Category: Personal Perspectives

A whole lot of groaning

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

There are three connected ‘groans’ in Romans 8:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15).

That’s a pretty clear cry, though it is childlike, not at all sophisticated, and a cry that comes from deep within.


We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:22, 23).

Two groans in these verses with creation and ‘we ourselves’ groaning. These two are placed together as they are deeply related.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words (Rom. 8:26).

Ever despaired as to how to pray? Sure, praying in tongues helps, and maybe Paul has that in mind here, but I think he is also pushing for something deeper than that, with a word used only once in the NT (alaletos, from a related word for ‘mute’ – alalos), maybe we could say with sighs / groans that are inarticulate, sounds without words.

Land / geography holds the corporate memory and so responds from that memory until either the memory is healed or new memories come in. New, as in new and different, do not occur naturally as memory locked in the geography draws yet more of the same kind of action to itself thus layering and re-enforcing earlier memories. (The rape of Dinah in Gen. 34 and the subjugation of the woman in John 4 seem related, being the same geography though separated by more than 1000 years. The pain from Genesis 4 is still present and manifesting in John 4.) Thus there has to be a healing for the memory locked in the land.

The land, responding as victim shouts with a voice of pain, that sound being one that is seeking recompense. Land does not by itself automatically release the pain through forgiveness. We have to hear the voice of the land, but we also have to help the land to articulate more than pain and to rise up so that ‘a better word than that of the blood of Abel’ is spoken; that original word coming up from the land being one that was requiring justice. If that voice is heard and responded to then the cycle will simply continue.

Back then to the Scriptures in Romans 8.

The Spirit within us groans with inarticulate sounds, sounds that cannot be put into words. We might not be able to articulate with words, but in yielding to the Spirit a sound is made, a groan is offered that will connect with creation.

This un-wordy groaning is for the future, for something different than that which is here now to manifest, something that is in line with liberation. The groaning calls for the future but springs from the past. The past of a simple understanding that we have been set free, that an unsophisticated, childlike cry of ‘Abba Father’, an expression of freedom is what we also desire for the land that is beyond us and yet present to us. Nothing smart there, something that could even be viewed as naive and childlike.

And in the same way creation has been groaning for liberation, a liberation akin to ours. Creation becomes our responsibility (nothing new there – consistent from the creation stories onwards).

We were in bondage, the Spirit comes and we receive a firstfruit, and respond with ‘Abba Father’.
Creation likewise is in bondage, but ‘sees’ our future and groans for the same. I suggest looking for our response. How do we respond, for we feel weak; the Spirit comes to align us toward the future, perhaps also we should expect that the land could receive her firstfruits, some measure of freedom, even if not the fullness.

I wonder also with this liberation of the family of God if we are not challenged to hear something from heaven that we can teach the land to speak forth. In 2 Cor. 12:4 Paul speaks of being

caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.

Although he uses another (rarely used) word regarding what he heard, there seems something parallel to the Spirit’s help. ‘Inarticulate sounds’ and ‘sounds that are not to be put into words’. Could it be that to truly help the land we have to hear some sounds that cannot be put into words so that the land calls out beyond a cry for recompense but we teach the land to also groan without words?

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Zooms for 2022

And a little north star thrown in

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by Martin Scott
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Admin day… sorting out dates. So first a change:

I plan that the first Tuesday of each month to have an ‘open zoom’, not directly related to the books I have written, but seeking to address some practical outworkings. I was originally hoping to begin on Feb 1st, but I have cancelled that one as I will be travelling with Gayle over that period. So:

Open Zooms:

March 1st., 7.30pm UK time will be the first one. I will present some material for discussion on the tensions of the nobodies being the key to change, and the scenario where CEO’s and those who carry authority to change things need to be reached. I do beleive this is the key issue facing us – transformation but how?

On April 5th., 7.30pm UK time Ro Lavender will follow this through with the valuing of every contribution as being key to transformation…. what do we avoid doing because it is ‘so small’, and what do we not see we are doing because it is ‘so small’.

If you wish to participate in one of those evenings or simply be put on a mailing list, send me an email or fill in the form on the home page: https://3generations.eu.

Book 1 Zooms:

I will start two groups that will be based on Humanising the Divine also in February. They will start on February 23rd. (Wednesday), one at 10.30am and the other at 8.00pm UK time. Let me know if one or other of those you would like to be involved in.

True North…

Ever since I was a young boy I have been fascinated by direction, and from an early age understood how one could follow the Big Dipper / the Great Bear / Ursa Major to find the pole star / north star. Find that and one could find the way home, or travel in a specific direction. The great bear was always high in the sky in the winter months for me, easy to find and then bang, there it is, the north star.

These last days since arriving back in Spain the night sky has been so clear, I began to look again for the north star. I was pretty sure I had it nailed, but where was the Great Bear? Pretty sure is good, but without the Great Bear… how sure is pretty sure? Then I realised I had to look to a different part of the sky to what I expected, much closer to the horizon, for I am much further south than back in the days of my youth.

We have to find the north star, but where we have to look to find what points to the north star might well have changed. (Apologies to those in the Southern Hemisphere but I think you have something with the Southern Cross?… That sounds pretty good!)

In December I was constantly having the same image – that 2022 would present us with four possible doors in every situation where we were to move forward. I can pull on Scriptures about an open door – but four? However, it was always the same, four doors that would open. Probably will be literal at times but as I have meditated on it seems that four being representative of creation / world, it is a world door that will open. The choice means that when in the past we might be looking for the definitive one, this was saying, go through the door. Which one? The one you choose. It does mean not going through the others, and the amazing thing is I realised that God was the other side of each door. It almost doesn’t matter which one we go through.

The other side of the door is the north star. How we are sure we are pointing to the north star (finding the Great Bear). Go through the world door, whichever one. It is a new way of navigating this year, and for some we will have to come to terms with we can’t do it all… but we can still be aligned to the GPS of heaven.

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Into the mess we go

Last post of 2021

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

Anyone who reads these posts on a regular basis will realise that I pretend that I am a simple imbiber of truth and then write about it… which being translated is I am a biased person who ignores any material that disagrees with my viewpoint! And if anyone reads between the lines of my posts you will also realise that I think most of us live that way.

A while back we had in our home for a few days, a Brexiteer, an advocate that humanity’s ability to create money out of nothing was reflective of us being created in the image of God, who viewed ‘woke culture’ as being negative, that ‘BLM’… Get the picture? Such a biased person, I think to myself!!! Yet, how good it was. Someone who on most of those key points would take a diametrically opposing position to my own. It was so good because when in the same space for a few days there are two options, argue and fall out… or listen.

We all operate with a map that helps us understand the territory, but the map is not the territory. The map simplifies things, and in so doing helps us navigate; but the map is not the real world, the territory is.

I have recently posted on same-sex issues and a response to that. In making a shift over the past years I have sought to listen to stories; I am well aware that there are stories to be told on both sides of the divide; stories in themselves cannot dictate how we should respond, but they help us make adjustments to the map, for they put us in touch with the territory. The danger is that the stories we select we think tell the whole story, that they map out the entire territory. They do not, and there will be days when we walk the territory that the map does not help us.

The Christian world operates by a map, a map that simplifies so much. I have commented in the past that Jesus who taught post-resurrection to the disciples about the kingdom of God clearly either did not do a good job, or what he taught (and maybe more important to for us to understand: what he omitted) exposed that we are not doing a good job when we have all the answers.

Questions. Questions often come when we meet situations we did not expect, or they encroach on our world uninvited. Questions. Where are you Adam? The inability to really answer that question meant he had no idea where God was: and there are two stories told since then as to where God positioned Godself – one told incarnationally by Jesus, and one that fuelled a lot of division. If Adam (male and female) had understood where they were and where God was the original temptation would have held no power at all. Adam, made in the image of God, stoops to eat some fruit to be like God! That was an incredible ‘falling short of the glory of God’, the glory that was present in their humanity. Failing to be human, shuts down questions.

That original temptation and Christendom line up. Move over, I am coming to the centre, being the strap line for both. A view of God, a God of power (true but not the essence of God), a God we can be like, one we can represent. Defending God… or defending the god that we believe is God.

I have been reading Paul Kingsnorth’s material on why he has come down on the side of being a non-vaxxer and an advocate for that position. (https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-moment-part-one – and two subsequent posts.) He rightly exposes the hostility and division that is present, the setting up of an ugly divide (I think most of his statistics he quotes are highly suspect… comparing like with not like, but this does not nullify what he is saying.) In it he also infers a regrettable loss of the shaping of the world that Christendom gave the West. Those days have gone, and are not coming back… thank God!

I, like many, wrote of the great re-set that was signified by the COVID-19 phenomenon, and have to look painfully at the lack of reset to the economic world. Far from being reset it has accelerated in the woeful direction of the ever-widening gap. Sad that those who are pro ‘God’s law for society’ (theonomists) don’t critique their hopes with a healthy does of true reset – Jubilee. Given that there are aspects where there has not been a reset I am torn. I could be persuaded to say – we need more to truly reset things… But that I do not hold to. The reset has gone as far as it can. An exposure of what is there is visible, and in part Kingsnorth’s articles are saying that.

Jesus came at the ‘fullness of times’, not I believe as some (past) have suggested, the time of global communication, roadways etc., but in the context of Galatians and the hostile powers (which included the law!) the fullness of times was the time when the captivity to powers had reached their peak. It was then that Jesus came.

Maybe, maybe… and again a maybe. Maybe the reset is allowing a re-evaluation of what is present. Powers that divide, that sow seeds of dehumanisation. The book of Revelation remains ever so pertinent, the beast receives a voice. The voice might be human but the beast is non-human and anti-all-things-human.

The powers might be coming to a peak. At such a time there can be a manifestation, a revelation of glory, glory being a description of what it means to be truly human.

We can resist mess by bringing all people to our side of the table. Or we an cohabit the same space and listen. If, I as a three-times vaccinated person, and pro-vaccination it is not because it is the godly way to go. Life is a compromise (look at Paul in Romans, the theological text-book to read about compromise!). There can be good reasons for, and there can be good reasons against a given position. Governments have some hard decisions to make, but we do not need to jump on a conspiracy to shape the map we use to journey on the territory.

We have entered new territory. The vaccine issue might be one sign of that. However, for us as believers we have to see beyond the simple right / wrong judgement (I think there might be something early on in the Bible about that being a real mistaken path?)

Mess is here. Dialogue needs to be companion for us all. Jesus is coming again to teach us about the kingdom of God. We will have so few notes from what he teaches. We will hit situations that we don’t know how to respond to. We will have trances that we think will be simply a test to hold to the proven buy history to be the right response, only to discover that God has moved on. And yes, I mean that last sentence (nothing to do with God ‘growing up’, or ‘changing a set of beliefs’, but everything to do with where we have set up camp.)

We will continue to use maps. Maps simplify. They can find the statistics that are needed to prove the rightness of the map; the stories will underline the grid I use. But the territory is the territory… and it is messy.

Who would want to be like God? S/he is where we are, hence the tarnishing of reputation that takes place. There comes a time though when, for the future of the planet, God moves on and invites us to move position. These are not absolutes, as in now step here as this is where the TRUTH is. The movement is incremental. Hence ‘let’s just go back to normal’ is not acceptable. Let’s stumble forward, get our feet dirty.

And as a footnote: the mark of the beast is something much more sinister than a vaccine chip. More subtle and more damaging. Speaking with a human voice… yet listen to the language for the voice dehumanises.

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Hard push

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

Starting February I am planning on starting two groups on book #1 Humanising the Divine, so here comes the hard sell!

If numbers are sufficient I will have a day-time group and also an evening group (UK times).

I am aiming for Wednesday February 2nd 10.30am and Wednesday February 2nd 8.00pm as the start dates. We will use the book but I will give some background that is not present in the book: reading the Bible as historic narrative; reading with Exile as key OT time, and the Jewish Wars of 66-70 as a major horizon that came into view.

At this stage I should pull out some reviews, so pulling two by random I have a review related to book#1:

Disappointed by the last chapter

and one on book#3:

Did not break any new ground.

However, what those reviews do not reveal is my clever strategy – did you note there were no comments on Books #2 and #4? You see you have got to read book 1 to be able to move on to book 2, and likewise book 3 to grasp book 4. Those – if I were to pull out the reviews, even by random would show that they were amazing.

OK long story short, my point is that there are some who really valued the books others not so much. All a bit irrelevant to me. They are not written at an intellectual level (a quick check on the author’s name will reveal that), are aimed at helping us (read ‘you’) think through your own conclusions, with no need to agree with me. Indeed joining one of the zoom groups only requires complying with two rules: you do not assume I am right on everything I write or suggest, and that you also do not assume all your perspectives are correct.

Irrespective of the reviews – good, bad or indifferent – I would love to have you join me. Send me an email with the group you would like to join.

martin@3generations.eu
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Our neighbourhood

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

Unbelievably it is 3 years ago that we were able to get an apartment in Madrid. Three whole years. I was looking at the picture that is on my FaceBook page (the page I ‘never’ look at) and here follows a little explanation (Plaza San Martin). Since 2012 we have always stayed (AirBnB) on that side of Madrid, nearly always in the ‘Lavapies’ barrio, at the bottom of the hill it (literally) means the place of washing feet. It has always been a place that has drawn the immigrants (seems appropriate as that is who we are to Madrid and to Spain), a challenging place where drugs are easily available, the drugs scene run in the main by Chinese mafia with foot soldiers often drawn from the African community. Since 2012 until 2018 we have (all-but) prayer walked every street of the barrio. Gentrification is setting in – the good side it can ‘lift’ a community, the down side of course is that people are squeezed out. We have tried to use the apartment as gift when we are not there, and I am always amazed at how within our hands there will always be something we can do that is small but sows into a future. The ultimate small is the ‘container’ for glory in the Bethlehem context that we mark at this time of year.

Land is interesting. It is the container for the corporate memory, hence can resist renewal or can be very open. Lavapies… a great history.

Quite a crowd, with the photograph taken in 1977 and of a funeral cortege in our area. In January, seemingly in order to provoke a reaction so that the military would have to step in and reverse the democratic process post-Franco, three gunmen entered a lawyers’ office and killed five of those present. However, it appears that the desired result did not take place. On the day of the funeral the response called for from those who identified with the victims was one of responding in silence and not to participate in any violence. As can be seen a crowd of some 100,000 gathered, without any physical retaliation. It is said that rather than reverse the democratic process it was a major catalyst in moving it forward.

Right in the centre of the area (Anton Martin) is this memorial to that event. The ‘hug’ says it all, and at the top of the plaque is a quote:

If the echo of their voice weakens, we will perish.

This is our area, and each time we walk past that memorial it is indeed a memory provoker. Beyond our memory that land has a record of it.

(Image by Tulimori – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34138915)

How many places are there that we can stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, those who had faith and those who did not, but they knew somehow that their responses were sowing for a future. Add to that a true apostolic vision, marked by long term patience aligned to consistent direction, and I am sure there are many geographic situations that are waiting for us nobodies to connect with.

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A very smart post

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by Martin Scott
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From time to time I read a post that is equally smart as mine are… what an arrogant statement I hear you say, but read on… and I often read posts that are way smarter than mine. (From time to time probably means inside my little head.) Here is one that is way smarter than one I could write by Tim Suttle who pastors a church in Kansas, USA.

A couple of quotes in there, one from Stanley Hauerwas that was a bit of reminder to me:

Anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.

Then in the article itself he critiques the use of the word ‘deconstruction’, simply suggesting that

Deconstruction, in the popular sense of that word, should be a normal aspect of growth toward maturity. In a less insecure era we would just call it: discipleship.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/paperbacktheology/2021/12/what-about-the-real-problems-that-are-driving-people-to-deconstruct.html
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Q & A

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Personal Perspectives

Last night I had a dream, maybe not a full on God-dream but one that I woke from energised. It centred around how we tend to approach life with the answers, how we are sure because of our faith, and then we try and make life fit our answers. My little task in the dream was to come to a group who were so sure about everything and tell them that their answers were irrelevant as they did not have the right questions (indeed they did not seem to have any questions; they had left that part of life behind them). As I looked around the whole group I could see they were very content, but evidently in a bubble, they had little contact (and probably little relevance) to what lay beyond themselves.

Pre-fall I guess the path was one of discovery, experimentation and surprise – sounds a great way to live? The instruction was to ‘eat of all the trees’. Try this fruit, what about that one… What a great way to learn and given that redemption brings about a restoration this should become an element in our lives. The freedom of discovery.

Post-fall it seems that questions are key. Before God says anything by way of revelation there are questions that come that penetrate right to the heart:

  • “Where are you?”
  • “Who told you that you were naked?”
  • “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
  • “What is this that you have done?”

Questions continue throughout Scripture. Particularly before revelation comes:

  • ‘What is in your hand?’
  • ‘What do you see?’
  • ‘Who do you say I am?’

If we are not comfortable with questions there will be very little revelation. We have to be comfortable with not knowing… and if we are not comfortable with that we will always have a tendency to resort to eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (hint: not a good idea and one that does not have a good ending! When I first wrote this last sentence I mis-spelt good as ‘goof’, not a bad spelling?).

Putting the two elements of pre-fall and post-fall together we need to consider that discovery (with experimentation and surprise) and questions need to be the tracks either side of the path that we walk down. God is the all-knowing one, we…? Well we are maybe not the all-ignorant ones, but far from being the all-knowing ones!

Questions without answers are not comfortable… but we have to be come comfortable with that feeling. We have to hold this, and learn to live with a big old ‘I don’t know’ as part of of who we are.

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A few reflections on the ‘r’ word

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by Martin Scott
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I hope you enjoyed the dialogue with Michele. I always appreciate talking with her as she lives with an integrity that has meant she has not always been able to walk in a straight line pursuing a successful career path in things ecclesiastical, but has turned aside and then followed the path of the Spirit… after all Jesus said that was a hallmark of those who are ‘born again’… theologians have changed the words of Jesus to apply it to the Spirit being like the wind! Such an interpretation can still allow us to live carefully… not I think an option Jesus seemed to want to offer.

I grew up with talk of Duncan Campbell and the Lewis revival of the early 50s; I came to faith through connection to Pentecostals so the stories of Smith Wigglesworth, Stephen and George Jeffries, the healing revivalists of the 50s became great ‘food’, then the extensive works and stories of Charles Finney (and what a middle name – Grandison!!), plus some amazing encounters connected to John Wesley. I wrote a book some 20 years ago ‘Sowing seeds for Revival’ (later republished as Gaining Ground). Someone asked me a couple of days ago would I change anything in that book (and Impacting the City) and I replied with a ‘basically no… even if I might express some things a little differently’.

I might not use the ‘r’ word so regularly, but am still looking for the ‘t’ word – transformation. Indeed for me ekklesia is bound up with transformation of the world, and it was one of the reasons why we moved to Spain, seeking to track where first Century unanswered apostolic prayers were seeded in the land / in the land of Empire.

[An aside: we all have to make some sense of our own journey. I, being optimistic, do not see wrong turns, simply distinct points on the way. I appreciate there are some who look back and view where they have been negatively. I do not. Does not make me right, but makes it a whole lot easier to live freely!]

When I began to travel outside the UK into the USA I soon discovered that the ‘r’ word was being used in a different way to how I had understood it. There it seemed more to be an activity within the congregation – ‘we are having revival’, whereas my background had reserved it for thousands coming to faith and donkeys no longer responding to miners’ commands as they no longer used expletives to command them to move (Wales, 1904)! The difference made me reflect some, then I began to think about the setting for those ‘revivals’ this side of the pond – 1859, 1904, 1951 etc. They were into a community already somewhat religious. Many, many chapels were built in Wales post 1859, those chapels were fairly full when we come to 1904. Filled with sons and daughters of those converted in 1859. With so much of the climate, there and in Lewis, being of a Calvinist nature therefore only God can convert, they were waiting for a move of God (‘I now feel guilty’). That move came, and although I have no doubt we can call it a move, such classic sermons as ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ also fitted a culture. The wider community was touched deeply, but that wider community was already strongly god-fearing (and we might wish to emphasise ‘fearing’!).

I have travelled numerous African countries and also in South America. The impact of the gospel has been incredible. Some cities in Brazil might be as high as 40% born again! But…

OK these are reflections.

Europe is post-Christian. Or maybe better put post-Christendom. I give a big ‘oh yes, now that is a description that will help us get out of bed each day with a spring in our step and a shout in our mouth’. Has God used Christendom? The answer is of course ‘yes’ but the question is irrelevant. God, after all, anointed a monarchy in Israel, a move that was birthed in ‘rejecting God’. God anoints what rejects the direction s/he is moving in!

Post-Christian, not having a voice that is listened to above others; pushed to the margins etc… That is where our faith was born, so surely it gives us hope. So many people have been praying for a revival of first Century Christianity, and then want to hold on to a context different to where it flourished. Seems to me like trying to grow grapes in the Arctic Circle. Plant all you want… but the context just is not the right one to produce wine!

I deeply suspect that north America, followed by South America and Africa will follow where the train is headed. Into the world of post-Christendom. At this stage seems we (in Europe) are well aware the train has left the track, while those in the other carriages can still happily swing from the proverbial chandeliers. I also like to swing in that way but perhaps for a slightly different reason.

I am not simply optimistic when I look ahead. I am up beat about now! I consider that we are right in an incredible outpouring; some put it this way that the last century saw three outpourings – Azusa Street and Pentecostalism; charismatic renewal, and ‘Toronto’ and the many parallel movements. Three outpourings, granting us a fullness.

I consider that Pentecost (Acts 2) gives a paradigm of three stages: for you; your children (generational); those afar off. We are at the afar off stage and how we respond depends on what stage we are at. Afar off means movement. Movement out. This is not a season of ‘bring them in’ but ‘abandon safety (safety is overrated anyway!) and make the journey to where the Spirit is moving’. If we don’t make the journey, and that journey will involve listening for there is a conversion to take place in ‘us’ that is greater than the conversion to take place in ‘the others’. If we don’t make the journey how can there be an embrace of Jesus?

I have come to believe that we really have to squeeze Scriptures to make it all about ‘in / out’ but if we let them speak to us we will hear very loudly ‘the earth is the Lord’s’, in other words ekklesia is not about getting people in but about a people being planted in the world so that there will indeed be transformation. (Moving from the first parable, the only one fully explained, with the seed being the word of God and falling on the soil of response… to the next parable where the seed is no longer the word of God, but the incarnated word, hence integrity being ever so important, with less mouth and more vulnerability and transparency, and the soil being the ‘world’. The first one fully explained so that we get it… and in getting it embrace the second and subsequent parables.)

Words do not primarily carry meaning at an intrinsic level – the old idea of etymology (the root word means) will not get us too far – but words are carriers of meaning, that meaning depending on what the communicator intended and the meaning the hearer injects into them. ‘The ‘r’ word, revival. I might or might not still use it, but my expectation is so far beyond what I had in mind when I began to travel with ‘sowing seeds for revival’ teams. The ‘t’, transformation word, is perhaps closer to where I am at.

But maybe it is the ‘r’ word I like. Responsibility. Taking responsibility for this world. Being sourced from heaven, being shaped by heaven’s values. I am happy to review almost anything, but the cross was the roadblock to destruction, so it opened the path to transformation. Maybe with the climate crisis we are running out of time. Maybe… but what is more certain is I am here in my generation, regardless of how many are yet to come. And finally to encourage me I meditate on the widow who put two small coins in the Temple treasury, that act prompting Jesus to speak to those who were so impressed with its magnificence to say – all will be changed! Being impressed or intimidated, I simply want as many as possible to throw a couple of coins in the right direction and then we might indeed see something in ‘this generation’.

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Kabul… Silk Road

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by Martin Scott
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Every so often in history there are major turning moments. In living memory the coming down of the Berlin Wall certainly has to be up there. Now the tragic scenarios in Afghanistan are there for us to view, though what do I know about such troubles? Yes we pray, but even still it is hard not to feel a sham in the light of what many are going through on the ground; they living in the very real fear of what might yet unfold.

There are geographies that are key to unlock much greater areas and I am sure Afghanistan is one of those. On the silk road, a theme that has been highlighted for a number of people, both in terms of the shift West to East and a restoration of trade that is not based on exploitation and greed (the sin of Sodom?). Kabul as a major crossroads, now in the centre of news.

Afghanistan has been described as the ‘graveyard of Empires’ having lived through successive attempts to be controlled. In recent centuries Britain has had a dubious history there; there are strong pointers that the initial arming and financing of the Taliban came from USA sources. I have no idea what should be done / should have been done politically, and it is certainly much easier to find what is wrong rather than propose something truly redemptive (co-words are compromising and ‘fallen’).

I am deeply troubled by the pain in that area of our globe, and do not write lightly. Yet it is a global sign that an era is ending. The end of an era does not normally come in a moment but there are often major ‘earth tremors’ marking the time. And so much of what was just continues (Jesus refusal to become the emperor of Rome, signalled the end of Rome but the history books tell us the empire continued for centuries).

I consider that the next years will increasingly signal the shift that is taking place, a shift from West to East, and a shift in where the control of financial exchange takes place. I am sure much will continue but 2022 will see a series of shock waves, even a number into what we might consider is very secure.

In history so much shift of power is from one power to the next, with the new power ‘eating’ the previous one. We have to see something different, something deeper that opens our world to dimensions of the kingdom of God. A simple shift of centres is not enough. Shifts in the global scene are a signal that there are shifts in the ‘spiritual’ scene that can be engaged with. I think we have to lose glib talk of the ‘sovereignty of God’ as if s/he is in control in some sort of ‘ruling over’ kind of way. Seems that the control was always to be in the hands of humanity, and that control was never to be over other people, but to lovingly shape the future, dig the channels where healing water can flow.

The future is going to be messy… but God will be found in strange places.

And for Afghanistan. It is one of a number of places where the memory is held strongly. The bloodshed embeds the memory deeper than before. Just as with the human person and the memory embedded within the body, so the land acts as the corporate memory, people no longer knowing why they act the way they do, simply responding to an unconscious but very real memory. A healing of the memory is so needed in that area. If there are those who have connections within the land, come into agreement with them about the healing of history.

And we have to pray in this messy era that there are those who become channels for the ‘love stream’ of heaven, and praying without simply pulling on history to suggest they will have to be immediate followers of Jesus. The messy days are here; but where we go Jesus will go before us.

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