Christmas – what a funny old mess.

Christmas – what a funny old mess. For example: > I have a Jewish friend who celebrates Christmas because he likes presents, turkey and pudding. He doesn't have a clue that the true meaning of Christmas is Santa Claus. > When I was about 20, I had a Pastor who abhorred Christmas as a being a Christian festival and wouldn't hold a Christmas church service because he was a Puritan and Christmas was 'draped in the rags of popery'. He did however like pudding and turkey and presents. > I was in Bethlehem this year where the Greek and Armenian priests hold their annual Christmas punch-up about who gets first dibs on poking their head in the place of Christ's birth. The actual 'supposed' slab where the manger is said to have been placed is filled with candles and is encased in bird wire and looks like a ferret's cage. I must have missed something, because other people were crying in awe. I got the giggles. > There is supposed to have been a woman who complained aloud in a card shop when she saw a nativity scene on a Christmas card, 'The (*&*&%^&$ church! They try to get religion into everything.' It's a mess.  With Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Sinta Klaus, trees, baubles, tinsel,  televised carols by candlelight shows, pudding, charity appeals, suicides, turkey, rampant alcohol abuse, rampant gluttony, rampant present abuse, rampant card abuse, superstition, emotional pap about it being Jesus birthday (spare us!) the invention of Winterval, Chrisukka, Happy Holidays, political appeasement and cultural sensitivity, deaths on the roads and it only being 11 months since last one, I don't know whether to take up arms and oppose the whole thing or just go back to watching the cricket on TV and have another fruit mince pie. So what's Christmas all about? Apparently Christmas is about whatever you like, and as long as you don't think your take on it is true, I'm OK with that. My reality is that as long as I get turkey, pudding and a present on Christmas day I'm happy because I celebrate the reality of Jesus everyday of the year and that he took action and conquered death and that he is not the reason for the season but he is in fact The Season and will remain so, day after punishing day, until the Great Day when we shall know him as he is. Anyway, have a happy – (fill in your preference)

Christmas – what a funny old mess.

Christmas – what a funny old mess.

For example:

> I have a Jewish friend who celebrates Christmas because he likes presents, turkey and pudding. He doesn't have a clue that the true meaning of Christmas is Santa Claus - or is it the Easter Bunny, or tinsel, or an angel up a tree?

> When I was about 20, I had a Pastor who abhorred Christmas as a being a Christian festival and wouldn't hold a Christmas church service because he was a Puritan and Christmas was 'draped in the rags of popery'. He did however like pudding and turkey and presents.

> I was in Bethlehem this year where the Greek and Armenian priests hold their annual Christmas punch-up about who gets first dibs on poking their head in the place of Christ's birth. The actual 'supposed' slab where the manger is said to have been placed is filled with candles and is encased in bird wire and looks like a ferret's cage. I must have missed something, because other people were crying in awe. I got the giggles.

> There is supposed to have been a woman who complained aloud in a card shop when she saw a nativity scene on a Christmas card, 'The (*&*&%^&$ church! They try to get religion into everything.'

It's a mess. 

With Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Sinta Klaus, trees, baubles, tinsel,  televised carols by candlelight shows, pudding, charity appeals, suicides, turkey, rampant alcohol abuse, rampant gluttony, rampant present abuse, rampant card abuse, superstition, emotional pap about it being Jesus birthday (spare us!) the invention of Winterval, Chrisukka, Happy Holidays, political appeasement and cultural sensitivity, deaths on the roads and it only being 11 months since last one, I don't know whether to take up arms and oppose the whole thing or just go back to watching the cricket on TV and have another fruit mince pie.

So what's Christmas all about?

Apparently Christmas is about whatever you like, and as long as you don't think your take on it is true, I'm OK with that. My reality is that as long as I get turkey, pudding and a present on Christmas day I'm happy because I celebrate the reality of Jesus everyday of the year and that he took action and conquered death and that he is not the reason for the season but he is in fact The Season and will remain so, day after punishing day, until the Great Day when we shall know him as he is.

Big Hearing-from-God incidents.

Big Hearing-from-God incidents. There is some confusion for people about whether God actually directs our paths, whether God speaks at all today or whether it's all up to us to use our God-given brains. In most of the decisions I've made to take this or that path I didn't ever hear a 'Word from God' as it were, such as 'God told me to become a member of  Franchise Association.' So I am today mostly a result of stumbling along from ditch to disaster with only the occasional meadow of flowers, and that wasn't how I thought it was supposed to be. So if you feel as though you have been ditched, I write this to say, it does work out in the wash. I have had many astounding interventions but this one takes the cake. The strongest leading or direction or intervention I've ever had was when we moved to Port Pirie in 1976 to work with Pastor Bill Wheatland. He and I met for prayer on the first morning and I asked God for a teaching job and Bill Asked for me to get a TV job. I was aghast that he could be so dumb because I had been firmly rejected 2 months before in an interview that lasted 2 minutes after I had driven for 3 hours in 110º heat in an un-airconditioned Ford Cortina .  After prayers I went out job hunting and before morning tea scored a job at the Catholic High School. 'We were wondering how to fill that position for a Year 8 teacher,' said Father Pulis.  I was pretty chuffed.  Meanwhile the Manager of the TV Station (the one who had told me I was totally unsuitable for television) had fallen off his boat the Saturday before I arrived and had broken his arm and the Managing Director had driven in from Sydney to take over. On that Monday morning, his PA found my letter from 3 months before wedged between two files in the engineering filing cabinet and said, 'Jim. you might like to read this.' It was within minutes of the time Bill was praying that I would get a job on the telly. The rest is history. By 2:00 PM I had a job at the TV station presenting a children's show for 15 minutes a day. After a week he turned it into a 2 hour show and after two months made me Sales Manager for the network. After 2 years Channel 7 offered me a job in the Children's Production Unit in Adelaide. I've hardly been out of a TV or video production since. It was the single key that opened my life into selling, speaking all over Australia, New Zealand, 28 states of the USA, and 15 or more other countries. It paved the way for writing books, making training packages and best of all – meeting YOU. Nevertheless I struggled for years and years over the fact that it was not a straight shady path with chocolate-crepe stands along the way and that if God had so clearly changed my direction how come it wasn't 'nice' all day and every day. There were personality clashes, role-confusions, financial struggles and deep misgivings about whether I was in the right place – even a life-long struggle with the slobbering three-headed black dog of depression. That often made me wonder if I'd made it up as well as messed it up, too many times to count. Looking back I can only say, God has been directing my path like a chess piece knight being moved at right angles, one square here, two squares there, two sideways, one back, waiting for the bishops, pawns and castles to move into my path or to be positioned for the taking. That one incident though was too God-like to be disputed.  In the middle of it I felt lost more often than not, but 36 years later I can see it all as clear as day.  God does direct our paths— pulls us out of ditches, saves us in disasters and when we realise it, often sits us in flowery meadows. So trust in the Lord with all your heart and he will direct your path. Anyway To infinity and beyond. Live long and prosper. Colin Pearce Address: Unsubscribe / View in your

Do you hear the voice of God?

Do you hear the voice of God?

I have nearly finished my novel – part of my M.A. in Humanities (Creative Writing). 

The characters – four bratty kids – live in Galilee at the time of Christ. At one stage, trying to work out whether the miracle-working rabbi is the real deal they ask their old Greek teacher Zoticus a question about their studies of Homer:

'What do you think about the way Homer's gods spoke to men, Master Z? Have you ever heard the voice of God.’

He looked away to the sky outside and sighed, ‘Only in  the songs of birds, the wailing of foxes, the howling of wolves, the rumble of thunder, the singing of children, the pleas of beggars, the moans of the hungry, the whimpers of the sick,  the whispers of a lover,  the tears of a widow, the laughter of babies, the humming of bees,

Addy and Okky pretended to be enthralled by Master Z’s word pictures and said in a mocking tone,

'and the wind in the trees,
and waves in the seas,
and a flag in a breeze
and a donkey’s big sneeze,
and a grandfather’s knees
and a dog scratching fleas
and Master Z. eating cheese.'

At that Master Z pretended to be cross with us and sent us out to clear our heads and get some sunshine.

So I ask you: Are you waiting for the big announcement from the sky or are you in tune with God's voice in your day-to-day events and encounters? He's speaking but you have to listen.

Anyway

To infinity and beyond.

Live long and prosper.

A Lamborghini or an Antarctic Prison

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Here's the question of the day:
If you could choose between eliminating world poverty and Bill Gates' fortune, what colour would your Lamborghini be?

Mine would be silver because I don't like to be ostentatious, so red and yellow are out and black gets too hot in summer. If it's silver I can park it at church and the other people will think it's just a fancy Nissan or Toyota and won't think that I'm in wastrel.

I am sure you would be different though. You would have world poverty eliminated by Friday wouldn't you? The sex-slave trade would be eliminated, child soldiers would be returned to their mothers, the refugees on the boats would be able to go home to their then-safe countries because all the bad people would be in the big jail you would build in Antarctica where if they escaped they could accidentally freeze to death or stab each other with icicles.

On second thoughts, that's what I would do to. Forgive me please. 

However I hasten to say I would need to administer it all from a comfortable office with a nice view so I wouldn't get overstressed. I would need a quality entertainment suite because I would be entertaining so many dignitaries, celebrities and politicians and we'd need good coffee in fine china with Belgian shortbread at morning tea and my own kitchen for the staff to cook lunch and a chauffer, and oh yes, I nearly forgot – my own jet. 

The whole thought makes me wonder how serious I am about eliminating world poverty.  I struggle to keep my candle burning bright in my small corner let alone become a city set on a hill that can't be hidden, and never even think of being a cosmic conflagration that burns the landscape clean. Such were William Wilberforce (abolition of slavery), Lord Shaftesbury (abolition of child labour), Robert Raikes (schools for poor children on Sundays) and hundreds of other heroes of the past and the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates of today.

How serious, really, is the prayer, 'God please let me earn more so that I can give more.'?  Why don't I start in tiny ways this morning by letting the kid in the coffee shop keep the change or by buying a copy of “The Big Issue" from the scary looking bloke with the one-eyed dog, or maybe put a bit more on the  sponsorship form for the people doing the World Vision 40 hour famine? Maybe I could grow a gift I don't have and enlarge a heart that is too small with little homeopathic doses of goodness.

Or I could just lie down until this unpleasant feeling goes away. Nah. I did that yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and the...

Anyway

To infinity and beyond.

Live long and prosper.

Colin Pearce

A Lamborghini or an Antarctic Prison

You can subscribe to two Minutes with God and The Kick in Pants Newsletter (both free and provocative) here. 


Here's the question of the day:
If you could choose between eliminating world poverty and Bill Gates' fortune, what colour would your Lamborghini be?

Mine would be silver because I don't like to be ostentatious, so red and yellow are out and black gets too hot in summer. If it's silver I can park it at church and the other people will think it's just a fancy Nissan or Toyota and won't think that I'm in wastrel.

I am sure you would be different though. You would have world poverty eliminated by Friday wouldn't you? The sex-slave trade would be eliminated, child soldiers would be returned to their mothers, the refugees on the boats would be able to go home to their then-safe countries because all the bad people would be in the big jail you would build in Antarctica where if they escaped they could accidentally freeze to death or stab each other with icicles.

On second thoughts, that's what I would do to. Forgive me please. 

However I hasten to say I would need to administer it all from a comfortable office with a nice view so I wouldn't get overstressed. I would need a quality entertainment suite because I would be entertaining so many dignitaries, celebrities and politicians and we'd need good coffee in fine china with Belgian shortbread at morning tea and my own kitchen for the staff to cook lunch and a chauffer, and oh yes, I nearly forgot – my own jet. 

The whole thought makes me wonder how serious I am about eliminating world poverty.  I struggle to keep my candle burning bright in my small corner let alone become a city set on a hill that can't be hidden, and never even think of being a cosmic conflagration that burns the landscape clean. Such were William Wilberforce (abolition of slavery), Lord Shaftesbury (abolition of child labour), Robert Raikes (schools for poor children on Sundays) and hundreds of other heroes of the past and the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates of today.

How serious, really, is the prayer, 'God please let me earn more so that I can give more.'?  Why don't I start in tiny ways this morning by letting the kid in the coffee shop keep the change or by buying a copy of “The Big Issue" from the scary looking bloke with the one-eyed dog, or maybe put a bit more on the  sponsorship form for the people doing the World Vision 40 hour famine? Maybe I could grow a gift I don't have and enlarge a heart that is too small with little homeopathic doses of goodness.

Or I could just lie down until this unpleasant feeling goes away. Nah. I did that yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and the...

Anyway

To infinity and beyond.

Live long and prosper.

Colin Pearce

To be a Wind Whisperer

Yesterday, my pastor was speaking about recovery and perseverance and as an example he mentioned that a competition sailor has to read the wind and the currents.

He or she has to be what people are calling, Australian Laser Class yachtsman and Olympic gold medalist,  Tom Slingsby – a Wind Whisperer.

A bit before and a lot after
I'm not bad at reading the wind. I am quite proficient at reading what it has just done but only sometimes I read what it is about to do.  That's all very 'trendy' so to speak, but I confess to not being very good at taking advantage of what I've predicted will happen.

Some people are really good at it. 

Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) was brilliant at it – probably the best there has ever been. He read the closing of the silk road by the Caliph in Istanbul, the rising of European nation states, the victory of the Spanish over the Moors and the birth of a new era of European power, the improvement in square-rig ship building, the development of large-span canvas sails, the maps of John the Navigator, the invention of the astrolobe, the stories of sailors venturing further into the Atlantic on newly charted currents. Amazingly he didn't just read one breeze. He read the whole lot. Putting them all together, he seized the the day and began the Golden Age of Discovery. Admittedly it took him 28 years to put it all together but I think clocks ran slower in those days.

Question:
Would you have been able to read those winds? 

Answer: 
It doesn't matter now. It's been done some 520 years. What matters today is whether you can read the wind that is coming your way – or not coming your way. It's a bit like predciting the future but not the slightest bit as spooky. Actually it's more about prediciting what you will do about the wind once you've observed it's likely behaviour. That makes a gold medal winning sailor.

Have you been able to read the developments of the last 50 years. 

How about some from the last 5 years?

The emergence of China in everything

The emergence of India in technology

The smartphone

The tablet

The fragility of the world economy

The fractures in the EU

The unravelling of the human genome

The Arab ‘Spring’

The rise of the Green Movement

The dragged out wars against terrorism in primitive countries

Does it matter?

No? Hunker down. Wait to go on the pension and hope not to take a long time to die. (Mind you, you are pretty much dead now with an attitude like that)

Yes? Of course it matters. You might be the Christopher Columbus they'll be writing about in 520 years from now – or your kids could be, or your grandies, or the people you meet and influence. 

Anyway, to infinity and beyond.

Live long and prosper.

The Olympics: To win or compete with grace?

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The Athlete


The Olympic Games are on again –
Four long years to train and strain
Hope dashed in a second by a fall or a sprain
or better opponents, in body or brain.

Crowds cheers, journalists' jeers –
Eliminated for dope or too many beers
Living with jitters and mind boggling fears
Both losing and winning inducing tears.

Discipline, effort, vain dedication.
'I'm sorry I lost. I'm in isolation.
My grief finds little or no consolation.
I feel as if I've shamed my whole nation.'

Please tell me my life is still on pace
That it's not defined by a stupid race
But by how I manage whatever I face
Come win or lose, with a load of grace.

I wonder if Jesus ever went to the hippodrome in Jerusalem? Did he walk or take a boat over to Jerash or Gadara to the hippodromes and amphitheatres there. Paul was imprisoned right next door to the hippodrome on the beach front in Caesarea Maritima.  He wrote about running and winning, boxing and wrestling and keeping his own body in good nick. With a blood thirsty crowd of 30,000 screaming for their winner outside his window each week he couldn't have missed the Roman pre-occupation with games. 

You would have had to walk around with your eyes shut not to have bumped into contestants on every street corner and village. With amphitheatres all across the Roman Empire as well as hippodromes and stadia there were chariot races, gladiatorial combats, games, races, wrestling bouts, object tossing and fisticuffs a-plenty.

Today it's the same. We worships the gods of victory, beauty, power, race and money. It's not easy to be in the arena without being taken up with the hype of success, winning, leading, dominating and smashing the opposition. You are either defined by the performance of your favourite team or the model of your car or the brands you wear. And it's all stupid.

As for you – 


So what are you supposed to do? How are you meant to 'be' in today's arena? 

To start with get this in your head: Your ultimate victory is already won for you. Christ has killed off the fear of death. He's won the ultimate human contest. Thankfully we don't have to beat anyone. It's done and dusted. It's the gold medal we wear all day every day – by faith.

Secondly, keep your eye on that tape at the finish line – the life to come. This world is not your home. You're just a-passin' through. That's the race you're running – to get to the end with grace and patience. The end.

As for the the game in progress, we have a comforter, a coach, an advocate. That's the Holy Spirit sent from the Father and we seem to enjoy avoiding him. How dumb is that?

You have team mates, sometimes on their game but like you, most often not. Nevertheless we're on the same team and we are all you've got. The Selector has put us in this team and He has done quite well with teams sillier than ours in the past so He can be relied on.

So run on. You're doing better than you think. Hey, you're reading this!

To infinity and beyond. Live long and prosper!

Jesus at the Bus Station in Jerusalem

When we were in Jerusalem in June 2012 we were pretty nauseated by the 'holy' pilgrimage sites. I came across one though that really got to me. It was the understated English recreation of the Garden Tomb. I was taken with its tranquility and its take-it-or-leave-it explanations. I was particularly captured by the suggestion that the possible site of Jesus' crucifixion may have been just outside the fence at what is now a bus station in the Muslim Quarter. I wrote this little meditation about it.

Hello Jesus,

When Joan Osbourne asked in her song,

What if God was one of us,

 just a slob like one of us,

 just a stranger on a bus,

 tryin' to make his way home?

I wondered if you’d think it was a rude question.

But Martin the enthusiastic Englishman in the Garden Tomb today said they crucified you at the Muslim Quarter bus station there at the cross roads in East Jerusalem just outside the Garden fence; not on a hill, not up high, but down low where everyone could see you, laugh at you, spit on you and blow smoke in your face as they went past with their donkeys loaded with olives and oil, onions and dates and falafel mix.

Then he said you were too heavy for two old men to carry all the way up the hill to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre so Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea carried you a hundred meters to the tomb Joseph's family was going to use for him. It's nice there. The birds must have woken you up three days later. I saw a little mother Laughing Dove on her nest she'd made on top of the Arlec floodlight where we had communion. Did you see her too? 


Or did you help her make a home there? I suppose you did. That's what you're like, isn't it?

When the Maries came to embalm you properly on that first morning of the week you were up and about, waiting for the bus to Emmaus. Then you got a ticket to Galilee, cooked your friends breakfast and then caught the last bus back to Jerusalem. A bit later you caught the first bus home.

You've been on a lot of buses ever since.

Do you remember the day when I was 10? You caught the Number 17 to Kingswood and got off at Kyre Avenue and came to Mrs McPhee's after-school Bible group? Do you remember how you asked if you could catch the bus home with me afterwards and stay?

I do. 

I was a bit unsure of you at first, but I am really glad we've been on the same bus ever since.

And then a month or two later you gave my Daddy a free ticket to Heaven. Kind really. He was tired and sick and I didn't really mind that much at the time. I thought it fair you paid his fare.

And to think I saw the place where you first got interested in buses. 

You and buses.

I see why you're interested in slobs like us, and whenever you meet us and ask us on board, you really do find your way home.

It's all so good

.

"And God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good."

When is the end to people inventing their own religions and gods to the exclusion of the one staring them in the eye?

Everything sings the praises of God. Everything paints the praises of God. Everything hums the praises of God. Everything writes the praises of God.

Horrible beetles and beautiful flowers. Disgusting bugs and delicious fruits. Torrential rains and burning deserts. Tiny moss and giant redgums. Black people's pink palms, white people's blue eyes, chinese people's almond eyes, Eskimos' flat noses , dogs' tails, cats' purrs, chimps' antics, elephants' trunks, baby's giggles.

I really don't know how someone can look at a sunflower, the blue sky and a child, a frond, a fern and a handful of compost and conclude beyond all argument to the contrary that it's all the result of nobody being interested enough to start it all with a design and a plan in mind. It has as far fetched to me that personal God doesn't exist and that He's not interested in you and me as to suggest that an Airbus 380 could be formed out of the North wind blowing rubbish across the Wingfield Tip.

Perhaps 'the universe' did it. Does 'universe' have a name by the way? Is it Bob or Betty? Is it a him or a her? And is it capitalised like 'Universe' or is it a hippie and has an all-lower case name like tiger-nevada-butterfly-yo-man? Wh-a-a-at? What's that you say? It can be anything you want it to be!  Puh-lease. And you say I'M  a dreamer!

When is the end to people inventing their own religions and gods to the exclusion of the one staring them in the eye?

Anyway, Happy 2012 to you.

To infinity and beyond.

Live long and prosper.

Colin Pearce