Our inauguration was on Tuesday.  The subject was “Qur’an and Bible – reading the one in the context of the other” – so I gave a reflection on reading the Bible alongside the Qur’an – ‘Qur’anic challenges for the Bible reader’ – and Prof Mustansir Mir from Youngstown State University, Ohio, spoke on ‘Reading the Qur’an with the Bible in mind’.  The lectures will be available on DVD soon.

My new study is small and temporary.  We’re still jumping through administrative and legal hoops before moving into more permanent premises.  We plan to start properly, in the new place, by the beginning of next academic year.  Meanwhile, we will be starting quietly in May, with weekly research-in-progress seminars at which staff and anyone else interested can test out their latest thinking.

 This term, I’ve been doing some teaching at All Nations Christian Coillege – very thankful that I’ve managed to do it, as it’s only a year since I was wondering whether I’d ever teach again.  I’ve also given some talks for CMS, including one on ‘The Crusades, Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther: what does it mean to ‘take up the cross’ in the context of Islam?’  It should appear on the CMS website soon.

 We are still in temporary accommodation in Oxford, but starting to house hunt.  We’ve found premises for our Centre, but are still negotiating terms.  In all, we’re very thankful, and expecting that our risen Lord will continue to guide us in His love and wisdom.

I was reading an article on these verses this morning, and it set me thinking about how love can be based on discernment.  It is just fine when ‘knowledge and discernment’ lead us to ‘approve what is excellent’ in a person, but what happens when we DIS approve?  When, instead of discerning excellent things, we discern evil – violence, lies, bullying, arrogance . . . ? 

The danger with seeking to exercise discerment is the human tendency to judge – and the human tendency also to justify ourselves, and to get judgements of others wrong.  Jesus knew what He was talking about when He warned against judging others by reminding us that we too will be judged.  Perhaps that is why Paul, when putting together love and discernment, focusses on the approval of what is excellent rather than on disapproval of what is wicked.  Not that he would recommend approving falsehood and wickedness!  But, if we are to learn love, we have to learn to discern the good – to see the image of God in which each person was created, however obscured by sin it may be. 

So I pray for myself, and for others, that I may learn to love with the all-encompassing love of God, while at the same time learning what is true and discerning good and evil, so that I love goodness and hate evil, while loving saint and sinner alike. 

   never-was-love.doc

 It starts:

“Never was love, dear King,

  Never was grief like thine.”

So runs the last verse of Samuel Crossman’s wonderful hymn, ‘My Song is love unknown, my Saviour’s love to me, love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be.  O who am I, that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’  It’s the hymn I chose for my parents’ funeral when I was 15 years old.  I don’t suppose I understood then quite what it was about the Saviour’s love that was so compelling for a bereft teenager, and the breadth of it is still ‘unknown’ to me 40 years on.  But I can look back and see the amazing juxtaposition of love with GRIEF that runs through this hymn and, as I now begin to understand, through the heart of God Himself.  God Himself – whom Crossman invites us to call ‘dear king’.  The almighty, the king of heaven, the rabb ul-‘alamin of Islamic prayer and the melech ha-olam of Jewish prayer . . .   is dear – as the verse ends, ‘this is my friend’!  Remarkable!  No wonder Crossman says he could spend all his days praising such a king!

 What is interesting is that I appear to be quite well, and even to be thinking as clearly as ever, so I think people find it hard to work out why I keep slowing down and having to stop doing something.  Apparently this is a common experience with such ‘minor’ head injuries. 

 My brain is telling me that I’ve now written enough and it needs a rest.  I don’t know whether anyone will read this, but this blogging could be fun.  I shall try to put things on the blog that just might be helpful to other people.  Maybe there’s someone else out there with a head injury.