‘Back in the day’ (of my childhood) the most ominous words we could hear emanating from the TV were,
“We interrupt normal programing to bring you a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative (or Labour) Party.”
“Borrrrring!”
Through the title of this blog, God reverses, that human announcement with his own,
“We interrupt this political broadcast to return you to normal programing.”
50 years ago there was a clearer distinction between politics and ‘normal programming’. Nowadays the two have become much the same as most everything on Harfung Mainstream Media has become ‘political’ i.e. has to do with being in control.
Last week we got some shocking news that reminded us that WE are not in control.
A family very dear to us (and to some of you) had suddenly lost their 24 year old son.
Our focus was suddenly shifted from ‘the ‘mirage’ of ‘party politics‘ around the American election, to an immediate personal encounter with ‘the reality’ of the ‘kingdom of God’ in the ‘normal program‘ of real life.
Hilary and I flew to Nashville for the funeral last Saturday.
Peter Thomas was an exceptional young man who raced through this life to find what was ‘beyond the stars’.
At the service his father told the story of how as a little tike, on their first ski trip, he wanted to go with his Dad to the very top of the mountain. He suddenly took off from between his father’s legs, down the ‘black diamond’ slope! When his father caught up with him at the bottom of the mountain, a grinning Peter asked, “Can we do that again Dad?’
Like his namesake in the gospels, Peter’s life was one of passionate pursuit. Maybe this was why ‘Abba’ choose Peter to be the first disciple granted the revelation,
“You are the Christ! The son of the living God!”
The final photo in the slide sequence at the entrance to the church captured Peter’s life perfectly.
As we walked into the sanctuary there he was again up front!………
When we returned to Minneapolis on Sunday and shared Peter’s story at our home fellowship, our son Robin picked up the guitar and began to sing the song he has been given, as he has walked through his own ‘valley of the shadow’. It proved to be God’s caption for those two photos…..
We’re never going to die……………………..When we’re perfectly aligned.
Waking that Sunday we had drawn back the curtains in the hotel room, to reveal a world shrouded in mist. As the sun climbed the sky during the morning the mist disappeared. The song rose up in my spirit…
“The perfect has come and the mist has now passed
With questions of What? Why? and How?
Now faith hope and love, but the greatest of these
Is the love that’s fulfilled – right here and right now!
In the process of a child being made ready to pass from ‘Shadowlands’ to ‘Sunstanceville’, Alyson expressed in the poem written just a few months earlier, how we learn as parents, that the politics of heaven are quite the opposite to the politics of earth, and that it is in surrendering control and trusting in the merciful and steadfast love of Christ,
that we too are being made ready,
to leap joyously
into.
……….perfect alignment!
GODSELECTION is not in any doubt.
His victory, for us as individuals families, nations, and humanity was planned before the foundations of the earth, was won 2000 years ago, and is now being rolled out truly and fully……… in God’s perfect time as we prove the opening line of Robin’s song….
“Life……. creates……. the conditions for LIFE.”