Today I got up then I ate breakfast and checked the letterbox and then I walked into town and

Just thought I'd say that I finished my church apprenticeship today. Tomorrow might feel a little odd as I feel like I've always worked for Crossroads. It really has been a remarkable, wonderful experience and the fact that it's been very hard at times has somehow added to it, not taken away - maybe because it's taught me lots or because that God has kept me and looked after me through it all. I've loved the thinking, praying, reading, 'peopling', leading way I spend my days. I've loved not having to dress up for work and go to an office and be there from 9 to 5 and account for my time. I've loved working from home and being autonomous. Once I sorted out how rest and fun and friends and errands and chores fitted in, I've loved plunging in head-first and having it be my whole life. And I've loved working under my pastor, whose integrity, care, wisdom and insight I highly respect. And I've loved my church, which is open to wierdness and to correction, where everyone is striving to love one another more.

Next I'm heading to Sydney and Bible college. Not to be a priestess or a nun, but to be better equipped to continue on with the sort of work I've been doing, but probably overseas. I'm not that excited about it, but it's my prayer that the knowledge won't be dry, but will be great truths about God that will broaden and humble my mind and soften my heart. And I pray that Sydney will be my second home - a vibrant, multicoloured one to complement my gentle, welcoming, Eden-like first home.

I used to be distrustful of where in Romans it says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him" (8:28). But all I've experienced during this apprenticeship has taught me to start to trust that it is true. I haven't always liked his means, but maybe that's what it took to have me keep on turning to him. He has given me perseverance, the ability to bear up, strength, comfort, blessings and a growing understanding and appreciation of how I am loved and free and with hope. There are things better and richer and holier than the things I can touch. And so, I'm glad to keep on humbly serving him. Amen and amen.

The Horror of Mercy

Sometimes mercy seems an absurd and horrifying thing.

Christians do not have the luxury of looking at the world and pretending all's well. We must see the evil in us, the evil prompting our nasty words and selfish deeds. We must face the fact that sometimes people and situations are rank. Jesus asks us to look that rankness in the face and to believe that he was punished for it and that justice has been fully served. That is why he asks us to be merciful.

Still mercy can feel absurd – utterly inappropriate, a madman's conjuring. It can seem horrifying – as wrongs appear to be overlooked and accomodated. The prospect of showing mercy can be enough to bring us to despair.

It is okay to despair. Righteous men do sometimes despair and when they do, they cry out to God. A righteous man remembers his God is a sovereign God who loves to answer his children's prayers. Our God is a God who will help us bear up, who will teach us how great is the mercy and love we have been shown, and how wholly sin has been understood and how fully it has been punished. He will teach us that there is no thing that can take us away, nothing that can separate us from his love.

I pray that he will give you his mercy, that thing so holy that it at first appears horrifying and absurd. When mercy stems from a heart that is grateful, generous and warm even in the midst of hurt, it is in truth a thing amazing and lovely.

Absurdity at Christmas

Christmas celebrates the birth of a baby. It's a little reminisent of the Buddist rejoicing when a small boy is found to be the reincarnation of a lama. Both occasions seem silly and naïve – grown men and women idolising helpless, purposeless children.

Reincarnation seems particularly silly – a ridiculous theory conjured up by people terrified that it might all end at death. But I'd suggest that the Christian belief is far sillier and far more implausible. Christians celebrate the birth of the baby boy, Jesus, not because we believe he is the reincarnation of another man, but because we believe he is God. Christians actually believe that the LORD God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God came to earth as a human. This is why Christians look at Jesus as a newborn and join the righteous Simeon in declaring, “My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

It sounds too absurd and outrageous to believe, and yet many do. We believe because as this baby became a little boy, a teenager and a man, he did no wrong. We believe because he triumphed over death and his opponents could not produce his body. We believe because these things have been written about by those who were there.

And we rejoice that this newborn baby was God because he came to earth to fix up our shit – for the sake of his Holy Name and because he loved us. He made himself nothing and became obedient to death, that we might live. When we behold this ordinary, new baby we can scarce understand that he is God, but we can begin to grasp God's hatred of evil and his love for his people.