Anyone feeling slightly disorientated?

For the vast majority of us, this has been a week like no other. To be honest, by most accounts we’re only just getting started. The next few months will look very different. It’s going to be a year like no other.

We’re facing up to situations previously unknown to the majority of the UK population: panic buying and emptying shelves; extra tensions on our health services; schools, social places and many businesses closed.

And of course, increasingly there’s the threat of the virus itself. Exposing our frailty and threatening and taking life, all the while invisible to the naked eye.

Fear is a completely understandable reaction. 

And yet for all that, I’m finding that there’s another source for the disorientation that I’m feeling.

It’s the disorientation of digital overwhelm.

Digital Detox

Only last week I was leading a seminar with trainee church leaders on ministry in an age of social media. I had surveyed over 130 church leaders who used Twitter, and strikingly 85% said they either had ‘no clear boundaries/limits on their social media use’, or only ‘rough limits’.

As a result I talked with the group about practicing a ‘tech rule of life’. In other words, intentionally deciding how much we will let social media play into our days. We talked about having set times where we put our phones elsewhere, having a ‘digital sabbath’, and seeking to be ‘fully present where we are’.

But that was all in ‘normal life’. Peace-time, if you like.

Now we face a reality where increasingly the majority of our contact with other people will be through social media – whether it be two-way multiple-screen video calls, watching live broadcasts, or consuming a barrage of information and entertainment.

Zoom video meetings are popping up left, right and centre; the latest daily crisis measures are beamed straight to our devices from Downing Street; maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never had so many active WhatsApp chats…

And not only am I tuning into a number of Facebook live broadcasts each day, I’ve even given it a go myself!

And you know what? It’s disorientating.

Counting Our Blessings

Of course, technology can be a real gift.

Families and individuals confined to homes have the opportunity for content and community. We have unprecedented access to information and data. Many of us will be able to communicate regularly with loved ones using technology that was the stuff of science fiction just a few decades ago.

And the online response to the events of the past few days in particular has been an incredible flood of resources, opportunities, and connectivity: social networking groups to offer and coordinate support; teachers offering subject-specific advice, ideas and even live tutoring; authors and artists reading or performing their works ‘live’ to fill our hours.

It’s a spectacular display of the creativity, variety and ability of the human race.

Facing Overwhelm

But what I’m particularly noticing is my response to it all.

I’ve noticed a temptation within myself: I don’t want to miss out. I want to stay connected. I want to be aware. I want to respond, engage, help.

Call it FOMO if you want, but it’s easy to feel that with all these opportunities going on, I need to make the most of them.

With all these resources available, I need to stay up-to-date.

With all this potential for staying in touch and finding out how people are doing, I need to be on it like a car bonnet. Whether that’s for myself, for my kids, or for my church.

So how will we cope?

Intentionality Amidst Hyper-connectivity

It strikes me that as we get used to a season of social distancing and self-isolation, each of us will need to radically consider how we approach social media and our relationship with ‘online’.

Whether you call it being self-aware, or self-care, or practicing rest, this is a new landscape for most of us.

In John Mark Comer’s book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, he notes the ‘busyness cycle’, shown in the image. The theory is that as Christians our default will be to assimilate to our culture’s trend of busyness. As a result, God becomes more marginalised in our lives as we neglect our own ‘interior life’. Our own walk with God takes a back seat and in turn that makes us more vulnerable to adopting the culture’s assumptions about how to live.

In a sense, this is a call to intentionality. To consider how our daily rhythms might resist the endless stream of information and include ‘gospel hooks’ that snag at our lives and re-orientate us to Jesus and his grace.

The Gift of Discernment

Amidst this feeling of being overwhelmed, last night my wife & I reached for Doug McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy. If you’ve not come across it, it’s real treasure trove of a book, in which McKelvey offers a collection of written prayers for ‘everyday moments’. There’s a prayer for changing nappies, and celebrating a birthday, or facing loss. The idea is that these prayers bring the gospel to bear on the realities of life.

However, one of them is particularly appropriate for this season, ‘A Liturgy for Those Flooded by Too Much Information’.

The prayer begins like this:

‘In a world so wired and interconnected, our anxious hearts are pummelled by an endless barrage of troubling news. We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord, than we can rightly consider.’

After focusing our hearts on the wonderful truth that Jesus carried the ‘full weight of the suffering of a broken world when [he] hung upon the cross’, McKelvey ends the prayer with this request:

‘Give us discernment to know when to pray, when to speak out, when to act, and when to simply shut off our screens and our devices and to sit quietly in your presence, casting the burden of this world upon the strong shoulders of the one who alone is able to bear them up. Amen.’

My hope is that this is the start of a conversation, perhaps the first post in a series. But more than that, my hope is that as the weeks go by we re-discover ways to live out our days that aren’t driven by clicking refresh on our newsfeeds, but instead find true refreshment with our Creator.

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What do you think? Can you identify with the disorientation of digital overwhelm? How can we intentionally ‘take hold’ of our days?

Preparing for Christmas with Ruth

I like to think of the Old Testament book of Ruth as ‘the story behind the Christmas story’…

If we’re half familiar with this little book, we’ll know that it culminates in the arrival of a baby, also born in Bethlehem, and who incredibly ends up being the great, great, great (add a few more!) grand-father of Jesus.

But there’s so much more to Ruth than its famous ending. So much more that will help us prepare for Christmas.

For a start, it all begins with famine.

The Cupboards Are Bare

Now, I know that’s a bit of a gear-change at this time of year.

We tend to think of Christmas as a time of feasting: platefuls of mince pies, chocolate stashed in every room of the house, marzipan-lined cake, and turkey with all the trimmings (don’t tell me it’s an overrated bird – haters gonna hate…).

And so the opening verse of Ruth can feel like a contrast: ‘…there was a famine in the land.’ (1:1)

But if we linger here, we’ll see that this prelude has an important, and even refreshing, word for us today.

The ‘land’ here refers to ‘the promised land’, Israel, a haven of blessing, provision and security that God had promised to Abraham and his descendants. It was the place into which God’s people had finally staggered during the book of Joshua, but only after forty years of wandering in the desert, a punishment for their disobedience.

So if this was meant to be a land of blessing, why on earth was there a famine?

Great question.

Warning Lights

We need to read between the lines here. We’ve already been told that Ruth is set in the time ‘when the Judges ruled’ (1:1). As a quick glance at the final verse in Judges will indicate (21:25), this was short-hand for God’s people being on a downward spiral of disobedience and idolatry.

But we also need to know that in the Old Testament, a famine represented something very specific.

When God outlined the nature of his covenant relationship with his people, he gave them the Old Testament law to set out what that relationship looked like. Within the law were clear consequences if God’s people disobeyed him and turned after false gods. Crucially for us here, one of these consequences was famine (take a look at Deuteronomy 28:15-29 to see this explicitly).

In other words, God’s people experiencing national widespread hunger was like a warning light flashing on the dashboard. It was a visible sign alerting God’s people to the reality that all was not well with their relationship with God.

And like all warning lights, it was meant to evoke a response…

Meet the Family?

Now, as we’re introduced to the initial characters, it’s notable that the very first thing we’re told about this family is not their names or characters or occupations, but rather where they’re from and where they go. In other words, we’re told their response to the famine. And we’re meant to see it’s not a particularly wise response.

Bethlehem was a small town within Judah, the promised land. In fact its name literally meant ‘house of bread’. But Moab on the other hand was one of the enemies of God’s people. We might rush past these place names as if they were irrelevant details, but the very first readers of Ruth would have raised their eyebrows at this family’s choice of destination: ‘You’re going where?! Moab?!’

And just to emphasise their decision, the narrator repeats it in verse 3, sandwiching it around the family’s names: ‘They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.’ (1:3)

Of course, we might think, ‘But aren’t they just doing what any reasonable people would have done in the face of famine?’

But, remember, this wasn’t any normal famine. It was a God-given warning light indicating that Israel needed to turn back to him in confession and repentance. It certainly wasn’t an invitation to flee further away.

Denial Strategies

But isn’t that what we do? When faced with the cold reality of our brokenness and corruption, it’s all too easy to turn away. To escape, rather than face the truth.

The narrator doesn’t dwell for long on the folly of this one family’s decision, although as we’ll see if we read to 1:5, it hardly leads to life-giving blessing. Given the context of Judges, you could say that Elimelek and Naomi’s move was just one lived-out example of a whole nation’s systemic denial of their real problem: a broken relationship with God and their desperate need for forgiveness.

All this might not seem very ‘Christmassy’, but that’s exactly why Christians have traditionally valued the period of Advent.

Remember, Christmas was the twelve days of celebration that began on December 25^th – hence the song! In contrast, Advent is about preparing for Christmas by facing up to the darkness. The darkness of a broken world and the desperate news that without Jesus all cannot be well with our relationship with God.

Escaping Advent

Of course, we don’t need to be legalistic about this. Marking Advent isn’t in the Bible. But it is biblical to face reality and see our personal and corporate need for a Saviour.

So what if the way that our culture rushes past Advent, or at least is so eager to bring Christmas in early, is symptomatic of trying to escape the reality of our brokenness? We turn away, rather than face the truth.

Tish Harrison Warren speaks of this ‘unhealthy escapism’, where we ‘run at breathless pace from sugar-laced celebration to celebration’:

“We suffer from a collective consumerist mania that demands we remain optimistic, shiny, happy and having fun, fun, fun.

But life isn’t a Disney Cruise. The tyranny of relentless mandatory celebration leaves us exhausted and often, ironically, feeling emptier. Many of us suffer from “holiday blues,” and I wonder whether this phenomenon is made worse by the incessant demand for cheer — the collective lie that through enough work and positivity, we can perfect our lives and our world.”

Look Hard at the Cracks

But who can do that for long? In a world that aches with sin, pretending everything is ‘endless cheer’ is both deceptive and exhausting.

As Warren puts it, instead we need the opportunity to ‘look long and hard at what is cracked and fractured in our world and in our lives.’

Things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. The very fact that there was a famine in the ‘house of bread’ should have been a clear wake-up call to this truth.

And so Advent presents us with a choice: will we face up to that reality, or will we try and escape past it?

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Why not take some time to reflect upon the ways you feel the world’s brokenness today. Acknowledge that things aren’t as they should be. This might be at a global, national and personal level.

Confess your own sin as part of this – are there ways in which you’re seeking to ‘escape’ from this truth? 

Give thanks that the Bible faces the reality of an aching world head-on, rather than pretending ‘all is fine’. How could this inspire conversations you have today? 

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This post was adapted from a daily email Bible reflection for Advent from the book of Ruth, ‘Finding Hope under Bethlehem Skies’. You can sign up for these here. Each reflection will also include links to previous reflections.

Around where we live dozens of Lego advertisements have gone up in bus-stops. Each one displays a striking and colourful bespoke Lego creation, with the same refrain at the bottom: ‘Rebuild the world’.

It’s pretty striking. Even Lego knows the world is broken.

And the big question is: who can do something about it that will actually last?

Is all creation groaning?

Here in the UK the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests have been taking place over climate change. The aims of the protesters are to get the UK government to declare a climate “emergency” and to legally commit to reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2025, with a citizens’ assembly formed to “oversee the changes”.

There’s been a lot of controversy about the protests, which seem to have really divided people – even dividing the XR members themselves. But in one online piece, a writer observed some of the XR protesters singing this little ditty:

‘We’ve got all the science / All that we need / To change the world / Hallelujah’.

It’s a revealing lyric. The world is broken and needs transforming, yes. But where is our hope to be found for such transformation? According to XR, in science and in ourselves.

A Bigger Story

Of course we should respond to the claims and evidence of climate change. As the Evangelical Alliance have put it, ‘Loving our poorest neighbours involves us caring about the environment and our climate change.’

But as Christians we frame this within a bigger story of de-creation, hope and transformation. A story where the rebellion that really defines our world is not a rebellion protesting against our government, but a rebellion foolishly protesting against our Creator.

And a story where we are not the fixer-uppers, but where God alone can rescue and redeem.

By the way, these themes are picked up powerfully in Andrew Peterson’s epic song, Is He Worthy?

I’m Part of the Problem

According to the Bible, systemic selfishness – of the kind that has arguably led to climate change – is not simply to be understood in terms of a disregard for God’s creation or a disregard for each other, but ultimately a consequence of hearts that have first turned away from God.

But not dissimilarly, the Bible also exposes the ugliness of humanity seeking to solve the world’s problems without God. Think of the story of the tower of Babel: people plotting to unify the world make a name for themselves without the very God who made them.

To put it another way, when we talk about the problems of our world, all too often we can look everywhere but within. Christians are not immune to this. We can easily distort Christianity into something where we’re simply clubbing together to meet external needs. And so we’ve avoided the fact that we need to be changed ourselves.

(I’ve written more about why we don’t need Cashpoint Christianity or Club Christianity, but Construction-Site Christianity.)

But the Bible’s overall story reveals that not only do we need someone else to rebuild the world, we also need someone to transform the depths of our hearts in the process.

Everything’s Not Awesome

My mate Sam Gibb, pastor at Hope Church Vauxhall, pre-empted Lego’s advertising campaign by running a week of church holiday club material on the whole Bible story and actually using everyone’s favourite plastic bricks to tell the story! You can see a sample of his work in the teaser below:

This summer at Christian Adventure Holidays we did a week of teaching on the whole Bible Story with the help of Lego bricks! We called it Fixed and based it on Christopher Ashes great book Remaking a Broken world. So the hashtag #RebuildTheWorld is very fitting! Here's a peak 👇 pic.twitter.com/UijsmIfcoe

— Sam Gibb (@samggibb) September 18, 2019

Most of us recognise that everything’s not awesome, but is our diagnosis of the problem sufficient?

If humanity’s failure to steward this world and to love our neighbour is actually evidence of a larger problem, a problem that puts us out of sync with the God who made us, then that has to change where we place our hope and confidence when it comes to a solution.

Sounds like a good reason to turn to the One who says, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’ (Revelation 21:5).