How many times can I be born?

No, I'm not talking about reincarnation. I'm talking about those people who call themselves born again Christians and can sometimes seem rather obnoxious.

"Yes, I'm a Christian."

"But are you born again?"

"I'm a Christian, what are you talking about?"

The truth is, that we can't actually be Christians without being born again. When Jesus talked to Nicodemus about this, Nicodemus pointed out that we can't physically be born again, so Jesus explained that this was a spiritual matter. (John's Gospel, chapter 3, verses 1 - 21)

As babies, we are born into humankind, the humankind that rebelled against God. As a consequence, we are born with bodies, minds and souls that are all functioning, but our spirits are not awake to God. That part of us still has to be birthed. Until that happens, we are not aware of God: we don't hear him, probably don't talk to him; we see our lives as the sum of our health, family, interests and jobs, but probably not as God's children with a whole spiritual side to our lives. Some people are born quite in touch with the spiritual realm, but don't know the God who created the Universe and his Son, Jesus, who saved us from having to live without God, or his Holy Spirit who is willing to live in us.

We can even go to church, attend every week, sing the hymns, give an amen to the prayers, say the responses written on the the service sheet or in the prayer book, take communion, recite the creed, even read out the prayer of confession and accept absolution. We might have been baptized as babies and chosen to be confirmed (or told by our parents that we were going to do that), but not know God. We can understand a lot about him, but not have a personal relationship with him. For that we need to be born again.

Being born of the Spirit lets us live free like the wind.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that we have to be born of water and the Spirit to enter Heaven. The Jews knew about being born of water, which, apart from physical birth, was also very topical because of the stir that John the Baptist had created, baptizing huge numbers of people in the River Jordan as a sign of their repentance. Jesus, though, added being born of the Spirit. He said that flesh gives birth to flesh - our parents give us our bodies - but our spirits have to be born from Spirit. We need to repent, turn away from our past lives, be baptized as a sign of accepting Jesus Christ as our saviour, and be filled with the Holy Spirit, who sets our spirits alive to God. The change is remarkable when we open our spirits to God and allow him to fill us. A whole spiritual realm is opened to us and our lives change accordingly - it causes us to feel truly alive in a way that nothing else can.

If we've been used to our lives being defined by our health, family, interests and job, then suddenly the lid comes off and our lives are defined spiritually, in line with what God wants for us. Jesus put it like this: "The wind blows where it wants; you hear it, but don't know where it comes from, or where it goes. It's like that for everyone born of the Spirit." (John's Gospel, chapter 3, verse 8, my paraphrase) That doesn't sound like business as usual to me.

What's your perspective?

Irene and I went to the Lincolnshire Wolds for a bit of time out and to pray. We found a lovely spot near the top of a ridge with amazing views to the west of Lincoln city, the cathedral standing proudly on its hill, and Boston in the southeast, dominated by the tower of the Stump. There was a vast panorama in between, over the fens, across to the Norfolk hills and Lincoln Edge, taking in Newark, Grantham and Spalding, even Stamford. We had packed a picnic and sat in the boot to eat it, looking down at the road, the nettles in the verge, and the hedge behind it. After several minutes we realized that we had gone there to be inspired by the view, which was behind us, but had spent all the time so far looking at an area stretching no more than ten feet in front of us.

We could have gone home and said that we had had a lovely time eating our picnic in a country lane with some nice blossom in the hedge, but decided instead to turn around. When we went back we could say that we had had our picnic overlooking 100 square miles or so of beautiful countryside between landmarks in several of the main towns and cities in the county, fields, hills, woods, sky - and even a country lane with hawthorn blossom and nettles.

We can go through life preoccupied by our personal issues and immediate concerns, or we can lift our minds higher and take in the bigger picture of existence. We can worry about the problems of today and tomorrow, or even yesterday, and fail to enjoy the moment we are living in, like a butterfly savouring the nectar in a flower, not knowing that it doesn't have long to live. We can allow ourselves to be confined by the details of nature and its scientific explanations, or we can open our spirits to the God who made it all from nothing. We can live in our own box of our own making, or in the expanse of life that God has given us.

Jesus knew this and told us not to worry. "Don't worry about your life or your body, or finding food or drink or clothing. Life's about more than that. Look at the birds: they don't farm and store their produce, but God feeds them. Aren't you worth more than them? And can you make your life longer by worrying? The flowers in the fields don't knit and sew, but no king rivals the splendour of their apparel. Lots of people chase after food, drink and clothes, but God knows that you need them. So chase after his kingdom and seek his righteousness; then God will meet your material needs as well. Don't worry about tomorrow; there is enough to be getting on with today." (Matthew's Gospel, chapter 6, verses 25 - 34, my paraphrase) Let's lift up our eyes and take in the big perspective, trusting God to help us fill in the details.

There's more

Comet NEOWISE

I've quite got into astrophotography. We live in an area that is much darker at night than where we previously lived in town, although surprisingly (and annoyingly) still lighter than I would have hoped. However, with the right settings the camera will capture an awful lot. Trying to get the picture above started me off, of course, and I have written about that before (but this time the photograph is my own). But I've found that there is so much more!

Getting the settings right took a few evenings of practice, but I can now both focus properly and get enough light in without too much motion of the stars elongating the images. Then turn the camera towards the Milky Way and voila!

The more you look at this picture, the more little dots you see. I'm sure that with a bit more practice I would be able to capture even more, but this is just a small portion of the Milky Way. Our whole Milky Way galaxy contains around 100 billion stars and there is about the same number of whole galaxies outside that. Everything about the Universe it is vast. But that's not all!

If I asked you how big God is and you said, "Infinite," then I would ask how you could so underestimate him. Start counting. 1, 2, 3, 4 ... Stop when you get to infinity. OK, don't bother! I would rather that you carry on reading than take time out to count for ever. Now consider all the numbers between zero and one: there are all the proper fractions (1/2, 3/7 etc) as well as those numbers like π, which cannot be written in full as a decimal, but just go on for ever and ever with more decimal places. There is actually an infinite number of numbers like this between zero and one - and that infinity is larger than the infinity associated with counting in 1s for ever, as we started to do earlier. In fact, there are mathematical ways of showing that there is an infinity of different-sized infinities. I think that's cool.

That is also about how big God is - not just as big as the number of stars in our galaxy or as big as all the stars in all the galaxies, not just infinite, but as big as an infinity of infinities. No wonder we can trust him.