Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Saviour

– Oceans, Hillsong United

Here we start, at the end of Relay 1 and Forum. 12 days of  teaching on the grace and goodness of our God. 12 days to understand our salvation, our adoption, our justification, our sanctification, his sacrifice and ascension. There isn’t much a really want to say at this point other than that this time was incredible and has deepened my understanding of grace significantly, what a gift. It will take some time to process, what a gift that time is. And here I am, finally starting out on this journey into the depths of the knowledge of the richness of Christ. Relay, I greet you with open arms, heart and mind. Lord, by your grace, use me.

Run, John, run, the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands,
Far better news the gospel brings:
It bids us fly and gives us wings
– John Bunyan

Finally back! The prolonged interlude is at last concluded so I hope to write more this summer and next year on relay too. Through the turbulence of exams and results, job applications and job offers we have slipped unwittingly and gloriously in to summer. It is hard to describe just what a slice of paradise Magdalen green is in the summer, the warmth, the view, the sun, Dundee’s west end  in all its leafy splendour. I walked down to riverside Tesco and back which, far from being its regular chore was, in this weather, a delight. I was listening to ‘the explicit gospel’ by Matt chandler, the combination of the revitalising sun and theology, a pleasure.  Absorbing both the vitamin D and the word my mind wandered from these wonders on to something I read in my day to day bible study about a week ago, Psalm 116.

¹ I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
² Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.

³ The cords of death entangled me,
the anguish of the grave came over me;
I was overcome by distress and sorrow.
⁴ Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!”

God, in his mercy to us, hears us when we call for help. Here the cry to the lord is the fear of death, the pain and distress of life at its darkest; this however is far from my recent experiences. By the grace of God I am currently in a simple time of life, far from darkest and thankfully running low on distress and sorrow. The temptation for all of us I feel is that realistically we spend much of our life in these normal good times where not all that much is going wrong and things are just ticking over, and thus we find God’s grace and mercy to us somewhat inconsequential for everyday living. And there lies a huge problem; our reverence for God can be almost directly subject with our perceived need for him. The man in distress says ‘Lord help me!’; the same man a week later when he is no longer in such deep need forgets God altogether.  Forgive the slight flippancy of this remark but I think we have a terrible tendency to treat God as a disaster sponge, to absorb all our problems when we have them dealt with and the rest of the time for him to stand at the sidelines of our life and cheer us on.  Sidelining God is about as useful as sailing whilst completely ignoring the wind and still believing we can make headway.

So then what? Do we try create drama so that we always need to involve God, clearly not, what we really need is a change of heart and mind. The first thing in this psalm is ‘I love the Lord… I will call on him as long as I live’ this is not treating God as the great fixer in the sky but as the fulfilment of our daily need, and the one who, because of his constant grace and mercy to us, we love. Neither bland nor half hearted, one sided nor forced, this is a love for the one who provides for us all we have and cares for us, loving  us more than we can know. Why do we love God? Because he first loved us. And so the psalm continues…

⁵ The Lord is gracious and righteous;
our God is full of compassion.
⁶ The Lord protects the unwary;
when I was brought low, he saved me.

⁷ Return to your rest, my soul,
for the Lord has been good to you.

There are some wonderful truths about God expressed here, his grace and compassion but also his righteousness.  I’m sure we can understand why his grace and compassion are important to us, but why should it matter to us that our God is righteous? Two reasons, first that only a righteous God is worth following, why would we follow a God who was not righteous and just? Secondly because through Christ we are offered his righteousness, though we have no righteousness of our own we are offered to take part in God’s righteousness and thus be justified by him and able to come before him; without his righteousness how could we stand? How could a just God have unjust people in his kingdom? How could completely fallen people come before his holiness and live? Only by the gracious gift of his own righteousness to us: only by his grace.

He ’protects the unwary’ and the writer says when he ’was brought low’ God saved him. There is a loving God worth worshiping, helping those who can’t help themselves, and protecting us from ourselves; we think we know what we need, we are wrong, and that’s why we need God.  And this enables the writer to give this excellent verse, ‘return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you’ that this gift of grace from our God should bring us deep joy and an assured hope. Rest, this is not an unsure wavering false belief, this is rest in light of seeing the wonderful things God has done for us. A call to relax, not to worry about our lives which can become a complete distraction from the goodness of God but to ponder upon his love and grace and live to his glory.

⁸ For you, Lord, have delivered me from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling,
⁹ that I may walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.

¹⁰ I trusted in the Lord when I said,
“I am greatly afflicted”;
¹¹ in my alarm I said,
“Everyone is a liar.”

¹² What shall I return to the Lord
for all his goodness to me?

¹³ I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁴ I will fulfil my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.

The writer lists what God has done for him, the troubles of his life and how God has intervened. At each turn of his life God has listened to his prayers, taken away his sorrow, kept him from falling, saved him from death, and provided for his needs. So he asks how he should act to repay God for his goodness to him, and the answer? To devote himself to God. To lift up the cup of salvation, to tell others of how God has saved him and why he worships, to help people to understand God in his goodness to them. He also promises to revere God, to act according to his law, and this is the way in which he worships. We are called to worship God, this psalm gives reason upon reason why we should, but is this just by worshiping in church? Of course not, we are called to revere God in all things at all times, glorifying him in whatever we do, as Ecclesiastes says ‘eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God’. God has given us worship as a gift, he is holy and does not benefit from our worship but he requires it because it is good for us to worship our Lord and not ourselves, and we can do all things (except of course, sinning) to the glory of God.  This brings us to some well known words of great joy  – ‘What is the chief end of man? To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever ’ and enjoy him forever we shall!

¹⁵ Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his faithful servants.
¹⁶ Truly I am your servant, Lord;
I serve you just as my mother did;
you have freed me from my chains.

¹⁷ I will sacrifice a thank offering to you
and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁸ I will fulfil my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people,
¹⁹ in the courts of the house of the Lord—
in your midst, Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord.

We are proclaimed free, to love a God who loves us more than we could understand even though we are more sinful that we can ever admit. In light of the magnificent sun I shall choose to praise the even more magnificent son of God, and thank God for his wonderful grace to us at all times.

This was a joy to write, I hope to write more and thus cover different issues and maybe in more depth but sometimes we only have to skim the surface of the divine to come off shining.

So events week has been excellent, well done all who organised this, it was great! I could say a huge amount of things about how great the experience has been the opportunity, the talks, the events; this list could go on indefinitely. But overall it reminded me how important the church is.

To clarify I mean the church as a body of believers not the church as in the building for the event on Sundays, they’re important, but this is not that discussion. Being part of the fellowship of the church is such an incredibly huge gift, indeed an intentional one; this message comes from me as no surprise but a point of reflection. The expression of church I’m looking at here is the Christian union at Dundee University. DUCU has made a huge impact in my life, there are vast differences between myself starting uni and finishing it, I will leave this place having developed more here in 3 years than may ever in decades of the years to come. No bad thing development just requires an effort not to fall back. Anyway, the Fellowship I have experienced as part of DUCU has been vital to my time in Dundee. A team of people committed to serving God in their community, to try and make a difference to their campus, to make efforts to learn to love their friends to the best of their ability; this is what I have the privilege of being part of.  Now I will commend DUCU for what it is now what is rather than what it could be; of course it’s not perfect, but what group of Christians is? No it’s far more real than that, a community of flawed and broken reality.  A community with flaws however is one that is challenged to exercise grace, day in day out, which takes time, effort and patience, but with God it is possible.  CU is a great challenging because of course, unity in Christians is a great challenge, but what else could unity such a unique, disparate, frankly at times ridiculous (look at any of the party photos) bunch of people; except for the gospel?

CU is of course just one small expression of church. But part of what was experienced in events week was an experience of church at a much higher larger level. There were churches all around the UK praying for our events, churches that had sent out many of the members of our CU from their hometowns, churches in Dundee, churches everywhere all praying in the shared belief that this mission is an important one, worth their time to pray for. Our CU is not large or especially impressive or important but that never mattered, we have a mission and we try to be faithful to God’s call to our lives, and our mission to our campus. One of the great joys of the week was the prayer breakfast, (not just for King’s fry up, although that does deserve a mention) but to come together weary, worn out and discouraged and pray together, focus on Christ and his word and find ourselves energised by his grace and power. To be able to worship, rejoice, even grieve together in God’s fellowship is wonderful, God has truly blessed the church. I think by the end of the week we could truly echo the words of Paul :

2 Corinthians 4:7-8, 16

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all‑surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

We are indeed, part of something bigger, a small part of the body of Christ, the church; and part of God’s plan that he enacts day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment in assured goodness for his creation. The love that can be shown in God’s community is incredible, the love it have experienced in DUCU and in my church have underpinned my time at university and grounded me. This is a community capable of producing incredible good and my prayer is always that it does, and that it continues. I am also incredibly thankful for God’s provision through the work of UCCF, for all the training and support they provide us, for uncover, which as we have seen, an incredible resource, and and for the faithful service of the staff and relay workers. I intend to serve God though my time as a relay worker from September in Aberdeen and I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunity to take part in the mission of Aberdeen CU, another expression of church. I am thankful daily for God’s blessing in my life and his work in the lives of all. That he chooses to work though such broken people, a gift yet a mystery.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

This morning has been a joy. I woke up early in order to fry up a full cooked breakfast, and a flask of excellent PNG coffee from Braithwaite’s, to take to the botanic gardens. The walk down was bracing and sleety along the riverside, past the sports grounds and the airport, up the hill to the gardens. The breakfast was of course not purely for my own enjoyment and delectation, it was to be delivered to my friend and ever intrepid zoologist Stefan. He has been braving the bitter Dundonian climate to research bird feeding behaviour in the botanic gardens most mornings for many weeks. I located him between a set of european pine trees in a tiny camouflaged tent patiently watching a small plastic tray full of mealworms. At the point at which i appeared avian fauna had yet eluded my friend this day so we decided to go enjoy our breakfast in the workshop. In a small, well insulated greenhouse we knelt on the floor around a flaking wooden table and tucked into the wonderful fare that is a full cooked breakfast; still warm might I add. Amidst good chat and happy stomachs we enjoyed our time, and considered the future, past university that is. Ahh but the day must continue of course, we finished up the last of the breakfast and headed out, parting ways at the gate. I wandered happily back admiring Perth road in all its finest suburban leisure, listening to my book of the moment – ‘the picture of Dorian Gray’ (interesting so far) in anticipation of the goal ahead of me, the finest greengrocers in all of Caledonia, Fraser’s.

And so here I am, back at my flat after having chowed down on the sweet sharp ecstasy of several Sicilian blood oranges (like a perfect mixture of both art and food, mosaic both in taste and composition) staring out at Magdalen green and the indeed silvery tay from the window at our dining table, which has become for me, nothing short of a mere slice of heaven.

All these things I feel with the joy and contentment of the love of my father in heaven, which makes even the oranges, all the more sweet.

“Go eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved that you do.” – Ecclesiastes 9:7

Replace bread and wine with blood oranges and coffee, in that is found the joy of my morning.