Tag: commuting

Doing God in public

Sara BattsLeave a comment

Recent(ish) tweets on the Bible Society’s Take your Bible to Work Day (October 25th) started me thinking about what I do and don’t do in public. In the past I’ve happily read a Bible on my train journey to work and then scribbled in a prayer journal. Now I’m using an iPhone, I don’t carry a Bible with me – no need, when it’s all there on the phone. I do generally have a copy of Cover to Cover notes with me, though, and I am a fan of PAYG to listen to.

So some days I use the commute time and some days I don’t. The thing that stops me more often than anything isn’t a general concern about being seen to Do God in public. Rather, it’s my attitude when I get on the train – if I’ve not been the most patient person waiting for a seat, or I’ve had to jostle for elbow space. Somehow I never quite feel I can then whip the notes out and read today’s passage or listen to the day’s PAYG – I’d feel way too hypocritical. One of the first days I walked to work listening to PAYG I started it just as I left the train. Walking towards the ticket barriers, I listened hard and felt very holy. Got to the barrier, was held up by someone faffing, made the kind of disapproving noise that sounds like Muttley swearing. Laughed out loud as I thought to myself that I probably ought to start that particular prayerful meditation again once I was out of the station…

Religious writers

Sara BattsLeave a comment

I was given a set of Bible reading notes recently – New Daylight. I keep referring to it accidentally as Living Daylight, but that is another issue all together. They seem OK, but I have a couple of issues with some of the daily notes.

Firstly, some are a bit thin on theology/ instruction/ education. Don’t get me wrong, when I’m reading these on the 08:00 from Colchester I don’t always want a lesson in Greek or Hebrew. It would be nice, though, if the notes went a bit deeper into the text. Each day only has about 400 words, so this is a tall order, I know, but sometimes it feels as if we merely skim the surface with a nice story to illusrate the point. It’s like the start of a sermon, the joky bit at the beginning, but without the actual meat of the message.

Secondly, and this really does make me cross –  if the writer only has 400 words, should they waste space on stories about their life? I nearly threw the book out the window after a few days when the writer spent a paragraph telling me about their sunny vicarage, toddler and au pair. Is that really a good use of space? Is that really a God-inspired piece of writing?

Who is writing for the rest of us? Who is writing for people who don’t have ‘perfect’ lives? Who don’t feel particularly blessed in their circumstances, whose faith is sustained not by a joyful sense of wonderful God-given things but by a grim determination not to turn away from a God we don’t understand? Let’s call ourselves the Psalm 13ists. Let’s rise up against glib proclamations. Let’s band together and write about life from the bottom of the spiritual valley, not from the glorious mountain top. And in doing so, we might encourage the poorer, the transient, the doubters, the kind of people who sit at the back of a church and wonder what on earth these people are getting that they are not.