Gatekeeper

 

Who are the gatekeepers, the guards at the door of your life?

Who are the stoic fortress wardens, armed with wisdom?

Who stands watch, remains vigilant through the night?

Who sees with perspective, the inside and the out?

Who are the key keepers that discern, to enter or not?

Recently my life has come under a certain amount of trial. I say 'my life' meaning more than simply my immediate experience, because while this trial had me at the centre it affected the majority of the people connected to me.

While trials in this life are both inevitable and uncomfortable they are also often moments of decisive clarity. They provide a unique perspective on ones view of themselves but also give an opportunity for us to see how our friends and acquaintances will respond.

Jaffa Gate - Jerusalem, Israel

To borrow a parable it is often not easy to tell whether we have built our house on the rock or on the sand until the rains come down and the floods come up. If your house is still standing by then end - you built it right.  It is the storms of life that are proving of our relationships.

If we take Job as an example (no I am not likening myself to Job) he experiences a trial the like of which most of us will never have to endure, unfortunately for him the people surrounding him were less than perfect in their response. Even his wife (one of his few remaining relatives) tells him to just give up and die! Hardly the kind of encouragement needed to persist through life's trials.

Abandoned Syrian Bunker - Golan Heights, Israel

Thankfully my story is very different! Over the past few days it has become blindingly obvious how well 'insulated' I am by a great number of people around me who care, pray for and support me, often in ways that I never even see. Many of them will in fact be the ones reading this and so to you I say thank you.

Among my friends and family there are a few who have the position in my life to speak louder and clearer to me than many others, their position in my life is decided by me. They may not even realise it but they have more influence over me than most other people. They are in many ways gatekeepers that have the power to discipline, correct, encourage and shape me in ways that most will simply never be able to.

Derelict Shack - Gloucester, England 

The truth is that we all have people like this in our lives, the question is whether they are good gatekeepers or not. Are they wise, discerning, kind? Do they have your best interests at heart? For most people when they are born it is at least initially their parents who fulfil this role - they protect, nurture and direct their children. Or at least they should. Because we are all human we have all experienced disappointment with our gatekeepers, times when we needed them to be looking out for us but they were absent. Or for some of us we found out the hard way that someone we had given the role of gatekeeper to was toxic. They did not have our best interests at heart and they did not just not protect us but attacked us.

What do we do when our gatekeepers fail us? - We fall onto God.

Jobs gatekeepers were pretty useless but he cried out to God and while the response he had was not what he had hoped for it was exactly what he needed. You may have been let down by your parents right from day one but God is the father in heaven who never fails to love you. Your friends and colleagues might be like sand around you but Christ is the rock on whom you can build your life. You may be in the midst of a storm but He can be the anchor.

You may be under siege from all sides but God can be your gatekeeper.

Title font used 'Code Bold'

Ruach

ר֫וּחַ

roo'-akh - Breath, wind, spirit.

 

It is free, more completely free than anything else. Illusive it cannot be seen. It is unpredictable, capricious. It can be gentle and consistent or a forceful torrent. It is exhilarating, uncontained, untamed. It goes where it pleases and dances to its own tune. It takes no heed of outside opinion, it is active and pervading. It sweeps up whatever is in its path. It is deep in the lungs, it is life, it is freedom. It is the great mover. It does not capitulate to demands and cannot be threatened, it is without fear. It knows no bounds and never ceases. It is playful and ecstatic. It cannot be measured and is not to be trifled with.

 

It is weightless and shapeless and whatever falls it its path is helpless to resistance.

It knows no inhibition chooses its own direction and pursues us with the deepest connection.

Its burden is light and it does not grow weary and in the fullness of time it gives sight to see clearly.

Ineffable, invisible, exhilarating; its absolutely incredible.

It does not stop nor does it tire, ever lifting, lifting us higher.

Effervescent and ever present it is the experience of the transcendent.

Unrelenting force and unbridled power yet to the righteous a refuge and a strong tower.

Smoke and fire, flame and dust through the wilderness it is the one to trust.

Beauty unleashed though always unseen, pure and faultless, perfectly clean.

 

 

Title font used: 'Sverige script'

Overgrown

A new week, a new project. A veggie patch. You might think that this is a pretty poor time of the year to be starting a veggie patch - just as we head into Autumn with Winter right around the corner but the inspiration and drive to do it is here now so it is happening hear and now. That and it gives us a good few months to be able to prepare fully for the Spring.

It is not the most amazingly lit patch but we will have to make do

It is easy to confuse a new project with a blank canvas, when it comes to gardening this is absolutely not the case. In fact, if you can at any point get to a blank canvas you have already done pretty well. I think Jesus understood this and it is possibly one of the reasons that he used the imagery of a gardener to describe God. The truth is that in our little patch, and in everyone's lives there are an abundance of weeds. Life sucking, fast spreading, tough to kill, deep rooted, weeds. If these are not dealt with you don't have a veggie patch. What  you have is at best a patch of problem-inducing dirt that is going to overgrow and starve anything useful that you try to plant.

Other than the single Rhubarb plant and the grape vine everything green had to go

Looking from this perspective it is very easy to understand that a piece of ground is completely incapable of ridding itself of weeds, where the weeds are they will continue to grow. Simple as that. Yet it is amazing how quick we are to draw the conclusion that we are able to de-weed our own lives. The ever growing self help section of Waterstones stands as testament to this. Offering up every kind of burying, ignoring and weed-hiding technique there is. Pouring into the false hope that we are able to tackle our own habitual sins, change the broken condition of our hearts and patch ourselves up so we can live the way we were meant to.

Our very wobbly makeshift work bench made the woodwork that much more exciting

The hope is false because we cannot change those things about ourselves. We can maybe change the way that the symptoms of our brokenness manifest in our lives or we can simply ignore the fact that we are overgrown with desires and behaviours that we cannot shake. But at the end of the day we are as helpless as a patch of dirt trying to de-weed itself.

We made stakes to support the panels for edging the patch

The only way that our little patch was ever going to be productive was if we got the tools out, got stuck in and worked hard at removing all the junk that was bedded in. So, being gardeners that wanted our patch of land as productive as it could be that is exactly what we did. Similarly the only way that any of us is going to grow in maturity and start bearing fruits is if we allow the divine gardener in to clear out the choking weeds of sin from our lives and sow the seeds of the gospel in us.

re-installing edging around the patch

Our first foray into this latest adventure was satisfyingly hard work, there was lots to dig up and some parts were more work than others (we found rather a large piece of metal nestled a good half meter down in the ground - it was one of the harder parts). We completely overhauled the ground and it took some time, all the while excitedly discussing plans the for the future. 'Go big or go home' my brother would say. I imagine God is equally as thrilled while he is working on our lives. He sees that his work in saving us is glorious and he gets excited about the culmination of his work in us which will be ... well glorious.

During our discussions there was also the recognition that while these first steps are big ones the journey of our veggie patch will be continuous work. De-weeding is going to have to be a day by day, intentional activity. There will also be some big milestones along the way such as the construction of the lean-to green house which is going to cost us, but it will be worth it. Again this must be the practice of all of us who wish to grow in Christ-likeness. We are to recognise, challenge and do our uttermost to give over these things to God and allow him to fix us.

Whether you are totally overgrown with sin or you are steadily waging the ongoing war with your weeds, my encouragement to you is this - let the Gardener till you, de-weed you, prune you and burn up in you all that is not from him. While we cannot kill sin by ourselves we can make the choice to allow God in, to release to him the most insidious of our problems and trust that as the good gardener he is shaping us for a mind bogglingly exciting, hopeful, glorious future.

We found a few gems while digging from the previous occupier of the patch

N.B  Once again the pictures that feature me were (unsurprisingly) not taken by me but the rest were. Thanks to Charlie and David.

Title font used: 'Bleeding Cowboys'