SpoonfulOfDreams

photo © anna for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike For some time I've been meaning to learn Classical Gas. For those of you who don't know, it's a guitar instrumental - you may have heard it but didn't know what it as called. Happily its based on a guitar technique I've been using for years so it's a bit like doing a dot-to dot where you just have to join a few dots and it begins to take shape. It seems like my whole life has been a dot-to-dot. I remember when I started school we were given wooden blocks as an aid to learning arithmetic, their lengths representing numbers. To me they were just nice coloured sticks. It was only many years later that I figured out what they were though I'm still not entirely sure. I don't think I understood school until I was about 15. Up till then it had been an instrument of humiliation and mental cruelty. I read some of my school reports a while ago and was surprised how negative and critical many of the comments...

Credit: Free images from acobox.com I don't know how popular books are that teach dream interpretation. There's certainly plenty of advice on the Web and many people are curious as to the meaning of their dreams. It's said that old men will dream dreams and young men see visions but I suspect this means old men will be naturally wise (just as dreaming is naturally induced) rather than having flashes of inspiration. When Pharaoh dreamed of cows and ears of corn they were believed to be inspired of God and neither Pharaoh nor his wise men could fathom them out. Joseph confessed that he had no such skill but it was God who gave him the explanation. He wouldn't have been able to reproduce this so called gift under controlled scientific conditions because it wasn't under his control. The Bible knows nothing of a gift of interpreting dreams. Repeatedly it is a young man who is employed to do the interpreting suggesting it is more akin to a vision than an interpretation. ...

Credit: Free photos from acobox.com I've been thinking quite a bit lately about why God doesn't answer prayer and, if he does, what sort of prayer does he answer. Is your prayer answered because you prayed it or because you just happened to be on God's wavelength? John the Evangelist said that God answers your prayers if you pray them according to God's will. Well what use is that? If he decided he wanted to do it why did he require your prayers? I've watched a couple of Derren Brown programmes that apparently blow the lid off faith healers, spiritualists, mediums and snake oil salesmen in general. He is pretty convincing though you have to take into account that his skill is in deception so he could be deceiving us. But that's why he's so on the money because it takes a charlatan to catch a charlatan. The problem with faith healing is that it requires an unquestioning belief that you will receive what you are asking for. If you're not healed or you...

This is a song I wrote some years ago and is on my album Beauty of Grace . I'd heard about Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of Christ' and how graphic it was. Some Christians strongly recommended seeing it as it brought the reality of the crucifixion to life. However, the more realistic something is the more you think you've experienced it first hand. But the Christian faith is about commitment not emotional attachment; more about faith than experience. The Passion of Christ is a dramatisation of an event, produced to create an emotional response. In that, there is nothing wrong but you cannot say you know Jesus if you've never met him in person. I've created a video on YouTube to illustrate the song. I know it very well: the carpets, curtains, paper on the wall, the living room and hall. But I have never lived there, never been at all. I've seen it on TV and it seemed like home to me. photo © francesco for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike I know her ...

What you Herd Credit: Free photos from acobox.com Do you know why sweaty feet smell like cheese? It's the same bacteria producing the smell. Very often two things are quite different yet there is some commonality that links one with the other. We wonder how two things can be so different yet so similar at the same time but its not surprising when you consider that most of what we eat is made up of the same two elements, carbon and hydrogen. And if you appreciate that food is body fuel you won't be terribly surprised that petrol and diesel are also combinations of the same elements. We put carbohydrates in our bodies and hydrocarbons in our cars. With this in mind you can understand that though people are quite different, one from another - in a given situation the majority of people may act in a very similar way. It has nothing to do with our similarities or differences but what we have in common; its what makes families sticky even when siblings are quite different to each ot...

A critical look at the Full Gospel I've just been listening to an address by Steve Jobs at Stanford University. He tells three stories, the last of which refers to death as a gift. He says that death clears out the old and makes way for the new, that to be reminded of death gives life more focus and immediacy. He makes good sense and in many respects I would agree with him except in one respect. Death is not a gift. The shortest verse in the Bible is 'Jesus wept', a phrase abused by many who have never read the book. But even for those of us familiar with its context there is some confusion over its meaning. It comes in the story of the death and resurrection of Lazarus and its often assumed that Jesus was sorrowful at the demise of his friend and sympathetic to the grief of Lazarus' sisters. However, seeing that Jesus was intending to raise Lazarus on that day its not likely he would be sorrowful. But the verse does indicate a strong emotion which some render as Jesus...

Thoughts from Psalm 6 in six parts (Each section begins with the verses I will comment on, followed by a prayer and a concluding verse). === 6 === Away from me, all you who do evil, for the LORD has heard my weeping. The LORD has heard my cry for mercy; the LORD accepts my prayer. All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish; they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame. Who is my enemy? Jesus reminded the Jews that they were taught to hate their enemy but love their neighbour. It was God's plan they should be set apart for him and the only way they could do that was to have a completely different lifestyle to their neighbour nations. Their neighbour nations practiced idolatry and witchcraft. They sacrificed their children, had little value for human life and were generally reprobates. This was not the pool where you would choose the mother of your children. So wherever Israel conquered they were to put to the sword every one of the inhabitants to rid the land of ...

Thoughts from Psalm 6 in six parts (Each section begins with the verses I will comment on, followed by a prayer and a concluding verse). === 5 === I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes. There are no requests here, no plea for mercy or deliverance, no statement of faith, no occasion for dialogue. There are times when we have no wish to listen to reason or examine cause and effect. You would suppose that you know better than anyone what you are going through yet you can only see it from the inside and untangling reality from your perception is an almost impossible task. When someone casually asks how you are you might weigh up how you are doing financially, emotionally, professionally, arriving at an average where negatives are cancelled out by positives and you end up with a simple "OK". But David throws out all reason and appears to lose any sen...

Thoughts from Psalm 6 in six parts (Each section begins with the verses I will comment on, followed by a prayer and a concluding verse). === 4 === Turn, LORD, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? Notice how directly David speaks. He doesn't plead for God to deliver him or put in a request for God to answer when he gets time or has the inclination. But we should not imagine that David is presumptuous or, as the name it and claim it preachers would have it, is merely drawing on his account. For all the respect that David has for his Lord, the case is too urgent to shrink from pressing God for an answer to his troubles. He knows God is his deliverer and there is no one else to turn to. Better that God be angry at his impertinence than to test him with pathetic ifs. When he answered Job directly after days of listening to his defence of his own righteousness, God didn't demand that Job be ...

Thoughts from Psalm 6 in six parts (Each section begins with the verses I will comment on, followed by a prayer and a concluding verse). === 3 === How long, LORD, how long? A recurrent theme throughout the Psalms, this sentiment is echoed throughout scripture. The first words we read in Genesis are "In the beginning"; the penultimate phrase in Revelation is "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus" (it is settled - we only await your coming Lord). We know God started it and have faith that God will finish it but even though God's revelation is completed and sealed it still awaits the finale. There's more to come but we must wait patiently. When Jesus was first presented at the temple he was welcomed by the prophetess Anna. She had been married for seven years when her husband died. Now at the age of 84 she saw what she had been waiting for her whole life. Moses, the only man who ever met God face to face, was 120 when the Israelites finally reached the Promised Land only to ...

Thoughts from Psalm 6 in six parts (Each section begins with the verses I will comment on, followed by a prayer and a concluding verse). === 2 === Have mercy on me, LORD, for I am faint; heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. It may be that David was physically ill. If so, this was either life threatening or so debilitating that David felt compelled to ask for mercy. We all know how paralysing a headache can be - that it can cause or be made worse through stress - so we hardly need to know the detail of his discomfort to understand his anguish, only that he is deeply troubled. That the Psalms don't rhyme has nothing to do with the translation; Hebrew poetry often uses repetition to emphasis a point. Here we see a theme repeated twice but from a new perspective each time. David is faint, in agony and deeply troubled, everything you would associate with a severe illness, but just as illness causes distress, so does distress manifest itself in physical s...

Thoughts from Psalm 6 in six parts (Each section begins with the verses I will comment on, followed by a prayer and a concluding verse). = Introduction = Turn O LORD and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. No one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from the grave? Not every Psalm entitled 'A psalm of David' can reliably be ascribed to the king himself but this one bears all the hallmarks of this resilient yet vulnerable, confident yet contrite ruler of Israel. It seems to be in the darkest times we meet face to face with our maker, when we have a true heart-to-heart - as if we have to come to the end of ourselves to find the beginning of God. Psalm 6 finds David at this place but the scenario doesn't present a jelly of a man pleading for mercy. Rather, we see someone who, even in the depths of despair, has a quiet and undying confidence in a God who is not to be served in blind allegiance. "Test me in this", says the LORD (from the mouth...

There are numerous times when I have vowed to press on with my foot to the floor only to find myself stalling at each bend. It's an easy thing to take a long view on the destination and make good initial progress, pumped with adrenaline and inspiration. Many fall at the finish unable (or unwilling) to make the last bit of ground but more die in the middle. Corpses pile high in the side streets and cul-de-sacs of life. Unmentioned to the starters and forgotten by the finishers, they are an embarrassment and only leave an unpleasant smell. What do you say of someone who aborts when the job is half done, for whom there is no return on the investment - a write off - a liability - collateral damage. Life is an opportunity but while for some it's a revolving door, for others it's a quarter light. The vista may be the same but some need to stand closer to the window to see it. I'm not speaking of those who don't realize their potential but manage to get through life withou...

I have a friend who is facing some difficult questions and trying to make sense of relationships. Life never stands still and as much as we'd like to rewrite some of our story we can do little more than paint over the painful bits or reconcile the first chapters with a good ending. I don't know if she is trying to make sense of the twisted thinking that causes people to choose a life of mutual abuse, searching for a strand of reason in the dogmatic assertions of self and institutionally appointed leaders of religious groups or listening to the latter as a distraction from the former. But she seems to have an appetite for engaging with people with unorthodox, and sometimes destructive, takes on life. I suspect she is hoping to put all her experiences together in a kind of patchwork, which may look chaotic at close quarters but makes some sense when viewed from a distance, in the third person as it were. My fear is that by exposing herself to people who are seeking to influence o...

I've recently been accused of not being decent. On my online dictionary it's defined as: conforming to the recognized standard of propriety, good taste, modesty, etc; in other words (or one other word), proper. It's a surprisingly subjective definition in that not only does it depend on something that's commonly (if not universally) accepted but also on our own preconceptions of what is acceptable and, to some extent, on context. It would be considered indecent to walk through the streets naked but minimal coverage would render that person acceptable on a standard British beach. On a nudist beach a fully clothed person could be considered improper whereas a partly dressed person might draw criticism in any of these contexts. We sometimes ask, "What would be the decent thing to do?" and it could be the case that none of those being asked fulfils the criteria yet there is no presumption of condemnation that being indecent would suggest. Often when someone is tol...

The Lord Loves the Righteous I can't say I expected to enjoy Psalm 146 when I opened up my Bible to its page. I'm not into happy clappy at the moment and this Psalm is the first of the Hallelujah Psalms that conclude this series of books but then I have been surprised how I've suddenly taken to these pearls that I've never truly appreciated before. Predictably it starts with 'Praise the Lord'. You often hear this proclaimed in Pentecostal type churches as if it were a Christian alternative to 'wow'. Of course it's a call to give honour to God not a declaration of happiness. I could spend a great deal of time expounding on each verse but instead I'll major on the line that most caught my eye. About two thirds of the way through we are told, 'the Lord loves the righteous', but why would I find that noteworthy? Surely God rewards us for our good deeds. Is it not the righteous who will go to heaven and the sinners who will be toasted? The pro...

But let all who take refuge in you be glad let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you. Psalm 5 v11 Psalm 5 is curious. In Psalms 1,2 and 3 we are told of God's faithfulness and how he rewards those who seek him. Little demand is made on God to meet the needs of his people, the reciprical relationship is simply stated. In Psalm 4 David is finding that the promises of the first three psalms cannot be assumed. Sometimes God witholds his blessing for reasons known only to him. That doesn't mean that he is fickle or capricious - its because we are presumptious and shallow; as the saying goes: "easy come, easy go". In Psalm 5 David is in distress like in Psalm 4 but this time he doesn't demand an answer or an action, only that God listens. "In the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation." I wonder if, in the depths of despair and fully conscious of his own sinfulness - in...

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. Psalm 23 vv5&6 Its clear from Psalms that David sees God as a king like himself. Just as the kings of his day had vassal kings under them so David recognises himself as a subject king before the LORD. If David has been called to the table of the King of kings his enemies had better not touch him. That God should then anoint him and fill his cup to overflowing should fill the hearts of his enemies with terror for in opposing God's Anointed, the one God has favoured, they oppose God himself. 'Follow' in 'will follow me' literally means to pursue. While his enemies flee, the blessings of God which 'surely' follow on from his anointing will not only be available for him but will pester him till he receives them. But this is far more than...

Answer me when I call to you O my righteous God. Psalm 4 v1 When you go to the doctor with an ailment you should not expect to walk out of the surgery cured. He will more than likely give you a prescription for a course of tablets and ask you to come back if it doesn't clear up. He may refer you to someone more qualified to treat your complaint. On the other hand, if you had a burst pipe in your house you would not expect the plumber to refer you to a specialist or give you a series of instructions, asking you to call back if the problem persists. You wouldn't expect to do anything yourself, other than to call him out and be there when he calls. When David asks God for an answer he's expecting a plumber. "Give me relief from my distress" he says - stop the leak. "How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love delusions and seek false Gods?" David has placed his hope in the LORD but his people are trusting in false Gods to me...

I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD delivers me. Psalm 3 v5 Smoke might continue to rise long after the fire is put out and, innocent or not, one embroiled in a scandal will always have that whiff of burning around them. It seems unfair that despite the principle of innocent until proven guilty, once tarred, the accused will always be conscious of a mark even if the stain is removed. You can rewrite history but the rubbings out remain. It's as if we imagine the perfect life to be one of continuous success without regret but the truth is: those that are most successful are often those that make the most mistakes on the way. Strength comes from persevering even when falsely accused, not blaming your situation on circumstances but triumphing over adversity. Psalm 3 is King David's cry to God when he has been hounded out of Jerusalem by Absalom, his own son. Looking back, David would see a chain of events leading up to this treachery beginning with his own sinful a...