Utterly Lovely

There’s a famous hymn which goes: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” It’s the kind of Christian hymn that I was brought up on. It presents God as a being of unreachable grandeur - a God who is beyond understanding, beyond human reach; who is to be feared.
At the same time, as I grew up, I was reminded every Sunday that this unimaginable God expected me to love him, first and foremost, above all else. It presented me with a problem: this all powerful, all knowing and ever living God did not seem very lovable. He was frightening. How unfair that he should command me to love him!
Jesus didn’t have this problem.
Jesus didn’t have this problem because he knew a very different kind of God. Jesus knew God to be like a doting father who, when his wayward son had gone astray and got into trouble, looked longingly for his return every day, and then ran down the road in expansive delight when the young man finally returned, showering him with gifts. Jesus knew God to be like an excited woman who threw a party for her neighbours just because she’d found a coin she’d been looking for all day.
Jesus didn’t know God as a being that is ‘unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, and ruling in might.’ He knew God as the kind of person who gives big hugs and throws impromptu parties, who wears his heart on his sleeve and forgives huge offences in the blink of an eye.
Jesus knew God to be thoroughly lovable.
Underlying all Jesus’ teaching is a confident knowledge that God is utterly lovely. Once we grasp that fact, loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength isn’t so daunting a prospect.

Just published:

'The Scruffy Disciple' 

by Robert Harrison

the life and loves of a disciple of Jesus

Fear & Hope - Sunday 31st July 2016

Fear is a powerful thing. Many of us are constrained or defined by our fears in one way or another. In the story of David and Goliath, the giant Philistine’s most potent weapon was neither his sword nor his hefty spear, but the intense fear that he stirred up in his enemies. Every day Goliath taunted the Israelites, demanding that they send someone to meet him in single combat. The Israelites were lured into Goliath’s trap. They looked at the 8 foot tall warrior and believed what he wanted them to believe: that he would cut them to pieces before their short sword-arms could get anywhere near him.
Goliath’s fear offensive was winning the war effortlessly, until the teenage shepherd, David, turned up. David had two weapons of his own. The first, an even stronger weapon than fear, was hope. David believed that God had a bright future for himself and the Israelite people, and therefore they would not be defeated. Alongside this hope, David had a highly potent long range weapon with which he was highly skilled - a sling-shot. He knew he could floor Goliath long before he came within the range of the Philistine’s sword or spear.
The sling-shot was a common military weapon at the time. The Israelite army would have had a whole battalion of sling shooters, and any of them could have defeated Goliath if only they hadn’t been paralysed by their fear of the huge warrior.
Fear is a powerful thing. Many of us are constrained or defined by our fears in one way or another. We don’t need a sling-shot to defeat our own personal Goliaths; we need hope. We need to remember that God wants the best for us and for our world. We need to remember that love and forgiveness are much stronger than selfishness and revenge. We need to remember that though fear may afflict us, it will not overcome us - unless we let it.
(This blog will be taking a break for a couple of weeks. Bye for now.)