The Kindness of Strangers

This Sunday we're starting a new series at Hope, on 1 Peter. I'm really excited to be travelling again through this rich and thrilling part of Scripture. There are many useful books out there on the letter. I'll be using Wayne Grudem's Tyndale commentary, J. Ramsey Michael's (Word Biblical Commentary Series), and I'll be going back to Calvin and Matthew Henry. Last year Tim Chester and Steve Timmis wrote 'Everyday Church'. It's a follow up to 'Total Church', and its strapline is that we do mission by being good neighbours. If you know Steve and Tim's ministries, you'll know that their big emphasis is that the unchurched UK needs more than ever believers who are living committed community lives. That means, committed to one another as the church, and committed to the local community. 

In 1 Peter the Apostle is writing to Christians, 'strangers in the world.' He is urging us to live radically different lifestyles from the unconverted. He is not calling us to live as strange people! Our Gospel gives us no mandate for eccentricity, exclusivity, or isolationism. Too often we mistake our calling of being separate for God with an ultimately selfish and completely unbiblical withdrawal from those who need the love of Christ. Didn't Jesus have a few things to say about salt, and light? We are called, and empowered, to the hard lifestyle of loving those lost in their sin, whilst hating sin. We are given the Holy Spirit so that we give ourselves to the needs of others, in the church, and in our day to day contacts. Our mission as a church is to see lost people attracted to the Gospel of our Saviour as they encounter it in our lives, and in the richness of our church's life. Peter tells us that when we do that, then unbelievers have the chance of seeing our good deeds (1 Pe. 2.12). And the Lord only knows what might come of that. 

'Mission by being good neighbours, good workers, good family workers - that is what it's all about. In particular, Peter calls us to a distinctive attitude towards others. We live in a culture where it is all about me: my rights, my pleasure, my fulfillment. God's people have an altogether different motto: 'it's not about me; it's about God and others.' That makes a profound difference when we enter the public square or the workplace or the home.' (Everyday Church, p. 116). 

How can you be a kind stranger? 

The Twinter of my Discontent

My good friend Jeremy Walker kindly approached me a few weeks back about writing some thoughts down about ministry and church planting for his twinterview. Jeremy's questions were excellent, really thoughtful, and it was a bit disconcerting when I sat down to answer them! If you would like a look, you can find them on Jeremy's blog here.

The Romance of Grace

Is the book of Ruth a romance? Does it have a romantic 'feel' to it? And who reads romances, anyway?

Here are two bereaved women, Naomi and Ruth, a struggle to rebuild life, and a struggle to build faith in this tough life. Then there is a ‘chance’ meeting of Ruth and Boaz, with the wonderful provision which that brings about, followed by Naomi’s plan that the younger woman, Ruth, should aim for Boaz as her husband. This man, who maybe feels that marriage has passed him by, is a man of such godly integrity that when this woman turns up by his bed one night, he has his mind on just one thing – and that’s not taking her into his bed, it’s making sure that he can conduct a marriage in the eyes of the law. And then, least romantic of all, to our eyes, we see Ruth being talked over like a piece of property! The book reads like two women’s struggle for survival, and one man’s sense of obligation, rather than the loud beating of two hearts coming together. Not a fine romance, surely?

But you don’t need to look too deeply to appreciate that this is a profoundly romantic story. The chance meeting is the sort of encounter which has filled great works of literature which have explored love. The needs of each party, struggling with both destitution on the one hand, and maybe mid-life loneliness on the other, tug at our hearts. We want to know if they can meet each other’s needs, and find real peace and happiness in each other. And then, in the uncertain course of the final chapter, as we’re with Boaz at the city gates, we see a man who will have and hold his love. He will negotiate the course of true love, will skill and guile, in order to secure the woman he wants. The famous Bible Commentator Matthew Henry once said, ‘choose your love, and love your choice.’ I’m not sure if we could really say that Boaz chose his love – it was more of the other way round! But Boaz stood up and loved his choice, and loved her with courage, and commitment.

And in all of this we see the love of the ultimate Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. I’ve often pondered the fact that Boaz, so clearly a type of the great Redeemer, should have been given that name. The Hebrew means ‘in him is strength.’ In Boaz the man we see great strength, as a man of faith. In Lord Jesus and in His sacrificial love we see the greatest power of courageous love. He chose His love, unlovely, sinful, wretched us, ‘chosen before the creation of the world’, as Ephesians 1.4 says. Having chosen us, He loved us, even to the giving up of reputation, respectability, rights, comforts, life itself. As last Lord’s Day was Ascension Sunday we remember how the Enthroned Lord Jesus loves His choice, living in us by His Holy Spirit. He loves us with an everlasting love, moment by moment, year by year, and so into all eternity. Our experience of His grace is that we find our hearts slowly weaned from their fears, and their false loves. We see in His Word, and know by His Spirit’s stirring, just how treasured we are. Our hearts are amazed, and moved to love, too. ‘Why, O Lord, such love to me?’ This is the deepest romance of grace.  And its glory is that it will never end. 

Criss-Cross Church

Some thoughts which I shared with the Hope Church family in my weekly email:

"God is intimately aware of us and deeply concerned for all our welfare. But His providential purposes, which include me, do not centre on me, as though what He is doing in me could be isolated from everything else He is doing! No, God's purposes criss-cross and zig-zag, and cross-fertilise one believer's life with that of another believer. He is always simultaneously and contemporaneously doing several things in several lives." (Sinclair Ferguson, Faithful God, pp.122-3)

Oh yes He is! And the proof of this is, of course, the Book of Ruth, which Ferguson is writing about in these comments. In Ruth and Naomi God takes a lonely, desolate woman, and a bewildered but resolute younger widow, and includes them in His providential purposes. These are purposes of blessing, not just for them, but through them to others. Boaz, the man of such godliness, experiences the criss-crossing of God's purposes into his life, too, in the 'chance' arrival of Ruth from her foreign land. And so, in and through these lives, God's plans are being worked out, for them, and then through their offspring for us, too. The Book of Ruth tells us that pain is never wasted in God's economy, but instead, is the channel of His glorious purposes, as we keep our eyes on His grace. 

All this brings us great encouragement as Hope church, as well as great incentive. 

The encouragement is that God is at work, in the criss-cross of our lives. Our lives were designed to intersect with one another, so that we may receive and share grace in the overlapping of our lives. Hope Church is to be a criss-crossing of Gospel grace. Therefore we need to remember and to encourage ourselves with the truth that the fellowship of the Lord's people is the centre of God's working out of His business of bringing growth and transformation to His children. If our hearts are alive to this, no gathering of the church is ever wasted, and every meeting of the church is the focal-point of what God the Holy Spirit wishes to do. 

The flip-side of this reality is incentive. We must stir ourselves and one another to prize the people of God! I am struck by the truth that, in the lives of all the godliest senior saints I've ever known, they've prized the local church so highly. They've longed to be at its gatherings, they've looked for opportunities to encourage and to be encouraged by fellow believers. For them, Christianity is a corporate business, with the church at the heart of their lives. They so prize the church because the Lord does, and his purposes for us as we share our lives together, are, literally, out of this world (Eph.3.10-11). 

So, love the church. Love Hope Church. Love us, despite our sins and struggles, as well as in our gifts and godliness. We are the church which the Lord has given you. We are His place of the zig-zag of renewing grace. What an unlikely bunch we are to be a blessing to one another, and to Huddersfield. Yet, we could say the same of  Ruth, Naomi and Boaz. But where there is faith, love for one another, and Gospel action, then we hardly bare to limit the possibilities of God's grace to one another in our church; and just maybe, through us to our community, and to our world. 

The Late King of All Wild Things

Maurice Sendak, children's writer, has died. This extraordinary man, with his difficult life. has left a legacy of extraordinary, and often disturbing children's books, best known among them, Where the Wild things Are. I've read the book many dozen times, as a boy, and then in turn to each of my five children. my thoughts on the book are here.


Sendak was always isolated, always an outsider. Other people's lives simply appeared too neat for him. His world was full of uncertainty, and nasty surprises. His books were the outworking of his desire to show the shocking troubles he lived with. He gave no evidence of Christian faith, and I wonder what he made of the church. Would he have thought that it was all too domesticated, too removed from life as he experienced it? Sendak leaves a challenge to those of us with a Christian faith; does our faith persevere with the often nastiness of life, in our lives and in others'? Does our message appear just too 'neat', even as we treasure the solid comforts of the Gospel? Or can we live with broken-heartedness, and welcome the disturbed with genuine compassion and patience in our churches, to learn Gospel hope with us? 

No Misery Memoir

'The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.' Ruth 1.21

On Sunday morning we had a very precious time as we heard Ruth 1. All week this chapter has been a great source of hope and joy to my soul. This sad, crushing experience of bereavement, loneliness and hopelessness has enveloped Naomi. She has lost husband and sons, and with them any hope for a settled, enjoyable future. Her life, as far as she could see it, was a write-off. All had come to an end.

But that's not the end. The bitterness at the close of chapter 1 could be read as the final chapter in this widow's life. It is though, as we discover, the prelude to the unfolding of God's magnificent purposes, both for Naomi and Ruth, and for the entire world. The lesson in what seems like the enfolding darkness, as broken Naomi returns to Bethlehem, is this: in all of Naomi's suffering God really does have purposes, and His promises of grace which will certainly be fulfilled. Naomi has not been forgotten, and hasn't been cast off. And whatever our trials, nor have we. What was true for her is true for us, as children of the same Heavenly Father through Christ. 

We forget these truths so quickly, don't we, when we suffer? And when we go through hard times we overlook the fact that God is not only the Sovereign God - Naomi knew that - but that He is also a gracious Covenant-keeping God. That means that whatever He sovereignly leads us into, He graciously preserves us in, and leads us through. This is always for His Glory, and for our growth in grace. God will see His people safely to heaven. And while He leads us there, He will refine, purify, and further His transforming work, so that Jesus might be, indeed, the firstborn of many brothers (Romans 8.29).

Matthew Henry makes these wise comments on Ruth 1.21:

'Consider that He who afflicts us is the Almighty, with Whom it is folly to contend and to Whom it is our duty and interest to submit. It is that name of God by which He enters into covenant with His people. He afflicts as a God in covenant, and His all-sufficiency may be our support and supply under all our afflictions. He that empties us of the creature knows how to fill us with Himself.' 

Let's trust Him for His grace.