A note from the Author…

A filling joy, a profound sense of perfect rightness, washed over them, beauty too terrible to comprehend. It was as if music, a single flawless note, sounded and was felt rather than heard. Colours more vivid than any pigment were seen, yet only the dark void hung before their eyes. They felt crushed under the weight of the indescribable wonder and terror. They were rendered so insignificant in an instant that each of them despaired and felt alone, yet in that crystalline instant each experienced exaltation, touched by something so wonderful it brought tears of joy flowing without stint. It was impossible to comprehend. There was only a flickering, as if a million lines of force sprang across the surface of the void, but they were gone so quickly the watchers could not apprehend their passage. One instant all was black and formless, then a latticework of countless glowing lines spread across the magnificent void, and light filled the skies, staggering in its purity and strength. All were forced to avert their eyes from that blinding display for a moment. A blaze of stunning energies poured forth, as seen before but now flowing outward… All continued to weep in joy at the perfect beauty of the display…

A Darkness at Sethanon by Raymond E. Feist

I wonder how many people can empathise with Raymond E. Feist’s characters, Pug and Tomas, who witnessed the awe-inspiring scene described in the excerpt above?  I wonder how many people could raise their hands as a testament to having embraced something so truly wondrous and yet so ultimately terrifying?

In 2005 my journey through life began in earnest and it began with such a moment; a moment within which both joyous tears flowed freely down my cheeks and yet a wave of panic rushed over my person.

You see it’s true what they say; that the Christian experience is a breath-taking, liberating one and one within which sometimes the only thing you can do is smile and throw your hands up in worship and adoration of a wonderful God or bow your head and fall to your knees humbled by the gift of grace given by the Lord Jesus Christ; a gift given so freely to us and yet at such great cost to Himself.

He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.  We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.  He was despised, and we did not care.  Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.  And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins.  But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.  He was beaten so we could be whole.  He was whipped so we could be healed.  All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.  We have left God’s paths to follow our own.  Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

Isaiah 53: 3-6

At the same time, however, the Christian faith has its difficult moments.  It’s utterly terrifying when it hits you for the first time that the rest of your living days will be a war; one battle after another in a perpetual conflict with darkness.  That may take the form of a battle with the darkness in our own souls; trying to suppress and overcome that primal side of us which urges towards rebellion.

This is one of the sorest trials of a renewed life, that it is built over dark dungeons, where dead things may be buried but not forgotten, and where through open grating rank vapours still ascend.

John Ker

Alternatively, it may be a battle with the darkness in the world around us.  After all, the New Testament considers Christians as the minority within a hostile environment; be that as metaphorical stars in the sea of a dark sky or as proverbial sheep amid a pack of wolves.

Where can I draw strength from?  Can you see it?  All I see is a dead world run by the fallen and do you know what?  These people seem to like it …

Uriel from Gabriel

The common misconception is that, for Christians, these battles are irrelevant given that God, ultimately, has granted us the final victory and therefore, for us to fight would be, frankly, unnecessary.  Yes, in the end God will stand victorious.  Unfortunately, however, we aren’t called to be non-combatants.  We are called to stand side by side with our fellow soldiers; to don our armour and to sharpen our weapons; to wait and to patiently prepare until our Knight-Captain marshals us and sends us into one of these battles.

God’s victories are won only on the battlefield of the human heart.

H. H. Farmer

There can be no victory where there is no combat.

Richard Sibbes

It’s moments like these which can, or rather, to frame this is my own experience, which have seemed terrifying.  The reason I write this is that I do not want to be found guilty of deceiving you, good people who are reading this humble note.  In truth, there are times when a life with Christianity seems far more difficult than a life without.

Take heart, however, by knowing that this life, this thing which I describe is far more precious than mere ease and simplicity because even though a life in Christ has presented me with a journey which has not always been easy but which, at times, has been fraught with difficulty, darkness and pain, it has also been a journey rooted in truth and veritas vos liberabit.

I didn’t say it would be easy … I just said it would be the truth.

Morpheus from The Matrix

In many ways, it is this binary of wonder and terror; of awe and fear; of light and darkness, which defines my journey in Christ thus far and I should make it plainly clear that I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The point is that from the moment of Salvation, each step along my journey has been like a succession of hills; each steep climb and difficult path, navigated with God’s help only to find myself at the peak, stronger, rejuvenated, with renewed zeal and ready to sing a song of praise as I amble down the valley side.  Whilst struggling up those steep sides, it’s fortunate to find that Salvation is not only the end within itself, but is, in many ways, the means to the end.

Our salvation includes more than pardon from sin, deliverance from hell and a ticket to heaven.  It includes all that we shall need on our journey.

Vance Havner

This humble piece of webspace is, for me, something akin to a travel journal; a place where I can share little slices of my journey with those who do me the honour of reading them.

As I travel on my journey through life, I’ll be glad to share with you stories about the people I encounter, the culture I engage with, the ways in which I pass my days and ultimately, how all of this interacts with a faith in the redemption offered to me by the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Who knows…

Maybe redemption has stories to tell…

Dare You To Move by Switchfoot

Yours, with thanks,

Jim

To adore God is to be lifted outside ourselves.  To bow in wonder before this transcendent majesty whose glory fills the heavens and whose mighty power spans the wide compass of history and reaches with unerring accuracy into every crevice of time and space, this is to mount up from a grovelling obsession with our own needs to an awe-inspiring glimpse of the glory of the eternal God.

Herbert M. Carson