I have to admit I was a bit on edge for session 3 last week. It’s been a stormy week, not just weather-wise but on the grief front too. This is my normal now – there are times when I can just drift along with grief and times when it rises up and demands my attention. I’ve learned now that I just need to give it the time and space needed when that happens, and since reframing it as giving my eldest daughter the attention that she needs from me, it feels more bearable. It did leave me feeling very drained though and I struggled to engage with the first half of the session, although I did manage to join in more in the second half.
Following on from session 3, we’ve been given some questions to ponder:
How easily can you relate to St Peter and his very human experience of being a disciple of Jesus?
I like Peter. He’s definitely my favourite disciple. I love his enthusiasm, his impetuousness, the way he acts first and thinks later. I can relate to that – perhaps not so much nowadays, but I was definitely more of an ‘act first, think later’ person when I was younger. Peter is so wonderfully imperfect. He gets it wrong so many times, says and does the wrong thing but Jesus still loves him for it and trusts him to build his church. He rebukes Peter at times, and Peter’s actions make him sad at times, but he never stops loving Peter or gives up on him.
Peter is such a wonderful reminder that we are all human and we get things wrong, but Jesus still loves us, and still has plans for us. I suspect Peter is the disciple most of us find easiest to relate to because even though his heart is generally in the right place, he gets a lot of things wrong and that is true for us too.
Which parts of this session did you find most interesting? Most challenging?
I enjoyed looking at Romans 12 and considering what it meant to lead a ‘godly life’ as opposed to merely a ‘good life’. I’m not sure I could manage to live up to all the things in that chapter that we’re told to do though. Thank goodness for grace! The main thing I came away with from that discussion was the importance of God being at the heart of what we do, and being our motivation for our actions.
What’s most challenging to me right now is that fact that I’m not finding the online session a safe space at the moment, to be honest. I think I might have found it easier to do this course with a group of people from outside my own church. Current church politics are making me more reticent than I perhaps would be with a group of strangers. Perhaps the fact that I’m finding it challenging in that respect though is part of God’s plan. After all, grit is necessary for an oyster to produce a pearl. I’ll keep working through this.
In terms of content, I found the first question exploring how you might know that someone is a Christian quite challenging. It’s not something that tends to be obvious from the way they dress, or the things they do – acts of kindness and helping others are not exclusive to Christians, nor is wearing a cross. Going to church doesn’t necessarily mean someone is a Christian, nor does not attending church mean that someone isn’t. At the church I attended in my university days, I struggled with feeling like I didn’t quite fit the right boxes to be a ‘proper’ Christian. The thing is, I was trying to live up to a particular view of what a Christian should be – a human view, rather than trying to find out what God wanted me to be.
Do you think the 5 marks of mission offer a good framework for understanding mission?
Yes, I found this quite a helpful list when it came to considering what mission is all about. Some of them come more naturally to me than others, and I think most of them are much more effective when done with others, but it was very helpful to have mission summarised in this way.
Here’s my updated spider web after session 3:
Where have I seen God lately?
- God’s been holding me in my grief this week. In the quiet moments as well as in the storms. I had a text message from a university friend asking me how I was while I was making space for my grief at my daughter’s grave last week. Although I didn’t open up about the fact that it was a tough week, it was a reminder of the love and support that does surround me and it did help to have a few moments of chatting via text message.
- My husband found some photos and videos of our daughter on his phone this week, some of which I don’t think I’d seen before. “New” photos and videos are such a precious gift.
A Kintsugi Faith 