A different person or a different approach?

I have been struggling again, nothing overly serious like previous which is great, more a little ticking of annoyance.

Whenever I sit with my cousin and chat about different things, especially my problems, being great and very understanding she always says the same annoying sentence to me "Have you prayed about it?" This time I have already been praying and what popped into my head on this instance is Daniel.

He questioned and pondered over why God didn't seem to be answering his prayers, within this quandary though, he prayed for around 20 days. Yet the more he prayed and the more he tried to get closer to God and follow the correct path nothing seemed to happen. He eventually heard from God through a vision and was comforted and rest assured in his faith. Daniel had to obviously wait, wait for the right time. This for me was a clear reminder that there is often a battle being fought that we're not always aware of, again reminding me of a tapestry, a perfect tapestry with a mess of threads on one side and a beautiful piece of work on the other.

There is often an attitude that because you have faith that everything is perfect in your life, or at least that everything should be perfect, I mean come on we have God on our side. Any Christian will know this pretence of good luck, love, happiness and wealth that is meant to follow a happy Christian, so if that is the case why oh why do we try to prove this myth when we are struggling? Why do we put on a brave face?

We should acknowledge, even in the hardest and darkest points, that we know that God will and has used these horrible situations to teach, show me more about who I am, who He wants us to be. I f we truly want to refine our character then we need to stop trying to do things under our own stubborn nature and strength.

We get dragged through these troubles sometimes kicking and screaming even of it is difficult to see whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down. Just because we are clueless in the dark, at time actually putting our hands out and feeling around, we still need to trust that everything good is happening for me and for His glory.

People close to another person struggling sees that this person is giving up and hiding. They see that the person in front of them has changed, usually through their "Christian mask" of keeping it together. From my experience though it seems to be more that for that person if it is out of sight then it is out of mind, if it isn't spoken about then therefore I don't need to live up to the truth.

When we are struggling we must remember to trust God. We might think that we are looking at the mess of our lives, a mess of threads, but take a minute to think of the tapestry on the other side, the side that God sees. We know through James 1:12 and Job 5:17 to name only a few examples that perseverance is shown and rewarded. Constantly question, are you getting closer to the world and its fears or closer to God?

Put your trust and faith in Him today, refresh if needed and find peace that settles us in our souls.

Building Bridges not Barriers

50 years ago, this August, Martin Luther King Jr spoke his world famous words, within one of the most awe inspiring and well known speeches of the 20th Century. Using the captivating words of what he dreamed he ushered in the hope of freedom for all people, freeing them of all racial prejudice. His dream became reality, with nations following suit. However within that there are and will be some barriers put in place, through peoples assumptions, memories of holding onto wrongs and prejudice of any body, race, creed, sexuality or disability.

Nevertheless we still see this happening, even half a centaury later we still see prejudice. People may be shocked to see it written like this but the truth is that law can stop and eliminate discrimination through prejudice, but realistically the power automatically becomes powerless when dealing with prejudice rather than discrimination, for the above reason I listed.

Is it possibly to eliminate the prejudice in people rather than just create laws preventing discrimination?

The truth is that we are all prejudice to one form or another.

Being Disabled, I have met discrimination an awful lot, sad as it. I could tell you story after story of how I have been targeted due to my disability, but I wont. I will only give you two examples, with each showing a different form of discrimination that a young disabled man has had to put up with.

Story 1: One of my best Friends and I decided to go to Nando's for dinner, He absolutely loves the place and is usually his chosen venue. Alas the place is always busy, with this also being near Christmas time (as that is when Paul is usually back) there was snow and ice on the ground. We ventured out with me sitting in my wheelchair, as expected it was busy and we were waiting in the queue, coincidently in the doorway, Paul stood back a little. A group came before us, this one young lad looked me up and down, said "no worries" put one foot in between my legs and climbed over me to get out. No consideration to ask me to move, which I would have happily have done, or to consider my feelings. Where was the fact that this guy, albeit in a wheel chair, was a human being who shouldn't just be walked over, which is inevitably what he did? He saw me as an obstacle rather than a person, would he have seen me differently is I was a healthy, 6 ft, muscular and threatening in appearance?

Story 2: This recently happened, but happens a lot. I decided to go the beach with my girlfriend, trying to enjoy the seaside, as one does, we got our fish and chips and wanted to park up and sit by the sea. We found a little spot with a disabled parking space outside a venue that was perfect, so we parked up. There was obviously an event on for OAP's, which we were unaware of, every time someone pulled up they stopped, looked at us, with a glare almost with an air of "why are you parked there!". They then parked somewhere else and walked past, every person who walked past stopped to check that I had my Blue Badges on display, that I truly deserved to be parked in "their spot".
In this case, it was different to the other story, because in this case I was being discriminated against, not because of my disability but because of my age combining with my disability. I clearly don't look disabled, which is nice, but that doesn't mean that I am any less disabled. With that truth being that I possibly had a little more mobility problems than some who were "eyeballing" me. Would any of these people have questioned the fact that I needed this parking spot if I was over 65? As I have heard the comedian Michael MacIntyre say "What do you expect to see, the person flop from the car and start crawling?"

In both case's I felt discrimination, yet this is against the law, and I would whole heartedly believe that if these people were sat down and spoken to about their actions that they would defend that they weren't discriminating me, and I do believe that they probably wouldn't discriminate maliciously, yet they were discriminating through prejudice.

The issue I believe here is the cliquishness. It is natural for different peoples groupings to form natural groups, with individual identities, coming with that certain expectations. In this case people put up barriers, built up brick by brick with the groups expectations and identities. We saw this recently, let alone throughout history, where a religious group, whose concern is truth, drawing lines of successions and expulsions, often closing ranks forcing their individual barriers to come out stronger. The problems with lashing out at any religious group is the understanding between extremists and individuals, to normal people with individual view points. It often becomes commonly said " I am right you are wrong" and " what is not done my way shouldn't be done at all".

Having a refreshingly open minded view point on the world, would follow the hopeful nature of Martin Luther King, open minded with hope of an equal future keeping in mind the phrase "Whoever is not against us is with us" rather than the extremist view point of "whoever is not with me is against me". There is a big difference between the two. In different circumstances there may be a place for either, but I honestly believe that we should be aware of a natural tendency to jump to negative conclusions when faced with an outsider.

Whether we realise it or not, we all harbour certain prejudices in our heart. We see this in the bible when it explains in Jeremiah 17:9 "the Heart is more deceitful than anything else" It is for this reason why I believe that people can be discriminating in prejudice rather than by law. Believing whole heartedly that they are tolerant of people of all types, even rationalising  that we have a valid reason to hold a negative viewpoint.

Yet this must stop, we must stop. We must remind ourselves of Peters words in Acts (10:34,35) "then Peter began to speak "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right""

We need to follow Peter's example here and come to this realisation that God is partial to all. Take a step back evaluate yourself, your barriers, instead of putting them up try and form a bridge.