The Weapon Of Our Warfare

My friend Joe got married yesterday.

I had the privilege of being able to attend, it was a beautiful service. Having been to quite a few weddings in the previous twelve months, Joe and Jessica had organised a wedding service that would have managed to surprise even the most experienced wedding crasher.

The service took place in a church in central London that had been standing for over 300 years. Sure, things had been amended inside due to repairs required over the years, but there was a sense of history that hit you as you walked through the doors.

The music and singing was great, and there was something absolutely revolutionary that in central London on a Saturday afternoon, where most other people are out worshipping at the altars of high street shops, football grounds or entertainment, a bunch of people were chosing to focus on someone bigger than themselves.

It was also great to see some old friends at the service and to catch up.

I'd been to a wedding where the bride and groom had taken communion after the vows, but the whole congregation shared in the eucharist yesterday afternoon. It seems such an obvious and simple thing to do, but it put the focus for me back on the most outstanding act of love and sacrifice in history. Joe and Jessica have it sussed that their love is possible because of a bigger act of love on Jesus's behalf.

One of the stained glass windows of the church contained a picture of a shield with a number of symbols on it. I couldn't make them all out, so the full significance was probably lost on me. But I was struck by the sentence underneath it.

It read: The weapon of our warfare.

My first glance was to see it negatively, but as I watched and listened to Joe and Jessica make their commitment to each under under that slogan, I came to a renewed realisation.

The weapon we have is love.

And I wondered if I was more effective at loving people, what difference would that make to the battles and warfare I encounter on a daily basis. The answer that resounded in my head was a simple and obvious one. A lot.

And if all of us committed to wield love and grace rather than weapons of hate, it could change the world.

twentyeight

So, I've officially survived what the NME describe as 'the year of rock and roll death'. That is to say, such rock luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain all died aged 27.

Whereas I do have rock music preferences, I hardly epitomise the lifestyle of rock and roll excess, so perhaps it's not surprising that I'm still here as I embark on my 29th year.

The thing that bothers me about my birthday today is those named above had already established their legacy to music at the time of their death. However, I am not a rock icon but a mere mortal. I long to have some kind of lasting impact on the world with my life but quite a lot of the time am not even sure what direction I am headed in, let alone what my legacy to this world will be.

Have I become the kind of person I didn't want to become ten years ago? I worry that I've morphed into a man who is a slave to work and less and less capable of creating a lasting and beneficial effect on the lives of those around him.

Maybe I'm just in a melancholy mood because I'm getting older.

But maybe I'm onto something and need to take the chance to make a change before I get to a point where the opening for that change has long gone.

Court

I had to go to court this week.

Naturally, I didn't do my preparation beforehand and ended up getting hopelesly lost and muddled up on the streets of Salisbury. Not being used to going to court, I had made sure that I was relatively smartly dressed so that when I went into the court they didn't throw me out of the building. So I found myself a long way from where I should have been, rain driving into my eyes and wind threatening to blow me into the path of oncoming traffic, suited and booted and trying to stop total strangers to ask for directions.

I noticed than when you stop people in the street to ask for directions to the court, there is an immediate change in their body language. There is a flash of panic across their eyes and you can practically see the speech bubble above their head form and the following thoughts take shape.
'Why does he need to go to court? Is he a criminal? Why else would he be smartly dressed unless he was trying to avoid the consequences of some heinous crime?!'

Without wishing to encourage accusations of paranoia, it did appear that the handful of people I made contact with whilst on my adventure to find the court all reacted negatively towards me. If they had known the full story, that I was headed to court to make final arrangements for a divorce and not to be sentenced for a criminal act, would they have reacted differently? Maybe. But their reactions made me feel like a criminal and I didn't enjoy feeling like an outcast as I finally began to trudge in the right direction towards the court.

The experience has made me acutely aware of the judgements that I make of people based on snippets of information and not the full story. And even then, it's not my job to judge people.

Thinking of this on the train home, I found myself once again astounded at the concept that Jesus encountered some of the most undesirable people in the eyes of the society he was born into. He knew all about their stories, and yet looked beyond all those circumstances and refused to judge them. He didn't treat them like criminals, but as friends. And rather than offering them a short shrift to keep them away, he extended an offer of life.

Not a life defined by how badly you had done or what mistakes you had made up to that point.

But new life.

A new life with him.