Monthly Archives: January 2010

Extra miler

Got in the car this morning (after sweeping out the broken glass from smashed driver’s side window – grr!) and on the radio was Australia All Over. I don’t usually get to hear this. The radio, after all, exists to broadcast cricket to the world.

Anyway, ‘Macca’ spoke of extra milers. That mums and grandmothers for years have been ‘extra milers’ and the we (on his show) love the extra milers. They’re extra dedicated, selfless, …

Does he know where it’s from? No idea. It’s worth knowing, though. Jesus said this, as recorded in Matthew 5:

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” esv

I’m sure Jesus was not on about devoted behaviour. It’s more about the higher justice that issues in mercy, the kind of justice God himself shows. But that’s a whole new posting.

How long, O Lord?

By which I means to ask, ‘For how long should we pray?’

With the title of this post, I’ve taken a powerful biblical question (see the powerful prayer for justice and comfort in Psalm 13) and twisted it to be about something different. Because that’s what I feel we do with Jesus’ words on prayer.

Jesus says:

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 6 (esv)

I confess: I know he speaks the truth, but I am forever tempted not to believe him.

I have a tendency – shared with all Christians, I think – to judge that more must be better. More impressive. More effective. This turns prayer away from relationship and into pragmatics. Here are some things I have heard:
~ ‘You should be praying for at least half an hour a day’
~ ‘You really find out what prayer is when you spend all night in prayer’
~ ‘What a great hero of faith was NN. S/he spent three hours every morning in prayer’

What’s wrong here? They forget Jesus’ warning. They measure godliness by word count. It’s not that using words in prayer is bad – words are essential. It’s just that this is not the way to make an assessment of faithfulness.

So, for me, when I seek to improve in prayerfulness I always seek to avoid simply judging how I’m going by how many phrases I manage to pile up.

Not freeway

The photos below I snapped about 100m from home. (And, at 4pm on a day of 36°C, I now recommend against the barefoot option.) The road is Albury’s internal freeway, opened in 2007, and is part of the Hume – the major transport route between Sydney and Melbourne.

Exciting, hey?

Well, perhaps exciting is not the word. Yet it is good & useful, brings more safety, etc. A road worth having.

(Another aside: this road probably enabled us to buy our house. I understand not one other offer was made on the place, with the road about the start construction. I don’t mind this road.)

Here comes the roads & rides part of this posting. There’s a tiny sign in the above photo. For your convenience, I have a separate shot of it for you. You are still welcome to visit Albury and read the sign for yourself.

You can enter the freeway at this point and ride north – which I have done – all the way to Sydney – which I have not. You can go across the river, and from there ride the whole freeway to Melbourne. That’s over 500km north, or 300km south. But the two or three kilometers which cross the Murray River? Never!

Daft.

This road a great surface, good shoulders and good visibility. The alternative cycle-way is like following Alice down the rabbit-hole. So down the rabbit-hole we go.

I have seen one rider, though: a bmx guy with no helmet. Perhaps I should have run him over to point out the dangers of this smooth piece of tar. Maybe next time.