Naturally curious, the Mongolians often ask us why we don’t have any children or, why I have coeliac disease. My replies are seldom clear as I don’t have clarity myself which tends to lead to further questions as people try to discern why things are like they are, and who is responsible. But the questions never bring resolution. In fact, they can leave me, if I allow my thoughts to wonder in that direction, asking whether these things are the result of my sin.

In the parable of the man born blind, I seem to remember Jesus’ disciples took a similar line of questioning when they passed by the blind man. “Who sinned…” the disciples asked Jesus. “This man or his parents?”

Who, what, and why questions seem to hotly pursue suffering. If life is hard, then there must be a reason. Something or someone must be to blame. After all, we reap what we sow. Such attitudes sound a note of pride in those of us who, with abandonment, observe hardships in others. But stop! We are just one small step away from the false assumption that whispers, we live pain-free because we are good people.

Suffering is no respecter of persons. Undoubtedly, we do sin and we have a responsibility to confess and repent from those sins. But there is also suffering in this world. Suffering that God did not create, that came as man turned his back on God and the world ceased to function in the way that He had created it. Sin’s entrance ushered in pain and sorrow. Sometimes we experience pain because of our disobedience but there are times when the pain comes because we live in a broken world.

There’s a certain irony to the healing of the blind man in John Chapter nine. The Pharisees, with their intellectual brilliance and expertise, failed to see beyond their natural eyes. Their repeated interrogations yielded no revelations that opened their hearts and minds to the realities of their sin; and God’s grace gift, Jesus the Saviour, remained hidden to them.

But the blind man was a beggar. Unable to run his own life and dependent on others, he knew that he needed rescuing. After Jesus touched and opened the beggar’s eyes, the man saw. He saw God. It wasn’t something the beggar had to make himself do, God did it. With open eyes the man believed and worshipped God in the beauty of His grace.

The ‘why’ questions remain unanswered. But worshipping Jesus clears my spiritual sight and brings a satisfaction that nothing else can match. And, to the degree that I’m able to give myself to God, my blindness continues being healed until I see that He, the measure of my worth, is the answer to all the questions. On the Cross my sin blinded Jesus to God, so that my spiritual blindness might be ended. He did that for me and He did that for you.

Obscured by rising towers, they loiter on street corners or cling to pockets of land. They’ve been abandoned, neglected, passed over for something bigger, better and taller. Their rusted roofs are pierced with a thousand holes. Their wooden-frames tilt right, or is it left? Clay-covered lattice walls crumble gracefully into piles of rubble, while their once brightly covered facades are faded, bleached by the sun and scrubbed by stormy torrents. With barred windows and broken doors, they’ve become a haunt for the homeless, drunks and pop-up brothels.

Their history is being overshadowed, swallowed up in the name of progress. Three and four storey buildings are being replaced by green and gold metallic-windowed high-rises. Steel-clad buildings and apartment blocks are reforming the Ulaanbaatar skyline. Tall cranes testify to a city undergoing change although concrete skeletons speak of those who’ve made a beginning but failed to complete their project.

These are natural aspects of growth and development and, while society must move forward, there are also dangers.

The ancients still stand, refusing to die, but how long before they slip, overshadowed and unnoticed, from our view. Today they can still prompt people to remember that they once accommodated life with all its sorrows and joys. They articulate the closeness of the past. But the buildings are not simply a narrative of outdated events and its relics, they also anchor the Mongolians to this place, to their culture and its history. Even more than that, appreciating and remembering history can cause us, if we allow it, to enter its history today, to let it shape our future and create something new.

Watching Mongolia change reminds me of a danger I face in my life as a Christian. My faith in God is anchored in the ancient covenant that God fulfilled through Jesus Christ. And yet life daily throws a constant stream of new fads and trends at me, even Christian trends! Each vies for my attention, threatening to distract me and overshadow the history that shapes the precious parts of my identity in God.

The gospel message is unchanging. In one sense it is completely unaffected by society’s paradigm shifts. And yet it is always wholly relevant, wholly fresh, speaking its ancient word into the context of the newness of this and every society in the world.

A group of young professional Mongolians are alerting society to the imminent danger they face as old buildings decay.  They are calling for buildings of note to be saved and restored. Some enthusiastic entrepreneurs are even taking shabby 1960s apartment buildings, highlighting their unique features and beginning to refurbish them. Retaining their essential character, these buildings honour and celebrate the old while being fully adapted to today’s generation.

Copyright© Gillian Newham, 2018

“all rights reserved”

Spending time on the North Cornish Coast when we’ve been in England, we’ve formed a passing acquaintance with the sea. From a distance we’ve observed some of its moods; we’ve seen it glassy and still, we’ve seen it roaring chaotically. But we’ve never actually been on the sea on an excessively calm or, for that matter, an excessively stormy day.

However, Jesus’s disciples had experienced both. In chapter 6 of John’s gospel, John recounts the story of the disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Caught in the grip of a storm, they were completely powerless to escape and yet Jesus came close, not battling the storm but simply walking on the water.

Earlier that day Jesus had fed the 5,000. Many of those who ate the food He provided would have been schooled in the Old Testament and, perhaps, caught the connection between Jesus and the one who had fed the multitude in the wilderness. There were those who, recognising that Jesus was a prophet, wanted to make Him king to fulfil their needs; because, like the Israelites of old, the Jews needed a deliverer to free them from the Roman Empire.

Let’s make Jesus king, the people thought. But to force earthly kingship on Jesus was to misunderstand His true personhood. He did not come to deal with Israel’s material problems. He came to give us, all of us, the bread of life and it is that life-bread that reconciles us to God.

Jesus wasn’t another Moses. He was the God of Moses. He didn’t come to fulfil a strategy, He was the strategy, and He came to provide us with a completely new reality.

He came to them walking on the water. The storm had no power over Him. But He saw those in the boat, terrified, without any hope of shelter. On land we can find shelter but in a boat on the open sea man is subjected to the full power of the storm.

In life too, storms come that take us into the dark, uncontrollable turbulent sea. We speak of life as a journey but perhaps a sea voyage would be a more appropriate metaphor because there are moments when, full of fear, it is all we can do to remain in the boat as life’s devastating circumstances threaten to hurl us overboard.

When Jesus arrived at the boat, it appears that the disciples didn’t immediately lose their fears. Perhaps they thought Jesus was a ghost. Or perhaps they sensed something of who He was. “It is I,” was the first thing He said. Jesus was identifying himself. But was He simply identifying the human Jesus or was He alluding to something more? Was He saying that He was the Lord, the Creator; the great I am?

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus continued. I hear compassion in those words. When someone draws alongside us during the storms of life and lovingly embraces us, then it seems to enable us to keep going. Sometimes Jesus calms life’s storms and sometimes He doesn’t. But as we allow Him, He always climbs into the boat with us, entering our lives, bearing us up and, amazingly, changing us too.

Recently we’ve been talking about prayer. It’s a conversation we have regularly especially since we desire to know God more deeply and to pray in His will.

We’ve been asking what it means to adore God. In the course of our conversation we stumbled over the old word hallowed: “hallowed by thy name.”  We’ve scratched our heads and wondered exactly what does that word mean?

So far we’ve learned it means to treat something as holy and sacred, to give it our ultimate concern and make it the most important thing in our lives. Therefore, in teaching us to pray is Jesus asking us, at the very start, to adore God and praise Him above all else?

My prayers often start with confession and petition rather than adoration. Of course, it is good and right to confess my sin and to seek God’s forgiveness. It is also good and right to bring all my petitions to Him. But when my sin and my requests, even prayer requests for ministry, dominate my prayer life and subsequently control my thoughts, then I realise it’s time to ask questions.

Have my priorities shifted? Is worry driving me to lift someone or something above my adoration of God; because Jesus teaches me that adoration, praise of God, should come before all my confessions and petitions. First and foremost, He is to be, and to remain, my beloved father.

Admittedly, we all come to God for different reasons and with differing struggles. Yet despite the struggles we must learn to look beyond our world of worries and determine to let our hearts adore Him; Christianity after all is not based on externals but upon an intimate relationship with Him.

“Help me keep my perspective right Lord,” I pray. “Let me adore you so that praise permeates every part of my being.” Sometimes I fumble to find adequate words of thanksgiving. At other times my words seem hollow and mechanical. But as I see more of His beauty, adoration blossoms until praise flows freely and His truth, mysteriously, begins touching my life, and I start seeing the world right side up; through His eyes. By His grace healing comes to my deformed heart and my deformed view of the world as I find myself forgiven, accepted, and able to trust others.

Adore God first I repeat, reminding myself that praising Him helps me keep Him in His rightful place and enables everything else to fit into its rightful place too.

The world convulses as the news of another disaster, another epidemic or an even more heinous terrorist attack hits the headlines. People crumple and nations stand in stunned silence. Nothing seems certain or safe anymore. Listening to the news fear wells up in my heart too, and against the backdrop of unmitigated suffering I tremble — my hope suddenly feels shallow and terribly flimsy and a barrage of scary ‘what if’ scenarios flood my mind.

“Stop!” I raise my hand to halt the runaway thoughts that push me towards the dark abyss of hopelessness. I reason with myself and start speaking truth to my heart. My hope is rock solid. Strong and one hundred percent sure and built on nothing less than, as the well-known song says, “Jesus blood and righteousness”. 

Phew! I breathe a sigh of relief. The world we live in is filled with uncertainties and terrors at every turn so it is essential that I keep my heart and mind grounded in God and his word.

In chapter six of Hebrews the writer speaks of the certainties of God’s promises. Using rich images to convey the truth he tells us that our hope is sure and steadfast. He calls our hope an anchor for the soul which enters behind the veil or curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.

“My anchor holds within the veil,” I repeat. Since hearing the story of the ancient Mediterranean ports this line has fixed itself even more deeply in my mind. In New Testament times a huge anchor stone was sunk deep into the ground on the wharf. When ships wanted to enter the harbour a small boat, known as a forerunner, left the safety of the port, navigated its way through the hazardous waters, which the boat’s pilot knew well, and out into the open sea to the waiting ship. The pilot then took hold of the ship’s anchor rope, returned to shore and secured it to the anchor stone so that the ship could safely be brought home.

Different pictures of the forerunner exist but each one depicts him as one who goes ahead of the danger to open the way of safe passage. Jesus is our forerunner; the rock of our salvation, the one who left the safety of heaven to come to the world to rescue mankind; Jesus, the one who passed through death to return to the Father to secure the way for each one of us to reach home safely.

So many layers, so many facets, to this picture but in the end, by faith, I realise that hope in God is full of certainty. He calls me to hold fast to hope — a word which I am told, in Greek, is the same word that is used for the rope of an anchor. And just like the sailors on those ancient ships who had to abandon their oars and down sails, I too must surrender myself to the will of the forerunner and let him guide me.

 “Lord,” I pray, “let me live in the reality of this hope. And give me courage and wisdom to share the truth of your word with those who live with the fear of the world breaking their hearts.”

We often walk in the woods. During the winter months we kept our heads down and ploughed a path through the snow. It was a sheltered place to walk, protecting us from the worst cruelties of the winter. But with the Lunar New Year over we’re officially into spring and the places we’ve walked are changing.

With each passing day the warmer temperatures melt the snow that’s covered the hills and paths since November. We’ve started taking time to sit out on a tree stump and drink our coffee. Above the trees we can see the amazing blueness of the sky, and we can hear the woodpeckers hammering on tree trunks. Small birds are returning and the tall pines are growing new needles. All around there are signs of new life, but in the midst of it all we’ve noticed that many of the silver birches are bent to the ground. Have they been weighted down with snow or damaged by the wind and ice? Or are they diseased on the inside? We don’t know but from their blackened branches and dry orange leaves they look crushed. 

Seeing them reminds us how we too have times when we are bowed down and crushed. We can be physically sick and worn down. Or through repeated disappointment and discouragement we can become listless and, sometimes, even feel like we’ve lost the desire to live.

The world tells us that happiness is determined by external situations but I don’t fully believe that. When I was younger the answers to life’s problems seemed easy, more black and white, but as I get older I realise that life is more complicated. We are complex beings. The Bible tells us that man is created in the image of God. Yes! We are created in His image, fearfully and wonderfully made, people with extraordinary senses, remarkable minds that are more superior to any computer in this world and hearts that are filled with rich emotions.

Therefore the remedies for a crushed or wounded spirit cannot be pat answers. They do not fit neatly into one or two sentences but somehow our restoration involves getting the gospel into the very depths of our heart, and that is not easy. We love God but there are barriers. We struggle with relationships, people are awkward and difficult and they hurt us. Anger grips us and bitterness festers. We hide our emotions and disobey God. Guilt weighs us down and our own depravity makes us sick.

We’ve placed our hope in ourselves. We’ve placed our hope in the things of this world rather than God: the things in this world that move and break and eventually die. Our careers finish, our material possessions fall away or relationships end in death. Our trust in the visible world smashes our hopes, leaving us with wounded hearts and crushed spirits.

We are complex people, created in the amazing image of God. So let’s pray that God would give us hearts of wisdom to have confidence in the complexities of life. Let’s pray that He would strengthen us in our inner beings. We are totally dependent on Him and we need a sense of Him with us. We need to be able to see Him putting His love and truth into our hearts because only God can truly fill the emptiness — He alone is the true hope of our hearts, the ultimate tree of life. Take hold of the gospel and let it work in you on the inside that we might stand upright, healthy and whole, confidence in Him.

“They soar,” Tsogoo says, lifting his hand high above his head. “Magnificent! The eagle is king amongst the birds.”  

These birds, with their hooked beaks and keen eyesight, not to mention their strong legs and impressive talons, possess a fierce nobility that demands respect. During the warmer months many raptors make their home on the Mongolian steppe or on its craggy peaks. Traveling in the countryside we often spot a hawk or a falcon perched on one of the white kilometre posts that mark our journey, but the sight of a small, brown steppe eagle will always cause us to put our foot on the brake.

From the safety of the car we eyeball one another, his pale yellow eyes sizing us up until, with a flap of nonchalance; he extends his wings and climbs effortlessly into the blue. He’s a hunter; an abductor stealing prey from the very mouth of another bird as it dashes for home. This eagle is an opportunist circling high and low scanning his territory for a tasty morsel.

“Yes Tsogoo,” I reply, “the eagle is magnificent.”  

              “Many myths exist about the eagle,” says Tsogoo, “but nothing is more fascinating than the truth.” He’s right. The truth often is more wonderful than fiction. “Do you know how a mother eagle trains her young to fly?” he asks.

              “I’ve heard she pushes them out of the nest, forcing them to fly.”

              “No!” Tsogoo says. “It is much more complex than that, and a beautiful illustration of God’s nurturing of us.” Tsogoo rubs his hands together, “Eaglets have to be taught how to fly,” he says with glee. “Their parents build large comfortable nests furnished with twigs and padded with rags and camel dung. It is a safe environment for the chicks to be born into and they begin life having their every need met. However,” he raises a finger, “a few weeks into this routine the mother begins stripping the nest of the soft rags and twigs until it’s no longer a comfortable place for the chicks to be.

“Hovering a few feet above the nest, she holds her wings steady as she demonstrates that, despite her chicks’ discomfort, she is still in control. Eventually she places her wing on the edge of the nest and encourages her young to step onto it. If they stubbornly refuse she starts beating them until, left with no choice, they step out. Once there she lets them experience their first flight. Returning to the nest she repeats the process again and again until, sensing the chicks’ growing confidence, she shakes him from her wing and lets him tumble. Some fly but many fall and, swooping down beneath them, she catches those caught in freefall.”

Tsogoo stops, rubbing his chin for a moment as a grin spreads across his face. “My experience of walking with God is so similar to that chick’s,” he says. “When I’m feeling comfortable God often comes close and begins stirring up my world until I recognise, whether I want to or not, that I must step out. Trembling, I take a shaky step and find that His presence is close, upholding me, but then He seems to distance Himself and I begin falling. I cry out and He comes, scooping me up, and letting me rest in the warmth of his closeness again. But He never lets me remain there for long. He’s always nudging me higher so that, slowly, losing my clumsy awkwardness, I learn to fly with great strength and agility and realise that I am, indeed, growing closer to God.”

They seem to be multiplying; ice sculptures that is. This year they’re in squares, in front of shopping malls and interesting roadside locations. And I’m left wondering whether this is the latest craze.

A large truck, stacked with giant ice cubes hewed from some monstrous freezer, arrives at the edge of the car park. With the aid of a crane and a dozen men the glassy blocks are manhandled to the ground. By dints of heaving and shoving they’re pushed into their allotted place, while the sculptor, a man in his early thirties, adjusts his safety glasses and bobble hat. Nailing his flimsy template to one of the icy rocks the sculptor removes a chisel from his tool box and traces the image onto the cube.  

Satisfied he’s captured the likeness sufficiently, he fuels up his chainsaw and, pulling the throttle trigger, lets a billow of blue smoke escape as the saw spits into life. Revving the engine for a minute or more the sculptor carves away great chunks as he discards the excess. Multiple cuts later the chainsaw is silenced. The ice is no longer a neat, clean-cut block but an indistinguishable blob that leaves me scratching my head and asking, is this man really a sculptor?

Stamping my feet I feel torn, I really should get on with my shopping but, like the crowd who are gathering, I’m fascinated and can’t tear myself away.

Discarding his gloves the sculptor takes out an angle grinder and lets it run over the image. Up and down, backwards and forwards he moves until the image is smoother but still barely recognisable. He returns again to his tool box and, rooting though a pile of tools, finally selects a mallet and a small chisel.

Gently tapping the steel hoop of his chisel he guides the cutting edge along the contours of the ice. He works slowly, a few taps here a few taps there, before stepping back to assess his progress. I think the image of a fish is emerging although it doesn’t look very fluid and smooth. Finally the sculptor lights a blow torch and lets the pencil tip flame glide quickly over the image, melting the imperfections and bringing a glossy polish to his work.

The sun, slung low in the sky, shines with that white light that comes in the winter. Numbed with cold my feet are heavy and I decide to abandon the shopping and return to the car. There’ll always be another day to shop but watching a man create something from nothing, from conception to completion, is an opportunity I rarely get. Walking on the compacted snow I’m reminded of the work God set himself to do in his creation, in his church and in my life. Forming, cutting, polishing, painful work and yet work that bears the image of its creator and hopefully, reflects his glory.

To my English mind the scene on the edge of Ulaanbaatar is quintessentially Christmas. The ground is snow-covered while the sky, a vault of brilliant blue, shines all the way to the horizon. Fondant-like frosting covers naked branches, roofs and fence posts. A close neighbour, clothed from head to toe in fur, ambles along the pavement on his old horse. Stopping for a moment he mentions that the lamas are forecasting a harsh winter.

Officially Mongolia doesn’t celebrate Christmas and yet the shops are tempting shoppers to buy artificial pines, baubles and other gaudy frippery to decorate their homes. It’s true the New Year celebrations are growing in popularity and perhaps, one of these years, Mongolia will adopt Christmas as an official holiday. However at this point it’s only the church that marks the true meaning of the season with the coming of Emmanuel.

On the smoggy streets, close to the ger districts, hawkers stack sacks of firewood and coal and tout for business. Beyond the city limits a solitary woman stands on a lone corner selling pine nuts. With a pile of banana boxes for her counter she stamps her feet on the icy pavement. Day in and day out she’s there, rolled up in a thick deel, like a pig in a blanket, waiting and hoping for a sale.

Red and orange down-coated children make their way to school, carrying on their backs rucksacks that are nearly as big as them. With shrieks of delight they slip and slide along the pavement. Filled with grand ideas of being astronauts or inventors, dancers or artists they hope for a better future.  

At the weekend a glut of battered cars appears in the bus stops heading out of city. The drivers erect a row of brightly-coloured sledges and, huddled in their cars, wait for parents, driving gleaming four-wheel vehicles, to stop and buy a sledge for their children. In juxtaposition the poor and rich exist together, each struggling for a better life. It’s Christmas, I want to shout, the time when we celebrate the true, living God’s son’s birth on earth.

The sun is incandescent with beauty — although I cannot look at it directly. With my eyes closed its warmth fools me into the thinking the cold is less cruel than it is. But, constantly nipping at my extremities and seeping iciness into my shoes, it steals away my warmth. Relentlessly, the wind whistles down this valley, laughing as it rips through layers of clothes to reach my heart, pulling heat from the very core of my being.

In nature only one thing removes coldness. Likewise, ultimately, there’s only one thing that can remove the eternal cold loneliness of our soul: the love of God. We were far from God but, taking great trouble, He came close, looked at us and loved us. In fact He loved us before the world ever began and had a plan to draw us into His love and take away the cold sin at the core of our beings. Filled with His love our unspoken ideals become a reality. He came to free us to love Him and that’s why we celebrate Christmas.

On my desk I have a photo of my mother’s parents’ wedding. Its black and white image is rich with detail. Great Aunt Grace is seated next to Aunt Elise neither of whom, so word has it, ever spoke to each other from one year’s end to the next and yet here they are seated together. On the back row Uncle Noah, the family comedian, grins warmly while the bride and groom look demure and my grandfather, holding his gloves in his hand, looks rather dapper.  He always was a snazzy dresser with his navy blazer, white shirts and gold cufflinks. The two small children seated on the floor below look like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.

The photo is over a hundred years old and yet it links me to great uncles and aunts I’ve never met. However when my father died, nearly thirty years ago, I learned that my mother had been adopted. Such news explained so many mysteries but it also left so many questions unanswered. Who were my real grandparents, aunties and uncles?  Of course there was no way to find answers to those questions but it made me realise how important it is to know that we belong.

Mongolian friends often make us smile when introducing us to a new family member. “This is my father’s older brother’s sister-in-law,” they say and, raising our eyebrows, we think surely that’s no relative at all. Despite having nomadic spirits, knowing where you belong is very important to the Mongolians. Children, parents and even distant relatives, no matter how tenuous the connection may appear to us, are all linked. They belong to one another and this belonging inexorably links their lives into an elaborate web of complex relationships.

But the threads that bind us in families can sometimes appear as delicate and fine as a spider’s web suspended between two trees. Mostly, invisible to the eye we only see it when the shimmering sun illuminates the gossamers. Or the rain or dust weighs down the supple strands. Often, we pass by without even noticing until we find minute threads clinging to our clothes.

Families are like that, intricately spun, lacing us into roles that never change. We are always a son, or a niece, an uncle or a mother. Families give us times of sublime delight and chest-expanding pride but they also make us cry and break our hearts and yes, cause us to experience every shade of emotion in between. Sometimes we boast of them and sometimes we want to deny any connection to them. But like it or not, adopted or natural born, we are in a family and the ties that bind us are as strong as steel, integrally connecting us to parents, siblings and, dare I say, all those eccentric aunties and uncles.

The richness of our families so often mirrors the family that God births Christians into. There are plenty of interesting characters in His family. But if we are in Christ then they all become our brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles. Many of them are easy to love and respect but there are some whose sharp personalities, actions and opinions just don’t fit with our personality and leave us never wanting to speak to them again. Yet as Christians, for better or worse, we are in God’s family, we are a brother or sister, an older or younger member. And God calls us to love those in His family, even the strange one with all their faults and idiosyncrasies, and in loving them we soon learn that we too have plenty of faults and idiosyncrasies ourselves.