Brighter Horizons : reflections

To Stand through the Falling?

walshy — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 08:38:00 GMT

Photo from The Washington Post

How fragile is life.

That the world can fall away
beneath your feet.

It's a truth we so often ignore,
block-out, forget,
and try to bury.

But at times like these
it rears its ugly head,
as if to tease our very souls.

Your life is but a speck in the sands of time,
A blot upon the earth,
A chasing after the wind.

Who will remember you when your gone?
And how will your hoardings
grant you redemption?

If the world fell away from beneath your feet,
Would you be ready
To stand through the falling?

Or will you have someone to catch you in His arms,
To hold you close,
and wipe away your tears.

Someone to give your life meaning.
Someone to banish the pain.
Someone to carry you home.

Mene Mene Tekel Parsin

walshy — Thu, 31 May 2007 12:07:00 GMT

I was reading through Daniel 5 today.

In the story, a hand comes down out of nowhere during a feast that the King of Babylon is having, and starts writing on the wall. Daniel is called to interpret the words, which he does:

Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

And that very night, the Medes and Persians invade, and King Belshazzar is slain.

The writing on the wall is a warning. The words are an affirmation that God is in control, that we will all die, and that we will all be weighed on God's scales and found wanting - and none of the things we have stored up for ourselves in this life will be able to save us from that.

In fact, Jesus says exactly the same thing in the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21):

"God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'"

As I thought about being weighed on God's scales, I realised that I am in no way ready to bring an account for the things I've said and done, or failed to do. And while I know that by the blood of Jesus I am saved from God's wrath (praise God!), I know that I will still be weighed, and called to account for my actions (Rom 14:12, Heb 4:13).

And so, like the Babylonians, I too need to see the writing on the wall, and take heed. So often I forget that how I live now matters. I see the grace, I embrace the forgiveness, but I forget that it all came at such a cost.

Mene - Know that God has numbered your days.
Tekel - Remember that on God's scales you will be found wanting.
Peres - Forget the things of this world, for you can't take them with you.

Do these things, and I guarantee, you will see the true wonder of the cross.

Sachsenhausen

walshy — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:55:00 GMT

We arrived by train, Graham and I, just as the prisoners would have. Sachsenhausen. It's just another town on the outskirts of Berlin, with normal people, in their normal houses, doing their normal things. But after just a short walk through the town, past the houses where the SS guards used to live, we arrive at the gate.

Arbeit macht frei. Work will make you free. We walk through into the centre of the camp. As I stand there, I try to visualise the tens of thousands of prisoners, standing at attention - tired, beaten, malnourished and scared. I try to visualise the guards as they call out the roll, and as they taunt and abuse the prisoners.

But I can't. It's all too hard. I know that in the very place I'm standing over 200,000 people once stood; most of whom eventually died in this camp, or at another. But I just can't imagine it. I mean, I'm standing here during the mildest winter on record, wearing a gazillion layers, and my butt is freezing!

After touring the camp - the barracks where the prisoners were crammed into, the cells for solitary confinement, the polls used for torture, the nooses, the electric fence running around the whole camp, the hospital where they carried out "medical experiments", and the cellar where they kept the bodies (you can still see the blood stains) - we headed out to station Z.

As the name suggests, this was the execution centre. Now Sachsenhausen was not a death camp like Auschwitz. People didn't come there to die, they came there to work. All the same, they did execute a mere 30,000 people at the camp. The picture below is of the trench which they would fill with prisoners, and then shoot into. Then other prisoners would have to clear out the trench, before going in themselves.

Eventually they would change this method - it was all too emotional, both for the soldiers and the inmates. Instead they built a building, invited prisoners in for a "medical check-up", and had them shot from behind while they were getting their height measured. It was easier that way.

Leaving the camp, I felt... disappointed. Disappointed because I thought that if I just stood in the camp, and saw and heard things for myself, I'd be able to grasp them; I'd be able to understand. But the holocaust is something that I don't think I'll ever be able to comprehend.

Since then, I've been reflecting on the whole experience. If you asked me what the most painful part of the whole thing was, it would be this fact - that after the soviets liberated the camp, after they saw for themselves the atrocities that had been committed - they did what any logical person would do: they reopened Sachsenhausen as a soviet concentration camp! From 1945 to 1950, another 6,000 people died in the camp.

People always say that we should learn from history. And yet I look at the world today and wonder if we really have: Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia, Iraq, Rwanda, Sudan. And we so often forget that even Australia (and America) were founded on Genocide.

How can we ever say that humans are intrinsically good? How can I ever say that I'm a good person? The power to commit atrocities, or to sit idly by, lies dormant inside us all. History proves it. If our situations were swapped, and I was in Germany, would I have done any different?

New Year's Resolutions

walshy — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:18:00 GMT

Ok, so maybe that last post was a little weird - but so is the enigma that is my mind. And sometimes I feel an intense urge to splatter bits of my mind upon the canvas that is this blog. But most of the time, lucky for you, I don't.

New Year's Resolutions. You know how it is. It's 11pm. You're sitting around, in the freezing cold, waiting for the damn fireworks to go off, and you get to thinking about the past year, and what you'd like to change next year, and so you cough up a few of the usual things - read your bible more, do more exercise, do any exercise - and then its midnight and you jump up-and-down and head home. By the morning, chances are you've forgotten what your resolutions were. And even if you do remember them, odds are that you'll never act on them.

All the same, this year I do have a New Year's Resolution. I came up with it after I woke up from the aforementioned dream.

My resolution is this: I want to feel people's pain. And I want to actually care.

One thing I noticed this year, which shocked me quite profusely, is how much my world-view has been corrupted by, well, the world. To me, poverty and pain seem to be just numbers on a page, abstract concepts that I pray for (occasionally), and feel compelled to throw money at.

And so when I pass a homeless guy on the street, I either overt my eyes and quicken my pace, or throw them a buck or two; either way making sure that I'm not late for my class, or my train, or myself.

I see the problems, rather than the people. To be honest, I don't have time for the people. To me, they are just annoyance, nuisances, impediments to my well-made plans. And so I start to view them as the world does - drug-addicts and bums, who will probably just waste my money on alcohol anyway.

But who am I to stand on my pedestal and judge them. Jesus says, "give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you" Matthew 5:42. And even if I didn't trust them with my money, I could always go into the shop they were sitting outside of and buy them some food, if I wanted to.

As I was walking through the Central Station tunnel early this year, I started to wonder how the homeless people see the world. And I realised that to them, I am no different from anyone else in the tunnel. Sure I may be a Christian with a real concern for the world and its lost. I may give heaps of money to charities, and campaign to make poverty history. I may lead Sunday School and preach on summer mission. But to the guy sitting on the floor of the tunnel, I'm just the same as everyone else - head down, hands in the pockets, too busy to stop, too busy to care.

I don't know what it feels like to be an outcast in this world, to be starving and sick, lonely and oppressed. But maybe, this year, it's time I found out. And maybe, this year, it's time I started caring about the people, rather than the problems.

I Had a Dream

walshy — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 15:37:13 GMT

In my dream, I was standing on the platform of a railway station. Ahead was a guy (who might have looked like Willy Wonka) who kept walking past me in a hurry, kinda like he owned the place. Beside me there were these big escalators, which seemed to go down somewhere deep underground. Lots of people were going down the escalators, but no one was coming back up. Finding this somewhat weird, I decided to investigate - so I stole someone's uniform and snuck onto a lift. And what I discovered, to my horror, was that this was no ordinary station - in fact, it was a concentration camp, a slaughterhouse - hence why no one who went down the escalator ever returned.

Anyway, for some reason I decided that Willy Wonka was the person responsible for all this, so (after a narrow escape back up the lift) I decided to hire a mercenary-guy to assassinate him. But when the guy arrived at the station, and I told him what was going on, he proceeded to put on roller-skates, and start skating around outside, randomly stabbing passer-bys (some of whom were my friends) with a sharp knife.

Anyone care to interpret, Daniel-style?

Reality Check - By Nature, By Grace

walshy — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:16:00 GMT

Mission is great. It allows you to spend time focusing purely on God, preaching His word, and sharing the gospel. It reminds you of the important things in life; of the desperation of those outside of Christ, and of the hope awaiting those within. It's a time when it's so obvious that God is working; through the church, through the team - even through you.

And yet the great irony of mission (at least for me) is that it can leave you all puffed up. You start reflecting on how great a speaker you are, how much you know about God and the bible, and how important you are within God's plans.

And so, you fail to remember the very thing you preach:

We were by nature objects of wrath. Ephesians 2:3b

Isn't funny how God always finds away to bring us back to earth! Now, post-mission, as I once again struggle with sin and temptation, I am reminded that it's not me worthy of the glory, but God. It wasn't me who did wonders on mission, but God!

God is the one who pulled off the real miracle, in transforming a lowly tongue-tied sinner like me into an outlet for His word.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:4-5

It is only by grace that we have been saved. May we never forget it.

An Ode to UTS

walshy — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:22:00 GMT

Well, 4pm today marked my final class at UTS - well 6pm did, but I skipped that one! Anyway, to celebrate the impending end of my 3-year degree, I thought I'd write a few tributes - to UTS, Baccs and Credo.

Today's installment - The UTS Tower, officially the ugliest building in Sydney:

A modern engineering marvel,
It stands aloft the streets alone,
A beacon to the lost in Newtown,
Searching for the way back home.

An affront to God himself, perhaps?
It climbs the sky and claims its space.
A modern Babel's stretch for glory,
Full of beauty, awe and grace!

But judge the book not by its cover,
Judge not a people by their cage,
Joy is found on the concourse couches,
Friends to clutch until old-age.

Ok, so it's not an ode! Poetry was never my strong point.

A Broken and Contrite Heart

walshy — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:07:00 GMT

Recently I came across these verses in Psalm 51:

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
       you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
       a broken and contrite heart,
       O God, you will not despise.

These are verses that I'd heard before. But this time I decided to look at them more closely. Specifically, what does it mean to have a contrite heart? Being an accountant I wasn't quite sure, so I looked it up:

con·trite: adj. Deeply affected with grief and regret for having done wrong

Here are my conclusions:

To be contrite is to be cut to the core by my own depravity.
To be contrite is to be brought to tears by my continual failings.
To be contrite is to beg for my own damnation.

For it is only when I fall at God's feet, with a broken spirit and a contrite heart, that I can, but for a moment, glimpse the world (and myself) through God's own eyes. And it is only as I cling to His cross, that I can start to fathom the true meaning of grace.

Following God is not about my personal sacrifices.
Following God is not about my words nor my works.
Following God is about never forgetting the cost.

Sorry God, Can't Talk Now - I'm Far Too Busy Serving You!

walshy — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:26:00 GMT

Do you ever find yourself so 'busy' that you fail to relate with God? I know I do!

Sure, I push myself to read my bible most mornings on the train.
And I push myself to rattle off a few words each night in prayer.
But is that really relating?

The words I read usually just go in one ear and out the other.
And the prayers I pray are usually just ramblings from the dregs of my mind.

And the greatest irony is this: not a day goes by when I'm not doing something God-related - be it going to church, credo or biblestudy, leading Sunday school or a small group.

Isn't it funny how you can spend your whole day doing God-stuff, but when it comes time to catch up with Him personally, you're either too tired, too busy, or just plain too lazy!

I don't know. Is it just me?