The sorriest sheep

I walked in the door after Equip, followed by a Chinatown dinner, at 9:30pm last night, and was nearly knocked off my feet by the smell of gas. There were four people sitting on the couch, splitting their sides over the Chaser’s War on Everything, who just gave me a brief blank glance at my exclamation that the house smelt terribly like gas. I quickly found the source in a hotplate still running gas in the kitchen, which I turned off and then threw the window open wide. At my further exclamation to the couch foursome that the hotplate was still on, only one seemed mildly alarmed, while the others just wanted to rewind the part they just missed on the DVD. It’s amazing how danger can so insidiously creep up on you, such that when you’re in the middle of it you don’t even realise that it’s happening. And it takes someone to come in from the fresh air outside to warn you that you’ve created the perfect conditions for an explosion, and turn the gas off. And sometimes they won’t be thanked for that, and their rescue efforts will go unacknowledged, while you carry on with your distraction! :) There’s an allusion to something in there somewhere.

Anyway, that doesn’t quite tie in with what I was particularly challenged by at Equip. I first went to the elective on Better than Gossip run by Ainsley Poulos, to assist the chairperson (very important I was :)...), which was very challenging (the talk that is, not my assistant’s job), especially in making us think through the reasons why we gossip (eg exclusive alliance building, power, to avoid exposing ourselves/protect ourselves – so we talk about others instead, or revenge), the ways in which each party in a gossip scenario can put a stop to the gossip and the things we can talk about that are better than gossip. But it was Di Warren’s talk on James 4:1-10 that hit the mark of the particular place where I find myself at present, and made wet things drip off the bottom of my cheeks. She began with telling us how we want the best of both worlds and try to live for God plus this world (vs 1-3) but that there can be no middle ground (vs 4-5) or any such thing as a "decaf Christian". And so we are to live for God alone (vs 7-10) and trust Him. She asked the question ‘How is Satan tempting me?’ and outlined some of his tricks. The first trick is to call us to centre stage, and whisper in our ear that we deserve the best life possible, and that our dreams are good (and what I would like is not all that out-of-the-ordinary) - when life is actually about God being centre stage. The second trick is to make the "world" look so good (and in my case it looks so very good) and the third is undermine God, and cause us to think that he is not really on our side (oh so true, when you feel sometimes like God just wants to keep giving you tests to pass), when he is ALWAYS on our side. And so we need to learn to trust Him and develop and seek a godly sorrow for our sin, and in knowing how it grieves God. And that’s not an easy life, but it’s the best life possible.

Anyway, it’s a fait accompli that there is a Christina Rossetti poem for all phases of my life, and this one is for now, which she wrote after she relinquished something most dear to her for God’s sake (which I can't always affirm with such confident resolve, but it's something to aim for):

I love ... God the most;

Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,

Nor with Lot’s wife cast back a faithless look

Unready to forego what I forsook;

This say I, having counted up the cost,

This, tho’ I be the feeblest of God’s host,

The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.