The Sandwich: Crumbs..., #3

By Glenn Myers

 

The Christian faith is lived out sandwiched between God's big promises and life's small annoyances. In this series of wry and humorous short pieces, originally magazine articles, Glenn Myers looks at:

• Hearing wrongly from God
• Shallowness, and how to get there
• The art of prayerlessness
• Learning good sense from the minds of small children
• The shortage of spiritual heroes
• The biggest failure in the Bible

And much else.

 

Romance, bad luck, bad luck in romance, finding yourself in the wrong church, child-rearing, and facing chronic illness – all can make God seem far away and the Christian faith unreal. Or they can be the stuff from which hope and character are built.

 

Welcome to life in the sandwich.

 

Glenn Myers is a prizewinning writer, based in the UK, author of around 17 books. He is married with two grown-up children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fizz Books
• Release date: Feb 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9780956501073

Glenn Myers

Glenn Myers has been a writer and editor all his life. Brought up in West Yorkshire, he has lived in Los Angeles, Singapore, London and Cote d'Ivoire, but has settled with his wife in Cambridge, UK. As a journalist Glenn travelled widely to write a series of 11 books about the church in minority settings around the world. These books sold widely and were translated into many languages. Since turning to comic fiction, he writes about the invisible worlds that we all live in--much more exotic than mere reality. He was in a coma for four weeks in 2013, but assumes he's stopped hallucinating now. Glenn has also written non-fiction exploring the spaces between doubt and faith, and he blogs at slowmission.com. They have two grown-up children. He and his wife are members of their local Anglican church. He enjoys cafes, board games and his hammock, though not all at the same time.

Book preview

The Sandwich

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Faith, hope, love and why things are still OK.

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Glenn Myers

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Copyright © 2021 Glenn Myers

Version 1.1

First published 2021 by Fizz Books

GlennMyers.info

ISBN 978-0-9565010-8-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-9565010-7-3 (epub)

Glenn Myers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Cover design by Chris Lawrence

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library

Printed by Ingram, Milton Keynes MK11 3LW, UK.

Contents

Author’s note

Foreword

The solution to all our problems

How if we took the worst from each denomination, we could decline much faster

Anointed

How we love the hyperbolic

No escape

How frustration and losing your mind is part of the package

Learning good sense from small children

How thinking like they do, helps

Fate and Luck

Escaping from their supervision

On heroes

About how you just can’t get them or be them

Hearing wrongly from God

About how putting your hands over your ears may impair your hearing

Unfair competition?

How it’s OK to have megachurches

The God that trusts

About how being trusted feels just like being abandoned

The practical challenges of being an angel

About finding the right broom tree, virgin, apostle, or musical note

The prayer meeting

About how God wants us naked, but we keep reaching for our clothes.

The empty nest

The hole truth

The biggest failure in the Bible

How it happened

Praying for miracles

About the sun rising again

On soulmates

About how they sound like a good idea

‘God’s not fair’

About riding forth for justice on a small horse

What I learnt from nearly dying

Where to invest

Prayerlessness

About catching the moment

Shallowness

How to master looking good on an empty soul

‘I never knew you’

About not living on fumes

Let it be

About the tangle of free will and love, and the weakness of God

And finally

About the author

Author’s note

I worked in the youthful city of Singapore in the early 1990s on the editorial team of Impact magazine. Impact offered teaching in Christian discipleship for the thousands of people joining the churches in that city state.

I was sometimes asked to write for Impact after we returned to the UK following our two-year stint, and those two years have lengthened into almost 20. I’m so grateful to Andrew Goh and the Impact team for their encouragement (and royalties) over the years.

This book is an edited collection of my favourites from all those articles. I noticed that I kept revisiting the same space, the place in a Christian’s head where God’s promises and life’s routines meet and where we can respond to disappointment and difficulty with false notes or true ones.

Back in the UK our own kids grew up. We repaid the mortgage. I suffered life-changing health challenges. We stayed married. It’s fun (for me) to watch my writing be shaped by all this. The kids who are mentioned in some of these pieces are now all growed up, one is producing children of her own, and they both make us feel very proud.

I’m still excited by the hope of the Kingdom of God. Through all these years I’ve watched fellow Christians live the same lives as everyone else, start to sag with the same wrinkles, host the same sicknesses, but yet cultivate (many of them) things that elude others—a patience, a generosity, a peaceableness, a quiet order, a capacity for delight. It’s natural to want these things for yourself and to explore how to get them. Hence this book. I hope you find it fun and provocative.

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Thanks ...

To Andrew and our fellow-toilers at Impact over the years; to the wider Christian community in Singapore who were such a blessing and encouragement; to friends who read this final manuscript and offered comments and criticism, especially Andrew Bowker, Jude Simpson and Andy Chamberlain; to Chris Lawrence for again coming up with a great cover; and, as ever, to Cordelia and our offspring.

Foreword

Writing that refreshes. That’s what Glenn Myers does with glee.

It may not appear in the immediate but you would be halfway through the second cup before you realize you have drunk deeply from his wicked sense of humour and astounding craftsmanship.

Here is a wordsmith par excellence. Often one would pause and remark silently, now, that’s a good choice of word or expression. So, whether it is recalling a homely incident or an event from the international stage, Glenn is a master at teasing and pleasing. He has some strong views for such a genial-looking person. But he presents them cogently and persuasively, almost like a back-handed compliment; not forcing anything down anyone’s throat. He is respectful of his readers and invites them for a congenial mental sparring rather than a knock-out blow.

When he shares the Good News of the Gospel and spiritual matters, he comes across as authentic and heart-warming. Glenn has a powerful message and conveys it winsomely. 

Andrew Goh, Editor, Impact Magazine, Singapore.

The solution to all our problems

How if we took the worst from each denomination, we could decline much faster

(1994)

I was fond of Singapore’s multi-denominational scene, and the opportunity I had to lift the lid on various churches and peek inside. Fun fact: among those committed to Jesus, we’re all similar under our denominational skin. I hope everyone will forgive me for the following.

What we need is a new denomination.

I visited a Brethren church the other day, for the first time for about fifteen years. Things hadn't changed much.

The church building still displayed the minimum possible aesthetic sense, designed (it wasn't hard to guess) by deacons, all male. They hadn't quite suppressed every splash of colour—it's hard to completely stamp out human, and especially feminine, creativity—but they were certainly subsisting on the bare minimum. The hall was 1930s hospital style: dull dark wood and magnolia. The most recent addition was a 1970s chipboard hymnbook cabinet with a balsa wood veneer (artificial). Brethren don't waste resources on Art.

We sang hymns, though, great eighteenth-century affairs loaded with fine doctrine like plum puddings. The singing was concerted, massive, and rousing—marred only by a few sopranos warbling out of control, like opera divas tumbling into the orchestra pit or stuka bombers that can't pull out of a fatal dive.

When the people on the platform addressed the Almighty, you rather got the impression of the serf, cap in hand, going to the landowner. These were Brethren. A people who know their place in the scheme of things.

I felt at home at once. Here were my roots. Plain but godly. 1930s decor and 1790s doggerel, sin and magnolia. Nothing changes here. Hardly anything, indeed, had changed, since I'd left these pastures for charismatic ones a decade and a half ago.

Singing solid hymns that fed the brain and spirit was a nice change from my current church, where—as a contrast—spiritual ecstasy is expected fifteen minutes into each service, whether or not you feel like it first thing in the morning and whether or not you've got a headache.

In our church, we do not all sing together. We play tag with the worship leader. You know the game. You're all ready for the second verse but he's jumped back to the middle of the chorus. Just when you think you're catching him again, he's onto a second lap with the first verse. The musicians and the ‘waa waa’ girls are not far behind, but he dodges them astutely when they start getting near. Finally he helps us by repeating the line ‘He is worthy’ seven straight times, until less charitable members of congregation want to knock him on the head to get the music into a different groove. We hit the seventh ‘He is worthy’ with a great bashing of drums, like a Taoist funeral, and then blast off into singing in tongues or a ‘clap offering.’

In my church, we are not so much serfs addressing the Lord of the Manor as