Mum Overboard

It was Elias’ first day of school and my mind was set on trying to make his school trousers stay up.  As I pulled the trousers to their smallest setting and felt for that tiny clear button to hold it all together, Elias, in that nonchalant way of his asked, ‘Where is God?’  Here’s my opportunity I thought. Trousers - check.  Imparting godly wisdom - here goes. Me - ‘God is everywhere all the time.’  PAUSE  Me - It’s hard for us to understand this but we do know that God loves us. He loves us so much he sent his son Jesus to die for us.’ Son - ‘Why did Jesus die? Me - ‘Erm... because of our sin. Because we do bad things and God is perfect so we needed Jesus to cover our sin so that we could be with God.’ LONG PAUSE Son - ‘So why did he have to die?’ LONG PAUSE And there it was. Another unravelling. The trousers were up but my spiritual certainty was not. I have the answer to his question within the framework of Christianity : Jesus had to die because the cost of sin is death. God

Jon Tyson- Unsplash Whilst mindlessly scrolling through Facebook one night, I came across a post telling Chr istians off for the use of the hashtag ‘blessed’.  The post was ca lling reader s to question their privilege and not to mistake it for the blessing of Christ. I struggle with how to talk about the good things in my life.  The book of Jame s states that ‘every good and perfect thing is from above’ (1:12).  Taking this verse all by itself, one could be led to believe that my stable and secure upbringing, my education, my husband, my children, home, car and the plethora of other good things I live with are blessings.  I’ve always thought of them in this way but, knowing that many aspects of my life are drenched in white, middle-class privilege leaves me in a bit of a pickle.   Am I attributing all my stuff and status to God?  Is he in on the inequality of the world, heaping blessings and favour on privileged me and overlooking many others? My family a nd I are safe and secure; so