I’m reading General William Booth’s classic ‘In Darkest England and the Way Out.’ (You can download it free if you follow the link). Well worth reading on its own merit – a book years ahead of its time, very influential in social policy and politics. Booth starts by reminding his readers of Mr Stanley’s (‘Dr Livingstone I presume?’- actually he probably never said it) exploration through the Congo, the descriptions of which were being read voraciously all across Britain at the time. I just returned from speaking at a funeral and my mind went off at a tangent as it does, I was struck by certain parallels. Stanley was describing to his readers in Victorian England what they could not perceive. ‘The Lost Continent.’ Darkest Africa. Pygmy tribes and cannibals. How could they imagine ‘forests’ (he uses the word because the word jungle hadn’t yet been coined) larger than France, where it poured rain every day and the sun rarely pierced the canopy? Then there are the tribes Stanley encountered. They had never seen a white person before. He describes […]
Month: March 2008
Out of the jungle
Fix Your Eyes
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Standing waiting for buses as a kid, I always could read which one it was before everyone else. At the age of 16 I went to get my eyes tested, as part of the preliminaries for joining the Police Cadets, I whizzed through the usual chart on the wall, and just to be smart read out the tiny writing at the bottom saying where the chart was made and who by. They put me on some other machines, testing for colour blindness and then depth perception – I recall looking down a tunnel and having to say what position various dots were on targets. At the end of the session, the Doctor said, “Well Mr Delaney, you have sniper vision.” I was devastated! I had wanted to be in the police so much, but I had some awful condition that he’d […]
BUT
Personally I really loved the film, Zoë didn’t like it at all – said it was one of the worst things she’d ever seen. It was called No Country for Old Men, and it swept the board at the Oscars this year. And I am not going to give the end away except to say that when it ended – all around the cinema, there was a collective “What?” People didn’t ‘get’ the ending. A Vicar friend told me years that if I wanted to imagine a world without God, I should see a film called Seven. It is a horrible film. The thing is, the ending of it is so shocking- because you’ve been preconditioned to expect a good ending, and you don’t get a good ending. Evil triumphs. It’s awful! I was kind of in shock for days after that film. It’s a bit like when we watched a film called Jude – based on Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, it’s just so depressing, and that’s the happy bits! The thing is with these stories, we don’t want […]
What day is it?
Years ago I took a large cross out on the day before Easter and preached out in the street. Some people became Christians that day, including a young gypsy guy who’d been driving past in a van – he later admitted he was off to do something illegal – he saw a man with a cross, stopped to listen to the message, and when I approached him he said, “Yeah – you got me.” Within minutes he gave his life to the Lord of the cross. Oh happy day 🙂 That same day, I was approached by a furious woman, who told me in no uncertain terms that this was ‘the wrong day to do this.’ It would have been okay to carry a cross in some solemn religious procession on Good Friday, but didn’t I know this was Easter Saturday – the wrong day! Well, today is in fact Holy Saturday so she was doubly wrong, because it is also the day of salvation! A couple of years ago I received an irate letter from a local person here […]
See the invisible
The invisible man married the invisible woman. They’re fine – but the kids aren’t much to look at. ‘Doctor! Doctor! I think I’m invisible.’ Sorry, I can’t see you right now. If in doubt, start with a lame joke. Or two. Then let me point you to something amazing you have to watch Rowan Atkinson must have seen the unseen, to help others to see it there. I was just listening to a Bill Hybels talk where he admits that people might think he’s all about applying leadership principles and strategies, but he says a huge amount of what he does and has done is (to use his words) ‘very mystical.’ He talks about hearing God’s whisper and going with that. We aren’t very good at focusing on the invisible. We like the seen, the known, the safe. I love the Billy Graham quote you can hear sampled on DC Talk’s Jesus Freak album, on the track – ‘In my mind’s eye.’ Can you see God? You haven’t seen him? I’ve never seen the wind. I see the effects of […]