‘first pairs of shoes’, ‘tiny baby teeth in jars’ and pictures of ‘my mummy’ drawn at infant school. All treasured relics from infancy. None of this is the stuff of problems.  It’s when one of these drawers overflow that problems arise: and one of them currently is regularly flying open and tipping its current overflow of ‘stuff’ in my direction.  By ‘stuff’,  I mean a mix of mad ideas, life-threatening challenges, countless impending uncertainties and half a dozen minor crises.

All of which is hard for a mother to ignore but ignore it I must because all I’m required to do is pick my way very carefully around the mess because this is not ‘my stuff’ to sort out. Even though it’s been left in my head and heart space, all I am required to do is love and listen. The days of ‘sorting it all out before bedtime’ have long gone.  Now I  have to fight the urge to ‘tidy up’, resolve the problem neatly and push the drawer back closed because people you love are allowed to clutter up your head/heart space (within reason).

I have one other drawer currently overflowing and generally being a nuisance,  this one is marked ‘health’:  It is bulging with pills, packets of bonjela, dental appointments and blood test forms. All very annoying. Wish I could close the file on that one.  (And I now have a new drawer called ‘tax returns for clergy- that one’s a total nightmare and I refuse to even open  it without an armed escort aka ‘my husband’!)

Thinking about all this has made me wonder how God copes with everything on his ‘to do’ list. I think his weekly double page spread might be a tad fuller than mine!

Does God have compartments in his mind? Does he have sub-headings and ‘drawers’ in some cosmic filing cabinet? Is there a cabinet labelled ‘Sheila Bridge 1962- 20??’ And if there is, does it annoy God that all the drawers of my cabinet steadfastly refuse to stay tidily closed?

I'm over here God, mine's the flowery one!

I know I am anything but tidily filed away.  I’m sure I keep  all the drawers  of my life sliding backwards and forwards in a most annoying way and I also regularly take out the contents and dump it ALL on the floor (so to speak):  ’Look at this mess God: mad ideas, scary challenges, pending decisions and unresolved issues’  seems I’m not so different from my offspring then.

So, I wonder,  how much head and heart space do I take up in God’s filing system? The Bible tells me in Psalm 139 that God thinks about me ‘constantly‘. Surely not?  Not with so many people to care for?

But there it is: ‘How precious it is Lord to realise that you are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day your thoughts turn towards me’. Verse  17, 18

And even though that’s the Living Bible rendition and not a translation, I’m going to choose to believe it because no one who keeps such close tabs on me (knowing when I sit and rise, when I come and go, what I’ll say before I even say it verses 1-5) could do all that without thinking of me constantly.

How does he do it? I have no idea but thinking about myself as a mother and how my children’s concerns  fill my life gives me an inkling. My children will never be simply a  ’drawer’ in my life, whether they are actually present or even being actively thought about, I carry an awareness of them with me at all times and in all places.

‘See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands’ says God (Isaiah 49:16) just after he says ‘can a mother ever forget her own child?’ the closest we humans get to ludicrous impossibility. So God says, how could I ever forget you?

(After I had mostly written this piece I was directed to a beautiful children’s book called Soul bird by Michal Snunit all about our souls being a bird with a filing cabinet full of feelings. The idea is expressed much more poetically than that and I recommend it. So my idea was not original, but neither is it as ridiculous as it it might have first appeared)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Soul-Bird-Michal-Snunit/dp/1849010323/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330003034&sr=1-1

I guess I must have learnt when I was very small because I have loads of memories of swimming but none whatsoever of  actually being taught to swim, which probably explains why I was never very good. Terror of being underwater isn’t exactly an asset for successful swimming and had, I suspect,  a lot to do with older brother’s gleeful games of ‘let’s sink little sister and she how she squeals’.

Two years ago I taught myself front crawl, overcoming a life time’s fear of having my face in the water.

One month ago I realised my front crawl technique could possibly be improved so I booked a lesson with a swimming coach.

It was a humbling experience.

For starters, she never even asked to see my wonderful front crawl technique – of which I had been ludicrously proud.

Instead she put me through a series of unfamiliar and frankly weird drills, starting with the ‘dying goldfish’. She didn’t call it that, mind you. I don’t recall what she called it but it was an exact imitation of a dying goldfish: swim on your side, arms held firmly against your body, beady eye on the ceiling and move forward by only kicking your feet. As I said,  ‘dying goldfish’.

And I thought ‘I can’t do that… I’ll drown! And if I don’t drown, I’ll look silly, which might be worse!’

In fact drowning was not the problem, steering was. I did the ’dying goldfish’ zig zagging from one end of the lane to the other.

Then, having mastered that drill, we moved onto ‘Superman Dying Goldfish’. This was the same as before but with your lower arm fully extended out into water as if flying like superman. I felt only slightly less silly and I wondered when we would get to front crawl.

Next came the ’rolling log’ exercise, then ‘the zip’ and finally ‘swimming with all arms and no legs’ followed by ‘all legs and no arms’ (thankfully no actual limbs were removed for this part of the drill).

But hey, what do you know? One hour later, (just one hour!) I was swimming along, face in the water, three strokes for every breath and breathing on alternate sides…. Woweee! It was an awesome feeling.

What did I learn from this experience? Maybe that it’s never too late to say ‘I need to improve my ability to ….‘ To what? Parent? Relate to other people? Ride a bike? Make cupcakes? Read the Bible?  Just because you’ve done something for years doesn’t mean to say you are necessarily any good at it, there is almost always room for improvement.

If you want to improve at anything, the first thing you need is the humility to recognise you’re not necessarily brilliant already. Secondly a willingness to go back to the basics will help undo habits of a lifetime that have become ingrained and thirdly, get a good teacher and be willing to look silly.

(Lest I  sound smug, I need to reassure you that although I’ve made progress, I’m a long way off ’olympic swimming ability’. I’m still in the beginners lane and there are 6 other lanes of gradually improving ability between me and the far side of the pool).

Mention ‘anger’, ‘sadness’, ‘fear’, ‘worry’ or ‘envy’ and eyes start to glaze over with a readiness to deny all.  Fearful of sin, many have believed that it is better to deny these feelings any place in our lives. So instead of acknowledging them, confessing them or allowing them to lead us to improved self-awareness, we have been trained to ‘stuff them’: keep them well below the surface of our lives and definitely hidden from public view.

This week I attended a day conference on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality lead by Pete Scazzero whose books I have previously recommended on this blog : ‘Look below the surface’  November 20th 2011

He had a room full of about 400 church leaders. He led us in a little exercise in emotional self-examination. He asked us four simple questions and gave us two minutes of silence to jot down answers to each question. Here are the questions:

What are you angry about?

What are you sad about?

What are you worrying about?

What are you glad about?

At the end of the exercise, he didn’t ask us to share our private revelations but he did ask us to say how we felt about the exercise.

A woman tentatively raised her hand to reply, I couldn’t believe my ears at what she said, my jaw just about hit the floor.

‘It felt a little bit naughty’ 

What???? You’re kidding me? Do you seriously mean that Christians are supposed to maintain a jolly game of ‘let’s pretend’ in front of an all-knowing God? If we can’t be real with God, then who can we be real with?

But she wasn’t alone. At least 10 other people articulated similar feelings of discomfort as well as awareness that this exercise was a new idea to them.

‘I was afraid that once I lifted the lid on these feelings, I might unleash something I couldn’t control’

‘It felt like I was complaining’    

‘It felt like a relief’ 

What is the matter with these people? Don’t they know that well over half the Psalms are full people venting anger, despair, confusion and pain? There is a whole book called ‘Lamentations’ for goodness sake. And what about Jesus – he was so angry about the temple traders, he went in and threw all their tables over. He was so sad when his friend Lazarus died; he stood outside his tomb and wept. He was so worried the night before the cross, he prayed ‘Father if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me’

I’m not aware that Jesus ‘stuffed’ his emotions down below the surface.

(On re-reading this post I’m aware that I sound angry at my fellow Christians and I apologise for that. I’m not angry AT them, but I am angry FOR them. Of course it took courage and honesty from them to express how the exercise made them feel and I respect that. I guess I’m just angry at the evidence that they and many others are still believing a lie which is that ‘God doesn’t like our negative feelings’)

Elsewhere I have written and reflected on my own childhood experience and the limited range of emotions I was permitted to express as a child growing up in a ‘godly Christian home’: ‘too sad’ and you were not ‘trusting God’ (and definitely not ‘counting your blessings’). ‘Too happy’ and you were veering towards ‘counting chickens before they hatched’. (Neither of these ‘counting’ instructions are actually in the Bible but the implication of the second one was that if you were too joyful something might go wrong and then you’d be sorry so best not to be ‘too happy’). Keeping in emotional neutral was almost akin to keeping your head down, stray too far in either direction and God might wake up and notice you, he might either zap you for having ‘no faith’ or slap you down for having ‘too good a time’!

When I reached my thirties I became aware that this dynamic had existed in my past and I committed myself to embracing the further ends of the emotional spectrum. I learnt that actually you don’t really ‘taste’ joy properly until you have allowed yourself to ‘sit in the ashes’ and feel desperately undone.  I may be naïve (obviously I was) but I kind of thought I had learnt something that was already obvious to other people. Judging from the reactions I heard at Tuesdays’ conference, clearly not so.

Christians it seems are the world’s best ‘stuffers’. We behave like it’s a religious duty to maintain an off-putting cheeriness, a refusal to admit that actually for most people (yes, even for us) life is a mixture of good and bad and probably more bad than good.

So to answer my original question: Yes, a bad feeling CAN lead to good action. Today is Action Sunday for Poverty and Homelessness. Here is a prayer from their website that expresses eloquently how listening to our negative feelings need not be a negative thing. Look out for the strongly negative feeling in the first line of each stanza and look where it can take you.

A Franciscan Blessing

May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,

So that we may live deep in the heart of God

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,

So that we may work for justice, freedom and peace

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,

So that we may reach out our hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.

May God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world,

So that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

Pete Scazerro's book

“Do NOT argue with a spouse who is packing your parachute”

“I’m not sure how ambivalent I should be”  That sort of thing.

But there was one that really stuck in my mind and I’ve been mulling it over ever since:

“Don’t tell your troubles to other people – 95% of them don’t care and the other 5% of them are glad you have them”

On the face of it this is a deeply cynical comment that denies the reality that there are a (small) percentage of your friends who are interested in your life and do really care. But it also contains a seed of truth and I think it is a salutary warning that is especially relevant to communicating over Facebook, blogs or any other social network.

Now, don’t me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with posting up on FB or writing a blog (says she, writing a blog!)

But, here’s the deal: it has to NOT matter whether anyone reads your post, clicks ‘like’ to your blog or replies with a comment.

If it matters ‘a bit’ whether anyone responds, well, that’s probably normal but the risk with social networking is that it can come to matter ALOT.  And that’s why I agree with that cynical ‘thot’: you should never wear your heart on your sleeve on FB. Having said that we all know that relentlessly cheerful, upbeat and positive comments are frankly nauseating (‘Look at me – I have a perfect family, perfect life’, blah, blah. Yeah, great. Get real)  on the other hand you have to be very careful about what bad news you do share.  Because if something is really devastating or personally distressing, how much worse will that feel if no one notices/responds to your pain?

And mostly the reason they don’t respond is that their own lives are too full/they are too busy to be on FB/maybe they don’t happen to see your post/they have pressures of their own/they feel that merely commenting would be inadequate. They are not cruel and heartless and they are not deliberately ignoring you.

But if getting a response matters TOO MUCH and you don’t get one (or you don’t get enough of a reaction) then it’s all too easy to leap to  those conclusions. So really, it’s wise to only go public about stuff that ‘does not matter’ (or at least does not matter that much).

If something really matters then you need to be talking to a human being face to face not into ‘Internet Empty Space’.

And the everyday reality of our face to face relationships is that most of us have to wave either a ‘red flag’  (I’m angry) or a ‘white flag’ (‘I’m distressed’) in someone’s face  pretty vehemently before we get the ‘listening to’ that we deserve.  (Sometimes we try other brightly coloured flags such as ‘come and I’ll feed you if you listen to me‘ but these don’t always work. Red, white or simple honesty such as ‘I need to talk’ usually work best).

Even when we have ‘flagged up’ our need, most of us only have a very small number of people in our lives who are well enough tuned in to us to be able to pick up the emotional ‘crackle’ of interference in our communication.  And out of this very small number of people, one of them still needs to a) care enough b) have the time (and yes, even sometimes the courage)  to say ‘Hey, what’s up?’

And what I most want to say about all this, is that this is NORMAL!!

It is normal to only have ‘a very small number’ of people who really know you that well. The danger of FB is that it creates the expectation that everyone should be noticing our lives. If we are not careful it puts us at risk of an over-inflated sense of our own importance, especially if we get a lot of positive comments. (Ha! ha! You were going to comment on this post but now you daren’t!). I can see why some people give up FB for Lent and the very fact that I’m writing about this subject tells you I have not been immune to these dangers.

So what I saying?  Here are what have become my rules for emotionally healthy social networking:

1. Don’t diss your friends because they never get round to commenting on your blog or responding to your posts. Don’t even be disappointed in them. If you can’t help being disappointed, if it matters TOO much (how often do you check to see if people have commented?)  step away from the computer, take FB off your phone or maybe even get off FB altogether for the sake of your own emotional well-being.
2. If you write a blog, write it because you enjoy writing and not because it matters whether anyone ever reads it (Oh, what years of writing experience have contributed to that piece of wisdom!)
3. Treasure the friends who can occasionally lay aside their own agendas and offer you the gift of listening. Recognise that this is a big ask, so make sure you offer that gift to them, as and when you can.
4. Before you post something up, ask yourself ‘how will I feel if no one responds to this?’
5. Be very wary of those  ’put this as your status if you really care’ or a ‘does anyone ever read my posts‘ type appeals. These are emotionally poisonous. You will be led to make false assumptions about the loyalty or caring nature of your FB friends because (for a huge variety of reasons) they don’t repost your appeal or reply to your post.  I avoid these entirely, even though some of them are about very worthy causes, so sorry to all those people I’ve offended. I am very happy to put up a signpost for information which people can follow if they want to but I’m not going to demand that other people publicise my cause, at least not in a way that manipulates their emotions – by asking them to ‘show me you really care’. Asking me to do that will guarantee I wont, but not because I don’t care, maybe because there are better ways to show I care?

On a personal note:

In the last month, D, H and C have all listened to me in varying degrees. Thank you, you know who you are (and the chances are you are not even reading this blog)  but I am grateful to God for you anyway. Don’t worry, it’s not a job for life (except in your case D!) next month it might be E or N or M. And I hope, in turn, I can be the person who listens to you.

One of my conclusions is that we have lost the impact of this passage because a ‘vine’ is not the every day object it was when Jesus used it as an image. S o I think we perhaps read this passage in a ‘holy, hushed, reverential’ tone of voice and we ‘tune out’: we lose the impact of what Jesus was trying to tell us.

To counter this I have re-written the passage using an everyday object found in most kitchens. I accept that my rewrite is theologically flawed but  maybe the shocking immediacy of the image has something to offer?  I don’t know, what do you think?

John 15:1-11  (as you’ve never heard it before!)

V1 I am the true plug, my father is the power supply and you are a toaster.

V 2 He throws away any toasters that simply don’t work or he fixes faulty toasters, restoring them to working order.

V 3  You are already restored because of everything I’ve explained to you.

V4 Stay connected to me and I will stay connected to you. No toaster can make toast on its own, it must have a plug and a power supply.  You are no different, you cannot make toast on your own.

V 5 So I am the plug and you are the toaster, if a toaster stays connected to me it will make much toast. Without me you cannot make toast!

V6 But if anyone does not bother to plug in, they eventually rust up or break down and are thrown out.

V7 If you stay connected to me and follow my instructions then you can be an ambitious toaster and make whatever toast you like: thin sliced, thick slice, bagels or buns, you can even warm muffins!

V8 This is all due to the wonder of my Father, the power supply, all that toast goes to show that you are a functioning toaster.

V9. Just as I need to stay connected to the power supply so you need to stay connected to me.

V10 If you follow my instructions you won’t go wrong. I follow my father’s instructions so I’m only asking the same of you.

V11 I’ve explained all this to you so that together we might experience the joy of toasting and so that you, being aware of your limits and your possibilities, might be completely content.

Or even like this?

Or like this?

Is this how you see yourself?

I enjoyed it immensely and hopefully didn’t disgrace myself, I think I was only in the wrong place at the wrong time just the once, or maybe it was twice?

There’s an awful lot to wear and quite a bit of it is linguistically challenging.

First layer is ordinary clothes: if I’d have known how layered up I was going to be I wouldn’t have worn the thermal vest but by the time you have put on three more layers on top and the service starts in five minutes, it’s too late to say, ’can I just pop to the Ladies and take off my vest’?

Next the cassock  – aka ‘the long black one’, not to be confused with hassocks (thick kneeling cushions also frequently found in churches but not generally very adaptable as garments).

Then there was the surplice  (aka ’the white floaty one’) but, oops, this was surplus to requirements and was discarded in favour of an alb (long, white, with hood and cord belt, think Friar Tuck)

Then a stole (a long scarf, worn shoulder to hip) – I’m not sure why it was there, once the top layer was on, no-one ever saw it again.

And finally a dalmatic, which sounds like it ought to be a female version of a dogmatic, but is in fact another neck to floor tunic with long sleeves which completely covers all the previously mentioned layers but is much more colourful.

Anyway, feeling slightly like a michelin man, I fulfilled my duties without any huge disasters. I remembered to walk in straight lines (diagonal lines are not so tidy) and turned and bowed in neatly choreographed unison. I understand that all this is fitting and doing things in an untidy way does not enhance worship but it did all seem a lot to remember.

There is a time and place for everything and don’t get me wrong I love the way we do Cathedral worship, I love the ceremony and I understand that there are historical, cultural and yes, even scriptural reasons for the wearing of robes. It is a style of worship that is reaching more and more as numbers attending cathedral services have increased. But it is all very far removed from my choice of attire at ‘Messy Church’ where month on month 70-80 people who would never dream of entering a local church let alone a cathedral come and hear the story of God, pray and ‘do business with God’ in ways accessible to even the youngest (eg scribbling ‘a mess’ on a piece of paper and throwing it in the bin as ‘prayer of confession’).  At messy church I wear jeans and a shirt (often, but not always, a clerical shirt because visual signals matter and I am their  minister). At Messy church there is no processing (we blow a bicycle horn to call people to come and sit down!), there is very little silence and eloquent, erudite sermons are not required.  Messy Church requires all the gifts I don’t have and uses none of the ones I do! But I love it.   The challenge is that somewhere in the welcome, the meal, the conversations and connections, the simplest of illustrations will plant a seed of an idea: maybe there is a God, maybe he does know me and maybe even loves me.

Baptistry window in Coventry Cathedral

All in the bottom two baskets of my freezer, nestling beneath my pies, pizzas and apple crumbles.

(You might not want to come round for supper for a while, least ways not until I’ve got my new glasses).

Why? You might reasonably ask. I did.

Son, (offspring number 2)  is a trainee vet and is organising an exotic animal symposium and these are specimens destined for dissection, generously donated by someone in whose freezer they have previously resided.

Bearded Dragon in Happier Times

‘Well, why does he keep a load of dead reptiles in his freezer? I asked (reasonable question, or so I thought).

‘Really, Mum, he had them when they were alive but then they died and you can’t just leave out a dead dragon for the bin men…’

‘You can’t?’

‘No!  There are guidelines about the disposal of exotic animals. After all, they might have zoonotic pathogens’

‘ZOONOTIC PATHOGENS!!!!!’ Are you telling me we’ve now got Zoonotic pathogens in our freezer as well as a load of dead reptiles?’

Son had the grace to look sheepish, ‘I only said they might have zoonotic pathogens’

(You really don’t want to come to supper now, do you?)

‘Anyway’, he added ‘Don’t go ferreting about in there, the scorpion still has its venom and there might be a chance you’d impale yourself on its tail’

FERRETING ABOUT??? Ferreting about? What planet is he on? I’m not even planning on looking in that freezer (thankfully we have two). If his sister was here, she’d leave home in disgust.

Thanking him for at the very least providing me with blog material, he asked me smugly what ‘theological spin’ I could work into the story.

‘Hmmm, let me think about it…. ’

…

‘And the serpent saith unto the woman: STEP AWAY FROM THE FREEZER!’

(apologies to subscribers who have received this one twice)

ps.if it makes you feel better, we have thrown away the pies, pizzas and crumbles, that particular storage space is now entirely reptilian.

It was as if the whole the field was ALIVE! Some aroma was coming up from the ground itself that was totally intoxicating. He lost his head, his sense of hearing and all sense of being a good responsible dog!  Finally he  came to and remembered this wasn’t how walks are meant to go, even so he couldn’t quite calm down and come back to me. Utterly nutty, out of character behaviour!

The only thing I could think is that ‘Spring has sprung’, after the heavy rains of the last few days maybe new life is stirring underground in a way I cannot detect.  Either that or it was the wind. It  is  a very windy day and children and dogs are very sensitive to wind. I used to dread teaching on windy days in my last job, if misbehaviour was likely on normal days it was three times as likely on a windy day! (Why is that? Surely someone’s done some research on that?)

I’ve read that scientists are now using frogs as ‘earthquake predictors’ because they have all been observed to leave earthquake areas twenty-four hours before a quake. It all just makes me realise how immune we have become to the natural world. We don’t have noses that can smell the spring underground. But we do have eyes to see and ears to hear the intoxicating beauty of the world.

‘Lord, open my eyes, that I may see…’

Bonkers? Moi? Butter wouldn't melt...

At another level it was a play about words: the fine nuances in their meanings. (Should the Bible text say ‘priest’ or ‘elder’, ‘church’ or ‘congregation’, ‘confession’ or ‘penance’?)

At yet another level it was play about politics, set in the days when England was trying to steer a middle way between what it saw as the dangerous extremes of Catholicism on the one side and Puritanism on the other.

But at its heart it was a play about faith and finding God and living in the light of that discovery.

Tyndale 'visits' Lancelot Andrews

If that doesn’t sound ‘extraordinary’ to you, then at the very least the fact that the theatre was full of people who had paid good money to watch a play containing huge chunks of the Bible and debating delicate theological dilemmas was extraordinary. I wanted to ask them all why they had come? They can’t all have been vicars!

I think the success of this play says something about the enduring interest in all things spiritual and about the powerful presence of the Bible in our culture.  I’m very excited about this because we have just decided to do a public Bible Readathon next May outside our church: Genesis to Revelation all the way through, round the  clock with as many readers from our church and community as we can encourage to take part.

The most moving moments in the play came at the point where extremists from either side come to the point of admitting that it was not cleverness that mattered, nor how much you knew about scripture, nor how many verses of the Bible you knew by heart but rather how many of those verses were ‘written on your heart’.

Repeatedly the players returned to 1 Corinthians 13:1 ‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal’. Perhaps it stood out to me because I have brought it to mind several times already this week.  As I write this review,  I am taking a quick break from a 5,000 word assignment in which I need to use words like  analepses, apodosis, and anagorisis.

I am challenged that it doesn’t matter one jot how many fancy words I know or how heavy the theology books on my shelf. I am challenged by Tyndale’s huge ambition that the Bible should be able to be read by every ploughboy in the land. I realise that only thing that matters is that my life be changed by the Lord of Love himself, that his love should be both written on my heart and flowing out in my life.

‘Love God and love one another’, if Jesus didn’t make it any more complicated than that, then why do we?

Finally she leaned forward and whispered the cue, “I am the light of the world.”

The child beamed with acknowledgment and in a loud, clear voice so that everyone in the congregation could hear said, “My Mommy is the light of the world.”