Graham’s goat of many cholers

  What 'gets your goat?'  Does anything really wind you up, make you angry and frustrated?

  Recently, the weather has been too hot for any of us to raise much energy about things that get us annoyed!

  But, as we usually have a more equable climate, there will be things which get you riled!  Some will be relatively trivial; others will be extremely important.

  One of the more trivial things that gets my goat is that a certain supermarket (beginning with ‘S’ and ending with ‘bury's’) almost force me to use their carrier bags, whether I need to or not!

  Among the more important things that get my goat are the failure of the richer countries to make on-going meaningful changes to the way in which we conduct business with poorer nations.  It gets my goat when I discover that a child dies every 15 seconds because of a lack of clean water and poor sanitation - whereas 10,000 litres of water a day are used to irrigate an 18 hole golf course.   

   But fear not - lest you think that I am becoming a grumpy old man - there is such a thing as 'Holy Discontent'.  This concept was introduced to some of us at conference recently by the American church leader, Bill Hybels.

   'Holy Discontent' can be a gift from God.  It is that sense of righteous indignation - that sense of annoyance, that feeling that things should be different which spurs us on to action and which motivates us to work for change in God's world.

   'Holy Discontent' is not an excuse to sit muttering in a corner and doing nothing.  Rather, 'Holy Discontent' causes us to get up and do something.

   It is one of the ways in which the Holy Spirit touches our lives.  We are shown something which we know to be wrong and, through our discontent, we are led to take action.

  Two good examples in Scripture are Moses and Jesus.  It is Moses' Holy Discontent, triggered by the treatment of his fellow Hebrews, that stirred him into action.  It was the Holy Discontent caused by the sight of the Money Changers in the Temple that triggered Jesus to cleanse the Temple.  In more recent times, it was the Holy Discontent caused by presence of street children that motivated Dr Barnado.  It was the Holy Discontent triggered by the plight of the terminally ill that motivated Dame Cicely Saunders to develop the hospice movement.

  What is causing you a sense of Holy Discontent?  Is it something in the community?  Is it something in the church?  Is it something in the wider world?

  It is by responding to these feelings of discontent that we can work for the extension of God's Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

  Bill Hybels’ advice about Holy Discontent was: “Find it.  Feed it.  Act on it.”

  That's a good way of dealing with ‘goats’ of all descriptions.

by Graham Clarke.