Occasionally books turn up that are a message I need to hear. In some cases they may have been books written years ago, long ago read and benefited from by friends and even recommended to me. I may have bought it and had it sitting on a shelf or in a pile by the side of my bed for years, probably because it was a good idea but I was not yet ready for the message.

At other times I just see a book, or hear of it somehow, and just know I must get it now, and drop everything else to read it. They are often life-changing. It was like that with ‘The Shack’, and Richard Rohr’s ‘The Enneagram’ and Brennan Manning’s ‘Ragamuffin Gospel’. You’ve probably got your own list. Some people read in the hope of solving problems in their world, I mostly read to solve problems in myself – in the hope that if I can make progress the world around me will enjoy it and respond. I think both orientations are valid.

I’m not a prolific reader. Each book feels like quite an investment of time and mental energy so I have to choose carefully. Maybe what I subconsciously do is let the books find me. That’s just preamble however. What I mean to say is I’ve had one book of each type find me this last month.

The first was Tom Wright’s ‘Surprised by Hope’, which has been on my shelf for a couple of years. The second is ‘Immortal Diamond’ by Richard Rohr, which leapt off Blackwell’s shelf. They both approach the subject (for me revelatory at present) of resurrection, but from different directions. Tom’s from rigorous scriptural argument and Richard’s from a contemplative and mystical angle. Two books, for me, in harmony; witnessing the same thing.

From Tom’s point of view, resurrection has been a lost truth who’s absence from our consciousness has led to diminished thinking and living on the part of Christians. The book actually did for me what it said on the cover, it restored hope in a surprising way.

The little piece of revelation that broke through to me this morning was that because of the hope of resurrection, it is O.K. for things to be begun in this age that will not be finished by us, or even by anyone. It is O.K. to be unrewarded and unknown in this age. And I don’t mean sadly and self-sacrificially accepted, but really, joyfully, O.K. I can be confident that all I endeavour by faith in Christ will finally be completed, fulfilled and perfected in the really real resurrection age. Nothing that was by faith that dies and goes into the ground will remain there forever. Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted. I no longer need to define success in any terms I’ve learned so far.

There are also promises and dreams I’ve lived with and not yet seen. At times I’ve imagined they were expiring, but now not so. Time is not what I thought it was, neither is a lifetime. Weariness and discouragement can fall away in the light of such truths.

On the cliff at Dodman Point in Cornwall there stands a large stone cross first erected in 1896, with a plaque laid at its base. At first sight one thinks, ‘War Memorial’, but in fact it’s a ‘navigational aid’. The plaque says something like this…”In the sure hope of the soon coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection from the dead, and for the encouragement of those who live by faith…this cross is erected.” The first time I saw this cross there was a sense of past and future opening up and being reconciled in the present, at a geographical point, and me standing there. I think the truth that Tom reminds us of does the same.

So the second angle, one that I find contemplatives such as Richard help me with, and which makes increasing sense to me combined with the first perspective begins with a question:

How much participation in the resurrection age is available to me to experience now, and how, really, experientially might it be accessed? Though for the moment it is always held in paradoxical tension with incompleteness, it surely has to be experiential and not just knowledge.

In the resurrected, restored, heaven-and-earth-reunited age there is an essential element of me that will be there, recognisable but different. We can only try to imagine, but like Jesus as the gardener or the fellow traveller on the road to Emmaus, who ‘I’ will be then is the ‘me’ who I am now, only more so; minus the temporary hiddenness and restrictedness. Mystics and contemplatives have told us there is a ‘True Self’ discoverable amidst the temporary clutter of fallen-ness and conditioning, and found that the quest to perceive and honour the immortal diamond; the Divine Image we are created in, involved dying. This process they wisely called ‘life’, and the art was waking up from the trance and paying attention to ‘life’.

On waking up they discovered there was a choice needed to invest our identity in that which continues, which is eternal, and disinvest our identity from that which must fall away. Not disinvesting from the physical body (that problem will be solved by a simple upgrade at some point), but the constructed, conditioned, inadequate ego identity that is the ‘me’ that cannot survive the glory that is my destiny. It is the part that dies continually by being let go of, and the part that as it dies, really feels like death. In Christian teaching I think this is what we call ‘Living by the Spirit’, only that has been seldom earthed.

The mystics and contemplatives (of which Paul must have been one) just had more courage than most to explore the experience to the limits to find out what was there. To let go means falling, to fall means entering the abyss, in the abyss is the dragon, but dragons hoard stolen treasure. By the time we encounter the dragon, however, we have already ‘died’ so it has no power over us. So we plunder, reclaim our lost treasure and more besides and we return with gifts. Is this what ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live’ means?

They encourage us to believe that we can co-operate with the letting go now and as we do so experience more of who we will be, which is not a stranger to us, but is who we really are. They tell us the falling is actually how we get caught and held – the way we’ve longed for all our lives.

Richard encourages me and reveals the meaning of all my experiences in the light of resurrection starting and still to come.

Taking the two together; the sharp perceptions of the intellectual thinkers and the courage and sensitivity of the mystics seem to me to be pointing the same way. The great fulfilment of which resurrection is part is getting nearer and clearer, and it is more worth living fully than ever before.

We are back and as always much to digest. I will be posting on our time away soon – not too many reflections as the work there can certainly not be accused of self-promotion so I do not want to embarrass them, though it is probably the best work that we have been able to see. Not perfect but…

Also in the next few days I will be posting here on a book I have been reading: God’s Gay Agenda. Some time back I agreed to review some books tied to thespeakeasy.info, so I need to fulfil that obligation.

Recently questions over austerity have arisen!! The 28 year old graduate who seems to have found errors in one of the main research papers undergirding the drive for austerity as the cure, and now The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has said: “While I think ‘austerity’ is fundamentally right, I think it has reached its limit.”

Interesting times!!

Also very challenging while in Romania we discovered that under the communist regime the (now debt-laden country) had a significant surplus and was free of debt. So all we need now is some smart volunteers to help steer society in a nice straight line. Any volunteers out there?

We are travelling this week so will only be online on a few occasions… this being one of them. We made our (customary) 15 hour journey on Monday and arrived in Romania and our bed (3.00am) to be reminded as to why we come here these next two following days. I hope to put a little more flesh on the bones at some point but this is one of the best mission-wholistic-gospel-faithful projects that we connect with. At one level I would love to list out some of the amazing stories that are here, but am also aware that Lee and team are not looking to blow their trumpet.

I have just finished a day on Revelation – started at 9.00am so if the team is not a little tired I can make up for that. A pleasure to input and so receptive. It certainly leaves us with the huge thought of what does this look like with feet on it. While here I have been very provoked to think through the answer to the question I present below and then the practical issue of who.

There is enough theology framework around now regarding the nature of the Gospel, resurrection as political act, New Jerusalem, critique of Empire, kenarchy etc., that we need to begin to find an answer relating to the apostolic criteria:

• Apostolic mandate knows about the issue of territory
• It relates to a generational time frame
• It is obedient to the one eternal Gospel but seeds it in a culturally relevant way
• and can fill the blank in of ‘My God is able…’

I will be pursuing these issues these next days in my thinking.

“Stay with the question. When there is a question, you are awake. When there is an answer you go to sleep.”

It was a comment made by the teacher on an Enneagram weekend I went on recently, and I have been pondering the wisdom of it a lot. It challenged me to ask which, then, is more valuable – the question or the answer?

His point was about letting questions remain to accomplish what they need to; not hating the not knowing, the transition, the imbalance so much that we have to dismiss it by the fastest means.

Our lives seldom present us with a set of instant answers, they more often immerse us in questions that set us on searches and journeys. They place us uncomfortably within questions not yet answered, with paradoxes that, unless we are to do violence to ourselves or others, just have to be held and with mysteries that we are not yet equipped to probe.  And yet we are also made to believe in fulfilments and home-comings and to yearn towards them. In Acts 17 Paul seems to be saying to the Athenians that the very environment we live in, God deliberately tailored for us to stir questions and initiate searchings rather than to present solutions. Jesus too, seems to have more often than not replied to questions with questions. Something was more important to him than knowing the answer.

It is what being alive is all about in our present age I think. Not so much about the arriving as the being on the way. The quick answer, the sure thing that we can settle on before we know why, could be more of a curse than a blessing. It could park us in a siding and delude us. Eschatologically as well, our lives are in tension between something begun; something promised but not yet completed. Who you and I really are is still a mystery, yet to be revealed. There is resurrection potential within; a concealed diamond crusted for the moment in the fallen and temporary but one day to be revealed in unimaginable spiritual and physical glory. There is an image of God we glimpse in ourselves and each other, hinting at something more to come.

So letting each other live with the journey and with the not yet discovered must be as important as embracing it for ourselves. We often feel, with our friends and partners and children that we already have just the thing that they need, so we want to do them a favour by short-cutting their search. Sometimes we mean well, wanting to spare them some effort or pain. At other times it’s because their state has made us feel uncomfortable and we want relieve ourselves of their pain. Perhaps it’s because we long to be useful, or we may even be motivated by fear that they will never arrive, or arrive at the wrong place. I know I’ve done all this to those I care for at times.

So, being true to God’s ways with us and the way he allows life to teach us, is the church meant to give the answers or to facilitate and support the searching?

Just putting together some notes for our time this coming week in Romania. So here is a seed thought that I am seeking to incubate between now and then:

• The New Jerusalem fills the whole of Creation
• God and the Lamb fill the whole of the New Jerusalem.

This could go in a number of directions. But are we to ‘get into God’ or does ‘God get into us as we get into Creation’?

Well a third of the year has gone. Cyprus has yet again emphasised the level of the crisis with no quick-fix solutions being offered. An economy that benefited from allowing people to ‘hide’ their money. Alongside this further exposures are in the pipeline with respect to the Virgin Islands and finances.

Italy is as yet without a government but with a pope who has made quite an impact, one of the most noticeable signs with his washing the feet of a Muslim woman at Easter. We reflect often on a dream that Gayle had that indicated Vatican – Rome – Italy. Chuck Pierce had prophesied about a flood in Rome that would mark a cleansing in the church – and that took place by the Milvian bridge, the place of the famous Constantinian victory in 312. So there has been a change in the Vatican… now a shift in Roman politics?

Spain continues to see a push for corruption to be squeezed into the open with now even a direct member of the royal family being prosecuted in a case.

In Jan. his year I wrote: The political scene in the West will polarise yet further. There will be a push both left and right. As a sign there will be reports of land literally cracking open (headlines such as ‘new fizzure appears’), indicating that lands are dividing politically. Well there have been a number of sink holes and landslides that have appeared at the beginning of this year. They are caused by natural causes or through an acceleration through human abuse.

Always economics and religion are the two elements that are hit the hardest in a time of spiritual turn around.

Values and consistency are being challenged. When economics are separated from culture and societal values we sow seeds of division. If people are fed individualistic values in the economic sphere then it spills over into society. Corporate responsibility is not the same as control. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ is still responded to the same as before.

An interesting point was made this week in Dover Beach that the news channel advocating ‘family values’ does not exactly promote the values it suggests through its entertainment channels. Or in the UK, the same operation sells its ‘news’ with the infamous third page. Inconsistent – or consistent?

We are also a third of the way through this decade of re-alignment and re-balancing. Our map is upside down – makes for an interesting view of the world.

A month or so after Adam and I returned from Iran, it was an immense encouragement to come across the Facebook site Israel Loves Iran. Over the months I have read some of the messages and testimonies and found them very moving. The other day I discovered the reciprocal Iran loves Israel site. Obviously much smaller, but with censored internet inside Iran, it would, I guess, only be expatriate Iranians who have the freedom to participate openly.

As I prepared to travel and pray in Iran in 2011, I sensed the Lord speaking to me about a ‘special relationship’ between Iran and Israel. In many spheres of life where there is un-health or fallen-ness, often what we see manifesting is not just a reduced measure of God’s intended creation mandate, but rather the exact opposite. Seeing this might even be a big clue to knowing what specifics to pray for and seek; not so much a reform of what is, but an embryonic expression of the complete opposite.

In Iran, as we walked the streets we often prayed that the land would be spared from war with Israel/America (and if I’m honest, especially while WE were in the country. We wanted to come home. Self-preservation is so strong).  But seriously, despite the belligerence of Iran’s leaders, any conflict would be so one-sided as to be suicidal. Poor odds are not the issue. The Iranian and Shia psyche accepts the self-sacrificing and suicidal. The annual Shia Ashura festival reflects Iranians finding their identity in their pain and suffering in the same way perhaps that another nation might find its identity in its success, or in it’s fighting spirit. You could say the modern Iranian nation is built on martyrdom. It is a land that land has a repeated history of population massacres, so that may affect an attitude that one may not be able to choose to live, but one can choose to die. And who would such death empower? The one who wants to eliminate his enemy needs to be saved from himself, as does the one who wants to sacrifice himself.

It is an interesting cultural phenomenon that Iranians themselves are not completely comfortable with Islam. Many look back to a pre-Islamic age, and the ruler who presided over their golden age was Cyrus the Great.

“Cyrus the Great Loved You…We Love You” Is the most recent post on Iran Loves Israel. When Iranians perceive that Cyrus loved Israel they are referring to the emancipation that was a feature of Cyrus’ rule. I’m sure he was no saint, but Jews along with many conquered minorities were released from slavery, re-settled and granted freedoms in a way that was extremely uncharacteristic of Imperial Rulers certainly then, and even now.

Biblically, though Cyrus did not know Israel’s God, he responded to his timings and purposes to the extent that he could be called a ‘Servant of God and of God’s purposes for Israel’. It was all to do with a return from exile and a completely new start.

Our enemies define us more than our friends do. What, or who, we hate can to a large extent form the structure of our character, as individuals, and by extension, it must happen to us as nations as well. Pakistan, for example, has no coherent ‘I am’ identity apart from India. It is almost entirely defined by reaction; by being ‘NOT India’. If there was no India to hate and fear – one wonders if Pakistan would exist. At a personal level too, if we have the courage to go there, we often encounter a shadow side, an unacceptable, hated and repressed aspect of ourselves. We can discover, though, that in embracing the shadow, we are acting redemptively for our whole selves and that we recover precious parts of ourselves that had been lost in the hated and feared shadow.

I don’t know…there may yet be war. The choice to befriend by the powerless may not be enough to moderate the egos of the powerful. If there is, I will weep. I care, but not about being wrong because there is something so worth hoping for here. Though I personally believe that in Christ the redemption dynamic has moved beyond the national boundaries of the Old Testament, I am sure that nations as they stand today can still reflect that, and if Israel can ever reflect what God intended her to be, Iran will have a part to play in the discovery.