You probably wouldn’t have even known the under 19 World Cricket championships were happening earlier this year except for one incident. A West Indian bowler ‘mankaded’ the last Zimbabwean batsman as the game drew to a close, denying the Zimbabwean team the opportunity to go thru to the quarter finals.

Chances are unless you know cricket you also have no idea what ‘mankading’ is, but if your name is Vinoo Mankad you probably regret the day you decided to play by the letter of the law rather than the spirit, because now a piece of universally regarded unsportsmanlike conduct has been named after you.

Mankading can happen when the bowler is running in to bowl and the batsman at the non-strikers end is walking down the pitch in preparation for a potential run. The batsman is out of his crease and the bowler can dislodge the bales and make an appeal. Technically the batsman is fair game and needs to be given out.. The etiquette of cricket is that you need to give at least one warning before taking a wicket in this way. Even then its considered a pretty dodgy practice.

Vinoo Mankad will be remembered for all of history now, but for all the wrong reasons.

A bit like Aussie cricketer Trevor Chappell…

Oh yeah… we did that whole underarm thing against the Kiwis didn’t we?… That happened 35 years ago now but its still one of the ugliest moments in Trans-tasman sport. Acting on instructions from his brother Greg who was captain at the time, Chappell bowled the final ball of the day… underarm. Yeah – he rolled it along the ground… What an insanely dumb thing to do… The Kiwis needed a 6 to win the game and by bowling the way he did he denied them any opportunity of making a shot that would give them the result.

I think we might now call that ‘un-Australian’… But the fact is we did it. It was legal – it was permissible in the rules of the sport, but it just goes to show there can be a canyon of difference between legal and ethical or ‘permissible’ and ‘good’.

But its always been that way.

You can be perfectly correct and yet obnoxiously wrong. Mark Twain once spoke of those who were ‘good people in the worst sense of the word.’

I think of the story in the gospel of John where Jesus is confronted with the woman caught in adultery and he chooses not to play by the rules of his own religion. Those who were ‘good in the worst sense of the word’ have arrived and declared her guilty and punishable by stoning – which was true.

Jesus knows this is the case and says ‘sure go ahead – kill her – but let’s start with the person who has never sinned throwing the first stone.’

It gets a bit quiet in the street and John writes that one by one they dropped their stones and left.

So the woman is then left alone with the one man who could genuinely pronounce a condemnation – the one without sin – and yet he chooses not to enforce the law as it is written. Maybe its his law – he can do what he likes with it… but its not that… Its not an abrogation of the law but an awareness of what the law was there for in the first place.

He says to her ‘so… no one left here to condemn you then hey?’

‘Nope’.

‘Well – I don’t condemn you either.’

I think its really important we see that first statement Jesus makes because his second statement gets a lot more attention. His first action is to not condemn – to withhold whatever punishment was due – because that is what God’s like.

Then he says ‘alright – go and don’t sin any more’.

Because God’s also like that. He calls us to a better life, but that call comes out of love and grace rather than fear of condemnation.

In John 1 Jesus is spoken of as the ‘one full of grace and truth’, which I find a beautiful tension. We so often err on the side of grace – allowing sin to go unchecked, or on the side of ‘truth’, pointing out the rules divorced from their context.

What’s the point?

Simply that we can ‘get it all right’ and yet get it so terribly wrong. We can create a culture of law abiding and even ‘enforcement’ in Christian communities (whether its overt or subtle) and yet miss the heart of God that loves, accepts and forgives all of us for our screw ups.

If Jesus came to set us free then it won’t be because we live in trepidation that one day someone is going to Mankad us – or nail us on a technicality – because God just isn’t like that.

So if I were to ask you now how ‘full’ your life is and you were to express it as a percentage what would you say?

60%?… 70%?… 80%?…90?… more?…

When is ‘too full’? And what implication does that have?

If that seems like a strange question then maybe its because you haven’t come to appreciate the importance of ‘margins’.

By ‘margins’ what I mean is living in such a way that you have plenty of space in life. You are not perpetually rushing – not hurrying from one activity to the next – not feeling like there is never enough time in the day, and even in the quiet moments feeling edgy because there must be something to be getting on with.

I remember as a 20 something living such a packed life that I simply ran fast from one activity to the next and it set the pattern for my existence for the next 10 years. It was largely ok as a single guy with boundless energy, as even emergencies managed to get catered for by just having a later night. In that phase of life the goal was to get as much done as was physically possible in one week.  There simply were no margins and if there had been I would have filled them to overflowing!

But I don’t believe its a healthy way to live – running hard and squeezing as much in as is physically possible. In fact I would suggest it is a way of depleting the soul, draining joy and slowly but surely bringing us undone in every way.

The absence of margins inevitably means an absence of time in reflection – because reflection will be seen as unproductive time. And the absence of reflection leads to a life lived without examination. What was it ole mate Socrates said about the ‘unexamined life’? I don’t think I have ever heard of a more ‘contemplative’ leader having a moral failure (which isn’t to say it hasn’t happened), but far more often it is the driven, type A workaholic who finds themself here, and my guess is that it is in part related to the absence of reflective space and the ability to see their own vulnerability.

The absence of margins will see a productive body but a withering soul.  However… because busyness and accomplishment is valued so highly in our society you can often get away with a depleted soul for longer than you can the lack of achievement. In reality busyness and hurry are like cancer to the soul and while their effect may not be immediately visible, the damage is being done. That’s not to undervalue achievement because I still love to get stuff done and I want to be successful, but its to say that it cannot be at the expense of the soul.

The absence of margins will inevitably have a detrimental effect on relationships. You simply can’t stop and be present with people if your brain is constantly focused on the next thing. You will piss people off because you clearly ‘need to be elsewhere’. You have better things to do than sit back and fritter a few hours away with friends. If you’re overly busy then it will show in your speech. You will talk fast and people will not rest easy in your presence… and if people don’t feel at ease around you then relationships will always struggle to take shape.

The absence of margins will also show up in your availability to people who call outside of your schedule. Margins are the space in life where the unexpected stuff can be attended to – and with care and focus rather than just as a duty to be dispensed with as quickly as possible.

I find it hard to measure ‘margins’, but I know when they are there and I know when they aren’t. Its been a long time since I lived with narrow margins and I doubt I ever will again.

To live with generous margins could be perceived as lazy, as wasteful even and at times I have struggled with being seen that way. But to live with margins also means to live in such a way that both people and God are paid attention to and given the time they deserve rather than being quantified as a task and allocated a slot in the diary.

In speaking of this I used to say that since living with margins ‘I get less done, but I’m a nicer person for it’, but more recently I’ve been questioning whether I actually ‘get less done’, or if in fact I just accomplish different things.

I guess it all depends on what we believe really matters in the end…

Each evening when my head hits the pillow, the last thing I do is an ‘examen exercise’, a focused reflection on the day that has passed, giving thanks, looking for high points, low points, energy spikes, darkness, relational connections and the presence of God in all of it.

It’s a very simple but effective way of daily noticing what is happening in life and of seeing Gods hand. In the movement of the day it’s a bit harder to be conscious of the spirit’s work, but in the silence and dark of the night as I replay the day’s events in my mind I am able to join some dots, glean insights and get curious about what God may be doing.

Yesterday was a fairly typical Friday – a ‘church’ day for me – with meetings, people connections, admin and a bit of down time. It was so typical that it would have been easy to miss the moments of joy and fun. But an examen allows you to tune into the often unseen moments of gladness and pain that may otherwise go unobserved.

And it was a surprising few minutes of reflection.

As I turned the light off and gave thanks the first images foremost in my mind were some Facebook pics I had just seen of my 13 year old son Sam, doing his first talk to the kids groups he is involved with leading. It was inspiring and joy giving – to see him doing it – but also to hear him articulating the nature of his own faith as we drove home.

As I looked for stuff to be alert to I was reminded of a conversation from earlier the day – a person who wasn’t doing so well and needed prayer and probably a follow up conversation. I prayed for the person.

When I looked for moments of joy where my energy levels rose, I found two that I didn’t expect. One was when I fixed the sound system in my car. A dodgy earth wire was causing an amplifier to cut in and out randomly. I don’t know much about sound systems but I managed to track and fix the problem.

Satisfying. I like fixing things especially things I have little grasp of.  In ‘noticing’ that I was reminded that I find enjoyment in the accomplishment of stuff and I like problem solving. Perhaps I should do more of it…

The second was a funny moment when we picked the kids up from youth group and I noticed the high school boys having a chin up competition. I joined in and my 14 chin ups raised a few eyebrows – hardly olympic standard, but always nice to keep people guessing about what a 52 year old body is capable of… I chuckled as I drove off with the kids. The joy was in the surprise.

There was much in that day to be grateful for, to ‘pray about’ if you like, but I find the examen is most helpful for tuning in to the activity of God and to the more specific and unique moments that bring energy to my soul.

You can’t manufacture those moments, but noticing them, seeing a pattern and then living in line with them is just another way of being more fully the person God has created you to be.