Summer Camp, More Goodbyes

Mid-goodbye-hug, I was bundled into a moving car and whisked to the rail station by the coast, where a train was about to depart for London. I yearned to linger and prolong 11 days of magnificent gospel partnership…but there was a Glaswegian-Norwegian wedding to witness and celebrate.
If the same team would have me, I would fly any where in the world to work with them. They were a fantastic mix of commitment to God and his word, godliness, Protestant work ethic, absolute craziness, humility, creative problem-solving, ruthlessness in dealing with sin, patience, sportsmanship, prayerfulness, servant-(arm-down-a-blocked-loo)-leadership. And all this in the extraordinary context of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (authentic gospel ministry looks weak and so brings glory to God alone), which we were studying for the week.

After the wedding, a week of last meals with good friends and neighbours. I never thought I’d be the one at the door, sending off people going to do work amongst the Chinese in some other bit of London, amongst the posh people in the West Country, amongst the prosperity-gospel-deluded in Africa, amongst the youth in Australia…

How do you say goodbye? Would that we could squeeze all that love and respect, and all those memories of fierce arguments and of sitting around in companionable silence, all the serious conversations and nonsensical banter, all the snuggling comfortingly in similar weaknesses and navigating our differences, into a small locket and carry that, warming our hearts, for the rest of our lives.

But we can’t. So we eat, and drink, and chat, and take selfies, and wash-up, then someone says,”Sorry, but I need to go. Otherwise, no one gets a sermon on Sunday”. And we part, and life goes on, because there is so much more to be done, and God will give us other partners for the work and companions for the journey. Until we meet again in the new creation.

Our not-very-smashed version of Massimo Bottura’s Oops I Dropped The Lemon Tart.

Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye.

We said goodbye to the first of our neighbours in the same way our neighbourly relationship has always been conducted – over a shared meal, laughter, much banter. He will carry a suitcase of meagre possessions to a wet, windswept land and there speak the good news.

He is thin man not given to grand schemes. His hugs are strong and his handshakes, firm.

globe artichoke with lemon butter dip

grilled corn with paprika, fromage frais and parmigiano reggiano

parsnip chips with parmigiano reggiano

homemade cherry ripple ice-cream

We lingered over the table till it was late.

See you later, we said. See you in the new creation.

Sunday Lunch: Beef Rendang, Chicken Curry, Chicken Satay, Nasi Kuning, Onde-onde

New members of the Local Church normally get a good grounding in God’s word over three years – spending the first year in the Gospel of Mark (studying Jesus’ claims about himself and how he fulfilled the Old Testament in dying on the cross for our sins and rising again from the dead to prove that his claims were true), then in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (containing many tough doctrines, the toughest of which to our sinful minds being the absolute sovereignty of God), and lastly, having a Bible Overview (seeing God’s work through a certain strand of human history as set out in the Bible, revealing much about God and his character and his intention for the world). People then either choose the repeat this cycle or go on to a Central Focus group – looking at different books of the Bible (other than Mark and Romans) each year.

Each “evening” (Mark, Romans, Bible Overview, Central Focus x2) the relevant building is filled with at least 10 tables of more than 12 people eating, chatting, reading, and discussing Scripture. An incredibly vibrant sight. But because there is little time for interaction between tables, Sunday lunch was a good time for people to get to know each other better.

banana leaf laundry

But it is not merely for social contact that we meet. Our responsibilities to the church family are numerous, for example:

6 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. ² Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. ³ For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. ⁴ But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbour. ⁵ For each will have to bear his own load. (Galatians 6:1-5)

We are not meant merely to encourage each other by singing over-exaggerated praises of people’s right deeds, but also to encourage each other to keep to the narrow way until the Last Day. Says John Calvin:

It is a very appropriate exhortation to humanity when he calls the weaknesses or vices under which we labour “burdens”. For nature dictates to us that those who sink under a burden should be relieved. He enjoins us to bear their burdens – not to indulge or overlook the evils by which our brethren are pressed down, but rather to disburden them. And this can only be done by friendly and mild correction. There are many adulterers who would gladly make Christ a pander; thieves who would like to make Him a receiver; wicked criminals of all kinds who would like to make Him their patron; they all want to lay their burdens on the shoulders of believers. But since he connects bearing with restoring and repairing, the sort of bearing demanded of Christians is unmistakable.

The word “law” when applied to Christ represents an argument. There is an implied contrast between the law of Christ and the law of Moses, as if he said,”If you desire to keep a law [see context of Galatians], Christ enjoins on you a law which you can only prefer to all others; and that is, to cherish kindness towards each other. He who lacks this has nothing.” On the other hand he says that when everyone compassionately helps his neighbour, the law of Christ is fulfilled.

Beef rendang and onde-onde recipes started off as the expert ones from the plussixfive cookbook, but quickly degenerated into a hodgepodge of attempts to patch-up lack of proper ingredients (or rather the lack of time to source for proper ingredients).

Curry chicken = Tean’s Gourmet chicken curry mix
Chicken satay = Asian Home Gourmet satay mix

Nasi Kuning
Jasmine rice
Coconut cream
Water
Ground Tumeric
Ground lemongrass
Kaffir leaves
Pandan leaves, torn and knotted

Generally, the Ethiopians, English, Malaysians, Punjabi-English, Singaporeans, Australians liked the lot, with the Malaysians and Singaporeans saying what a treat home-cooked home-tasting food was and one English person saying that beef rendang tasted like Christmas. Another English person though said it was all very foreign to her and restricted herself to the satay, after asking how she should get the meat off the skewers and how come chicken tasted so good (not having previously been informed of the concept of marinating meat). Must remember to prepare English people before non-roast lunches!

Frugal-student-on-a-budget cost:
beef rendang
stewing beef (1.5 kg) from butcher £9
coconut milk £0.89
spices £2

chicken curry
chicken drumsticks and thighs (4 kg) from butcher £5
spices £2
garlic and onions £0.35

chicken satay
chicken thigh fillets (2.5 kg) £5
satay sauce £0.50

nasi kuning
rice £1
spices and flavouring £0.40

onde-onde
pandan leaves £1.72
glutinous rice flour £1.25
gula melaka £1
dessicated coconut £0.75

banana leaves £1.20

This fed about 18 people.

End of Week Snack: Double Deep-fried Korean Fried Chicken Drumsticks

What synonyms can one use to convey the extreme fried-ness of the chicken drumsticks that were going for £1 for six at Sainsbury’s? None that I could think of after a small group leaders’ evening and two staff days.

Needed to express excess energy in some productive way. So still agog with the thought of poking stuff round boiling oil and spotting some cheap chicken in the supermarket, hit upon trying to replicate some fried chicken someone let me have off their plate a few years ago. There was, of course, nothing organic, biodynamic, or healthy (in the modern #firstworldproblems sense) about this snack. Much encouragement from Acts 10:34 – 11:18 and Acts 20:17-38, from team meetings that were not about corporate strategies and new programmes but about trusting in God’s promise that speaking the plain word would fulfil his purposes, and also over meals with church planters and people who have been reading the Bible with senior management in the Square Mile for decades and writers of soon-to-be-published books and materials and stay-at-home mothers whose children just had their first day at school.

Double Deep-fried Korean Fried Chicken Drumsticks
Ingredients
2.5kg of discounted chicken drumsticks (dark meat being better for deep frying due to the larger percentage of connective tissue)
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper

½ cup potato flour
¼ cup plain flour
¼ cup glutinous rice flour
(but really, just proportionally 2:1:1)
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda

vegetable oil

4 cloves of garlic, minced or thinly sliced
1 cup of tomato ketchup
½ cup of hot pepper paste
½ cup of honey
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Directions
1. Marinate chicken with salt and pepper for an hour while you cycle out to get the other ingredients.
2. In a separate container, mix the flours and the baking soda.
3. Beat the eggs in a bowl.
4. Dredge chicken in beaten egg, then cover with flour mixture. This gives a thicker crust (which is preferable in these parts) than real proper KFC (korean fried chicken). Set aside.
5. Heat oil to 180°C. Spread old newspapers on the floor next to the cooker to absorb oil splatters.
6. Fry chicken while talking to housemates about the ins-and-outs of the Church of England.
7. Make the sauce by saute-ing the garlic in some oil, then with the heat on lowest setting, adding the ketchup, hot pepper paste, honey and cider vinegar, stirring to combine.
7. Re-fry chicken – the curate’s genius idea from Sunday lunch for a superior crunch.
8. Immediately coat chicken with sauce.
9. Set aside and sprinkle with roasted white sesame seeds.
10. Think of buffalo wings and look around for blue cheese dips and carrot and celery sticks but find none. Offer a plateful to health-conscious housemates. Feed hopeful neighbours who, nosing the air, have appeared in the kitchen. Deliver a tupperware-ful to brothers living a 5 minute ride away.

A Frugal Hungry Student In London Eats Decently For Less Than £1 A Meal

Though, assuming an average of 3 meals a day, this is 3 times the poverty line budget of £1 a day.

The School will attest that feeding church associates, apprentices, and ministry trainees, is like opening your storehouse to a family of locusts. They are always ravenously hungry, but are on a strict budget because of fundamental lack of funds, or being very conscious of the provenance of their supporters’ finances, and also because of the principle of the stewardship of money – that is, that what one has in one’s savings account isn’t really one’s own. Just like everything else in our lives (our gifts, our experience, our very breath), the money isn’t totally ours – God gave this to us as trustees to be used for his glory.

Yet at the other end of the spectrum, it is too easy for our sinful selves to be obsessed with saving money and getting the best discounts, to the detriment of our health (thereby then decreasing the amount of ministry that can be done) or to the detriment of our priorities in life (there being no inherent goodness in getting the best bang for our buck).

For my own future reference, here’s what can be had for less than £1 a meal:

Breakfast
a healthy energising bowl of strawberry yoghurt, sweet small Sonata strawberries, blackberries, blueberries sprinkled with Dorset Cereal granola for crunch;

or

a filling Duchy Originals English muffin stuffed with bacon (part of a 2 kg pack from Smithfields), sunny-side-up, and cheese…to be washed down with a mug of good hot coffee or tea.

Lunch/Dinner

steamed purple sprouting broccoli (with flowers), brown basmati + red carmague + wild rice, spicy peri-peri chicken drumsticks;

or

“revitalising tonic” chicken soup (Chinese herbs from a packet someone brought me from Singapore – so perhaps that’s cheating a little), stir-fried spring greens, brown basmati + red carmague + wild rice

or

1.6kg roasted pork belly with superbly crunchy crackling, delicious caramelised onions, sweet potato mash, steamed spring greens.

Peri-Peri Chicken and the Assurance of God’s Plan

Spent a pleasant afternoon at the home of a South African couple. To emphasise their heritage, a small pink springbok rug had pride of place in the living room.

While waiting for the peri-peri chicken to transform in the oven, we had a good look at Ephesians 1:1-14:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,

To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:

² Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹ he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

¹¹ In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹² in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. ¹³ And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

How much more pleasurable a good peri peri chicken meal with members of God’s family, assured that our lives are not random and meaningless but in the care and control of a loving God, who has saved us through the death of his Son, forgiven our sins and redeemed us and adopted us as sons, and who has made known to us his plan for human history –  to unite all things under Christ, for the praise of his glory.

Daisy’s Dream Kitchen, Politics, And the Problem of the Human Heart

Brought a friend along for some last minute shopping for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

When the car boot had been filled with cooler bags and an assortment of items gotten at wholesale retail, we stopped off at Daisy’s Dream Kitchen (facebook) at Blk 517 West Coast Road for a re-fuel and a gab. (The balance of flavours in the buah keluak pork ribs and assam chicken was excellent: not rob-you-of-senses robust but just the right amount of assam acidity to liven up the palate. Friend insisted on returning for more soon.)

Naturally, the conversation turned to the on-going debate about ministerial pay, and the merits of the content of speeches of Alvin Yeo, Vikram Nair, Tan Chuan-Jin, Chen Show Mao, and Pritam Singh in parliament. She despaired over the opposition wasting the opportunity (the Workers’ Party specifically) to show that they could form a sensible government, with their complacency in thinking the internets would cheer on anything Chen Show Mao said and their failure to show they cared more about the people than scoring political brownie points.

But it is naive to expect that everyone will work together peacefully for the common good, whether in the government of a country, the management of a company, or just to save stray (and sometimes rabid) dogs and cats from being culled.

What is the real problem with this world?

The third session of Christianity Explored yesterday showed us that more than war, poverty, environmental issues, racism, greed, etc. our hearts are the real problem. If there was a website that listed every single thing that we did or thought, even our best friend(s) wouldn’t look us in the eye.

We can’t blame society, our parents (or lack thereof), unfortunate life events, or even our genes for causing us to act or think this way; all this evil comes from our hearts:

And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them,”Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said,”What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:14-23 ESV)

Since the time of the book of Genesis, God’s command has always been the same, because it is only right and just to treat your Creator and those made in the image of your Creator in this way:

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mark 12:28-33)

Sadly, we don’t even manage to treat the one or two people we call our “loved ones” this way.

Those who think of Jesus as gentle and loving are half-right: he is certainly loving enough to warn of the dangers ahead but this means saying some hard truths rather forcefully:

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ (Mark 9:42-48)

Whatever form hell will take, the warning is simply to avoid it at all costs by not sinning.

But we all know that we can’t stop all that evil pouring from our hearts every second of the day.

This is why Jesus came. Though not as a pep-talk lifestyle guru. But that’s for the next session.