For the more observant of you who still bother to read this blog, you may have noticed that typing in www.pilgrimsoldier.net now brings you to this new site. If it doesn’t then hopefully at some point in the next 24 hours or so it will due to the wonders of the internet! Not the most exciting post, I know, but a post nevertheless!
If you’ve followed the link on the old blog then you’ve arrived at the new blog! I’m not sure how much I’ll be updating it before we physically move, but the best idea is to click on the RSS feed and add it to whatever feed reader you use so that any new posts arrive when I’ve written them!
It’s been ages since I last wrote and I doubt that anyone will actually read this given that fact! However, I need to write something tonight as tomorrow Zoe & I will receive our first appointment.
These last few months have been a real journey for me as I seek to allow the Holy Spirit to ready me for service as a Salvation Army Officer. Tomorrow is not the culmination of our training but it is the first of 3 important days over the next 4 months! And so I find myself this evening with lots of thoughts going through my mind but first amongst those is the wish to be free from thinking about my own wants and desires.
This theme has been a significant one for me over the last few months and then on Monday night someone read the following taken from an ordination address in 1869:
“Go wherever God may send you. Go without wishing to have everything arranged for your own tastes and your own comfort; without wishing to have everything in accordance even with your own religious desires. Go in the spirit of perfect self-surrender, of thorough self devotion, simply for Christ. There should be no limit. Christ gives you your commission, and to Christ you must give it back.”
This sums up what I want my officership to be about! I want to give up my own self-focussed wishes and instead go and do what God requires of me so that the community of believers is built wherever He chooses to send us.
So I’m waiting for tomorrow and everything that that will bring!
One of the problems with college life is that it raises questions that make you ponder but then another question crops up in the next lecture and you forget what you were pondering as you ponder anew! Sometimes though a thought breaks through the morass of ponderings and takes up residence in the forefront of your mind. On those occasions it suddenly seems that everything points to that same thought and its just that you are seeing it from different angles! This is one such thought!
It’s a couple of years ago now that I suddenly realised that Jesus passed the mantle of being the “Light of the World” to us, his followers. It seems like quite a ‘thick’ thing to say because I’m sure everyone else had already grasped this. However, I wasn’t quite as quick on the uptake as others. I knew it but had never made the link to the same phrase being used about him. This isn’t the thought though, its just background!
What has come to me over the last few weeks and is something that I am desperately trying to work out in my own mind is what us being the “Light of the world” actually means. And what I’ve realised is that all too often we don’t use it correctly!
What happens when you turn the light on in a dark room? It illuminates the room of course and you see things as they really are. Of course there are shadows and we can see the dust on surfaces, but the light doesn’t point it out, it simply lightens the darkness! All too often we, and I include myself in this, go into dark places and start pointing out all the dirt in those places. Instead of simply lighting up the room we take it upon ourselves to show how dirty and dusty and shadow-filled that room is!
But if we look at what Jesus does in the Gospels we see a man who simply goes into the dark places of the world and sheds the light of his presence. He doesn’t point out the sin in the lives of those people he encounters, well he does but normally only when they are supposed to already be living in the light and are the religious people. Instead he simply allows people to see the dirt themselves and allows them to decide what to do about it themselves.
I’m beginning to realise that this is what we’re supposed to do as well. It’s about us taking God’s light out in the world’s ever increasing dark places and lighting up the room. We don’t need to point out the dirt because if our light is being truly effective, people will see it anyway. All we have to do is spread God’s light and give people the chance to see their lives in the light of God!
What is it that gives me my sense of belonging to a church or corps? What makes me feel as if I belong to it?
Is it the sense of belonging to a community of people who love each other? Is it a commitment to the mission of the corps/church? Is it the style of the worship that makes me feel at home?
Or do I simply go because that is where I’ve always gone? Or rather where I’ve been sent!
Why do I belong? Why even ask? Why?
Isn’t it enough just to belong? Isn’t it? Do I?
Lots of questions but no answers! I don’t know, but there must be a reason; there must be a purpose!
