Brett Fish, Author at 1Africa

Why I don’t Suffer from White Guilt

Lifestyle

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September 21, 2015

I am a white South African who is completely optimistic about the country South Africa can become. But it took being outside of the country for me to better realise some of what needs to be done here.

A three year period of working with non-profit organisations in Americaland (as I call it) and stepping away from the melting pot, so to speak, really helped me gain some perspective. Especially with the #BlackLivesMatter movement that was starting to gain momentum in the States after events like #FruitvaleStation and #Ferguson and people like #TrayvonMartin and #MikeBrown and way too many more to be counted.

Returning to South Africa (which had always been the plan), I was hungry to get involved in the race conversations that feel so crucial. But as I started talking to people and reading comments on articles and blog posts, this one phrase kept popping up: White Guilt.

BEWARE THE GREAT WHITE [GUILT]

I can’t remember ever hearing this phrase from a person of colour telling me it was something I should be experiencing. But again and again white people, particularly those who didn’t seem to want to engage very long in these conversations when they started getting a little hard or uncomfortable, started throwing it out.

“I’m tired of carrying this white guilt.”

“I’m sick of blame being laid because we are white and the history of our country.”

And my own personal unfavourite:

“Enough of the white guilt. Can’t we all just move on already?”

Whereas the truth for me in this ongoing uncomfortable and confusing journey towards racial unity, is that I have never once felt ‘White Guilt’. I have felt strong conviction towards something different and hopefully better and therein lies the subtle distinction.

Guilt is something that condemns and makes you feel bad and tells you that you are not good enough and leaves you whimpering in a hole somewhere, completely unproductive.

Whereas conviction is something that empowers and strengthens and helps bring purpose and lifts you out of your hole, on to your feet and sends you running on towards action.

I guess the confusing thing is that guilt and confusion can sometimes feel the same. But only one of them is ever helpful.

In South Africa right now we need people of all colours who are going to be brave and committed enough to risk sitting at the table together. Facing an unimaginable past and walking together towards the possibility of a mutually beneficial future.

WE NEED YOU

The truth is that South Africa needs you to engage. We saw a tremendous miracle happen in 1994 in terms of how the country handled the transition of power in many ways. It was by no means a perfect handover and us folks got a bit of a great deal.

But things are brewing again and there are some uncomfortable conversations and quite possibly some sacrificial actions that need to take place. As those representative of the former oppressors we do not get to decide when it’s time to “move on”. We need to listen and engage. We need to be investing in our friendships with people who don’t look like us. We need to be diversifying the voices we let inform us about the world.

Forget ‘White Guilt’ but bring on the conviction that leads us to become nation builders together.

The future is bright. Are you in?

What if meeting friend’s needs became a common change?

Brett Fish

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September 14, 2015

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What if meeting friend’s needs became a common change?

My friend Darin was visiting Cuba with a mate of his and they were sitting on the side of the road trying to figure out a definition for poverty (as one does).

Darin’s friend turned to him and said this: Imagine you get home today to find you’ve been kicked out of your house, your bank account has been completely emptied and you get a call saying you’ve lost your job.

# How long before you get a meal?

# How long before you have a place to sleep?

# How long before you have a new job?

Darin thought for maybe a minute and responded, “I won’t miss a meal. I will have a place to sleep by tonight. And depending on the economy I will likely have a job in a couple of weeks.”

“How did all that happen?” Darin replies, “I called someone.”

They came up with a definition that day that poverty is when you find yourself in a situation like that and have no-one to call who is able to help. The idea of economic isolation.

What about you? If you work through that situation yourself and those three questions, would your answer be similar?

THE BIRTH OF COMMON CHANGE

Ten or so years later and Darin is heading up a non-profit that helps groups of friends put their money together to meet the needs of people they care about. It’s name: Common Change

And it is steaming its way to Africa in a big way. With our history of using the concept of a stokvel (a rotating credit union or saving scheme where typically members of a group donate money to a group each month and once a year they get all the money in the group) this is an easy jump. The main difference between the two is that Common Change meets specific needs of people who are within a one degree of relationship with someone in the group.

So many of us feel overwhelmed by the extent of the need we see around us on a day to day basis. Many times this paralyses us into doing nothing. Imagine an online system that allowed us to choose beforehand how much we wanted to give every month and a group of people we trusted to help us figure out the best ways to use that money? Another huge benefit is that instead of throwing money at a need, we are then committing ourselves to walking alongside a person we know and care about as their need is met.

HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?

Similar to the stokvel idea, this is something you can just put together with a group of mates you trust. Choose an amount of money or a percentage of earnings and put that in a bank account or a box under someone’s bed and then meet together regularly to discuss any needs in the life of people you know. And start making gifts to those people.

It does make sense to head over to www.commonchange.com and get an idea of what it’s about and as it arrives more officially in South Africa in the coming months. There are already four groups currently engaged in various forms of this kind of giving who have already given thousands of rands to people they know in need. By comparison, in under ten years the Common Change groups in the States have given out over $600 000. That’s a lot of needs being met.

Imagine a life, where instead of reacting in panic every time a need presents itself and quickly passing around the hat to hopefully get enough, we could change our mindset to reflect that we believe there is enough in the world and change our actions to start donating towards those needs before they present themselves.

Who can you think of who might be up to giving something like this a try?

The Five Essential Things Your Marriage Needs to Thrive

Brett Fish

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September 7, 2015

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The Five Essential Things Your Marriage Needs to Thrive

I started with a quick google search of “Tips to a Good Marriage”.

Instantly my feed was full – ‘7 Tips for a Happy Marriage’, ’10 Proven Tips for a Happy Marriage’, ‘The 50 Best Marriage Tips OF ALL TIME’ with definitive caps lock usage, and my personal favourite: ‘7 Science-based Tips’ (It may interest you to know Science has ‘Have More Sex’ as point number 6!)

And all that without even scrolling, plus much more.

I have been married for 6 years to the beautiful Val (or tbV as I call her) and so I am not an expert on marriage by any means. I also don’t have anything against lists. Individual points on lists might provide ‘Aha!’ moments of helpfulness or even a significant moment of change, but no list is likely to save or radically transform your marriage and this is why: Marriages tend, in my experience, to be made up of people.

ROCKET SCIENCE ALERT

People are different. So what works for your marriage might be totally unnecessary or even inappropriate for mine. The essential thing your marriage is missing, might be something tbV and I are brilliant at, and vice versa. Because people are different and therefore each marriage is a complicated complex web of difference (in a good way!) and requires specific care, attention and cheerleading that is unlikely to be satisfactorily found in 5 bullet points.

So this is NOT going to be a 5 thing list to get you through another few days before everything resorts back to the way things were before. What it is going to be though is a quick microscopic look at the one thing that your marriage would do well to get right, and that, in my opinion, is people.

SOME PEOPLE YOU NEED

# Married friends who you can talk about marriage with – this may seem like an obvious one but marriage tends to be something we don’t often talk about. Who are the safe people (to both you and your spouse) that you can share with when times are hard and who will champion your marriage and not pick sides?

# Older in marriage couples who can share some stories from way down the road. Just as being mentored can be a life-transforming thing, so it can be for us as a couple. Is there a couple who has been married for longer than you whose marriage you look at and go, “We could learn from that?” Make it a regular thing to spend time with them.

# A Marriage Counsellor – We tend to think of marriage counselling as a last ditch attempt once the wheels fall off and it can be. But it can also be something to do every couple of months where we invite someone whose work it is to know and understand people, to take a look from a different perspective and help us strengthen areas of weakness that haven’t developed into issues yet.

# Single friends to hang out with – Often when you get married, there is an awkward divide that happens between the married and the single people in your friendship groups. The dynamic changes and it can often cause a bit of conflict or misunderstanding or loneliness on either side. And while single people are not the only people to hang out with, when you just need a break to catch a drink or watch a movie or reconnect then they are perhaps likely to be a bit more in-the-moment flexible (although don’t assume this!) and making space to hang out with them keeps those friendships tight.

There may be others, but start with these and see what happens. And while you are on the look out for people who might be able to mentor you in your journey of marriage, also be keeping an eye out for a couple that might appreciate some insights you have to share with them.

Because marriage is made up of two people who are so different that no road map,’ How-To’ book or ‘science-inspired’ Top 10 list is going to hit the target every time, it is going to take the people in and around your lives (who are also different and thus bring a range of skills and experiences and ideas to the table) who will be the ones able to speak more specifically and directly into the lived out commitment journey you are both on.

Marriage is about you and your person. But don’t forget to make it about you and your people too. This is not something you were ever meant to attempt purely as two people.

Being Single is Not the Disease you Have

Brett Fish

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August 31, 2015

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Being Single is Not the Disease you Have

I got married 6 years ago when I was 35 years old.

Phew, cutting it fine there, Brett. If I was a woman, people would have given up on me at least three years before and being male I probably had a few more years I could sneak out before the general public gave up on me.

Because getting married is the absolute pinnacle of life, right? Well maybe not marriage quite as much any more in the sense that the institution has lost a lot of respect in the world in recent times. But still the idea of having someone – whether it’s hooking up or living together, or as Gwyneth Paltrow so eloquently educated us, “consciously coupling” (I’m assuming that is the state that precedes “consciously uncoupling”?) is still seen so often as one of the key destination points that all life leads up to.

When you finally get together with ‘your person’, you have arrived…

Or something ridiculous like that.

IMMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT…

I remember back to the one place that used to push home this point more than any other – the dreaded singles table at the wedding. You know the one? And getting married at 35 combined with the fact that I worked with teenagers for many years and so had a lot of much younger friends too meant that I got to spend a lot of serious time at ‘The Singles Table’. (There’s a sitcom waiting to happen!)

But when planning a wedding (you know, to celebrate life arrival) you group all the couples together and those people will get on well with them and the Houstons know the Lloyds so they can sit together. And then you’re left with a bunch of singles who don’t really go with anyone and so you stick them all together at the reject table somewhere right at the back. Teetering on the edge of the abyss or something.

If that feels like too dramatic a picture, then you were clearly never at the singles table at a wedding. In its defense, it was one step up from the children’s table outside behind the bouncy castle.

SWIM WITH THE TIDE

There was a time, many years ago, particularly within the catholic church where the focus was on singleness as the way to have “made it” – nuns and monks and the gift of celibacy were the way to go and being single meant you were seen as more spiritual and closer to God and there were bible passages that could be used to ‘back this up’.

Then the protestant church swung the pendulum completely the other way and being married, and then being married with children was the way to have arrived, and so this unspoken goal of life seemed to be what was put on the pedestal and held higher than anything else.

TIME FOR SECOND OPINION

The point I want to make is this. Being single is not a disease. It is not a punishment. It is not something you have to escape from or get out of or dream your way away from. In fact, it can be an incredible gift. As can marriage.

Neither being single nor being married is ‘the better way’ – Paul, in his letter to the church in Phillipi (and us by extension) says this:

‘I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ [Philippians 4.12-13]

While Paul is speaking specifically to areas of finance in that passage, the concept can be carried through to every area of life.

Contentment is the key – be where you are and enjoy where you are at – if you are single then embrace your singleness and make the most of it in every way possible – and if/when you get married then live that to the full. Don’t sit in the place of one desperately wishing that you were in the other. BUT, that also doesn’t mean that if you are single and do want to be married that you should not keep on gently presenting that desire before God.

Those of us who are married also need to take a moment to own how we add to the idea of singleness being a bad thing, both with what we say and how we live (show this to your married friends!). We sometimes use language that seems to indicate that real life only began when we got married or for some when they had their first child. And we can treat you as if you are diseased in some way. No wonder you start believing that.

BE ENCOURAGED

I invited a number of my older single friends to share their stories with me a few years away and it became one of the most popular series on my blog ever. Something like 15 stories on my blog ranging from people who desperately didn’t want to be single, to those who were single and hoping to find someone to be with and also those who could not imagine a life where they were not single.

Probably the stand out point was that they were all completely different. Of course there were some similarities, but because people are so different and complex, each story was as well. And your story is too. And that is great. Because it means you don’t have to accept the diagnosis that has been blanket spread over everybody else. You can figure out what you are hoping for from life and share those desires with God.

And then go about your life living it to the absolute fullest until such time that something changes. Don’t regret the single thing.

Settle Down and start Settlers’ing

Brett Fish

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August 27, 2015

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There are two types of people in the world – those who Settlers of Catan, and those who think they play games.

I used to be a big Risk fan. I was fairly decent at Monopoly and chances are I would likely take you down in Scrabble. I was semi decent at Chess and would beat most part-time players like myself and was the self-proclaimed Boggle champion of the world.

Then, sometime in the early 2000s, my friend Stephen taught me a game (which was in German) that changed everything. Called ‘Die Siedler von Catan’ I realised quite quickly that this was different to anything I had ever played before. Stephen won that first game which I largely put down to me having to believe what he said every time he translated one of the Development cards which are key to the game, but a seed had been sown. It would be a number of years before I encountered that game again, this time in English, and it’s more well-known name, ‘The Settlers of Catan’.

A NEW WAY TO GAME

The big difference that Settlers (as it is known to millions of people around the world) brought to gaming was the introduction of choice. Before Catan, most games had a single purpose – destroy the enemy armies, bankrupt the opposition, find out who committed the crime. Yet suddenly there were a couple of different ways to win the game, as well as a board that was always different.

The Settlers of Catan board is made up of a series of hexagonal shaped pieces of cardboard displaying one of the five resources – wheat, stone, brick, sheep and ore. Every game these are shuffled and then randomly put in the board formation to create the board you play on. A series of numbers is placed on each resource which relates to dice throw. And so no two boards look the same which means that your strategy has to adapt depending on the setup of the board.

During any one game there are a number of different strategies you can pursue in order to win and the game has a number of expansion packs which add a whole new dimension to the original game.

SO MANY OPTIONS

Settlers of Catan proved to be a ‘gateway drug’ for me to a world of new and exciting games, with each year producing more.

From the popular Carcassonne where the game consists of adding cardboard block pieces to build the board as you play, to similar resource-gathering games such as Stone Age or Puerto Rico, to much more complex multi-faceted games such as Terra Mystica and Tzolk’in (see below) which is a complicated looking game that is played on a series of interconnected gears and based on the Mayan calendar, there is something for everyone of all ages and levels of skill and strategy.

South Africa is fast following in the Footsteps of America as more and more local Board Games stores (like Wizards or Quantum Gaming in Cape Town) set apart evenings when the public is invited to come and try out new games to see if they are to your liking.

With most decent games setting you back a good R750 to R1500 and beyond, it helps to be really sure of what you want to buy, as well as making friends with others who own some of the other games you enjoy. It is not uncommon for a Whatsapp message to be sent out during the week calling all game players together for an evening of strategy, adrenalin and some serious fun.

TIME TO MAKE THAT JUMP

The point is that gaming has gone to a whole new exciting place and you do not want to be left behind. Finding a friend who is Settlers of Catan savvy is an easy way to dip your foot into this new pool of adventurous gaming as a basic understanding of Settlers will help ease you into most of the new types of games around today.

Another aspect that has changed, I believe, with this new type of gaming is that playing board games has become a bit more of an event. An opportunity to bring a bunch of mates together and really hang out.

MAKE GOOD CHOICES

One thing that Settlers of Catan and the games that have followed have brought to gaming, and to life, is the focus they help give to reasoning. Looking at a bunch of possibilities and choosing what you think is the best one based on circumstances, strategy and also the strategy of those playing alongside you. Which, if you think about it, are important life lessons.

There are valuable skills that I have learnt playing a series of different games against a variety of opposition. And I have no doubt these spill over into every day life.

So if you are ready to move to another stage of life in your gaming, why not write the words, ‘Settlers of Catan?’ in the status line of one of your social medias and see who will come out of the woodwork to help you out. You might be surprised.

How Can Something So Free Cost So Much?

Brett Fish

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August 21, 2015

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The moment has arrived.

It’s the end of the talk and the preacher is getting ready for the big ending. He has preached up a storm and many people in the crowd tonight are feeling suitably convicted about the sin in their lives and how it has separated them from God and their need to become a Christian.

And then the theatre begin. The band starts playing slow moving music in the background, the kind that grabs hold of your emotions and hugs them tightly into submission. The preacher tells everyone in the crowd to close their eyes and assures his potential converts that no-one else but him and Jesus will see who is making a decision tonight.

Then the invitation comes. People respond by raising their hands silently until he acknowledges them. A little later they will be ushered to the front, where they will be prayed for, fill in a card and job done.

Everyone on the ministry team goes home feeling successful. More souls for the kingdom.

WAVE THEM IN THE AIR

The above story is largely tongue in cheek, but the message hidden in there is that we have tended to make it so easy for people to become Christians. Part of our marketing and sales approach has been sneaking in the word FREE as much as possible. ‘Salvation is FREE’, ‘Jesus has paid the cost’, Grace has done the work for you’, and so on.

The problem with that, is that it is true. And also completely not. I once read a quote that said, “It doesn’t cost a lot to follow Jesus, just everything.” And that is a part of the mystery that the Gospel is often described as containing.

When Jesus left behind the group of followers He had spent three years building into, He left them with a very definite message. And it wasn’t about helping people raise their hand in the air and come to the front to say a prayer. The call on the early disciples was to make more disciples.

This is an area where much of the church has failed. For too long we settled on the idea of making converts and missed out on the longer haul journey of walking with people to discipleship.

It is true. Salvation is completely FREE. God offered to all of us the opportunity to have a restored relationship with Him and He did it through sending Jesus. Jesus came and died in our place, extending the very personal invitation of being reunited with God. A lot of undeserved grace. A gift undeserved and freely given.

But Jesus also had some harder words to say:

The main difference between the idea of becoming a convert and being a disciple is the ongoing nature of relationship. A convert is someone who put up their hand at a meeting and took up their cross once and then it was done. Whereas a disciple is someone who hears these words from Jesus and realises that every single day I need to pick up my cross again, deny myself and continue to follow Him.

It is out of the understanding and appreciation of all the grace and love that God has freely given to us, that following Him emerges and will be witnessed as we demonstrate a life lived in service of others.

Completely free, but costing everything we have as we wake up every morning determined once more to deny self, take up our cross and live another day for Him.

Get your #Hashtag Game on

Brett Fish

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August 19, 2015

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As I jumped onto the Twitterer [as I call it] this morning, it wasn’t long before i saw it: #VehiclePartsUpASongOrALyric.

Without blinking I dived in with: Gears in Heaven

After a little more thought, I upped my game with a smooth: I love big trunks and I cannot lie.

But it was minutes (that seemed like hours but were in fact only minutes) later that I found what I was looking for and signed my game off with the stunning: Smooth Carburetor

Then back to work, cos I had an article to write. (This one in fact, don’t tell – Sh!)

THE HASHTAG GAME

For those of you still annoying your friends with ‘Farmville’ and ‘Pirate Kings’ invitations or spending your time trying to figure out if it is okay to spell the word ‘boob’ in a ‘Words With Friends’ game against your mom, it is time for you to move on.

Hashtag games are a fairly recent phenomenon which, in the last year or so, has suddenly erupted and become a bit of a mainstream thing.

How it works, in a nutshell, is that someone posts a hashtag which serves as a category, for example #TakeAMovieToDinner or #MakeASongAboutSomeoneElse and then everyone who plays tries to think up the cleverest or funniest ‘Answer.’ With these examples, ideas such as ‘The Burger King’s Speech’ [@Michael_Oh2L] or ‘I Think We’re Stallone Now’ [@mseric] would be winners.

There is no official winner or prize although the more your suggestion gets liked and retweeted, the more you can hold your head up high and feel like a winner, at least until the next game sounds and your brain is working overtime again.

HOW BIG IS IT, REALLY?

With 17.3 thousand followers, @TheHashtagGame is one of the chief ‘Calls to Arms’ in terms of informing you of what the present game is and who started it.

Their Twitterer bio comes with this appropriate piece of advice for those daring to dip their toes into a game: ‘WARNING! @TheHashTagGame is a highly-addictive Twitter social game known to cause sleep deprivation, irregular grooming habits, and/or loss of employment!’

They have even developed an app that you can download to keep track of all the games currently being played and how much trending it is doing. Hashtag games regularly end up as top trending topics in a number of the countries that play them,

Chris Hardwick hosts the show @Midnight on Comedy Central which includes the playing of the fun game #HashtagWars in which three celebrity guests try to come up with the best responses to a Hashtag in a limited time. @Midnight currently has 444K followers on the Twitterer, just to give you an idea of the scope. Their #MakeASongBritish went viral with popular suggestions such as ‘Knowing Tea, Knowing You’ [@say_shannon], ‘Purple Reign’ [@JeanGina3D] and ‘Hit The Road Union Jack’ [@lizzwinstead]

The ever popular Jimmy Fallon also incorporates Hashtag games into The Tonight Show typically tweeting out the tag a few hours before the show and then reading some of the best suggestions live.

Occasionally celebrities like Patton Oswalt [@pattonsswalt] and Zach Braff [@zachbraff] will get involved, but for the most part it is up to a new wave of Twitterverse celebritwitterties with names like @BreezyPuffs and @HashtagShenani and @NoompsyDahling. lead the way in creating games and coming up with some of the better suggestions. On occasion, even a fake Orlando Jones [@OGOrlandoJones] joins in.

HOW TO PLAY IT WELL

The secret really is on picking the right people to follow, which you can do by choosing to follow people who come up with winner suggestions. A number of people I know have separate Twitterer accounts simply to play The Hashtag game so that it doesn’t get confused with work and a more serious Twitterer handle.

The hashtag entries that work the best are the ones that approach the category from an unexpected angle, work on multiple levels or take a few seconds for the reader to get.

AVOID THE ADDICTION

As with anything in life, a good thing can quickly become an addiction that controls you, and it’s important that you realise this early.

The key to letting Hashtag games be something to enhance your day, rather than rob you of productivity, is to decide beforehand how invested you want to be. Choose a particular topic you think you will be do well in (for me, anything movie related is usually a win) and jump in and throw out your three best.

Following a tag can be like diving down a veritable rabbit hole as the topics can trend for a couple of hours so rather grab some time during a coffee break to skim through and catch a few that you like.

Well, that’s all there is to it. How about we finish off by trying one ourselves? I will call the topic and you give us your best suggestion in the comment section.

How about #DrinkUpAMovie?

I’ll go first with: Gone With The Wine

Who will tuck Cecil the Lion’s son into bed at night?

Brett Fish

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August 18, 2015

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Who will tuck Cecil the Lion’s son into bed at night?

I miss ~~Cedric~~ Cecil so much!

The fact that each of the three times I have gone online to write about Cecil the Lion, I have first called him Cedric and then gone to check and then changed it to Cecil, largely makes my point for me.

It’s a week later and I can’t even remember his name. How are you doing on that?

Nope, wrong again (after some more checking of the facts) – it was three weeks ago already? So why does it feel to me like it was just last week?

TIME TO CHANGE YOUR PROFILE PIC BACK

I was on Facebook yesterday and conducted a random survey and the third person to respond had a rainbow of colours covering their profile picture. Urgh! Get with the program person. I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations ran out on that one weeks ago. Time to follow the sheep back to the normal-coloured profile pic pen.

In fact, how many posts do I need to post on an issue to show that I am suitably outraged but not quite a fanatic? For how many days must I black out my profile pic or rainbow it up or have a picture of a lion that resembles Cecil (in that it’s a lion, but now lion activists are all up in paws because, ‘Are you saying we all look the same?’) before I can return to normal profile pic status?

Je Suis Cecil Lives Matter

Then things started to get really complicated. The #BlackLivesMatter movement in the States started using the Cecil the Lion campaign as a way of explaining the significance of #BlackLivesMatter over #AllLivesMatter.

“Because we understand how stupid it would be to be saying “All Animals Matter” right now, yeah?”

Some people reached back all the way to January to revive the Je Suis Charlie tag to hopefully build on some of the recognition momentum to be gained from such a powerful statement. No-one is known to have asked any of those people, “So you’re saying you’re a lion?”

BLESSED ARE THE SLACKTIVISTS

It was Malcolm Gladwell, back in 2010 who coined the term, ‘Slacktivist’. The idea of posting, forwarding or liking an article or picture on social media as a form of protest. Or at least the feeling of a form of protest.

Because, let’s be honest for a moment, when last did you think about the invisible children (Kony 2012, Uganda) or the missing girls (#BringBackOurGirls 2014, Nigeria)? Do you even remember what disease the Ice Bucket Challenge was trying to raise money for? (July 2014, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease)

I could go on. The buzz of slacktivism is that it feels like we’ve made a difference. We get the sensation of having participated in something important and bigger than ourselves. And then a week from now we move on to the next thing and the cycle repeats again.

Who will tuck Cecil the Lion’s son into bed at night? The answer is no-one will. Because we don’t genuinely care and we have already moved on…

SURELY WE CAN DO BETTER

In the Bible, Jesus tells a story about two sons:

²⁸“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

²⁹“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

³⁰“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

³¹“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

[Matthew 28]

Perhaps the time has come for us to be less involved in public proclamations of our “action” and to simply get involved locally in some area of service. What are the needs of a nearby community that you possess the skills to meet? Perhaps it is an hour a week commitment or maybe it’s taking a younger person under your wing and mentoring them? If we can get as creative offline as the campaign-producing people seem to be online, it won’t be long before we see small but profound changes happening all around us.

Ones that won’t be forgotten a week from now.

The Dangerous Prayer

Brett Fish

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August 17, 2015

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Prayer is something of a mystery to me.

Once I heard the late Keith Green’s wife Melody giving a talk where she finished it off by challenging the audience to commit themselves to praying two prayers every day:

[1] I will go ANYWHERE You want me to go.

[2] I will do ANYTHING You want me to do.

I doubt many of us would be brave enough to pray those prayers every day and really mean them. Would you?

I find that often prayer can become this thing of me reading my shopping list out to God of all the things I want. My desire to pray the next time might depend on how many of those things I believe God said “Yes!” to.

In Romans 12, the writer reminds us that when we become followers of Jesus, we are meant to have our lives ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds’. So maybe prayer is one area where we need to see that taking shape differently.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRAYER

My wife tbV [aka The Beautiful Val] and I had the privilege of visiting a Benedictine monastery during our time living in America a couple of years ago.

One thing we were really challenged by was their sense of the bigger picture. When a monk commits to being a Benedictine, instead of committing to the whole movement, he commits to a specific monastery, and while there is flexibility if they realise it is not a good fit, the commitment is typically for life.

In our transient world we often look back to a decision made in October last year and reflect on how that changed the path of our lives. The Benedictines will look back at an incident that occurred 60 years ago and see the same thing. It is such a wider scope and way of viewing things that gives you much more opportunity to send some roots down and be part of building something that lasts longer.

If all that is not enough for you to think about, then let me leave you with this prayer, passed on to us from the Benedictines and ask if this is perhaps something each one of us can commit to praying each day to the greater good of our lives and those of our family, our community and perhaps even our country and world?

Prayer of Discomfort

“May God bless you with a restless discomfort
about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,
so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression,
and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for
justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer
from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may
reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that
you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able,
with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.”

How about it? Do you DARE to pray this risky prayer with me?

The Insane Risk of Faith

Brett Fish

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August 14, 2015

2

Many of the stories we read in the Bible have lost their effect on us.

As children we were mesmerised by the impossible odds some of our heroes overcame. Yet at some point we became all adult and they reverted just to ‘stories’ we kinda believe are true because they are in the Bible, but don’t really think about in that same way.

Take a moment to consider two of our favourites. But imagine them as real life occurrences (before you know how they end).

THE LIGHTIE AND THE GIANT

David and Goliath. We have heard it so many times that the ridiculousness of it has long since escaped us. An entire army held hostage by one albeit-WWE-type soldier who challenges them to a one-on-one duel every morning.

A non-soldier teenager comes along and takes up the challenge, refusing to wear the provided armour because he can’t carry it and choosing instead to tackle this military machine of a man with his sling and handful of stones.

Once we know the end of the story we can read it with a complete lack of suspense, but if this was true and it really happened, then there was the moment an entire nation was relying on a little kid to defeat a weapon-bearing giant armed with a bit of a toy. Complete insanity.

CATCHING A WAVE

Next up we have the story of Peter walking on the water. He has always gotten a bit of a hard break with that one. He walks on water for just a short while, but then he catches sight of the wind and the waves and starts to sink and Jesus has to rescue him. What a joke.

But once again, pretend the story is a real life event for a minute. There is a moment when this fisherman, who was very well aware of the science of how water works, steps out of a boat and places his foot on top of a lake, and then quickly follows with the rest of his body. All while the other disciples were probably trying to look busy.

He literally stands on water. He takes a few steps. We tend to lose sight of the lunacy involved in that moment. God changes the scientific nature of water so that a human can stand on top of it.

ALL IN

There is a short story in the New Testament which Jesus draws attention to, of a lived out crazy experience of faith. The wealthy in the temple are making a big show of how much they toss in to the offering bowl. Then, quietly and unassuming, a widow steps forward and drops in two tiny coins. And no-one notices. Except Jesus. And He draws attention to it, saying, “They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on.” [Mark 12.44]

Moses holds his staff above an ocean, Noah builds a giant boat in the middle of a desert region, Abraham takes his only [promised] son up a mountain to sacrifice him and the disciples start handing out five loaves of bread and two fish to thousands of people. What is interesting, time and time again in the Bible is that people were called to an incredible risk of faith, often an insane one, BEFORE the miracle happened.

There is a moment when if God doesn’t pitch up, they are going to be absolutely embarrassed and in extreme cases people will die.

AND THEN THERE WAS THIS ONE

Perhaps the story to highlight this extreme that God often requires of us is a lesser known one involving the prophet Elisha, which was sneaked into the book of 2 Kings in the Old Testament.

God has already miraculously provided a son for a woman from the town of Shunem through a prophetic word from Elisha. Years later the son dies. She sends for Elisha and when he arrives he does what might have ended up being the dodgiest action a priest ever took (if God had not showed up).

‘When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. Then he got on the bed and lay upon the boy mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out upon him, the boy’s body grew warm. Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out upon him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. ‘ [4.32-37]

A really great story once we know how it ends, but for Elisha, at that moment when God tells him what he has to do, his faith must have been hugely challenged.

HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?

We don’t even have to perform some of these strange acts today to have that question leveled at us.

And actually the answer is Yes.

In 1 Corinthians we are told:

²⁷But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹so that no one may boast before him.

The way of following Jesus is contrary to what looks like sanity for the rest of the world. In fact we are also told in Romans 12:

²Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

But it is not so much losing your mind as having it restored to the way it was meant to be. A mind that has faith and trusts in God will not make sense to anyone else who is focused on themselves as the one their Universe revolves around.

In a world that looks like ours does today, perhaps having a mind that is focused on something else besides myself is one of the sanest things I can do?

Brett Fish

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