Okay, so I promised you honesty

With all my enthusiasm for lent this year (after last year was such a success) I have had an epic fail at pretty much the 1st hurdle.

Shortly before lent I seem to remember preparing and delivering a session for my youth on the character of Elijah. I'm pretty sure that the session was delivered off the back of a massive high after getting back from a leaders conference. I came back, not bubbling with frothy enthusiasm that wouldn't last but full of a quiet confident resolve to apply myself  in a diligent way to the furthering of the gospel and the kingdom of God. Or so I thought. One of the recurring themes of the study was the way that some of the incredible highs of the ministry of this, arguably the most mighty man of God in the old testament  (notably the showdown with the prophets of Baal) were followed by the almost suicidal lows of the blackest depression. The study pointed out rather perceptively that often it is after our greatest successes that we are at our most vulnerable to attack. It makes complete sense as we are caught off guard, sadly often by our own complacency.

I have to confess that this quiet confident resolve soon gave way to headlong plunges into pools of indifference, and less than cautious toe dips into the shallows of rivers of past sins. The thing that fascinates me right here is that when we are ambiguous about unnamed sins that the minds of our hearers will often race into all kinds of lurid speculations almost automatically. Another thing that fascinates is my almost immediate urge to qualify it and play it down. Honesty (or integrity) asks that I do neither of those two things. As I know people from my home church may possibly read this (and do I post it on my churches email google group as I usually do when I know it will make me look good?) I wonder about the wisdom of this. For any of you reading let me tell you that there ARE people I will confess my weaknesses to but this is possibly not the forum for such an activity. Let me say that I am human and prone to every temptation,  like Jesus was as he walked our earth. I must have confidence in my brothers and sisters who I hope strive (as I do) to follow the not judging command, that they will simply pray for me and bless me.

As I've said in the past one of the tasks of fasting is to hold a mirror up to our true nature...and on this one, job done! and the other is to rise above it.

This week I went for my first appointment with the man who is to be my "Spiritual Director". As we chatted in the presence of the third person in the room and he gently asked me "How is your relationship with God at the moment"  I felt suddenly overwhelmed with raw feelings of need and inadequacy but more importantly....longing...longing to know him and be known. As the Ghost of Christmas present says (in the Muppet's version at least) "Come in and know me better man". In that short but lovely conversation it suddenly became apparent to me that what I want...above all things is RELATIONSHIP and not religion. That my relationship with my creator exists, and it exists outside of the confines of doctrine and social cleeks and denominations and self imposed prisons. And like it did for Elijah in his suicidal low of blackest depression, it came for me yesterday evening, at about 8 pm, the still small voice of God, breathing hope back into me. Hope and life and the realisation that God does not want a relationship with the person I am trying to be. He wants relationship with the person I am.

And so I am going on in this ongoing journey of relationship discovering the moist and bloody fledgling of the new man trying to emerge through the cracks in the eggshell of the old man.