complicated

"It seems rather complicated."

And there was me having done my level best to make it simple!

I really enjoyed getting in to the P5 year class today and working through the first of the lessons on basic Christianity with them.

Maybe it was just the teacher who found it all rather complicated - the children themselves didn't say. I've been tossing the thing around my head throughout the rest of the day - where did it cease to be simple and how could it better be told?

I still don't have the answer! And it bugs me quite a bit. Because the message isn't meant to be a complicated thing. It's simple and clear and easily passed from a person to his friend.

I spoke about Jesus and the resurrection. It worked all right for Paul - and what's good enough for him is surely good enough for me: or so I thought. Even though Mars Hill in Athens isn't quite the same as a P5 class-room in Davidson's Mains.

The person: and the event. Jesus and the resurrection. Someone arrived who changed people's lives: something has happened which changed the world.

Hardly complicated stuff. Maybe I should just have stuck with that - and given it all in a simple three-word summary: Jesus is Lord. End of story.

Person (Jesus), event (resurrection - he's risen and so is still alive) and response (Lord).

Maybe, on reflection, it only gets complicated when we move from the message to the religion (which is what they wanted me to teach the children there).

Christianity. I tried to explain how people figured the only way to make sense of Jesus was to see that he was in fact the 'christ' (and hence 'Christianity').

I think that's where it got complicated! I mean, you then have to explain what 'christ' means and to what it refers. So I'm thinking, try and keep it simple: explain that it simply means the 'anointed' one.

But then, yeah, 'anointed'?? Explain, please!

So, OK, keeping it simple and all that: anointing involved pouring oil over someone's head. And I see them mentally scratching their heads, beginning to think, who is this loony and what sort of crazy religion sees folk pouring oil over the heads of others? And is this car oil? Vegetable oil? Olive oil? Doesn't sound too clever ... or that civilised at all, for that matter.

And I'm trying to help them see it was a picture of the help God gave to people who had a special job to do, and I'm explaining about prophets (and I'm thinking the only profits they know about are something rather different), priests (and I'm guessing they have pictures coming into their minds a million miles from what I want to convey) and kings (and I'm hoping that I'm not conjuring up pictures of Henry VIII, but I'm none too confident I'm not!).

And I'm beginning to think myself that it is getting pretty complicated! And why didn't I stop with the simple, straightforward message!

Well, today has brought a pretty sharp reminder of the need to have simplicity. A complicated message just won't get off the ground. The message really has to travel light.

But it was great being in at the school and the children were really good. Full of all sorts of pretty complicated questions, too, by the time we were done: well, the questions maybe weren't so complicated but the answers looked as though they might have been, if I'd had the time to stay and talk them through!

It was a relief to have the time at night, talking through the way we follow Christ.

We call that time on a Wednesday night the climate change chat room: which is confusing, I guess, for those that aren't in the know. One man had pitched up who hadn't been there before and wasn't entirely sure just what the time would be about.

But I explained. It's a 'chat room' because ... well, we chat: we talk the scriptures through. And 'the climate change' is not just about the Al Gore sort of climate change, but a recognition that the spiritual climate has changed as well - and we have to learn to adjust.

We got back to Elijah and the trip he made to the widow of Zarephath. The Lord simply said Go to Zarephath, and stay there. And in some ways that's all the guy did.

Just be there. And watch what happens: because when you go where God has said to go, then God goes too: and things always happen when he's around.

It isn't really complicated at all!