Things can only get better?

For my birthday this year I was given, amongst other lovely things, a book about the Clapham Sect entitled - imaginatively - The Clapham Sect. There's been quite a lot going on in the two weeks since I received it but I have managed to read the first three or four chapters and the thing that has struck me most forcefully is the fact that as a nation Britain still faces many of the social, economic and (whisper it) moral issues that were prevalent two hundred years ago, a observation reinforced by an article I read in The Economist this morning.

Backwards and forwards

This is essentially my 2011 Christmas newsletter to go in my Christmas cards - you lucky, lucky people!!


Looking back over the last couple of years I think it's fair to say that having lived a pretty settled life for over thirty years (gulp!) my more recent past has been anything but!

Since May 2009 I've moved from London to Leicester to take up a job that only lasted nine months then worked for a Christian mission agency for almost two years before being made redundant during one of the most severe economic downturns in living memory. My initial forays into job-hunting have suggested that I'll find it very difficult to find a new job that will genuinely use the skills and experience I've accumulated over the last ten years or so, and as a result I've had to give up my flat since it's likely that I will be unemployed for a while.

Happy Christmas everybody!!

However, at the moment I'm feeling remarkably positive about the whole situation, although I'm aware that could change significantly over the next few months.

The plan, such as there is, involves a rent-free move to a friend's vicarage for a few months, working in a local shop one day a week, doing a little piano teaching and working through some redundancy coaching. I will also be looking at some strategic volunteering opportunities and coming up with some projects to help me work out what I want to do more permanently. Oh, and I might even look for a job...

Realistically, I think 2012 will be another tough year, full of opportunities and challenges, choices and decisions. I suspect there will be no easy answers and no clear way forward. If you're a pray-er, I'd be really grateful if you'd pray for wisdom and discernment, and for the ability to communicate well with others (particularly my family).

Have a great Christmas and an extraordinary 2012!

Value-added

Reflecting on some of the reaction I've had to recent blog posts I thought some mention of values would be helpful, not least because it's these values that will shape a lot of the praying, imagining, creating and planning that I intend to do over the next few months. They're the values that, if I have the courage, will influence my decisions about a new job, or responding to opportunities that open up.

A few years ago, while I was on the Arrow Leadership Programme, I was told to write a personal vision statement, a document which outline the values and people which were important to me and the ways in which I intended to invest in and prioritise these areas. I found it impossible. With the benefit of quite a lot of hindsight I've concluded that this was simply because I struggled to get my head around the suggested formats we were encouraged to work with, rather than because I have no values or people that are important to me!

But an interesting thing has happened in the time since Arrow. Through a fairly subconscious process of reflection, plus opportunities to explore my Myers Briggs profile, I've got to a point where I can now identify what I would consider to be my four core values. They are (drum roll please):

Relationship
Community
Transformation
Celebration

That's all I'm going to say about them for now, but I hope sharing them will begin to make sense of some of the other things I've written about recently, both for me and for you!

Risk-taking behaviour

There's one really important thing you should know about me - I don't do vulnerable. By this I mean that I really struggle to share the deeply personal stuff about myself with others, even those I've known for a long time and would trust with my life. It drives my sisters mental.

One of the unhelpful by-products of this trait (and I'm aware there are many) is the fact that I'm not very good at telling others about the interesting or creative ideas I have from time to time. Because I don't tell anyone else about what I'm working on it means that when I get bored, or decide an idea wouldn't work anyway, it's very easy to give up because no-one's in a position to hold me accountable. It makes for quite an easy life really - very few risks are taken and the failure rate stays assuringly low.

But my current state of underemployment has moved the goal posts a bit. I'm very quickly realising that I'm going to find it tricky to get anyone else to pay me to do a fulfilling job which leaves me with two basic options. The first is to get an unfulfilling job. The second is to create for myself the kind of employment I'd actually enjoy.

Not only is the second of those two options by far the riskier economically, it would also require me to face my struggle with vulnerability head on. It means risking people thinking I'm not operating in the real world, that I'm not being responsible. It means having to tell people my thoughts and ideas. It means risking the possibility that people think my ideas have merit, that I should pursue them. It means that people might ask me how I'm getting on and wondering why I haven't achieved what I set out to do. And who knows where it could end?

Light in the darkness

November is a dark month, with the reality of short days and long nights starts to kick in. But over the last few years the darkness of November seems to have become much more personal.

For my family there are some significant anniversaries which fall in November, and this weekend is particularly painful. It's a time that prompts tough questions which seem to have no useful answers. At times the darkness can feel almost overwhelming.

But today also marks the start of Advent, the time when, for hundreds of years, Christians have entered a time of waiting and preparation for Christmas. The first chapter of John's gospel talks of Jesus not as a baby, which tends to be our default at this time of year, but as 'the light of men'. John's 'Advent' was less about looking forward to a birth and more about announcing that 'the light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world'.

This weekend that Advent promise has a dual significance. Jesus has stepped into the world to bring the light of hope and comfort to those close to me who are grieving and I pray that they will be aware of that today. But he also comes to offer that same hope to everyone, whatever the darkness they face.

Grand Designs?

I'm a closet Grand Designs fan. I'm not particularly into architecture or buildings, and I have no desire to build my own home. But I love seeing the way people think creatively about how and where they live, and there's nothing like a good story of triumph against the odds.

But more recently I've found Grand Designs a pretty unsettling programme to watch. Against a background of world-wide recession and increasing austerity I've found that the financial excesses of people often driven by an almost obsessive but frequently unconscious desire to make some kind of statement has left me with a fairly unpleasant taste in my mouth.

The example of this I've found most difficult came with a build re-visited in the currently series. Roger Gaukroger's decision to build in the Lake District was motivated by the fact that as a child growing up he and his family had never had somewhere they could really call home. But rather than choosing to create a modest, comfortable house, he designed an enormous building several times larger than the three-bedroom dwelling which already stood on the plot. Even at the outset he only had funding for 25% of the projected cost, and as the build descended into chaos Roger was threatened with bankruptcy and had to seriously consider putting the far-from-finished house on the market.

Although the project was eventually completed and the Gaukrogers were able to move in, Roger ended up with debts he would never be able to pay off therefore leaving his children to inherit not a home but a burden of financial responsibility that completely undermined the whole reason for building.

Interestingly, while Kevin McLeod and, by extension, the programme's producers, are happy to affirm or criticise the choices made by participants around ethical building materials, conservation issues and investing in local or specialist craftsmanship, they seem unwilling to challenge financial choices beyond asking leading questions about budgets and borrowing.

However, this week's episode has restored some of my faith in the Grand Designs raison d'etre! In another re-visit Kevin returned to Cumbria to visit Alan Dawson, a master steel worker who had spent over twenty years creating a new prefabricated building system. With his steel works under threat from the financial crisis he chose to commission his own team to build his house with the dual aim of keeping them in employment and essentially using the building as a showcase for the ailing firm and its craftspeople.

Clearly this approach had significant risks but it seemed to me that these were genuinely motivated by a sense of responsibility for the welfare of others, and a willingness to think imaginatively about strategies for sustaining a business in challenging times.

Unfortunately the business didn't survive but a new and wholly unexpected twist underpinned the almost pastoral element of this project. The newly patented approach to construction had attracted a lot of attention, including catching the eye of a New Zealand designer who had seen the potential for the system to form the basis of new earth-quake resistant buildings. His plan was to take the system back to Christchurch to explore its potential in contributing to rebuilding the city after this year's destruction.

Now that really is a grand design.

Money-making Opportunity 1: Mince Pies

Anyone who's read any of my Facebook statuses this week will know that there has been much talk of mince pies. I've always enjoyed baking - one of my earliest memories is being up to my elbow in eggs, sugar, butter and flour, making fairy cakes with Mum. In fact, my kitchen experience was so dominated by sponge cakes that I got to university and suddenly realised I couldn't actually cook anything useful. Like dinner. (It's tempting to digress here and tell you a story about the day I made a lasagne with red wine vinegar instead of red wine, but that can wait.)

A few years ago, back from uni (having mastered the art of the lasagne) and living at home, I decided I would attempt to master Christmas baking. Mince pies seemed a fairly obvious place to start, and Mum had a recipe so on I cracked. From that first batch I was hooked.

Last year saw another breakthrough as I embraced homemade mincemeat. I had always assumed that mincemeat must be really hard to make or why would you buy it? Mum dug me out another recipe and I was staggered to discover that essentially you stick a load of dried fruit, sugar, suet and fruit juice in a bowl and...er, well, that's about it! Give it a mix, cook it on a low heat, add some brandy and job's a good'un.

So that means that my homemade mince pies are now 100% homemade. Which is nice.

It also means that, provided you shop around, you can essentially have a fair trade option, something you'd be hard pushed to find in a supermarket. In fact, I've discovered it's actually pretty tricky to find fair trade dried fruit in supermarkets, but fortunately Leicester has a great little fair trade shop, Just, in the city centre which stocks a basic range of food products. I know thinking ethically about food almost inevitably costs more, but I find it difficult to justify not paying a little extra when the impact on the life of someone else could be so profound as a result. And, if I'm honest, not to take the ethical option at Christmas seems to me to undermine the whole reason Jesus came in the first place.

Last Tuesday I left my job and we decided to have afternoon tea in the office to say goodbye. I thought I'd make my first batch of mince pies for the occasion and was absolutely blown away by the reception they got. The next day on Facebook an innocent request for suggestions of things I could do with my new-found spare time led to a series of requests - some serious, some not so - for me to make mince pies for people and today I've had my first firm order!

Now, let's be honest. It would be almost impossible to actually make money from what is essentially a luxury product with a very small seasonal window. But I'm thinking that even if they just keep my hand in and give me something productive to focus on, and I don't end up out of pocket, there's nothing to lose!

When watching Jeremy Kyle is not an option

So, unemployment has finally hit. Well, not total unemployment, in fairness - I still have a one-day-a-week job in a local shop but seven hours a week at £6.08 an hour isn't going to pay the rent.

I'm obviously doing proper job-hunting - seems only right. I'm also just about to start a six-session course of redundancy coaching which I'm hoping is going to change my life and set me off in a new and inspiring direction.

But I'm also thinking about whether there's any scope to earn money through some of the skills and experience I have in other areas. So I thought I'd share some ideas and see what people think. Some have more merit than others, some would be far too much like hard work. But one or two might have potential. Possibly. Who knows?!

Behind the tinted window

Yesterday, as I drove away from work for the last time, I thought about Mother Superior's words to Maria in The Sound Of Music:

When God closes a door he opens a window.

Now one obviously needs to be a little bit careful about finding theological truths in Hollywood, but I think she's got a point. The challenge I feel like I'm facing at the moment is that God's window not only appears to be shut, but tinted; I can see the window but I can't even see what's behind it, let alone climb through it.

Godly perspective or excuse for failure?

I have a job interview on Tuesday for a chaplaincy role in a school. It’s the kind of job that I’ve not done before but connects on many levels with my experience and passions and when I’ve told people about it they’ve been enormously encouraging and affirming and tell me it would be a great fit for me and a brilliant opportunity.

Then I tell them there are seven candidates so the chances of me ending up with the job are slim. Anyone who’s dragged themselves through GCSE Maths will confirm that this is a statistically accurate statement.

However, four times in the last two days, this statistically accurate statement has prompted the response, ‘well, if it’s God will for you to get the job, then you’ll get the job’ or variations on that response.

I’ve been surprised at how I’ve felt about these well-intended comments. They’ve come from mature Christians and I’ve made the same comment myself many, many times, but this time they’ve got my back up a little bit. The simple fact is that I worked really hard on my application. And I worked really hard to get the experience to write about in my application. On a human level, I’ve been short-listed for the job because I’m a good candidate and because I communicate well on paper. Interestingly, nobody said, when I told them I was doing the application, ‘well, if it’s God’s will for you to get an interview, you’ll get an interview’. There was an implicit acknowledgement that in order to get an interview you have to put the work in.

So why does that not seem to translate to this next phase in the same way? Why, when I’ve told people that I’m one of seven candidates, has no-one said ‘well, you’ll just have to prepare really well for the interview’? The fact is that if I get this job it'll be because I’m the best candidate. And I’d like to think that God cares enough about this school and these young people for it to be his will that the best candidate gets the job.

Clearly at this point we start to creep into the murky waters of defining ‘best candidate’, and it’s maybe at this point that the issue of God’s intervention starts to make sense; God’s idea of ‘best’ in this context might be very different to that of the interview panel. The last two years have taught me that far more reguarly than is comfortable life simply doesn't work out in the way we expect. So the 'best' candidate might someone who doesn't seem to fit a role in the way the panel anticipates but their apparently odd decision is vindicated down the line by a turn of events or development opportunity that was impossible to predict at the time of the interview. So in a context like this where the panel is made up of Christians I'd like to think that during the day on Tuesday each of those individuals will be asking God to show them his best candidate, and for them to have the courage to act on what they discern as a result.

So does that mean I can just roll up for the interview armed with nothing but the gift of the gab and wearing something dragged from the back of the wardrobe hastily ironed? Of course not. But it worries me that the 'if it's God will...' approach can lead to at best a naivety and at worst an arrogance that gives me permission to take no responsibility for my choices.

The irony of this situation is, of course, the fact that I believe that if God wants me to get this job, I will. I believe that because I've seen God come through for me in some amazing ways in the past, and he has a funny way of knowing what I need better than I do. But I also believe that this is a two-way thing and he can only use what I give him to use. And, frankly, I want my contribution to be the best it can be.

Ignorance is bliss

Seven or eight years ago I'd never really given much thought to the arms trade, except, perhaps, as the activity of some dastardly Bond villian, later brought down by 007 in the name of Queen and Country.

But then again eight years ago I wasn't living in Custom House. I'd never been to the Garden Community Cafe or met Bill and Eve Perry. And I'd never heard of Defence and Security Exhibition International (DSEi).

DSEi, more often refered to simply as the arms fair, has come to the ExCel Centre in the London Borough of Newham every other September since 2001. In fact, the first ExCel arms fair opened on September 11. Yes, that September 11.

The arms fair is, essentially, a trade fair for weapons manufacturers. Proper weapons. Warships. Tanks. And, yes, I have seen them myself.

For the four-day duration of the arms fair there are warships moored in the docks. These are the same docks that were heavily bombed during World War 2. During the 2007 fair, I took part in a silent vigil at the ExCel Centre. It was a powerful experience, not least because of the police presence. And the tank on display just outside the entrance.

I realise war is a complicated thing. I understand that there are times when it might be necessary to use force against an oppressive regime. But that doesn't give us an excuse to be uninformed.

I didn't know about the arms fair until I moved to Newham, but now I do and I think you should too. Whether you choose to tell anyone else about it is entirely up to you.

Tiding me over

There have been a number of points over the last few years when I've wished I had a skill or hobby that was easy to turn into a little business. Not a global empire, just a side project that brings in enough to tide me over in the times when I can't find someone else to employ me.

We all know that there's no such thing as a job for life anymore, but I wonder whether we've really started to understand the implications of that for the way we view work and employment. No more jobs for life obviously means more people spending a greater proportion of their working lives either looking for work or unemployed, economic downturn or no. But perhaps it also means more people looking for 'side projects', a greater willingness to just having a go because there's nothing to lose.

So while I look for 'proper' jobs I'm also thinking about what my side project might be. Suggestions?

To be (paid) or not to be (paid)

I’m just starting to do some hands-on youth work after eighteen months of a kind of self-imposed exile. I feel a bit like I’ve been in youth work rehab and I’m making my first faltering steps back into a once-familiar world.

OK, so that’s perhaps a little dramatic, but the basic gist is sound – I used to do loads of work with young people, for the last year and a half I’ve done almost none, and now I’m starting to get my hands dirty again.

The thing that’s different this time, though, is that I’m doing it as a volunteer, after over ten years of being employed by churches, sometimes paid, sometimes not (and, yes, I think there’s a significant difference between being an unpaid employee and a volunteer).

It’s proving to be an enlightening experience.

I realise that since I’m not volunteering in the same churches as I was employed the comparison is not a completely true one, but the experience so far has been striking all the same. It’s got me thinking about the similarities and differences between being an employee and being a volunteer and how those dynamics have developed, particularly in the context of church-based youth work. I’m intrigued by the fact that at the same time that I’ve all but decided not to go back into employed full-time church-based youth work (at least for the immediate future), I’m enthusiastically embracing new opportunities to get involved as a volunteer. That suggests to me that any issues I might have with church-based youth work aren’t fundamentally rooted in a dislike of either young people or church.

I'd do anything

One of my abiding memories of secondary school is being regularly told, usually in assembly, that I was capable of doing anything I wanted. Sometimes the message was clear and unambiguous, sometimes it was implicit, but I left school with a clear understanding that the world was my oyster and all I had to do was decide what world-changing endeavour I would undertake.

Actually, I don't think that message is really true. In fact, I'd go as far as to suggest that buying into that message can lead to analysis paralysis and crippling disappointment.

Incidentally, those same assemblies also made it clear that 'us girls' could do anything a man could do, and usually better. I suspect that message isn't really true either, at least not in that simplistic a form.

In the last year or so I've learnt a number of important lessons, possibly the most valuable of which is that there's something incredibly liberating about recognising the things I'm not very good at. I don't mean that self-depreciating thing I do where I suggest there's something I struggle with in the hope that someone will turn round and tell me I'm actually brilliant at it; I mean the things I genuinely can't do, that others are far better at than me, that I make a complete hash of and someone else can do in their sleep.

When it comes to looking at jobs I'm starting to realise that understanding I can't do everything is actually far more useful than thinking I can do anything. It means I'm much more realistic about the kind of jobs I'm willing to invest time and energy in exploring, and much quicker to write off things that look good on paper but I know I would either never get (again, I'm being realistic, not self-depreciating!) or I could get but which would cause both me and others a whole world of pain.

Next!

So, I've become a victim of the global downturn. At some point between now and Christmas I'll finish work and be back in the job market. For the third time in three years.

Challenging times.

I'm being asked, with ever-increasing regularity, what I'm planning to do next, and the truth is that I don't know. I'm very aware that I've learnt a huge amount about myself in the last three years, and I'm starting to feel like I'm up for a bit of a challenge. That in itself is something of a miracle as this time last year that, frankly, was the last thing I was looking for.

My first priority? Ending well. My second? Finding the courage to embrace what's next, whatever that might be.

The nature of justice

I've surprised even myself with how strongly I've reacted against the idea that on Sunday Osama Bin Laden was "brought to justice".

I condemn utterly the atrocities that have been perpetrated under his leadership over the last two decades for which he should - and will, before God - be held to account. However, his death in a firefight in a fortified house in Pakistan doesn't conform to my understanding of justice.

Interestingly, I don't think my response is particularly shaped by my faith, although it is clearly informed by godly principles such as a belief in the sanctity of human life. I suspect it's due more to living under a judicial system which doesn't consider death to be an appropriate punishment for any crime, no matter how heinous.

My understanding of the British legal system, limited as it is, tells me that every defendant has the right to a fair trial - the opportunity to state their case in a court of law, to explain their motives and their actions, and to be judged accordingly, no matter what crime they have been accused of.

I'm not naive enough to think that this system is foolproof, that the innocent are always acquitted and the guilty always punished. However, I think the outcry over the proposed introduction of 40-day detention for terrorist suspects tabled by the last government in response to the London Bombings in 2005 speaks volumes about the British view of the nature of justice, particularly in relation to terrorism.

I also concede that holding Osama Bin Laden to account under this kind of system would be fraught with difficulties, although the fact that the international community has established a war crimes tribunal speaks volumes about a universal understanding of how justice should, and can, be done.

A weekend of simple pleasures

Waking up without the help of an alarm clock...four hours gardening in beautiful spring sunshine...American pancakes, crispy bacon and proper Candanian maple syrup...examining tulips at close quarters...bathtime with Nate, Jemima, Char and lots of bubbles...sleepy cuddles...skyping with Char, Jess and Ali...toast and chocolate spread...blowing the bed down...walking round the village with people from church...homemade hot cross buns.

Because I'm worth it

The idea of communicating with God is a funny old concept really, when you think about it. There's God - all-knowing, all-powerful, creator of the universe, outside of time. And then there's me - feel free to contribute a list of appropriate adjectives!

The point is, it's a slightly unequal exchange. There's really very little I can contribute to a conversation since he already knows what I'm going to say before I say it. And while there are a few things I'm moderately good at - playing the piano, listening, making macaroni cheese - even those pale into insignificance when you consider that those abilities came from God in the first place and all I really did was practise a bit. Mostly against my will.

And yet the staggering thing is the despite the vast difference in intellect, creativity and imagination, God seems to think I'm worth hanging out with. You couldn't make it up.

Church in a bubble

One of the interesting things about getting involved in a new church is the process of finding out how the church functions and what its priorities are. I’m really enjoying being part of a small village congregation with a tangible sense of community but I’m also beginning to see how this can all too easily lead to a highly individualised approach to faith and a lack of engagement in the wider world.

Last Sunday I was struck by the fact that despite the news being full of the momentous and historic events unfolding in the Arab world there was no mention of these in the service at all. The irony is that the theme of the sermon was the freedom from oppression that comes from the power of God at work – an allusion to the (largely) peaceful overthrow of an oppressive regime in Egypt two weeks ago would have been timely and appropriate, and yet it never came. Nor did we pray for those situations, in either abstract or specific terms.

Over the last few years I've learnt to appreciate the Anglican approach to prayer, particularly intercessory prayer, or prayer for others. I'm sure this must be due, in some part, to being the state church - an Empire church, indeed, for some part of the last five hundred years - and that must give you something of a global perspective. The other irony is, of course, that my church has a long-standing commitment to the work of oversees missionaries which means they clearly realise what happens in the village on a Sunday impacts the other side of the world. But I wonder whether somehow that's remained a purely spiritual dynamic, divorced from social and political realities.

A couple of weeks ago I was leading staff prayers at work and was reminded of the quote attributed to the theologian Karl Barth – “Read with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other”. While it’s obviously entirely appropriate to spend time in corporate worship reflecting on areas in which we need to grow and mature in our individual walks with God, it’s also vital that we acknowledge that we live in a world which needs to be shaped by the grace and compassion of God and to engage as a community with the responsibility we have to be part of that process.

It's fair to say that I struggled a little bit with church on Sunday but I'm very much aware that if I want to see things change, I have to take responsibility for making change happen and not just blog about my frustrations!

Living in the grey

Today I had the incredible privilege of meeting a miracle baby. Simon Peter, now eighteen months old, was born at 25 weeks (around three months premature) weighing 2lbs, to my cousin and his wife. Having a baby three months early must be a terrifying experience, whatever your circumstances but at the time Ben and Anna were living on a remote island in the South Pacific with only a small hospital and no specialist neo-natal care faciliaties. The first few hours of Simon's life were spent being airlifted to Australia and the next few weeks in intensive care.

Against all the odds, Simon is now a healthy toddler - walking, attempting to talk, engaged and engaging. This afternoon I sat on the floor with him and pushed a truck around and enjoyed the simple satisfaction that comes from making a small child laugh.

But this morning on the news I heard that Amanda Holden had lost her baby, stillborn at seven months. You don't have to be a mum to understand just a little of the pain and devastation that a loss like that would induce.

Why should one couple experience the miracle survival of a baby born three months early in the middle of nowhere while another suffers the devastating loss of a child surrounded by some of the best medical care in the world?

My experience of growing in relationship with a God of love, compassion and grace is starting to teach me that there are no simple answers to a question like that, and yet there seems to be something hard-wired into our humanity that desperately longs for a formula, a certainty with which to counter this kind of earth-shattering loss. Maybe this means, as uncomfortable as it might be, that we have more in common with Job's friends than we'd like to admit.

The problem, of course, is that to reduce suffering to a black-and-white issue of cause-and-effect - that a righteous life leads to blessing and an unrighteous one to punishment, or any other pat response that Christians have a painful tendency to trot out at inopportune moments - actually does both us and God the disservice of reducing him to a remote, disinterested entity who commands our obedience rather than desiring relationship.

I'm not interested in living in relationship with a God who can be reduced to something I can fully understand - what on earth would be the point of that? But if I'm willing to allow God to exist outside of the limits of my comprehension, I also have to be willing to embrace the grey, and to keep asking "Why?" without any real expectation of ever fully understanding the answer.

As Job says, "Who are we to tell God how to run his affairs? He's dealing with matters that are way over our heads."

Powerful yet Godly

Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, 3 Feb 2011

It's 25mins worth investing, but if you don't have the time (or inclination), here's the transcript:


Thank you so much. To the co-chairs, Jeff and Ann; to all the members of Congress who are here, the distinguished guests who’ve traveled so far to be here this morning; to Randall for your wonderful stories and powerful prayer; to all who are here providing testimony, thank you so much for having me and Michelle here. We are blessed to be here.

I want to begin by just saying a word to Mark Kelly, who’s here. We have been praying for Mark’s wife, Gabby Giffords, for many days now. But I want Gabby and Mark and their entire family to know that we are with them for the long haul, and God is with them for the long haul. (Applause.)

And even as we pray for Gabby in the aftermath of a tragedy here at home, we're also mindful of the violence that we're now seeing in the Middle East, and we pray that the violence in Egypt will end and that the rights and aspirations of the Egyptian people will be realized and that a better day will dawn over Egypt and throughout the world.

For almost 60 years, going back to President Eisenhower, this gathering has been attended by our President. It’s a tradition that I'm proud to uphold not only as a fellow believer but as an elected leader whose entry into public service was actually through the church. This may come as a surprise, for as some of you know, I did not come from a particularly religious family. My father, who I barely knew -- I only met once for a month in my entire life -- was said to be a non-believer throughout his life.

My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas -- sometimes. And yet my mother was also one of the most spiritual people that I ever knew. She was somebody who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play.

And it’s because of her that I came to understand the equal worth of all men and all women, and the imperatives of an ethical life and the necessity to act on your beliefs. And it’s because of her example and guidance that despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing my earliest inspirations for a life of service ended up being the faith leaders of the civil rights movement.

There was, of course, Martin Luther King and the Baptist leaders, the ways in which they helped those who had been subjugated to make a way out of no way, and transform a nation through the force of love. But there were also Catholic leaders like Father Theodore Heshburg, and Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Muslim leaders and Hindu leaders. Their call to fix what was broken in our world, a call rooted in faith, is what led me just a few years out of college to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago. And it was through that experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior. (Applause.)

Now, that was over 20 years ago. And like all of us, my faith journey has had its twists and turns. It hasn’t always been a straight line. I have thanked God for the joys of parenthood and Michelle’s willingness to put up with me. (Laughter.) In the wake of failures and disappointments I've questioned what God had in store for me and been reminded that God’s plans for us may not always match our own short-sighted desires.

And let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith. (Laughter and applause.) The presidency has a funny way of making a person feel the need to pray. (Laughter.) Abe Lincoln said, as many of you know, “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.” (Laughter.)

Fortunately, I'm not alone in my prayers. Pastor friends like Joel Hunter and T.D. Jakes come over to the Oval Office every once in a while to pray with me and pray for the nation. The chapel at Camp David has provided consistent respite and fellowship. The director of our Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership’s office, Joshua DuBois -- young minister himself -- he starts my morning off with meditations from Scripture.

Most of all, I've got friends around the country -- some who I know, some who I don’t know, but I know their friends who are out there praying for me. One of them is an old friend named Kaye Wilson. In our family we call her Momma Kaye. And she happens to be Malia and Sasha’s godmother. And she has organized prayer circles for me all around the country. She started small with her own Bible study group, but once I started running for President and she heard what they were saying about me on cable, she felt the need to pray harder. (Laughter.) By the time I was elected President, she says, “I just couldn’t keep up on my own.” (Laughter.) “I was having to pray eight, nine times a day just for you.” (Laughter.) So she enlisted help from around the country.

It’s also comforting to know that people are praying for you who don’t always agree with you. Tom Coburn, for example, is here. He is not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. We came into the Senate at the same time. Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God. And I keep praying that God will show him the light and he will vote with me once in a while. (Laughter.) It’s going to happen, Tom. (Laughter.) A ray of light is going to beam down. (Laughter.)

My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years. All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God. “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

As I travel across the country folks often ask me what is it that I pray for. And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general: Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office. Sometimes they’re specific: Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance -- (laughter) -- where there will be boys. (Laughter.) Lord, have that skirt get longer as she travels to that dance. (Laughter.)

But while I petition God for a whole range of things, there are a few common themes that do recur. The first category of prayer comes out of the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that one day the world will be turned right side up and everything will return as it should be. But until that day, we're called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.

We've seen a lot of hardship these past two years. Not a day passes when I don't get a letter from somebody or meet someone who’s out of work or lost their home or without health care. The story Randall told about his father -- that's a story that a whole lot of Americans have gone through over these past couple of years.

Sometimes I can't help right away. Sometimes what I can do to try to improve the economy or to curb foreclosures or to help deal with the health care system -- sometimes it seems so distant and so remote, so profoundly inadequate to the enormity of the need. And it is my faith, then, that biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed. It’s faith that reminds me that despite being just one very imperfect man, I can still help whoever I can, however I can, wherever I can, for as long as I can, and that somehow God will buttress these efforts.

It also helps to know that none of us are alone in answering this call. It’s being taken up each and every day by so many of you -- back home, your churches, your temples and synagogues, your fellow congregants -- so many faith groups across this great country of ours.

I came upon a group recently called “charity: water,” a group that supports clean water projects overseas. This is a project that was started by a former nightclub promoter named Scott Harrison who grew weary of living only for himself and feeling like he wasn’t following Christ as well as he should.

And because of Scott’s good work, “charity: water” has helped 1.7 million people get access to clean water. And in the next 10 years, he plans to make clean water accessible to a hundred million more. That’s the kind of promoting we need more of, and that’s the kind of faith that moves mountains. And there’s stories like that scattered across this room of people who’ve taken it upon themselves to make a difference.

Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government. And that’s why my administration has taken a fresh look at the way we organize with faith groups, the way we work with faith groups through our Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

And through that office, we’re expanding the way faith groups can partner with our government. We’re helping them feed more kids who otherwise would go hungry. We’re helping fatherhood groups get dads the support they need to be there for their children. We’re working with non-profits to improve the lives of people around the world. And we’re doing it in ways that are aligned with our constitutional principles. And in this work, we intend to expand it in the days ahead, rooted in the notions of partnership and justice and the imperatives to help the poor.

Of course there are some needs that require more resources than faith groups have at their disposal. There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need -- all those who need help making a mortgage payment, or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college. There’s only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster. There’s only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need.

And that's why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.

Over the past two years, the nature of these obligations, the proper role of government has obviously been the subject of enormous controversy. And the debates have been fierce as one side’s version of compassion and community may be interpreted by the other side as an oppressive and irresponsible expansion of the state or an unacceptable restriction on individual freedom.

That's why a second recurring theme in my prayers is a prayer for humility. Now, God answered this prayer for me early on by having me marry Michelle. (Laughter and applause.) Because whether it’s reminding me of a chore undone, or questioning the wisdom of watching my third football game in a row on Sunday, she keeps me humble. (Laughter.)

But in this life of politics when debates have become so bitterly polarized, and changes in the media lead so many of us just to listen to those who reinforce our existing biases, it’s useful to go back to Scripture to remind ourselves that none of has all the answers -- none of us, no matter what our political party or our station in life.

The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands. And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend. As it’s written in Job, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways. He does great things beyond our understandings.”

The challenge I find then is to balance this uncertainty, this humility, with the need to fight for deeply held convictions, to be open to other points of view but firm in our core principles. And I pray for this wisdom every day.

I pray that God will show me and all of us the limits of our understanding, and open our ears and our hearts to our brothers and sisters with different points of view; that such reminders of our shared hopes and our shared dreams and our shared limitations as children of God will reveal the way forward that we can travel together.

And the last recurring theme, one that binds all prayers together, is that I might walk closer with God and make that walk my first and most important task.

In our own lives it’s easy to be consumed by our daily worries and our daily concerns. And it is even easier at a time when everybody is busy, everybody is stressed, and everybody -- our culture is obsessed with wealth and power and celebrity. And often it takes a brush with hardship or tragedy to shake us out of that, to remind us of what matters most.

We see an aging parent wither under a long illness, or we lose a daughter or a husband in Afghanistan, we watch a gunman open fire in a supermarket -- and we remember how fleeting life can be. And we ask ourselves how have we treated others, whether we’ve told our family and friends how much we love them. And it’s in these moments, when we feel most intensely our mortality and our own flaws and the sins of the world, that we most desperately seek to touch the face of God.

So my prayer this morning is that we might seek His face not only in those moments, but each and every day; that every day as we go through the hustle and bustle of our lives, whether it’s in Washington or Hollywood or anywhere in between, that we might every so often rise above the here and now, and kneel before the Eternal; that we might remember, Kaye, the fact that those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint.

When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people. And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will.

I say these prayers hoping they will be answered, and I say these prayers knowing that I must work and must sacrifice and must serve to see them answered. But I also say these prayers knowing that the act of prayer itself is a source of strength. It’s a reminder that our time on Earth is not just about us; that when we open ourselves to the possibility that God might have a larger purpose for our lives, there’s a chance that somehow, in ways that we may never fully know, God will use us well.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this country that we love. (Applause.)

Who needs enemies?

The book of Job is one of those parts of the Bible that for me blows out of the water any possibility of reducing God and the potential for a relationship with him down to a few easy-to-grasp theories of cause-and-effect.

A man who’s lived a pretty decent life gets unwittingly involved in a – I hesitate to use the word “competition”, but that’s how it seems – between God and Satan over whether men worship God only because they’ve been blessed by him. God gives Satan the freedom to destroy everything that Job owns – his property, livestock, family and health – and then they wait to see how Job will respond.

Job’s life falls apart in the first two chapters of the book and the remaining forty are a rich, deep and emotional exploration of who God is and how and why he acts.

Chapter 2 ends so well. Hearing about the catalogue of disasters, three friends travel to be with Job and:

They sat with him on the ground. Seven days and night they sat there without saying a word. They could see how rotten he felt, how deeply he was suffering. The Message

What follows is a conversation that’s been repeated over and over through the course of human history. One man tries to reconcile his understanding of who God is with his personal experience while well-meaning observers try to shoe-horn that same experience into the confines of a clearly defined, simple to grasp system of belief. It’s never going to work.

Don't retreat, reload

Don't panic - I haven't become a card-carrying member of the Tea Party, the Sarah Palin Fan Club (I hope there isn't one) or the NRA. This afternoon I arrived in Swanwick, Derbyshire for the bi-annual Arrow Reloaded conference, four days of teaching, worship, reflection, socialising, networking, blah, blah, blah and etc.

Actually, I'm really looking forward to it. I took part in the Arrow leadership programme about four years ago and haven't quite been the same since. The programme aims to equip those involved in Christian leadership to "be led more by Jesus, to lead more like Jesus, to lead more to Jesus" (and, yes, that was off the top of my head and I didn't have to scrabble around in my delegate pack to find the vision statement).

I'm aware that I find myself in a slightly interesting position coming into the conference. All through Arrow itself I was employed as a fulltime church-based youth worker, so figuring out how what I was learning applied to my work context wasn't particularly difficult (although working it out in practice very definitely was...). On the first Arrow Reloaded, back in January 2009 I was coming to the end of my time in London and preparing to head off to a new youth work role in Leicestershire, so while I knew the specifics of my circumstances were changing, the wider context of working with young people within a church and a community would stay pretty much the same.

However.

It's now January 2011 and life looks very different for me at the moment. Although I still work in a Christian context, it's for a mission agency (ironically the one which runs Arrow!). And not only am I not employed as a youth worker, I actually have no leadership role within a local church community.

I suspect that the way in which I engage with that set of circumstances will play a fairly major role in how much or how little I get out of these four days. For a start, I'm aware that there are pastoral options available to me here that could enable me to work through some of the challenging events of the last couple of years - if I have the courage to draw meaningfully on those opportunities, I think I might leave here far better equipped to face all that the next few weeks and months may hold than I am as I arrive.

I also want to make the most of the people around me - the key note speaker (who, going by tonight's introductory session, is likely to be phenomenal), those I went through Arrow with but who I don't get to see much, and old and significant friends.

And I'm looking forward to time out - although with a programme this packed, that might turn out to be a vain hope!

My life in football

The role of women in football has been headline news for the last week, so I just thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and share some of my own experiences…

Let’s be honest – on the face of it I’m probably one of the least likely women you’d ever expect to find involved in football. I grew up reading and playing the piano, usually to be found laying on my bed with a book or being chauffeured around by my long-suffering parents to perform in some kind of concert. Equally, while I don’t object to getting muddy, I’d rather it was the result of pottering in the garden rather than stand on a touchline on a freezing Saturday afternoon in January.

However, despite being the oldest of four girls, early pointers to a slow-burning interest in football can be found as far back as 1976, when I left hospital at ten days old, resplendent in a claret and blue hat, scarf, gloves and booties set lovingly knitted by my paternal grandma. And then there was the Christmas when I got my claret and blue bike, painstakingly re-sprayed by my dad. Let's be frank - he might have been the only man in a houseful of women, but he was a master of the use of subliminal messages.

My introduction to football itself was, however, a little less promising. I have two particular memories. The first is being taken to watch my dad play for the church football team, the second spending Sunday afternoons with my grandparents in the days when you could watch football on "proper" telly, and being utterly disinterested in the tiny black and white figures hoofing a ball about.

My actual playing career lasted for approximately two training sessions at primary school when I was eleven, having acquired a cast-off pair of boots from my cousin. I suspect I simply decided football required too much running around and, frankly, I'd rather read a book, which I still consider a wise and discerning conclusion.

I think the turning point came, somewhat unimaginatively, during Italia 1990. We didn't have a TV at the time, but a family down the road would let us watch theirs whilst cat-sitting. I can't now remember why I even starting watching the England games with Dad but by the end of the tournament I was hooked.

But it was still some time before I went to my first professional football match. I discovered during my time at university that Dad had started taking my two youngest sisters to Crystal Palace. Back in London one holiday, I found myself heading to Selhurst Park for a league game against Charlton. I don't think I'd ever experienced anything quite like it - the walk to the ground from the bus stop within a sea of red and blue, the noise, the electric atmosphere. I think Charlton scored early, held on for most of the game and then conceded an equaliser a few minutes from the end, but in the context of my footballing journey the result was academic.

Since that time I've been to many more football matches, mostly at Upton Park, Dad's allegience to West Ham finally rubbing off on at least three of his four daughters. (The fourth is married to a Leicester City fan and therefore feels compelled to maintain a degree of impartiality.) But that's quite enough for one day...

RnR

I've got myself a little bit out of synch with my readings over the last week or so, but the pay-off has been that I've ended up reading big chunks of the Old Testament at a time.

One of the things that's hit me in a new and pretty vivid way (partly because I'm reading The Message which, I think, helps with the sense of reading a story) is just how messed up most of those key Genesis characters are!

I'm just working my way through the story of Joseph. It's very familiar - the technicolour dreamcoat, the well, Potiphar, Potiphar's wife, prison, the cup bearer, the baker, Pharaoh, seven years of plenty, seven years of famine. And right there I hit the first problem. It's familiar. I know the key players. I can recite you the dreams.

Re-reading the story, I'm aware that it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the events of Joseph's life happened in fairly quick succession over a short period of time - I guess that's the danger of packing all that action into a few short chapters. But the reality is that he must have been separated from his family - particularly from his father and his younger brother - for years, first in Potiphar's house (clearly for a chunk of time, but Genesis seems hazy on the details), then in prison (for at least two years, since that's the gap between the cup bearer and baker's dreams, and Pharaoh's dream), then serving in Pharaoh's household (for at least nine years before his brothers turn up). I make that eleven years at the very outside.

That's a long time in which to think about the injustice done to you by your older brothers. When those same brothers turn up after over a decade begging for food, it's not surprising Joseph gets pretty emotional on at least three separate occasions - I imagine there was a fairly combustible mix of joy, anger, relief and regret that surfaced during the course of that protracted reconnection and reconciliation with his family.

I guess the thing I find so amazing about this story is that during those years of estrangement, Joseph doesn't allow the bitterness and resentment to take root and destroy him. Instead, he's able to see God at work in all that he's experienced as well as being willing to step up and take responsibility for those things within his control, so that when his brothers finally stand in front of him and unwittingly fulfil the prophecy they ridiculed all those years before, Joseph is able to embrace them with a compassion and grace borne out of a deep understanding that "you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good".

Totally wire(less)ed

I'm very aware that since Christmas I've been playing the "I only have an ancient PC which is really slow and a pain in the bum" card as my reason for not blogging more regularly, despite (in my head at least) having lots of interesting thoughts to share.

However, thanks to my parents (Dad for doing the donkey work, Mum for putting up the cash) I have a beautifully restored laptop, complete with wireless internet, in my possession. This clearly means I no longer have any excuse not to blog with impunity, so we'll soon see whether the lack of laptop was just a euphemism for "I can't be bothered".

Week 3

Day 15
OT: Genesis 31:1-55
NT: Matthew 12:1-21
Psalm 9:13-20

Day 16
OT: Genesis 32:1-33:20
NT: Matthew 12:22-45
Proverbs 2:1-11

Day 17
OT: Genesis 34:1-35:29
NT: Matthew 12:46-13:17
Psalm 10:1-11

Day 18
OT: Genesis 36:1-37:36
NT: Matthew 13:18-55
Psalm 10:12-18

Day 19
OT: Genesis 38:1-39:23
NT: Matthew 13:36-58
Psalm 11;1-7

Day 20
OT: Genesis 40:1-41:40
NT: Matthew 14:1-21
Proverbs 2:12-22

Day 21
OT: Genesis 41:41-42:38
NT: Matthew 14:22-15:9
Psalm 12:1-8


This reading plan is taken from The Pocket Bible In One Year, OM Publishing

Week 2

Day 8
OT: Genesis 17:1-18:33
NT: Matthew 6:25-7:23
Proverbs 1:8-19

Day 9
OT: Genesis 19:1-20:18
NT: Matthew 7:24-8:22
Psalm 7:1-9

Day 10
OT: Genesis 21:1-23:20
NT: Matthew 8:23-9:13
Psalm 7:10-17

Day 11
OT: Genesis 24:1-67
NT: Matthew 9:14-38
Psalm 8:1-9

Day 12
OT: Genesis 25:1-26:35
NT: Matthew 10:1-31
Proverbs 1:20-33

Day 13
OT: Genesis 27:1-28:22
NT: Matthew 10:32-11:15
Psalm 9:1-6

Day 14
OT: Genesis 29:1-30:43
NT: Matthew 11:16-30
Psalm 9:7-12


This reading plan is taken from The Pocket Bible In One Year, OM Publishing

Week 1

Day 1
OT: Genesis 1:1-2:17
NT: Matthew 1:1-25
Psalm 1:1-6

Day 2
OT: Genesis 2:18-4:16
NT: Matthew 2:1-18
Psalm 2:1-12

Day 3
OT: Genesis 4:17-6:22
NT: Matthew 2:19
Psalm 3:1-8

Day 4
OT: Genesis 7:1-9:17
NT: Matthew 4:1-22
Proverbs 1:1-7

Day 5
OT: Genesis 9:18-11:9
NT: Matthew 4:23-5:20
Psalm 4:1-8

Day 6
OT: Genesis 11:10-13:18
NT: Matthew 5:21-42
Psalm 5:1-12

Day 7
OT: Genesis 14:1-16:16
NT: Matthew 5:43-6:24
Psalm 6:1-10


This reading plan is taken from The Pocket Bible In One Year, OM Publishing

The Bigger Picture

Unfashionable as such a position might be, I think the Bible's a rather interesting book. There are a few books that I come back to over and over again - Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice (hmm, do we see a theme emerging?!), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - but the one real ever-present for the last thirty-odd years has been the Bible.

I feel I need to qualify that statement, though! While I'm generally pretty good at engaging with the Bible on a regular basis, please note I didn't write "reading the Bible every day" - the two are very different! And like most other people who've grown up with the Bible there are bits I know far better than others, concepts that have been more formational and stories that have been more captivating.

In recent years I've found Tom Wright's For Everyone translation and commentaries particularly helpful, but I felt it was time to try something a little more systematic and longer term than I have for a while. The catalyst was discovering that 2011 is the 400th anniversary of the King James (Authorised Version) of the Bible and I decided that if I value the Bible as one of the primary ways of engaging with God then what better way to mark the anniversary than to read the whole lot!

We live surrounded by stories - real life stories like the one I read yesterday about an Australian teenager caught in the floods in Brisbane who told rescuers to save his younger brother and come back for him but was swept to his death before they had the opportunity; fictional ones like Harry Potter which for reasons almost beyond comprehension grab the imagination of a whole generation. There are individual stories and stories of whole nations. Many of these stories are trying to make sense of the world and of human experience. And, bottom line, that's what the Bible's about too.

So my challenge to myself this year is to engage with this ancient meta-narrative, this over-arching account of why we're here. But I'd love to be able to chat what I'm reading over with others. My plan is to post the Bible passages for each day up here, a week at a time - how about reading along and posting your comments? Maybe it's been a while since you read the Bible. Maybe you've never read it, but have wondered whether it might have something interesting to say. If you don't think you could manage reading the whole lot, why not just do the New Testament readings? And if you don't have a Bible handy, check out Bible Gateway - just put the passage into the search box, choose your translation (I'm reading The Message but whatever works for you!) and get reading!

New Year's Resolutions

There's something fairly arbitrary about New Year's resolutions. In fact - let's be honest - there's something pretty arbitrary about New Year full stop. Jan 1 is no different from Dec 31, 2011 no different from 2010, and yet every year we mark the passing of one year and the beginning of another with an enthusiasm which can border on the ridiculous.

Why?

I think there's something inherent in human nature which means we need moments at which we stop, reflect and make decisions to change. Sometimes these moments are created by circumstance - that was my experience in 2010 - but I think there's something about New Year which provides a rhythm for taking stock. It gives us an opportunity to draw a line under those things we'd rather not take with us into the future and a tangible springboard into a world of new possibilities.

Before Christmas I mentioned two resolutions I was planning to have a crack at in 2011 - to read the entire Bible in a year and to avoid shopping in a Big Four supermarket during January. You'll be delighted, I'm sure, to hear that so far both resolutions are on track, although I'm glad I didn't commit to reading my Bible every day - that would be a whole different ball game!

I'll be blogging about both resolutions over the next few weeks (and months, with any luck!) but I'm aware that these kinds of things are much easier to do with other people. Are you up for it?

Story

I fully intend to get back into the swing of blogging this week, but in the interim here's the Archbishop of Canterbury's New Year address which provides a little bit of context for my decision to read the whole Bible in 2011.

Perhaps someone some time has said to you that you shouldn't hide your light under a bushel. Or told you to set your house in order. Maybe you only survived a certain situation by the skin of your teeth. Perhaps it's time you listened to the still small voice within.

All those everyday phrases come from one source – a book whose four hundredth anniversary we celebrate this coming year, the King James Bible – or the Authorised Version as it's sometimes called. It wasn't the first Bible in English by any means. But for all sorts of reasons it got into the bloodstream of the people of this country.

The language it was written in wasn't ever quite the sort of language people spoke in their daily lives, even four hundred years ago. But its rhythms are exceptionally memorable, and its stories can still move and even shock us.

Things move on but it's good for us to have some long-lasting furniture in our minds, words and images that have something a bit mysterious about them and that carry important experiences for us that we can't find words of our own for. And when we try to make sense of our lives and of who we really are, it helps to have a strongly-defined story, a big picture of some kind in the background. As the King James Bible took hold of the imaginations of millions of people in the English-speaking world, it gave them just that – a big picture, a story in which their lives made sense.

It was the story of a world broken and out of control - but still a world God loved fiercely; the story of God promising to be there for the people he had made, in good times and bad; of his promise being kept in the most dramatic way you could think of, when God himself lives a human life in Jesus Christ. And woven into all this were the records of how individuals – very like us in their confusions and failings – had got caught up in this great story of God's promises, and how it had changed them.

So reading the King James Bible told you that your life story was set within the biggest of pictures, the story of the whole universe.

Four hundred years on, that can feel quite remote. You may be the sort of person who feels that you can make sense of your own story in your own terms. Or you may feel that there's only one big story and that's about money and whether I've got a job tomorrow or whether my children can afford higher education.

But the trouble is that we so often don't have the kind of big picture that simply tells us that we matter, never mind what happens, that tells us there is something quite outside ourselves that can eventually make sense of things – even if, like some of the writers of the Bible, specially the Psalms, there are moments where all we can do is shout out in protest.

Whether you're a Christian or belong to another religion or whether you have nothing you'd want to calla religion at all, some kind of big picture matters. If we 're going to talk about a 'big society', that'll need a big picture, a picture of what human beings are really like and why they're so unique and precious. This year's anniversary is a chance to stop and think about the big picture – and to celebrate the astonishing contribution made by that book four hundred years ago.

May the New Year be a time to discover something of this vision in your life; a time to discover more of the meaning of another of the King James Bible's great words – the 'loving kindness' we all need to give and to receive. A very happy New Year to you all.

© Rowan Williams 2010

Happy New Year!