The Thursday After

My highlight at WMB (Waterloo) this morning was the the kids playing “My Lighthouse” on colourful ukuleles.

The ukulele is serious business, and perhaps one of the kids will go a long way. They could aspire to join the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, and maybe even play The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Even if they don’t get that far, they could still play some Beethoven at Royal Albert Hall.

And then there’s My Lighthouse. Ever wonder why a lighthouse? In this (2:15) interview the Rend Collective song writers explain why the lighthouse is a great metaphor for Jesus, especially being from Northern Ireland. Lighthouses have been around a long time: the Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) preceding Christ’s birth by a few hundred years. I wonder why the new testament never calls out the lighthouse as a metaphor. Shows the ongoing work of the Spirit!

A lighthouse doesn’t constantly shine – you see the light for a short blip, and then its gone for several seconds. This was a new detail the interview highlighted for me: the “not always visible” way a lighthouse shines is how we often experience God.

Chris Llewellyn is a founding member of The Rend Collective. His story of finding himself in Rugby and then in Jesus is worth the 7:30. Have you had an experience like Chris? Do you experience Jesus as a revolutionary? Kind of echoes another theme from this morning: — maybe we are too comfortable.

This morning we also sang Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me. The second line goes like this:

There is no more for heaven now to give

Its a brilliant meditation question: What more do you wish heaven would give? This is worth pondering. Oh, there’s lots we wish for and lots we long for. But is there really something more we need that God has not already given us?

I personally love the long history of God’s people singing to and about him. I was surprised to learn in today’s 180 challenge, that Paul, in Ephesians (staring around 6:40), describes the first two signs of the Spirit at work as singing together and singing alone.

For the past several years I have collected songs we sing at WMB into a Spotify playlist. Its an impressive collection: 249 songs that take almost 15 hours to listen to. I compared that to the Psalms: only 150 and you can easily read them in 15 hours. Even if you don’t have Spotify, you can listen (with ads). So here it is, for summer, for your “singing alone”, a collection of Songs at WMB. Save the link.

Finally, combining the lighthouse metaphor with the comment that we have gotten comfortable, a prayer:

Disturb me, Lord, when I am too pleased with myself,
When my dreams have come true because I have dreamed too little,
When I arrived safely because I sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb me, Lord, when with the abundance of things I possess
I have lost my thirst for the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life, I have ceased to dream of eternity.

Disturb me, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, I shall find the stars.

Pete Greig, Sabbath Blessing (petegreig.com), adapted from H.K.W Heicher, The Ministers Manual vol 37, 1962.