Thought for the Day 26/03/21 - How do you handle Black Swans?

AUDIO

You're just not expecting a black swan, right? 

Everybody knows swans are white.

That's the thing.

A 'Black Swan event' is something you know about, though ... it's the one you're not ready for, and it throws you as it catches you off guard.

So to be clear ...

"A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight" ... or so we are TOLD.

It doesn't help when they happen to be told: 'you'll be alright' ... you need resilience and recovery actions in place to get through them.

It's all about ...

Building in 'anti-fragility'

In the jargon we need to build an ethos in advance that is 'Anti-Fragile'.

This thinking came up again for me recently in a military leadership publication HERE, and then again shortly afterwards in a contribution to the Gospel Coalition blog.

It's all very relevant to an era of pandemic when 'resilience' has become a hot topic.

The problem seems to be that the Black Swan moments we have were quite simply previously unthinkable. By definition, you see, you don't think of or prepare for the unthinkable!

Building anti-fragility into ourselves and our organisations is held to be the way to deal with these events.

How do you prepare for the unthinkable to happen?

This pandemic we've been having is far from having been a Black swan event as it was being widely predicted beforehand, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work on randomness still has lessons to teach us about resilience.

This anti-fragile approach to dealing with events for which an organization is not prepared would suggest that we need to:

 

• maintain our clear goals and priorities
  
  
• be realistic about accepting the world as it is along with the actual curbs on our freedom of action within it and 
  
  
• emphasise risk management and 
  
  
• adaptation in order to 
  
  
• sustain our original objectives. 

Taleb argues that when implemented this anti-fragile approach to organisational leadership will enable teams to not only survive uncertainty but to 'have the last word'.

So WHAT has that got to do with the Bible?!

Remember that last bit about sustaining our original objectives there?

Let's talk Black Swans and the Prophet Jeremiah ...

Black Swans and the prophet Jeremiah

Jeremiah was called to be God's spokesman to the people of God as he lived amongst them when they went through the unthinkable experiences of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem which was followed by the forced emigration into Babylon and captivity.

His brief from the Almighty was to uproot and tear down, to plant and build up ... to turn the coming unthinkable events to reconstruction and the building of an improved and resilient new life. It sounds like an Anti-fragile brief to me!

If you have seven minutes to watch a short video about the book of Jeremiah, it's really interesting, I'd really recommend watching this one HERE.

So how do you plan in advance for your Black Swans, Jeremiah?

Planning in advance for your future Black Swans

Writing before the devastating destruction of the homeland of the people of God and their being carried off as captives to a foreign land, in preparation for the Black Swan that was coming Jeremiah exposes the heart of their problem:

"‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

    who draws strength from mere flesh
    and whose heart turns away from the LORD 
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
    they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
    in a salt land where no one lives.

 ‘But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.   

They will be like a tree planted by the water

    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.’"

So here is our Verse for the Day:

The Point

Way before their Black Swan event, Jeremiah was calling for spiritual anti-fragility and he characterised that negatively then positively.

Negatively ...

Trouble was in store for those people who 

• drew their strength from mere flesh and 
  
  
• whose hearts turned away from 
  
  
• their faithful and covenant-keeping God.

Positively ...

Great happiness lay in store for those people who

• trust in the LORD, and who consciously
  
  
• place their confidence in Him

Confidence is the issue, and where you place it.

The former end up "... like a bush in the wastelands;

    they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
    in a salt land where no one lives."

                                                       Jeremiah 17:6

Whatever that means, you know it doesn't sound good!

But when the Black Swan flies in (and for his people, it really did) Jeremiah counsels those people in advance, then 

" blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.’"

                                     Jeremiah 17:7-8

That sounds like the best place to be, doesn't it?

The Takeaway

One of the main characteristics of unexpected and cataclysmic events is that you never expect them in the first place and only looking backwards do you see they were predictable.

The thing about prophets is that they break through that principle and (by definition) tell you what's coming down the pipe.

Jeremiah is doing that for his people and telling them how they need to prepare for it.

It's clearly better to prepare in advance, and the key to that preparation is about where you place your confidence.

To trust your own strength and 'positivity' is not going to get you through life's major but unexpected crises, says Jeremiah but:

"blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

    whose confidence is in him."

Get that sorted out and He'll get you past your Black Swan.

Thought for the Day 25/03/21 - How can you cope with the menace of mortality?

 AUDIO
One of Port Talbot (well, Margam)'s famous acting sons really surprised me last weekend.
Sir Anthony Hopkins, aged 83 and now living in Los Angeles, California, popped up on Twitter quoting in Welsh (obviously) the old Bishop Morgan version of the Bible.

William Morgan’s Y Beibl cyssegr-lan was the first full translation of the Bible into the Welsh language in 1588 and its use has been credited with maintaining the language up to the present day.

I simply hadn't expected it from Sir Anthony.

Looking well but clearly feeling the passage of time, Anthony Hopkins quoted rather out of context the text of Eseciel 37:1 

"Bu llaw yr Arglwydd arnaf, ac a'm  dug allan yn ysbryd yr Arglwydd, ac a'm gosodd yng ghanol dyffryn, a hwnnw oedd yn llawn esgryn."

Hopkins quoted it in Welsh from memory, which is commendable but for many incomprehensible. 

In English that verse reads like this:

"The hand of the Lord was on me, 
and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord 
and set me in the middle of a valley; 
it was full of bones."

                                                                                Ezekiel 37:1

And then with no word of explanation, he shot straight into quoting (some also say out of context) a short portion from Dylan Thomas's poem Fern Hill.

Again he added no explanation, but he headed his little video 'Today I celebrate life'.

So what was going through the octogenarian's mind?

Last month in the Sunday Times, Anthony Hopkins said that his latest role in The Father, (tipped for an Oscar in April) had made him more aware of “mortality and the fragility of life”.

“We’re all fragile, we’re all broken,” he said. 

“We can point fingers and condemn other people — it’s so easy because the world is a madhouse — I try to keep my mouth shut and enjoy life as best as I can.

We all pretend not to be, but we’re all lonely. 

Success is all fine, it’s a way to survive, but at the end, we’re all desperately, desperately alone. 

And that is the most painful and eloquent thing for me."

Being alive without life

Sir Anthony describes living without  the life-breath God gives, as he's missed the intention of the author of Ezekiel

Oh yes, he's a son Port Talbot can be proud of.

He's certainly had a great deal of success, but as an actor not as a Bible expositor!

What's ACTUALLY going on in Ezekiel?

The background to Ezekiel 37 is that the people of Israel have suffered for their sin and been cut off from the bountiful life that could  have been theirs in God.

They are suffering the angst of banishment from His presence and His Promised Land; not because they were not successful, but because they were quite simply rebellious.

This left them as spiritually dead as dry bones blanched in the heat of a desert valley, with no life and no hope of getting a life for themselves ... utterly beyond self-resuscitation ... and Ezekiel has been sent to them in the anguish this all brought them, to steer them back to the life that God gives.

God put the issue Sir Anthony has been addressing directly to the prophet Ezekiel like this: 

"He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’

I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’

Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 

“Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 

This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: 

I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life."

                                                              Ezekiel 37:4-5

The point

It's when people famous or infamous, rich, poor, wise or foolish ... all broken as Sir Anthony describes ... stop and HEAR (pay attention) to the Word of the Lord that God can breathe breath into even blanched bones that lie lifeless in the desert, and when He does so those bones unfailingly live.

The Takeaway

It's hearing - actually listening to and living in the light of - the Word of God that 

• human brokenness is fixed, 
  
  
• human mortality is re-modelled, and that 
  
  
• the pain of broken life without God is 
  
  
• remedied, 
  
  
• ransomed and 
  
  
• redeemed.

How important then is it to you, would you say, that you HEAR the Word of the Lord?

Thought for the Day 24/03/21 Why would you WANT to go to chapel?!

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I'm hearing a lot of people saying that they just can't wait for the COVID rules to change so that we can all go back to church once again.

It would make me a little bit nervy if the concern was more to go to church more than to be it, or to be going for the place or the people not for God.

I mean, really, that wouldn't make sense!

Who likes going into a cold barn to sit on hard benches next to people you don't really know to comply with instructions ('stand up', 'sit down', 'sing', 'now be quiet') from the officiating officer, then listen to someone else tell you what to do with your life?

Chapel doesn't sound so great when you put it like that, does it?!

Oh, the number of times I've had to ask one church leadership team or another 'What do we really think we are DOING here?!' (And what a difference thinking through that question has actually made).

When you look at what seems to be going on, it's really no wonder the famous '80s DJ Noel Edmonds famously said he couldn't think of anything worse to do on Sunday mornings than go to church: "The church is the dullest experience that we have in this country". 

You can read about that and much else that might need changing about what happens in church and chapel HERE.

But what concerns me most is not embracing trendiness but turning away people who are going through tragedy.

If church puts itself where it can't be turned to, that is incredibly SAD.

The tragedy of unattractive 'church'

The seriousness of the unattractiveness of 'Church' is arguably highlighted in Noel Edmonds' own experience, although his experience is by no means unique.

Things could have been so different for so many if only they'd known a God-loving church.

All credit to him, Noel himself is quoted as very honestly saying:

 ""I seek no sympathy and feel no shame in admitting that on the evening of January 18th 2005 I attempted to end the overwhelming mental pain which had consumed my whole being. 

The fact that I did not become another suicide statistic is solely due to the swift response of a Devon ambulance crew and the compassionate support of the Priory in Bristol."

The financiers whose actions are blamed for driving him to this were jailed in 2017 for their £245 million loans scam which saw profits spent on sex parties and luxury holidays.

But having go through this crisis, Noel has since relocated to New Zealand with his third wife, Liz Davies, and now gives his professional abilities to running a radio station for plants.

'Church' can stop people in trouble from turning to God

The tragedy is that people switched off by church, because their church expectations or experience aren't appropriate simply won't turn to 'the Church' in their trouble and won't get help from there in their times of greatest need.

The opposite was true of the Psalmist in the Verse for the  Day we're looking at today.

"One thing I ask from the Lord,

    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple."

                                                Psalm 27:4

The first thing to notice about this psalm then is this: 

It's not 'belonging' but 'going' that matters

The psalmist wasn't thinking about 'belonging' - having some ages-old family link and formal membership ... an ancestral worship site and a place to be buried.

The psalmist here is all about 'GOING'!

Not only for going, but for staying. He wouldn't be turned away easily ... he was going to be a permanent resident, and NOT in the graveyard, but in the pew!

But the key thing is the reason he was going ...

The REASON to be going is crucial

He wanted to be 'going' to gaze at the beauty of the Lord.

It's easy to be put off the chapel not just by the pews but by the people.

A lot of people think they're going to chapel for the people, but that's a very shaky reason to be going there and it isn't going to do much lasting good for your 'inner man'.

People in general are a funny old lot, and we don't (any of us) live up to the mark.

The people are a secondary consideration, says the psalmist ... he 'goes' to gaze on the beauty of the Lord, and to worship Him in His own Temple.

The experience when you go is fundamental

We fill church with all sorts of (sometimes entertaining) distractions.

The temple at Jerusalem had 'lots going on'.

But the Psalmist knew what he needed to do up there.

It was gazing on the beauty and the glory of the Lord that was going to inspire him to keep him faithful and resilient through hard times.

Now that's the thing.

Why was he so KEEN on going?

Life wasn't going so well for him, and he knew he needed the presence of God.

Make no mistake, the psalmist wasn't falling from faith, as the verses just before this make clear:

"When the wicked advance against me

    to devour me,
it is my enemies and my foes
    who will stumble and fall.
3 Though an army besiege me,
    my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
    even then I will be confident."

                  

                                 Psalm 27:2-3

He wants to lean on the Lord!

But to stay in that resilient position, the psalmist  knows he MUST be going to public worship to practice the real presence of God.

More than that, he must be going to fill his mind with the beauty of the Glory of His faithful God.

He knows that if he takes his eyes off the Lord, however firmly resolved he is to stick with God, human strength, decision and determination can't resource faith and the outcome would be that he would sink .

 The Point

If we seek to know God and have His help we will 'go' to chapel or church ... it really doesn't matter what you call it.

But it's important to be clear what we're going for ... and this is what makes all the difference.

Neither the people nor the process there are what matters.

To be going must be to be looking for the opportunity to gaze on the beauty of God and to worship Him in His special presence.

It's to feed the relationship that is the safeguard and salvation of our psychology, and the safeguard and salvation of our souls.

The Takeaway

We've really got to be up front about this, and show that understanding to our world.

Things that hinder people from doing that are obstructions to the knowledge and the salvation of God ... 

How are we distracting and locking people out ... and what do we need to do to sort this out?

Let us know what YOU think in the contact form below.

Thought for the Day 23/03/21 - How do you 'process' pandemic?

AUDIO

You know it's serious when they roll out the Archbishop, and today he was on Radio 4.

'Go on Welby ... we'll give you three minutes ... now make us all feel better about death and mayhem!'

Well, fair play to the man, he didn't make the terrible mess he seemed to've been set up for.

You see, today is National Pandemic Memorial Day.

But is memorial really the way to process a pandemic?

Well, it may feel like about all we've got left!

Today in the UK we recognise and remember 4.3 million cases detected of COVID and 126,000 registered  deaths. 

Hard to compute the sorrow

It was back on the 26th. January as the UK passed the 100,000 deaths milestone that Prime Minister Johnson told the Downing Street Press Conference "  that it was "hard to compute the sorrow contained in this grim statistic".

Two months later we are 26,000 deaths on from there, and it's not computing but processing that is our issue ... and Archbishop Welby calls on us to lament.

I think we've been there already for a while, don't you?

Lamenting

Now in the Bible, lament is not lamentable ... it turns out to be quite positive.

Welby quoted Psalm 137:1 "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

    when we remembered Zion."

Remembering is part of the process ... remembering what we've lost and not repressing the sorrow.

But notice what the Israelites are lamenting the loss of ... it's Zion ... the city of meeting with God:

"How can we sing the songs of the Lord

    while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
    may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
    my highest joy."

                                          Psalm 137:4-6

Remembering a reflecting is part of the process, but what they missed was the worship of God in the place He'd appointed to meet with His people.

And that was part of their understanding of the world ... when things turned bad they had for ages been taught to turn back in their affliction to God ...

Remembering and reflecting were precursors ... the necessary first steps ... which led to turning back to seeking their God. 

Remembrance and reflection led to repentance, and in response to that LAST one God stepped into their situation and healed their land.

Remembrance and reflection come first, but ...

 It's repentance that sorts out the grief

It's a lesson that the Israelites spent a long time in their history learning.

In another time of national calamity, King Jehoshaphat remembers and reflects on that history as he leads his people in repentance towards God:

"Our God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it for ever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? 

They have lived in it and have built in it a sanctuary for your Name, saying, 

“If calamity comes upon us, 

whether the sword of judgment, 

or plague or famine, 

we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your Name 

and will cry out to you in our distress, 

and you will hear us and save us.”

                                                     2 Chronicles 20:7-9

The Point

A day of Remembrance recalls from where we have fallen.

A Day of Reflection simply shines back at ourselves the image of what we look like now.

A Day of Repentance takes us on to sort out our situation and seek solutions from God, the One Who historically has redeemed and saved His people out of all of their trouble and they direct their steps back into His ways.

That last bit seems to be the bit we are missing.

The turning back to God, crying out to HIM in our distress, and seeing His salvation ... that bit.

Ah yes, many are saying: 'It's not that bad, don't be so miserable ... we've got a vaccine!'

Yes that's good! I've had my vaccine and I'm glad of it! But already vaccine-resistant variants are emerging, and that's not being negative, that's simply the scientific reality we've got to deal with.

Let's remember the point made in Revelation 9 where after terrible calamities had happened:

 "The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; 

they did not stop worshipping 

• demons, and 
• 
  
• idols of gold,
• 
  
• silver, 
• 
  
• bronze, 
• 
  
• stone 
• 
  
• and wood 

– idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

Nor did they repent of 

• their murders, 
• 
  
• their magic arts, 
• 
  
• their sexual immorality or 
• 
  
• their thefts." 

                                  Revelation 9:20-21

Of course, nothing like that to repent of for us here today ... is there?

(Did you spot my tongue then as it slipped into my cheek?)

The Takeaway

It is GOOD to process the trauma of the last year by holding a day of reflection and remembrance.

It is painful but its' function must be to expose the scale of our problem.

To stop short after remembrance and reflection ... to stop short of the repentance that leads on to restoration ... would be to waste the opportunity that the situation affords us.

And that's why (and you may not have heard of this) a small group of people, unknown personally to me, have called today for a Day of Prayer and Fasting ... a tangible act of return and repentance towards God.

You'll find practical help with this in the BIBLE, and in books like THIS one and also this one from our friend Jeremy Marshall HERE.

And if we can be praying for or with you about anything raised here, please reach out to us on the contact form below.

Thought for the Day 22/03/21 - What will you do with confusion?

AUDIO

Yesterday I had the responsibility of filling in the 2021 UK Census.

It was quite an insight to see what sort of questions they wanted the answers to!

They wanted to know all sorts of things about my private life ... but the 'religion' question just asked me what tribe I belonged to and that was about it.

I'm certainly not going to get answers to the questions I have about the spiritual condition of the UK from THAT! 

There was nothing about what you actually believed, and nothing about the difference it makes, it just said 'are you Christian?'

As a culture it's hard not to think, then, that we are confused in a crisis of misunderstanding. No wonder our Government makes things hard for Christian BELIEVERS without even seeing it! 

It makes you wonder, doesn't it, what on earth God is doing here at the moment?

Confused in a crisis of misunderstanding

And then last night I read Paul's exhortations and encouragements to the suffering church in Thessalonica ... doing well under the circumstances, but the persecution they were going through was intense. 

They had lost believers who had died and the circumstances were such that they were left wondering: 'What on earth is God doing here ... ?!'

People in their culture with big questions like that (and they hadn't been Christians for long so their past habits were still quite strong) would just go off to see an augurer or an enchanter to get an 'answer'.

Paul says 'hang on, that ain't the way!'

He keeps it simple and says in our Verse for the Day what to do ...

                                    " pray continually"

1 Thessalonians 5:17

That's it - that's the whole verse!

Now, it's not unusual when a person is struck with a sudden fright to try to remember 'a prayer'.

That's not what the Apostle is talking about here. 

Talking to God like your Father

This is about the speaking with the Lord that is the way Christians relate to Him, not addressing the Divine as if He was a public meeting!

Here's the basis for doing that in the Bible's faith:

The Thessalonians believers' sin had been forgiven when they'd turned from sin to trust Christ ... that's the way it is for all actual Christians and there's no box for that on the Census form.

So the personal separation that sin puts between people and God is now dealt with. 

As a consequence the Thessalonians (and all real believers - not just the ones who tick 'Christian' on the census form) both 

know God and 

sustain an on-going personal relationship with Him ... 

and that relationship happens through prayer.

It is not about forms, patterns and rituals. 

Paul is simply talking about relating to God.

The antidote to confusion and augury

Of course, life as a human in a fallen world can be confusing (that's an understatement).

But there are ways of tackling that which deliver, and ones that don't (of course, we realise that).

The Christian antidote to augury is a relationship of thankfulness and faith in the One Who  holds the past and the future in His hands.

So to these confused, persecuted believers who HAVE trusted in Christ but are shaken by their experiences, the Apostle Paul says 'pray without faltering'.

In fact, this is part of a list of three things here about how to handle it when God's actions confuse us.

Paul writes in these three verses:

• Always rejoice
  
  
• Don't falter in praying
  
  
• Give thanks in all circumstances

And then Paul gives the reason why for all three actions: 

"for THIS is God's will for you in Christ Jesus"

                                     1 Thessalonians 5:18

You want to know what's going on? 

God is fulfilling His plans and purposes for His people ... don't go running after augurers to give you some kind of shallow answer! 

THIS HERE is God's will for you in Christ Jesus!

The Point

Given the sin-wrecked state of things on this planet, and given the way we are not as clever or as insightful as God, we may well experience temporal confusion as things happen to us that we don't understand.

Paul's message is clear: 

Don't go running off to whatever kind of modern 'witch doctor' takes your fancy to tell you what's going on ... God knows the why and the wherefore, not THEM!

The will of God for you is that you live with Him by faith and trusting Him, do these things that your God gives you reason for:

"Always rejoice, 

constantly pray, 

in everything give thanks. 

For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."

                            1 Thessalonians 5:17-18

Remember there was someone who once wisely said: 

'Those who walk with God will always arrive safe at their destination'.

The Takeaway

Faith trusts God because of what it believes and because faith puts its' daily trust in Him.

Do not go running for answers, says Paul, but rejoice, pray and give thanks to the One Who has hold of the outcomes, and crafts them for the good of His people.

And it is 

• the regular, not just daily but HABITUAL rejoicing in God even when everything else but God is crummy, 
  
  
• the not just daily but throughout the day not flagging in speaking with and relating to Him along the way and 
  
  
• the not just regular but reflex action of giving thanks in everything that God brings to you

which exercises, strengthens and safeguards faith ... which is what saves you.

Don't go running after your augurers!