Happy Friday, everyone! As I write this at 16:20 (4:20 in the afternoon), the sun already went down thirty minutes ago. I forget how far north I am - but then again, I’ve only ever been to England in the spring and summer months. As of last week, the U.K. came out of the second national lockdown and Lancashire county went back into Tier 3, which has more restrictions than the previous ‘Tier 3.’ And still, nothing has really changed here at Capernwray. I did venture into Carnforth on Wednesday, just managed to get to Aldi and Booths grocery stores. Had to stock up on some ‘snackages,’ as my British friend Leah says.
What I have been meaning to do is share some of the things we have been learning at Bible school. If you have ever been to a weekend ministry conference, that is how I would describe it… a week-long ministry conference that changes topic week after week instead of having semester long classes that have a core theme or subject matter spread out for 3.5 months. Fortunately, our weekly learning journal assignments have us focus in on take-aways for the week. So much happens within a week that you don’t want to forget! But it is not until I review my lengthy notes that I could answer, “What is the Lord teaching you personally this week?”
Suffice it to say, there has not been a week’s theme that I have not enjoyed learning about. Every speaker they have brought in has been so different in teaching style and content. In the first week of November, we had a lecture series on the books of Ecclesiastes and Lamentations taught by a Scotsman, John Allen. They have such a fun accent to listen to! A read through Ecclesiastes is a sober one showing that the only thing that is guaranteed in life that can bring a lasting effect (you would actually want to have) is to have a relationship with God. John shared that in many Bible translations, we see the word meaningless; however, he made the case that a better translation is ‘transitory’ - here for a little while. The Hebrew word used is ‘hebel,’ which means a vapor, something that is going to vanish quickly. It is the same meaning that is seen in James 4:14 (KJV), “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” Hmmm, transitory… talk to anyone that is at least 10-15 years younger than you and how quickly can we think whatever problem they are currently facing is more transitory than meaningless. Life hurries by! I enjoy language and semantics, so this obviously stuck out to me.
I go through different music phases, listening to different genres, and at the start of Covid-19, I found myself listening to music from the 60s, especially the 1965 hit by The Byrds, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Taken from the famous passage in Ecclesiastes 3, John broke down those verses in such a simple way. Wisdom that comes from God, and not the world, consists in knowing what the appropriate time is. There is a time for everything in our…
Actions (vs. 2-3) - sometimes you have to be proactive or be preventative
Emotions (vs. 4) - sometimes life is painful or pleasurable, and you got to deal with it
Relationships (vs. 5) - sometimes you have be welcoming or weary
Possessions (vs. 6-7a) - sometimes you have to save or sacrifice
Behavior (vs. 7b-8) - sometimes you have to be encouraging or opposing
This next segment is brought to you by the expert naturist team, Con and Sher, from the minimally viewed short-film titled, “A Neature Walk in England,” available only on YouTube.
The first weekend of lockdown in November, we had an optional social event to get into small groups, make a short-film on the grounds, and then watch them in the conference hall that evening. We heard about this at the beginning of brunch and my table agreed we had too much to do for our book reports. Bekah, who plays Sher, mentioned the classic YouTube videos of “Neature Walks” and by the end of brunch, we were inspired to take advantage of the sunny day and recruited our friend Lois to help make this fresh dream into a reality. Once we started, we really couldn’t stop. We will be filming our Christmas special tomorrow. “How neat is that? That’s pretty neat.”
The second week of November has been the only week where a guest lecturer was not able to come due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. However, God had someone else in mind and it quickly became a favorite week (which is nearly impossible to do here because one can hardly rate a week here as not being a favorite, ha!). After our principal had it confirmed that another Torchbearer center principal from a school in Germany was not able to come, a day or two later he received an email from one of Capernwray’s former principals, Charles Price, who currently resides in Toronto. Charles shared that he and his wife were coming back to the north of England for a couple of weeks to see his mother-in-law, and after quarantining for two-weeks he would have a week open to help out in any way. This just so happened to be THE week that was recently vacant and THE week that our book reports were due. Why is that worth mentioning? Charles Price was the author of the book I had chosen for that particular assignment without ever guessing God would have opened up an opportunity for him to teach at Capernwray! I highly recommend his book, Alive in Christ. It’s only 126 pages, but each page packs a punch. And Charles taught on Romans chapters 1-8, which is one of my favorite books of the Bible. I did get to take a picture with him and he signed my book - trust me, I was not the only one! As we are reading through the Old Testament in winter school, my understanding of the Tabernacle, offerings, feasts, and law has grown clearer. In Alive in Christ, Charles draws on these things to point to Christ in such a refreshing way. Here is an excerpt I tabbed that is worth sharing:
“Once a year on the Day of Atonement the altar of fragrant incense became soaked with the blood of the sin offering as Aaron poured it on the horns of the altar. That day the smell of burning blood mingled with the fragrance of the incense brought a different smell to God.
On Calvary, the Lord Jesus Christ brought the ritual to fulfillment. As He, the aroma that delights God, was made to be sin and mingled His sinless life with the sin of the world, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). The tarnishing of the purity of Christ when the sins of the world were heaped upon Him and He was made to “be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21) brought to the Father an unpleasant aroma, and heaven remained silent. The Father withdrew from the Son.
But do you know a very wonderful thing? As Jesus cried out those words on the cross and then dismissed His Spirit, “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matt. 27:51). The curtain that had divided the Most Holy Place from the rest of the temple was ripped apart as a divine act. God broke out!
God was no longer to be approached in a building, through rituals and offerings that needed constant repetition. He had broken loose from the temple and its inner chamber. He would now invade the lives of men, women, boys, and girls in any place and at any time, if they would be willing to receive Him. They now would become the temple of the His Spirit, the place He would make His home, and the place He would do His work!”
This was also a great week because I got to host the girls on my floor to watch “The Chosen.” It is a multi-season TV show about the life of Jesus Christ. I cannot hype it enough - if you have not seen it, please stop what you’re doing and go to this link! The first season is only 8 episodes, it is free to watch and is superbly done. I kept talking about this show in my family group, interactive group, lunch table, etc. And finally, I got to enjoy watching other people watch this series that has stirred my affections for Christ and the Gospels. We finished it in two weeks and the guest speaker after Charles Price had just watched it, so Bekah and I got to talk with him about it after lectures.
One way we occupied our time on the weekend during lockdown was doing some photo shoots outside. You could probably guess how those went! We were easy to locate, it wasn’t hard to hear us laughing and hollering! It reminded me of the times with my high school girls getting ready for one of our awkward family Christmas photo shoots, sharing things, doing one another’s hair, and helping with makeup. We explored south of the grounds into a wooded area, ended up finding some discarded (but intact) kitchen tiles from the 60s or 70s and a babbling brook. I know this has been the most time I have spent in any kind of woods or forest. Even with the leaves fallen, it is still so pretty. All I can think of is, “Oh, this could be a scene from a movie!” Truly, I wonder where they film a lot of their medieval themed shows or movies in England! I would love to scout for them.
Another thing that happened in November during lockdown was the filming of the Capernwray Christmas presentation on site, called “Unexpected - Hope at Home.” Normally every year, Capernwray puts on 3 live performances in the conference hall for the community. It kicks off the Christmas season for many folks in the area, but obviously doing anything in-person was not an option. Instead, and maybe even better, we got to spread the production all over Capernwray Hall and the grounds, AND you don’t have to be a local here to view it! I auditioned for a dramatic part and got assigned a monologue. Everything was filmed the last Friday and Saturday of November, which meant we got to decorate Capernwray Hall for Christmas the weekend before on Saturday, the 21st!! The atmosphere that day was special. Music was playing from every room, different Christmas traditions were discussed and shared, we made lots of snowflakes for the windows, and in the late afternoon, two other students and I ran up to what has become known as “the hill” to catch the sunset. One thing I can say about the lockdown, you find yourself walking up different hills to watch the sunset! No picture can ever do a sunset justice. But every single one of us still tries, haha!! Then later that night we got to decorate and bake Grittibänz, which is a Swiss sweet bread man/woman you decorate with raisins and chocolate chips. I have a picture of the before… transferring it to the pan didn’t work very well, so there is no after picture. You can trust me that no matter what it looked like, it was pretty good! Next time I’ll remember to put the chocolate chips IN the dough, like a true Swiss ;)
Having been in England for two months by then, two weeks of which were spent in quarantine, on top of a national lockdown for the month of November… gosh, I think by that weekend we needed something FESTIVE and celebratory! Don’t get me wrong, as a whole, our student body, faculty, staff, voluntary workers, and probably the sheep are still so grateful that this Bible school is even open. Each Thursday we have “whole community prayer,” which always involves praying for other Torchbearer schools around the world, among praying for other things. Many of Bible schools could not open their doors this year - period. The center in France only has 14 students. Some are wondering when they can open again, or if they may have to resort to selling their properties. It is often a point of conversation at a table, on a walk, or in one of our rooms that we still cannot believe all of us are here.
The Christmas presentation filming had ideal weather for Northern England. NO RAIN. They did a lot of outdoor filming, as you’ll see, and I got to suggest one of my favorite spots on the property for my segment. This past Sunday it was streamed live on YouTube. You can watch, too! See where I’ve been living the past two and a half months :) We all watched it here in the conference hall. I think we all enjoyed the Zoom choir the most. LOL! Seeing that we are not allowed to sing indoors together, we were all sent to our rooms to film ourselves singing to different songs. Beautiful Christmas songs and lyrics, yes, but as we all found ourselves and other people on the screen, it was hard to not laugh. In all seriousness, though, “Unexpected” is a perfect word to describe not only this upcoming Christmas, but the whole year. More to come on that…. trying to keep this post about the infamous November lockdown.
The fourth week of lockdown (week of November 23rd), our guest lecturer was from a local church in Carnforth, Cristi Murgu. He was originally from Romania and lived there during the rule of the Soviet Union. He taught on the Sermon on the Mount and no surprise, it was a great series. Cristi titled it “Inverted” because the principles Jesus was preaching seemed upside down. One of the talks that stood out to me was the theme for Matthew 5:10-12 that Cristi framed as ‘rethinking resilience.’ He shared a story from his school years in Romania. ‘The repented’ was the nickname for Christians in Romania, but it was a mocking nickname. The headmistress came to his class one day and said, “Can I see all those who are repented outside in my office?” In his class there were only three Christians. Out of the three, two decided to go to the office. Cristi didn’t go out; he didn’t know what the headmistress was going to do. Then he shared after that incident, all credibility was lost with his classmates, the non-Christian friends – Cristi had been too afraid. He later found out the headmistress told the other two to not bring Bibles to school or talk about Jesus. But Cristi had to live with the consequences among his classmates. Then Cristi humbly reminded us of Matthew 27:39-44 and how, “Jesus did not bail on us. He went the distance. In people’s hardest moments of persecution, people feel comforted knowing Jesus experienced this.” Lastly, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I can hear the same word or phrase over and over, and it loses its impacts. Point in case - salt and light. Jesus doesn’t call or invite us to be salt and light, like there is a choice to be made. Rather, Jesus says in Matthew 5:13-14, “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world…” Cristi reminded us it is built in our identity. And we spent that lecture discussing and defining what salt does, what is its purpose, and the same for light.
SALT: it’s distinctive (there’s nothing like salt), enhances taste, stops the decay (it preserves), creates thirst, disinfectant
LIGHT: Brings clarity (you clean better with the lights on than in the dark), reveals what is hidden, lifeline for the lost (like a lighthouse crying out, “There is hope!”), relieves great fears (like a night-light)
And this is our identity as followers of Jesus - this is who we are: distinctive, stopping decay, revealing what is hidden, a lifeline for the lost, etc. A question Cristi gave us to chew on was, “Do people see the joy and hope in us and think, “I want to have what you have?”” Yeah, talk about an upside down, inverted way to live today!
The more I read scripture, the more I see how I miss the mark. I didn’t know until coming here that the word ‘sin’ is an archery term, it means “to miss the mark.” You and I can’t hit the mark every single time of every day, all year… So now what? What can be done? To wrap up this post, I’ll leave you with a quote from Alive in Christ, “The whole point of the Christian life is that only Jesus Christ can live it. It is not a technique or a discipline but a relationship where you allow Jesus Christ to make His home in your heart and allow Him to live in you the life you could never live by yourself. If you could live it by yourself, then why bother becoming a Christian, just go and do it! But of course you can’t, which is why Jesus Christ is indispensable, not just as the One who forgives you of your past, but as the One who comes to live within you and replaces your life with His.”
With that, have a wonderful weekend!
In Christ, Jessica
Colossians 1:27 :)
