Rocks and hard places

Here's a picture from our recent 247 Prayer Room. This activity station had 2 rucksacks that people were invited to pick up and wear. The instructions were...

Choose a Rucksack

One of these rucksack is filled with rocks
The other one is filled with water
Both are heavy, but only one is useful

What are the rocks in your life?
What refreshes and sustains you, like water?

Ask God for help to put down the rocks and supply you with water.

I tried on the water rucksack, buckling it up the way a Runner would. It had a built in bendy straw thing so you could drink the water while wearing it. I wandered around the room feeling heavier than normal as the water sloshed around. 

There was a treadmill at another prayer station. I ran on the treadmill with the water rucksack. I pretended to be a Runner. I imagined being super fit and drank water from the bendy straw. (Is Covid still a thing?) I ran for 10 minutes and got bored. 

I swapped the water rucksack for the rock one and ran on the treadmill some more carrying the rock rucksack instead. I ran for another 10 minutes and got fed up. I am not a Runner.

I got off the treadmill, but didn't discard the rucksack of rocks. 

I pottered round the room and did all the other activities. After a while, the rocks got uncomfortable. When I lay down on my stomach to write stuff and read, the weight of the rocks on my back made it hard to breathe. The water rucksack had been heavy, but had moulded to the contours of my back and distributed the weight evenly - plus it got lighter as I drank it. The rocks were always bulky and weighty and dug into my flesh through the material of the bag. 

I thought and prayed about the rocks. 

What are they and why do we carry them? 

Some people don't have rocks (lucky them). 

Some people do have rocks but don't seem to mind them. Their rocks don't cause problems because they have coping strategies and support mechanisms in place. They structure their lives wisely and are flourishing - even when life has rocks. That's great too. 

Some people have rocks but deny having them - which is OK if they're still functioning for now and not ready to deal with them yet. 

But what about the rocks we have that we want rid of? 

What do we do with things that are heavy and damaging and just plain wearisome. Why do we lug them around when we could could be carrying the water? Or nothing at all - and just stopping regularly for coffee and cheesecake?

The reasons are many and swirled in my head until I made this flowchart. (There are probably countless other reasons why we carry rocks around but the prayer room was finishing and I had the last slot and limited time to think).

1: It’s just a season in my life, and for now, this is my rock and I need to carry it. 

That’s fine! How can I help you with that? We are instructed help each other carry their heavy stuff!
'Help carry one another's burdens, and in this way you will obey the law of Christ'. (Gal 6:2)

2: I don't know what's wrong with me - I put the rocks down then pick them up again. Repeatedly...

How amazing that you KEEP putting them down. If you can't stop picking them up - then keep doing what you're doing and put them down again when you realise they are back. I salute your perseverance.
'Happy are those who remain faithful under trials, because when they succeed in passing such a test, they will receive as their reward the life which God has promised to those who love him.' (‭‭James‬ ‭1:12)‬ 

3: They are a part of me- I inherited them

OK - but did you check that out recently? Because something quite remarkable and incomprehensible happened when you became a Christian. In purely physical terms, DNA isn’t as static as we once believed. Some genes get turned on and off due to environmental factors, age or injury. In spiritual terms, it gets even weirder. There was literally a BC version of you and an afterwards one.

How critical are you of thoughts like this? Check what you believe about your inheritance. Is the rock still really yours to keep? Forever?

4: It just hurts 

That must be exhausting. What drugs are you on? (Honestly - Thank God for pharmaceuticals). 

Also - without minimising it or denying it exists or dealing with the current real time effects of the pain, can you see this situation any other way? Could you zoom out to a viewpoint beyond the boundaries of the pain and see something bigger? (Like when Chandler goes so far over the line it becomes a dot?)

Or as Jenn Johnson sings in Gravity:
But then You come
And take me by the hand
You say come up here with Me
And then my feet came off the ground
You lifted me above the clouds
As I look down the whole world seems so small
Past the stars through space and time
And I forget what's left behind
As I'm surrounded by these grander things
Up here in perfect harmony
You're orchestrating galaxies
They're lighting up as far as I can see
The majesty
The mystery
Your gravity
Pulls me close to You
And I can breathe again
Here with You

5: It’s comforting to have the rock - even tho it’s uncomfortable and painful - it’s FAMILIAR.

I get that. After carrying something for so long, it can be scary to put it down. Who are we anyway without all our packaging and memories and experiences that brought us to this place - right here, right now? 

You look like you could be a Runner, though. Why not put the rocks down and try on this rucksack instead? It's heavy, but you're strong from carrying all those rocks around. Just try it on and feel the weight of it and give it a go. The rocks will still be here if you really want them back again. Drink from this bendy straw thing when you're thirsty. Just letting you know - I've used it myself, but I wiped it afterwards and I don't have Covid.

6: OK - I might try the water thing, but honestly - I prefer caffeine. And did someone mention cake?

Life support

Our church has this principle that underpins everything we do:
• Prayer is our heartbeat

There are a few more (see website here) but I've been kind of fixated on this one for a while. Prayer is the basis for everything that goes on. The analogy is simple - without a heart beat, we're dead. And without prayer - a constant, dynamic connection to God - any idea or project or activity the church can dream up, is likewise dead.

Prayer is our heartbeat. 

I've thought about this a lot recently. Mainly because my husband's heart stopped a few weeks ago.

It was a very weird day.

A woman we'd met only once before spent a big chunk of her day with her hands inside his chest, fixing a diseased valve and removing a section of ballooned aorta before it went pop. For 6 and a half hours his heart was motionless, his lungs deflated and pushed to the side, while a bypass machine took over all vital functions. Blood was removed from his body, filtered, cooled and oxygenated before being returned by a mechanical pump - allowing the surgeon to works in a bloodless surgical field.

I now officially LOVE this woman - and the team of people who looked after him during his 9 day stay at the Heath. The thank you cards and trays of Dunkin Donuts were a deeply inadequate expression of thanks but I honestly don't know how to gift wrap such a thing and anyway - everyone loves donuts.

On 7th January my husband had NO heartbeat. But - it wasn't over. Another mechanism had kicked in and was refusing to let him go. The period in ICU was temporary. It facilitated surgery that resulted in a person with waaay more energy than he's had for years and who constantly ticks like a bomb because the new valve is titanium based and will last longer than the rest of him. Totally worth it. Plus he has this really cool scar:

And now we are collectively experiencing a very weird period in history.

There are record numbers of people in the ICU departments across the country and across the globe. Nations all over the world are in various states of lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19 and the resulting illness that can accompany it. We are in the middle of something quite extraordinary that we have no blueprint for.

Being unconscious and sedated is not normal, healthy or desirable. Being intubated and on a ventilator is not the default position of a human being.

If prayer is our heartbeat, then to be prayer-less is unnatural and temporary. But like the ICU, there are mechanisms in place that mean it's not the end. God is like, This thing can't die. I'm taking over. I'll pump the blood and keep this thing going until you're strong enough. Until you can wake up.

This thing isn't over Xx

In the same way, the Holy Spirit helps us where we are weak. We do not know how to pray or what we should pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays to God for us with sounds that cannot be put into words. (Romans 8:26)

Why Pray? (247)

Seeking and hiding

It's 3am and I'm in our latest 24/7 prayer room. Our theme is Fixing Broken Things. All the activities around the room feature it on some way. Loosely sometimes- but there if you look for it.

Then they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul. (2 Chronicles 15:12)

We have a roll of lining paper gaffer taped to the floor with verses and prayers scribbled all over it. I look at the verse from Chronicles for a long time. I become fixated with the word seek. Isn't it weird to single out one particular word and overthink it until it sounds like something you've never heard before. A foreign syllable that feels strange in your head when you think it and on your lips when you say it and your ears are like - Whoah! That was a brand new sound.

Seek

Seek

Seek

Honestly - what does it even mean?! What does it look like to seek for something? To seek for God? And how do you seek God's presence when it's essentially everywhere? Seeking is kind of like searching, but more intense. Like there's more riding on the outcome. Like your life depends on it or something.

This song starts playing over the PA. It has a line about seeking in it and the printed lyrics are in the prayer tent. I go over to the tent and crawl inside to read them. There’s a sleeping bag and pillow and camping lantern in here. It’s 3am and I could lie down and sleep, but I’m too busy thinking about seeking, here in the tent. Hidden from the rest of the room. Hidden from the world. I’m seeking while I’m hiding. Hiding and seeking at the same time. That's kind of cool.

I remember an incident from years ago when the kids were little and my parents were down visiting us. Grandparents are nature's built-in babysitters and were playing with everyone while I tidied up after dinner. There was lots of squealing and running and laughing as they played hide and seek. There was a distinct lack of stealth to the whole thing that comes with toddlers, but no one seemed to mind and it didn't affect the enjoyment of the game. After a while, the house became quieter as the game moved on and attention (or grandparental energy) ran out. I was making a cup of tea when a muffled voice almost made me drop my mug. 'Do you think they're still looking for me...?'

It was my mum. She'd been hiding in a cupboard for the past 20 minutes, squashed next to the ironing board, 8' from where I was standing and I hadn't know she was there. The kids didn't know she was there either, and what's more, they weren't looking anymore. They were watching TV with Grandad.

Sooooooooo..... My Mum won at hide and seek.

If the end goal is to out manoeuvre the other players and stay hidden until it's decided you can't be found, then everybody gives up and declares you the winner, then that's what happened. Technically and actually. My mum was the winner.

Except that wasn't the point. The point was the game itself. The laughing and being engaged with what's happening in the moment. The being alive together.

It's so easy to beat a little kid at hide and seek. Toddlers are monumentously poor at
1: Being quiet (unless they are asleep)
2: Finding a good hiding spot
3: Staying there for any length of time

As illustrated here (pinched from my mate Michael - engaged in a covert hide and seek operation with his daughter, Abby). I love this picture. It illustrates everything that's beautiful about playing with your kid. You can't win at anything with them because you can't win at relationships. You build them. The game - the stories you create together make the whole thing work.

I think about all this in the prayer tent while I hide. I get a sudden image of God in the fringes of my mind, counting. I zip up the prayer tent to hide even better. I even lie down to make myself smaller. 4..... 3..... 2...... 1...... OK - Where are you!?

And I burst out the tent, surprising him (because you can totally do that) and he laughs and bolts and beckons me to follow him. I don't know where to run to first. He's everywhere. Divine hide and seek.

Is that even a thing? I google and unsurprisingly, other people are writing about it: There's something deep in our hearts that wants to be pursued. We love the feeling of hiding, knowing full well people who care about us are pursuing us, seeking us out. I believe there is a God-given desire in all of us to be pursued, to be sought out. We want someone to pursue us. It makes us feel wanted, worthy, and desired. God is no different. He wants us to pursue Him. I believe that He even hides Himself sometimes to see if we value Him enough to seek Him. www.wholeheartedmen.com

I think this guy's onto something. I think winning is in the connection of relationship, not the victory of the outcome.

And if you really, really want someone to find you, then you hide in plain sight. Just like Abby.

How to look good naked

Our church finished a 247 prayer weekend a few days ago. As requested by Madi, our room contained a prayer den. It was an ace idea. Both kids and adults could engage with it and it took 5 minutes to assemble and cost NOTHING: 1x table, 3x blankets, some pegs, a random assortment of cardboard boxes and a huge length of white gauze fabric that we pulled out of a skip in London 9 years ago after an event. A few hours after it was set up, the den even included a pillow. Genius.

The den, along with the other activities, encouraged people to pray and think and sing and write in sand or on stones and maybe cry at the state of our world and be thankful for grace and pray for more of it to go around because things are broken and we have to live on a dysfunctional planet and not go crazy in the meantime.

I did all that. But the most significant thing I found was purely accidental -  the position of the prayer den itself. Although the table, blankets, pegs and cardboard boxes were there to be constructed by other people, we had to set it up in such a way so that it looked like a den in the first place - otherwise it's just a bunch of clutter that someone forgot to clear up. It ended up being right up against the wall by the lectern at the front of the church so as not to obscure the other activities in the room. If all the seats were out in their usual place (which they weren't), they would all have been facing towards the den.

While we were still setting up, I was totally distracted by the juxtaposition of the den with the lectern. The hidden and secluded vs the prominent. The seen vs the unseen. Secret vs public.

What we want to be known about ourselves vs who we actually are.

Of course some things need to stay private or you're (perhaps correctly) branded a social weirdo - but how much energy and time is wasted in keeping our seen and unseen lives separate things? Regulating both of them to ensure they touch in only controlled ways lest they collide abruptly and splinter into a million component parts that scare other people - or God - away? Or worse still maybe, kidding ourselves that what happens in either of these two realms is contained there in isolation and bears no relevance to anything happening in the other one.

What an absolute and tragic waste of time. Jesus totally got this and made a huge point of teaching that thought processes are JUST as important as outward actions. One directly influences the other. Like cause and effect, they are inextricably linked. This is simultaneously wet your pants scary and the most liberating thing ever. There may be no place to hide - but there's no need to hide either.

Unlike the Orwellian thought police, God wants healing of our motivations rather than control of them. He's arguably more interested in mending the secret damage of the heart than the public stuff that we tend to fixate on. If the story in Eden ended with humankind hiding from the creator and covering up with fig leaves, Jesus offers the chance to reverse that process - but far beyond the physical limitations of naked flesh. Further even than Robbie Williams went in the banned Rock DJ video.
The offer is to unwrap it all.
Every last secret thought.
Every buried attitude.
Every concealed motivation lurking on the fringes of consciousness.

Then to stand bare-souled and healed before him - unafraid, unashamed and loved.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. (Tim Keller)

Persistence

We spent a week of the Summer holidays on various beaches with a bunch of friends and an assortment of windbreaks, towels, buckets & spades, camping chairs, cool boxes and flasks of coffee. It was ACE.

One beach in particular was just breathtaking. We ended up there on one of the warmest days of the holidays and swam and played in the sea without wetsuits. Apparently the beach, Barafundle Bay is one of the top 12 in the World and we didn't even have to leave the country to get there.

After a few hours the tide began to creep up the beach. The gradient of the sand was such that there was a steep-ish bank and a ridge of sand about 30' or so from our camp.

Wouldn't it be cool, we thought, if we could create a massive sandcastle at the top of the ridge that would withstand the waves and allow the kids to STAND on top of it? The kids were too busy playing in the waves (and failing to save a long-since abandoned sandcastle from being swallowed up by the sea). But the adults in our group got to work. 

The spot at the top of the sand ridge was chosen and digging implements assembled. I don't know if you have had first hand experience of this, but adults can quickly build an impressively huge sandcastle without children getting in the way. We had a system. We had plastic spades. A common goal. Five of us chucked the sand on, and one stood on top and compressed the sand down, flattening it layer by layer and making it strong enough to support the weight of the 8 children we collectively own.

Within half an hour it stood imposing and strong on the beach. It wasn't an ornate or decorative thing, but it was fit for purpose, topped with a large flat sandy platform to accommodate 16 feet (maybe more- if everyone huddled up like penguins). The tide was still a few feet away and we still had time to save ourselves. Yay!

I scrambled up to join the bigger children. I pulled the smaller kids up one at a time. It was a squash. But it didn't matter because no one stayed long. There were still holes in the sand to be dug. And seaweed to collect. And it's far more thrilling to climb up a massive sandcastle then immediately jump down again than to simply stand atop it and wait for Sandcastle Armageddon. 

Apparently. 

I didn't try it.

Once up there I stayed. Initially this was to pluck the smaller members of our group from the jaws of the approaching waves. But pretty soon (probably due to OCD-related reasons) it swapped and became a battle of wills in my head. If I get off of this thing before the sea washes over the top of it, then the sea will win. I don't want the sea to win. Therefore I will stay here.

When the sea is only a few feet away, but those few feet are slopey, waiting for the tide can take a lonnnnnngggg time.

Sometimes there were 5 or 6 of us up there. Sometimes I was alone. Although the sun was still shining, it was dropping in the sky and lack of movement made me shiver. The constant scrambling up and down of many small feet dislodged slabs of sand from the sides, so I patted them back in again. And waited for the end.

I was cold. And horribly sandy. If I could only get down and rinse off in the sea I could get dry and warm and maybe there was some hot water left for TEA?

But that would involve getting down, and then the sea would win.

By the time the waves reached the foot of the castle, some of the kids had got too cold to be wet and were already back in clean, dry clothes. Those left ran up the castle wall and waited for the structure to collapse.

But Armageddon was still a while off yet. We had built the sandcastle pretty high. The game of choice changed from climb up sandcastle and immediately jump down into sand, to climb up sandcastle and immediately jump back down into sea. It looked fun. But if I tried it, that would involve getting down, and then the sea would win.

So I froze a bit longer as the waves slowly eroded our fortress and (rather excitingly) flowed over the ridge and back towards our camp, leaving us stranded on our artificial island. 

After another 10 minutes or so the next wave washed over the entire sandy platform, and the game was over. The sandcastle had gone, but we had WON!!

The remaining islanders washed off in the sea and rejoined our group to a round of applause. When we turned to leave, all that was left was a flat expanse of sea and sand with only a broken spade handle suggesting anything had happened.

OK. F/Fwd to this Sunday and we are in church. Singing a song I've never heard before. Part of it went:

You are everything you've promised, 
your faithfulness is true
When we're desperate for your presence, 
All we need is you

I really struggled to sing this. Not just because it was unfamiliar, but because it wasn't true. At that point in time, if I had the chance to itemise the things I was desperate for I would have said:

1. For my in-box to be empty
2. For the rain to hold off so the 4 loads of washing I did yesterday can dry
3. For the children to be head-lice free (a process I embarked on this morning which took the best part of an hour and a half and resulted in 3 of us being half an hour late for church, and probably the reason why I'm not desperate for anything else right now).

What's wrong with me? 

Then I remembered the beach. And some other things too.

If I can:

• waste an hour and a half of my life sitting like a pixie on top of a pile of compressed sand in order to win a self-created mind game with the Atlantic Ocean

• complain to HMRC via repeated recorded delivery mail over 4 years, 2 MPs and several house moves until they finally lose interest in me and my alleged 'overpayment'

• find 90 seconds every single day to breed dragon pairs and collect fake coins

Then surely I demonstrate my capacity for stubbornness and persistence which can be channelled into something that means something. I just need to be obstinate about things that matter and not give up praying about stuff when it doesn't happen right away.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Suppose one of you should go to a friend's house at midnight and say, ‘Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of mine who is on a trip has just come to my house, and I don't have any food for him!’ And suppose your friend should answer from inside, ‘Don't bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.’ Well, what then? I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking. And so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For those who ask will receive, and those who seek will find, and the door will be opened to anyone who knocks. (Luke 11, 5-10)

Just say an individual wave got disheartened from crashing into a huge sandcastle then just gave up? A single wave dislodges and rearranges several hundred thousand particles of sand and nothing more. But wave after wave after wave can do this.

Ask

Seek

Knock

And Play in the Sand

Thinking Big

Once again, thanks to the amazing seasonal generosity of family and friends our kids ended up with £30 - £110 worth of Christmas money/vouchers to spend in the sales this year. (They did receive exactly the same amount of money each- our relatives are very equal that way- but there is a sliding scale of purchasing power in our house which correlates to age lest we all suffocate underneath cuddly animals, lego and squinkies).

The kids' wish lists were very modest, considering:

M: A bag of marshmallows and a big stuffed Spot the dog (A character she has shown NO interest in whatsoever since the age of 3, so that was a bit unexpected. However he's huge and cuddly and therefore appealing)

J: An Anakin Jedi Interceptor Lego ship and a BIG cup of Wilkos pick'n'mix sweets

E: An iPod with the capacity to download apps and take photos (which his previous one didn't because it was so old)

These items were duly sought and purchased in the days following Christmas day and the kids LOVE them and play with them lots. All were bought in real shops from real live people who work there- aside from J's Anakin lego model which was ordered online cause it was cheaper. 

The 4 days in between securing the purchase on Amazon and the magical package arriving via courier to our door were long and punctuated by sighs of, 'Oh I WISH it was Thursday because then my Anakin Jedi Interceptor Ship would get here,' and 'Mum, do you think my Anakin Jedi Interceptor Ship might get here tomorrow, even though they said it would be Thursday?' and 'If my my Anakin Jedi Interceptor Ship does get here tomorrow I can't play football with Jack cause I'll be too busy building it then playing with it...' 

Day 2 of waiting for Anakin Jedi Interceptor Ship. Bedtime.
Me: What prayers are we going to say tonight then Jackson?
J: Please God help my Anakin Jedi Interceptor Ship get here on Thursday, Amen.
Me: .... Amen... Anything else?
J: Nope- that's it.
Me: Jackson, God can do anything, yeah? And when you pray you can talk to him about anything! Isn't that amazing? Let's think of something else to pray about... I know what-
J: (interrupting) Dear God please make my Anakin Jedi Interceptor Ship get here BEFORE Thursday!!

This cracked me up completely. He's 9 years old. The entire focus of his world is about 2 meters wide and is packed with nerf guns, lego and cola bottles. It's a place of smallness and safety, cushioned from real life by a network of family, adult friends and his posse of mates who look forward to football in the yard at lunchtime more than their lessons, just as he does.

The WORST thing to happen to him last week was when I finally threw out his favourite jogging bottoms which have had a hole in the right knee for the past 3 months (Somehow they kept emerging, clean and damp from the washing machine, so I'd think- OK he can wear them just this one more time...) 

My world is somewhat bigger than this. 

My world involves solicitors, contractors, internet Tesco shopping and parentmail. There are banking dongles, hair straighteners and estate agents. There's also midnight email conversations, school dinner money reminders and an almost- teenager who is part toddler/ part mastermind contestant (specialist subject: Apple). There are landlords and ex-landlords, ex-tenants and bailiffs. There are bills to be prioritised, conversations about tampax (No, you don't need them yet), sexting (Great- you know what it is but haven't yet done/seen anything? Let's keep it that way) and a tick list of things that I never quite get to the end of.

Sometimes I think I am envious of the small safe world of my kids. And then I remember how excruciating adolescence was and how I glaze over at mindless youtube videos which feature singing dogs, uploaded by 10 year olds who boast 'You won't watch this without laughing,' while the kids crease up on the floor next to me, proving that if you are a child, then this is perfectly true. 

So my life is bigger and a bit more complex than theirs, but has God grown (in my head) to match?

God can do anything. And when you pray you can talk to him about anything! Isn't that amazing?

I need to apply this to me too and stop only praying about what I can see and hear and worry about. You can scale everything up from the world of my 9 year old, but mine too is small and limited. 

God knows we need people to pay on time so that we in turn can pay contractors/ staff/ the VAT man. He's fully aware of the date we need accounts by and that it must coincide with the pension people doing their bit so we can (hopefully) get a mortgage before stupid season starts again and we're not at home long enough to move house. 

So why do I insist on telling him???

I tell him about lots of other stuff too, though. I prattle on and on about family things (so many of them far from him), my friend's mum who is dying of cancer (Why don't you always heal? Help them to remember all the memories they are making now), my friends who lost their son last year (I still don't get it God, but I know you do. Use what happened- somehow) and my other mate who is finally pregnant after ages of waiting (Thank you/let them be OK/Thank you/let them be ok).

As good and as right as these prayers are, I stall and get overwhelmed when I look further afield. There are some massively ugly things happening that I don't quite know what to do with or how to pray about. So in all honesty I don't. Because the more you look the more mess you see and before long it's less of a prayer and more like a Billy Joel song:

Hunger
Dirty water
Tax evasion 
Genetic modification
Corrupt politicians
Genocide
Celebrity culture
Preventable child death
Nestle
Meow Meow
Trident
Rape culture
Suicide bombings
The LRA
Human Trafficking
School shootings
HIV
Jimmy Saville
The arms trade
Whistleblowers
FGM
Austerity
Child soldiers
The Middle East

When the problem gets so big I have less to say about it. I have no solutions to offer so other than fire off petitions of complaint (often via Avaaz.org) I concentrate on the things I can pray semi-coherently about. It's kind of a back side forward approach.

I'm forgetting who He is.

I AM.

History is not the history of man. It’s not the history of civilization. God was there first. Do we sometimes invite God into our story? Are we like ‘We’re going to let you be in our story God,’ and he’s like, ‘Excuse me? But your history is my story. Your existence is my story. Your nation? My story. The world that you live in? My story. The history of your civilasations (thank you very much) is my history and it started long before you were around. History is MY STORY and I am inviting you in. 

My name is I AM. Your name is I am not. 

I can take anybody and do extraordinary things. 

You are one of 6.4 billion people on this planet so you've got to just get over yourself. Do you think the world is going to screech to a halt if you fall off of it? I don't NEED you to do this, I'm inviting you to be part of My Story. I could use a sheep if I wanted to, I don't need anything or anybody to help me do this but  I. Want. You.

Stop insulting God with tiny prayers and a shrunk down life and your little teeny idols. (Louie Giglio)

Problem solving

When I was a kid we got a rubix cube for Christmas, as did probably every other family in the country at some point in the 80's. No one in the house could do it. No one I knew in school could do it either and in the pre-internet era of my childhood no one could google the technique. There were books published to help the rubix-impaired but the one my dad brought home for us didn't have enough pictures to be helpful, and to this day the cube has remained a mystery to me.

However, there was also another puzzle in our family. I can't remember which Christmas it first appeared- someone in the house got it from someone else in the house and it was always just there from that Christmas day on. It's spherical and made up of sections which rotate at 90 degrees to the tram lines of coloured beads which circle it. The premise is to get all the coloured beads in rows of the same colour- thusly.

From this image of perfection, it takes just a few random moves to cock it up completely and have none of the coloured beads in any sense of order at all. Like this.

For the first 20 minutes of Christmas day, the ball looked as it does in Fig 1. We took it in turns to click the ball round once or twice, shunt the beads round a little, then immediately reverse the process, replacing the beads on their correct layer and keeping the lines complete. But gradually the shunting around became more and more adventurous as the ball was passed between family members until (horror!) the previous action was not successfully reversed and the puzzle was mixed up. The ball was snatched back by it's original recipient (whoever that was) then by someone else, then someone else, each attempting to repair the damage- but the ball got more and more disordered and pretty soon my dad was the only one fiddling with it, muttering away under his breath in frustration as we continued to open presents and eat chocolate.

The puzzle ball remained undone for 8 or 9 years after that first Christmas morning when it was first opened. Oh we spent time with it alright- clicking it and shunting its beads and cajoling it and occasionally throwing it, before abandoning it in frustration, lying that we would never attempt to solve it ever again. But it would patiently lie there on the floor or at the bottom of the magazine rack, taunting whoever came near with its fig2-ishness until the next person idly picked it up while watching telly and started click-clicking away. The lure of the sphere always won.

The main problem was that there were no breathing spaces. The beads touched each other in one big long traffic-jam of nose to tail plastic at every point on the track. So each move made by the solver impacted on something else in at least 3 other places. While you worked on fixing the greens on the lower level, the reds snuck out of position when you weren't looking then laughed at you.

One day I was sat idly playing with the cryptic sphere for the ten zillionth time when I made the smallest of tiniest discoveries: Click the ball round by 2 positions from the concentric-hoop position and you ended up with 2 independantly moving tracks. A flicker of hope rose inside me. All this time I'd been wrestling with the fact that every time you moved a bead by even one place there was a chain reaction which cocked up something else on the other side of the world, but NO- here we have the possibility of changing one thing without inadvertently dislodging something else.

I began to breathe a bit faster and my hands shook a bit as I tested this new discovery. Actually there were 8 clicky positions where the tracks could intersect with each other and at TWO of these positions, there were independent loops of tailgating beads, eternally circling each other. Great- work with that. Knowledge is power... The theory developed and slow progress was made, eventually resulting in the greens becoming reunited after 8 1/2 long years. 

Good, good... Now it's your turn reds... But hold it right there! No no no. In reuniting the last red with it's kind a green one has sodding well jumped back up to the top! Aargh. So near and yet so far... OK, don't panic- repeat last move for red and have green at this junction here instead of wherever-it-was and... both slot in together during the same clickety-click! Yes- we are 50% there. Half way. Keep your head together soldier and BREATHE... Remember what you have learned. Apply the same strategy to the colours at the ends now... Keep calm though, don't let it know you think you've beaten it cause it's a crafty beggar this one- it may still have some way of getting out of this one... but NOOOOOO! It's all over for you cryptic sphere! You are SOLVED baby! You have no power over me now oh Ball of Ridicule. Your mystery is unravelled and your spell is broken!  IN. YOUR. FACE. Bwah-ha-ha!!!!!!

I was rather smug in my household that day. But I willingly shared the sphere's secret with all who would listen -  after all, one person should never have that much power. Plus it was reassuring to repeat the solution again and again, to prove it wasn't a blip and the sphere really had been defeated.

Looking at it now it's plainly ridiculous that it took so long to beat. (What was I doing for 8 or 9 years of my childhood? We only had 4 tv channels). I've just counted the beads now. There are 56 of them. There are 4 different colours in a track with 8 different configurations. Some mathematical whizz could work out the total maximum number of Fig2nesses there could ever be. Ultimately it's just a plastic ball that fits in the palm of your hand. 

But just say there was a bigger ball. 
With more tracks. 
And even more beads. 
In 5 or 10 or 50 different colours.

Or just say there was a gihumungous ball that transcends time with a bead which represents every person ever- not just those of us on the planet now, but all those who have lived and died already AND all people not even born yet. 

Just say... every person is like a bead on a massive cosmic puzzle ball that is intrinsically connected to all other beads. When just one of them moves it has an impact, not just on those immediately around it, but sometimes (depending on the position of the other tracks) on the other side of the world too- or on beads which exist only as echoes of the past or on beads which haven't yet appeared? 

Just say... just say the ball contains the whole of humanity and God has got to jiggle and move all the beads around to make the best possible pattern out of the puzzle at that particular point in time while the beads are moving around on their own accord. Could all the beads be reconciled to the completed puzzle when each has their own agenda and destination?

Impossible. Noooooo way. There are just far too many variables. In Bruce Almighty Jim Carrey gave up and resigned as God after only a few days of prayer-answering and he only had the people in Buffalo to look after.

I believe prayer works. I really do. But I don't know how it works or why God sometimes appears to ignore or refuse some perfectly reasonable requests. I just need to remind myself who designed the puzzle ball in the first place and be thankful that he can multitask- unlike Bruce Nolan.