Latest / Eurasia Region Podcast / S2-E5 | Everyday Eurasia |  Peter Rae

Transcript

S2-E5 | Everyday Eurasia |  Peter Rae · Eurasia Region Podcast

• 0:06
  Welcome to the Everyday Eurasia podcast, Inspiring Faith for
• 0:10
  Everyday, a place where we discover together what it means
• 0:13
  to follow Jesus in our everyday lives.
• 0:22
  This first week of Season 2, they'll be joined by the Co
• 0:25
  Regional Education Coordinators for the Eurasia region.
• 0:28
  Today we will listen to Peter Ray.
• 0:30
  Peter served as Regional Education Coordinator for the
• 0:33
  Eurasia region since 2022, a role he shares with Antoni
• 0:37
  Holloman. Peter served as VP Academic at
• 0:40
  NTC for 15 years and though in such areas as leadership, data,
• 0:45
  media and theological education. In January of this year, he
• 0:49
  stepped down from that role and supports now NTC by working with
• 0:53
  alumni and development matters. He's a worship leader and board
• 0:56
  member at Alongside Church of the Nazarene in Manchester.
• 1:01
  The beginning of Deuteronomy 8 says remember how the Lord your
• 1:05
  God LED you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years to
• 1:10
  humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart.
• 1:14
  I've been a member of faculty at Nazarene Theological College in
• 1:17
  Manchester for the past 30 years, and one of my
• 1:20
  extracurricular activities has been to take a group of students
• 1:24
  to watch a Shakespeare play every year or two as part of a
• 1:27
  class I teach. Just this morning, a student
• 1:30
  reminded me of how important that literature class had been
• 1:33
  for him. He said I'd been an engineer for
• 1:36
  30 years, then found myself in a class studying literature.
• 1:40
  I thought it would be really pointless, but it made me see
• 1:43
  things in a totally different way.
• 1:45
  I have a memory of my own from my first year of university,
• 1:49
  travelling down to Stratford, that's Shakespeare's birthplace,
• 1:53
  in an ancient wheezing bus, to sit in the 2nd row of the
• 1:56
  theatre and watch the famous actor Ben Kingsley play Brutus
• 2:01
  in Julius Caesar. It was amazing, spellbinding.
• 2:05
  You may not immediately see the connection between Shakespeare
• 2:08
  and our passage of scripture, you could be forgiven for that.
• 2:11
  But it's this. It's about the wilderness space.
• 2:16
  Entering the wilderness is a constant theme that runs through
• 2:19
  a number of Shakespeare's plays, from comedies to histories,
• 2:23
  tragedies, romances, early plays, late plays.
• 2:26
  Shakespeare's characters leave the security and the structure
• 2:30
  of urban life for the insecurity of wilderness or the forest.
• 2:34
  It's only there in those stripped down spaces, away from
• 2:38
  the veneer of civilization, that they can work things out for
• 2:42
  good. Or I'll the wilderness, the
• 2:45
  forest. These are places where you leave
• 2:48
  the familiar, the known, and enter unfamiliar territory.
• 2:52
  Shakespeare's characters enter what these days we might call a
• 2:55
  liminal spaces. They go beyond the boundary of
• 2:59
  the known and familiar. They're disoriented.
• 3:02
  They enter uncertainty, enter the unknown.
• 3:05
  The liminal space is a stage of transition where you leave
• 3:10
  behind the old you, but have not yet discovered who you will
• 3:13
  become. It's a bit uncomfortable,
• 3:15
  unsettling, but you can't become that new thing until you've
• 3:19
  thrown off the old skin and made yourself vulnerable and then
• 3:23
  encounter that life changing revelation in the wilderness
• 3:27
  space. So how is this like the Exodus
• 3:30
  story? While the children of Israel
• 3:33
  have left the known world of Egypt?
• 3:35
  It was slavery, maybe, but familiar somehow, comfortably
• 3:40
  predictable. And they find themselves in this
• 3:42
  desert space, this wilderness space.
• 3:45
  Their regular pattern of life is gone.
• 3:48
  Where will their food and drink come from?
• 3:50
  Their security? They've left behind the
• 3:52
  landmarks of their lives and moved into uncharted territory.
• 3:57
  And you know all about the stories of their grumblings and
• 4:00
  complainings. A whole people, a whole nation
• 4:03
  in a liminal space, a place of transition.
• 4:07
  They've shed the familiar and don't know what lies ahead.
• 4:11
  We do, of course. We've read the rest of the
• 4:12
  story. But they're in the middle of it,
• 4:14
  and it's uncomfortable. Can they have the faith to trust
• 4:18
  in God at a time like this? To believe in an ending that
• 4:21
  they cannot see? The wilderness is the hinge
• 4:25
  moment for the children of Israel, the critical point where
• 4:28
  they receive and embrace their identity.
• 4:32
  So I've been thinking about desert places, the extended stay
• 4:36
  in the wilderness. The wilderness is often
• 4:39
  mentioned in Scripture as a place of preparation for God's
• 4:43
  people. Moses spent decades in the
• 4:45
  wilderness before he saw that burning Bush that was not
• 4:48
  consumed. David spent much of his early
• 4:51
  life as a shepherd and then as a fugitive trying to survive in
• 4:54
  the wilderness, and all this prepared him to be Israel's
• 4:57
  shepherd. King Elijah, John the Baptist,
• 5:00
  Paul each spent time in the wilderness.
• 5:04
  Jesus himself spent 40 days fasting and praying in the
• 5:07
  wilderness, during which time he was severely tempted by the
• 5:10
  devil, but where he was also prepared for his public ministry
• 5:14
  of preaching, teaching, healing. What's the point?
• 5:18
  God often chooses to use the wilderness places of our lives
• 5:22
  to prepare us, refine us, create a reliance upon Him to loosen
• 5:27
  our grip on the former things and prepare us for a new thing.
• 5:31
  What are the things that that we need to loosen our dependence
• 5:36
  on? And how are we being called to
• 5:38
  prepare ourselves in this sacred space for our encounter with the
• 5:42
  Holy God? For some of us, theological
• 5:46
  study is an unsettling place, making us ask questions about
• 5:50
  the foundations of what we believe, stretching us, making
• 5:53
  us a bit uncomfortable. And let's be frank, we're often
• 5:58
  not happy about the wildernesses which we find ourselves.
• 6:01
  But we also trust that in the danger and uncertainty of it
• 6:04
  all, God is with us. There are lessons to learn in
• 6:07
  these places of unsettledness and discomfort, and I think that
• 6:11
  a major concern when we're in a wilderness season is that we
• 6:15
  miss what God wants us to learn. Not to be any different would be
• 6:20
  a tragedy. If the children of Israel had
• 6:23
  come through the wilderness but missed out on the covenant,
• 6:26
  missed their transformation into the people of God, missed their
• 6:30
  calling to be holy, then they would still be just a lost
• 6:35
  nomadic people. Perhaps what we must come to
• 6:38
  long for above all else in these days of change is a renewed
• 6:42
  dependence upon the God who is present in every situation.
• 6:48
  Lord, in this wilderness season, stay near to me when I feel
• 6:52
  weary. Give me strength when I feel
• 6:55
  lost. Guide my steps, help me to trust
• 6:58
  You even in the waiting, and remind me that I am never alone.
• 7:03
  Amen. Thank you for listening to the
• 7:06
  Everyday Eurasia podcast, Inspiring Faith for Everyday.
• 7:10
  For more Everyday Stories, subscribe on this podcast
• 7:13
  channel, follow our socials, Facebook and Instagram, or our
• 7:17
  newsletter snapshots. For our newsletter and further
• 7:20
  information about the Euratia region, visit our website,
• 7:24
  euratiaregion.org.