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Two Sundays ago I finally got to listen to and meet someone that I have considered, for some time, to be one of the greatest Christian worship musicians of our era: Geoff Bullock.

If you’ve been around contemporary Christian worship music for a while, especially in Australia, you are probably familiar with his songs like ‘The Power of Your Love’, ‘You Rescued Me’, and ‘Just Let Me Say’.

Geoff is a musician who has been there, done that, had it all crash down around him… and gone on amazingly since.

Though he probably would not think that he has gone on amazingly. We found a humble man. A high achiever, coming from a family of high achievers. A great musician – I would be well pleased if I could tinkle the ivories with a tenth of his ability. And he is a brilliant song writer with a beautiful voice.

We didn’t have to pay a cent. It was in a small church in lil’ old Adelaide, and he wasn’t there just to perform, just to lead us in worship, or act as a channeling mechanism for an ultimately un-channel-able God. He was there with a genuine desire to tell his story – the story of his brokenness – just so that his story could help others.

He was honest. To me that makes this musician worth listening to.

Not power-house Christianity. Not who wields the voting power in the local congregation. Not which clique you need to belong to, to feel like you are ‘in’ the church. Not how well you have to hide your true self, or how your children need to behave, so everyone will ‘know’ that you are a mature, coping Christian.

Simply this: GRACE.

Check out more of his story of real, amazing grace at http://www.geoffbullock.com and http://geoffbullock.blogspot.com. You can also find links to some rewrites he has made to old favourites like ‘Just Let Me Say’, and ‘Refresh My Heart’.

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I just realised that the Apostle Paul (then called Saul) was a third culture kid!

I have been doing Perspectives, and this week we were musing over how the Good News was eventually poured out to all people. After a couple of weeks of feeling I fit in with the rest of the class, I was changing my mind – people were talking about things I didn’t quite sync with, and I was feeling awfully presumptuous to even think I had anything to offer in this group. Yes, it was my old companion, social disconnectedness, and I was dreading its increase. Then – wham! I realised Paul was a TCK.

Borrowing heavily from the course’s Study Guide:

Paul had been exposed to at least three different cultures:

i. Greek: Tarsus, his home town, had a Greek university, he was fluent in the Greek language and familiar with Greek philosophy and poets.

ii. Roman: He was a Roman citizen and lived under Roman occupation.

iii. Hebrew: His parents were Jews and he was brought up to be a Pharisee (Acts 22:2)

He may well have known four languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin.

Tarsus was then in Syria (now in Turkey). On a map it looks reasonably close to Jerusalem. However, in those days, they would have been worlds apart in terms of language, culture, and just plain world-view.

Wow!! How heart-warming to think that God chose a third culture kid to be part of his band of apostles.

God’s story’s amazing!

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that Paul may not have been a Third Culture Kid by the traditional definition of one. Were his parents permanent migrants to Tarsus? Did he experience high mobility during his childhood years? I need to do some digging around (when I have time) to find the answers to these questions. One thing is certain, he was a Cross-Cultural Kid.

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Warning: this post contains strong religious sentiments that could offend some and overt sentiment which could offend others!

I have a secret to tell you: I like hymns. There – it’s out! But don’t judge me too harshly. It’s all because of a childhood isolated from pop culture. The hymns of my parents have stood through my faith’s formation.

One hymn in particular runs through the thousand changes in my life. I can remember the first time we met.

It was about twenty-five years ago, in a church in the north of England. The minister was enthusiastic as he introduced a new hymn from their new hymnal. It spoke of God making peace with us, giving our lives hope – now and in the future.

My mother loved it. When we returned to our African home she looked it up in a Baptist Hymnal that a friend had supplied. I learned to play it. The hymn spoke of God and His unfailing goodness.

The hymn book returned to our birth country with us. The hymn spoke of God providing for every need we would have – even when we couldn’t see it happening.

When I arrived in Australia I found that our family favourite was listed as one of the most-loved hymns of all time. It speaks of how God alone is constant, totally dependable in any situation. My family still sing it at significant birthdays and anniversaries.

It was sung in churches after the tsunami came and killed thousands. My birth country was one of the hardest hit. It was surreal because our first child, half-Sri-Lankan, was born the morning after. The hymn was sung again last month after Black Saturday’s bush-fires.

My father died two weeks before those fires. We sang the hymn at his funeral. It is testament to that single Thread that ran through his life: many-coloured but importantly, scarlet. It ran from birth to manhood, old age and death: a life stretched across three very different continents.

The hymn is?

If you live in the U.S. or Canada, visit Hope Publishing to view the lyrics.

If you don’t, they have been reproduced by permission at Lee Marshall Music.

Note that copyright of this hymn is held by Hope Publishing, and it cannot be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from the copyright holder.

If you’re after a bit of background on the hymn, try www.hymnary.org.

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Warning: I am mounting my little soap-box. If you have strong views on Christmas, you may find this post objectionable!

My childhood Christmases below the Sahara were low-key. Four people singing carols around a tiny Casio keyboard. A small prayer-time. Eating my mother’s ‘paal-choru’ (milk rice). Exchanging visits with expatriate neighbours, mostly non-Christian. Hardly any Christmas decorations. Inexpensive gifts exchanged between families – perhaps a box of chocolates for some Christmas cake. It is possible my memory is playing tricks on me, but I am fairly certain that if I was given a gift, it was for my birthday – not Christmas. I remember reading books about Christmases overseas, longing for that opulent glow.

I now live in a city where that opulence is easy to create. How incongruous that here many find Christmas difficult. Budgets, already strained, crack under the weight of Christmas trappings. We try to capture something we once had, or longed to have. For those who have lost loved ones, grief is keener at Christmas. The pain of a broken family is more intense, as children miss out on Christmas with one, or both, parents. We feel disconnected from society in some way – lonely.

As I chat with people, loneliness is named most often as the reason why people find Christmas difficult.

It’s easy to say lonely people have the wrong perspective. Let’s look deeper. Our letter-boxes contain sales catalogues with jewellery that lovers can exchange for Christmas, spa packages for couples, and menus for the family roast. We walk into shopping centres filled with people rushing, pushing, bumping, focused on making their Christmas perfect. Around the corner are pictures of starry-eyed children singing Christmas carols. The television airs movies about love, and families. Everything seems geared up to tell those feeling they have not, how much they are missing out on.

If we are using this time to celebrate Christ’s birth: let’s get with it! Christmas is not about the ‘haves’, it’s a celebration for the ‘have-nots’. If we could transport ourselves to Jesus’ birth, what would we find? A poor family. A conservative society. The shame of an unwanted pregnancy. The prospect of being stoned to death. Whispers of illegitimacy that would haunt the child for life. A heavily pregnant girl enduring a long, bumpy journey on a donkey. Ending in that incredibly painful exercise called ‘giving birth’ – not at home, not even in hired lodgings, but in an uncomfortable cattle-shelter, in a strange town. So poor, so lonely, there was no bed to lay the tiny newborn – just a cattle-trough. Then suddenly turning into refugees fleeing a ruthless leader. Culminating, some thirty years later, in a torturous, humiliating death.

All for what?

In my humble opinion, so God could come for the have-nots.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the presents, food, and starry-eyed children – but they are so fleeting, and don’t make people immune to pain. We all nod wisely and agree that it’s not about the gifts. At the risk of sounding blasphemous, Christmas is not even about family! Neither is it about getting together with like-minded folks. If God had decided to hang out only with agreeable heavenly beings, where would we all be?

What do we really need to celebrate Christmas?

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Here are two pre-Christmas posts that I found thought-provoking.

What is it about Christmas that makes loneliness deeper and harder to cope with? Sindhu has written about a big city Christmas, away from home:

http://sindhujamanohar.blogspot.com/
2008/12/turning-around-not-so-merry-christmas.html

At The Link Between, Jody has written an excellent post on consumerism, apt at this time of year. One of the quotes she uses is, ‘do rich Christians really know the poor?’

http://thelinkbetween.wordpress.com/
2008/11/23/consumerism-and-middle-ground/