Pain is God's megaphone

Life is a choice and choosing to live victoriously is better than trying to live a positive life negatively.

But here's the thing. If a child doesn't feel pain, will he learn? If an underlying health issue doesn't instill some pain, will we do anything about it?

Lepers yearn for the gift of pain, because their disease so dulls pain that they injure their limbs enough to lose them. The pain of learning carries through life, but it only is pain and will only adjust us, if we feel it and admit to it.

There will be no more, tears in heaven

In 1991 Connor, Eric's Clapton's 5 year old son, accidently crawled through a 53rd floor apartment window and fell to his death on the streets below. Clapton arrived shortly after his son fell and for a long time his performances were deeply haunted and distracted by the tragedy.

Out of the crisis came the haunting ballad, "Tears in Heaven", which I am trying to master. It presents challenges for voice and for guitar, but it is such a rewardingly beautiful song. Sadly Clapton rarely sings the song anymore, because he has moved on and feels too detached to do the song justice.

He rightfully argues that there will be no more tears in heaven. Sadness sure can tear us apart down on the streets below and it can lead to untold sorrow. But there are still no tears in heaven.

The great equaliser

I recently read an article, which argued that a lack of positive factors in our lives is worse for us than the presence of negative factors. 

The reality for almost everyone on the planet is a fair share of negatives - such is life. We all bear the brunt of illness or financial misfortune or marital blues or family issues ... the list goes on and on. Yet none of that matters, as long as there is real hope or at least something that gives life a sense of value and meaning.

My wife and I noted that our children have had many advantages in the form of a loving home, caring parents, sound instruction and substantial support. Yet for all that they have the disadvantage of having never had to really fight for their survival as children from embattled or negative homes do.

The candle burnt out long ago, but the legend never did

On this day in 1962, Marilyn Monroe took a fatal dose of sleeping tablets to escape her complex life. Although she raised the ire of the secret service for her indiscrete sharing of JFK's inner thoughts and worked her way through a few husbands, she could find no satisfaction. How sad for a girl who had so much going for her ... beautiful, talented and desirable. Well it was not to be. After 36 hectic and often exciting years, she burnt out and left the world stage: but as Elton John noted, her legend lives on.

She reminds me of the woman at the well, one of the most insightful human exchanges ever recorded about Jesus. It was not a parable, but a real-life exchange that could take another two thousand years to fully interpret. What a remarkeable person He was, so wise and yet so profoundly economical in His style. He could convey a wealth of meaning in a sentence.

Work in progress

Wendell Phillips said, “Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake”. Of course there is a double meaning, for our world as we know it was as much formed on the scaffold of the stone-mason as on the scaffolds where truth died to spare the lies of thrones. Our own lives are also under the scaffold, an incomplete work whose time must surely come.

Many years ago I lay on the floor of the Sistine chapel to admire Michelangelo’s profound adornment of the ceiling. At the time the last supper was under renovation, masked behind scaffolding and workers sheets. For all the wonder of that equally famous painting, I was denied something of its true greatness ....

What on earth is God doing?

Does crisis come to destroy us or to build our character or to prepare us for a greater destiny? Are we ants that God tramples on to see if we can take it? Does He have nothing better to do than crush lives to see if they will still work? Are we the crash test dummies of heaven? Is their reason to our crises or is God capricious? Does He tempt us for the sake of it - or is there a greater purpose at stake?

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