HEALTHY ROOTS PRODUCE ENDURING FRUITS

A person away from home is like a bird away from its nest.

[The righteous] are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: if you fall down, your friend can help you up. But pity the one who falls and has no one to help! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali... From that time on Jesus began to preach, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.'

After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, Jesus' brothers said to him, 'You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do... Jesus told them, 'The right time for me has not yet come...' However, after his brothers had left for the feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone who had a need... All the believers were one in heart and mind. They did not claim any of their possessions as their own, but they shared everything they had.

(Proverbs 27: 8, GNB; Psalm 1: 3, GNB; Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12; Matthew 4: 12, 13-17; John 7: 1-3, 6--10; Acts 2: 44-45; 4:32 -all NIV)


A Yale University psychologist, Daniel Levinson, reports in his study of Yale graduates, Seasons of a Man's Life, that few of them had friends after high school. In a changing corporate environment, they found some companions with common interests, but where were the long-term bonds of friends who really knew and depended on each other?

We might preface any move to a different place or position with a life-sustaining inquiry: will we make friends there? The question occurs for us because we sometimes have to move -- as Jesus did.

According to Matthew, Jesus did not begin his public ministry until he had chosen a home. The context of Jesus' 'locating' may provide some answers to questions about the need to have a settled place.

Locating in Capernaum came after two unsettling events. First there was the temptation in the wilderness. That occurred at the only time in Jesus' ministry when he was without human companionship. Is this significant?

Well, consider the other time of temptation in Gethsemane when the sorrow in his heart almost crushed him. What he required then was the prayerful presence of his closest companions. Jesus' advice to his sleepy disciples was 'watch and pray'. Watch for what? They were to be aware of each other and sustained by alert and caring partners. This is what he needed, what they needed -and how about us?

Prayer is nourished in friendship and, in a time of crisis, we want dependable, 'watchful' friends. And how is that possible without tested experiences of reliability and daily or weekly contacts that let us know the needs of another whom we cherish?

In the second 'unsettling' event that precipitated the locating in Capernaum, Matthew explains Jesus' move in terms of security. He wanted to be away from the political territory of the murderous Herod who had just imprisoned John the Baptist. Later, when his brothers goaded him to make a public journey into areas where Judean authorities sought his life, Jesus rejected them and 'stayed on in Galilee' until he knew the time had come for him to head towards Jerusalem.

So what's the right time for a secure place, and when do we know the time has come to venture out from a nurturing location?

For Jesus, there was a secure thirty year period of growth in body and mind among kin in Nazareth before his ministry. But as he began to itinerate throughout Galilee after he found a home in Capernaum, it wasn't long before his ministry brought him into conflict with his home town, Nazareth (Luke 4: 16-30) and his adopted home in Capernaum (Matthew 11: 20-24).

However, after those rejections he still found a home. He carried with him the ability to establish long-term bonds in a new location. For example, after the successful training mission for disciples, Jesus found rest in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (Luke 10: 1-23, 38-42). This was the home to which he returned when a friend died (John 11) and the sanctuary for a symbolic anointing before his death (John 12: 1-8).

It takes time to find a home away from home. But more important than time is vulnerability. We need to know and let others know that companionship is more important than money, and appreciation for kindness than secular success. That's a problem, for modern professional and business life encourages the Judas in us to think about our purse and our piety whenever an understanding friend gets too close to our weaknesses.

Is it worth the effort to find and re-find a place? In the context of Jesus' ministry it would seem so. The choice of disciples (according to Matthew) came after Jesus found his new home in Capernaum and was out walking on the seashore. He observed Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John in the hometown activity, fishing. This was the context for strong and bold discipleship for them and for us. It can begin in one chosen place and should be sustained by the kind of friends we carry from those secure moments throughout life.


No-one would choose to live without friends, even if one had all other goods.

Aristotle

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost, 'Death of a Hired Man'

We all want someone who knows us better than anyone else does, and yet accepts us, enjoys us, needs us, holds nothing back from us, keeps our secrets, and is there for us when we want to be near.

Lewis B. Smedes, Caring and Commitment

Our society doesn't promote friendship. Activities are promoted, new homes are pushed, materialism is hawked. But there is no structural push for friendship; it's more that you stumble into it.

Interviewee, 'The Friendship Paradox'

Life in contemporary suburbia, you may have noticed, is not conducive to friendship. Many of us live in 'bedroom communities,' sorry imitations of villages with no defined downtown areas and no sense of neighbourhoods. Newer suburbs, even if they possess some sort of downtown, rarely have footpaths more than a few blocks long. So suburbanites glide through their 'community' in automobiles, armoured and glassed off from their 'neighbours'. We work in one suburb (or the city), go to church in another suburb, shop in a third, and join health clubs in a fourth. Our children attend schools in separate neighbourhoods or even separate communities...

In short, the social and economic demands of suburbia create space for material attainment and status seeking, but destroy space for the practice of friendship. And it is not simple over-inflated rhetoric to say that friendship has become a counter-cultural practice. If such is the case, the church in suburbia may have a surprising new mission: to establish a cultural space for the birth and supported practice of friendship.

Rodney Clapp, 'The Celebration of Friendship'

In the community of faith we can find the climate and the support to sustain and deepen our prayer and we are enabled to constantly look forward beyond our immediate and often narrowing private needs. The community of faith offers the protective boundaries within which we can listen to our deepest longings, not to indulge in morbid introspection, but to find our God to whom they point. In the community of faith we can listen to our feelings of loneliness, to our desires for an embrace or a kiss, to our sexual urges, to our craving for sympathy, compassion or just a good word; also to our search for insight and to our hope for companionship and friendship.

In the community of faith we can listen to all these longings and find the courage, not to avoid them or cover them up, but to confront them in order to discern God's presence in their midst. There we can affirm each other in our waiting and also in the realisation that in the centre of our waiting the first intimacy with God is found. There we can be patiently together and let the suffering of each day convert our illusions into the prayer of a contrite people. The community of faith is indeed the climate and source of all prayer.

Henry Nouwen, Reaching Out

Most of us know that feeling of being alone, isolated. It's not the same as choosing to be alone once in a while, or being independent at times. It's the feeling that no-one is near, that no-one remembers, that there is no-one to live for. It's a feeling of deep isolation, of not belonging to anyone. And when we have that feeling, 'To whom?' becomes our lonely cry of distress and longing.

God hears that question. So what we do at such times is very important for our spiritual as well as for our emotional lives. We can try to escape the loneliness by working harder, even putting in overtime; by reading a book; by going to a bar and joining other lonely people sitting in a row; by playing tennis; by calling someone -anyone. Or we can stay with that loneliness a little while and become aware of life at a deeper level. If we do, we might realise that no amount of work, busyness, food or drink, even of companionship, will completely release us from our lonely condition. Something larger, deeper, more lasting is necessary...

Even when events and people say: 'You don't belong', God's gentle voice reassures us: 'You do belong -- to me.' 'to whom?' is a cry God can both hear and answer. In fact, God is waiting to answer, as a loving parent waits with open arms for a child who has left home.

The parable of the prodigal son tells us, 'There is a homecoming for us all because there is a home!' [Thielicke, The Waiting Father]. Belonging means we have an address, a place where we are 'at home'. We belong to God and God will not let us go as others might. That belonging is more lasting, more constant, more loving than any belonging that job, school, club, church, friends or even family can provide.

Don Postema, Space for God

It is important to remember that the Christian community is a waiting community, that is, a community which not only creates a sense of belonging, but also a sense of estrangement. In the Christian community we say to each other, 'We are together, but we cannot fulfil each other... we help each other, but we also have to remind each other that our destiny is beyond our togetherness.' The support of the Christian community is a support in common expectation. That requires a constant criticism of anyone who makes the community into a safe shelter or a cosy clique, and a constant encouragement to look forward to what is to come.

Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out

What is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian community is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let those who until now have had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of their hearts.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

In life, no house, no home
my Lord on earth might have;
in death, no friendly tomb
but what a stranger gave.

What may I say?
Heaven was his home;
but mine the tomb wherein he lay.

Samuel Crossman


Holy Spirit, our companion and guide,

Show us the way home. Construct in our imagination the heavenly city where we have perfect fellowship and never know any as strangers. Gather to us the people who share our vision, that we may be supported and challenged by citizens in the coming Kingdom of our Father.

Use our vision of the future kingdom to find an earthly resting place. Meet us with faith and love along the way, lest we become suffocated by ever-present greed and selfish shoving in the crowded ways of urban existence. Let the eternal city shine through the darkness of perverse relationships and the blinding rage of continuous betrayal. May we find a lampstand for our candle of love while others blindly stumble with curses against our mutual obstacles.

Place us where we may honour the diversity of others without losing ourselves. Provide for us the daily nourishment of a morning greeting, a special remembrance, a helping hand. Give us guarantees of your faithfulness in our return to hospitable surroundings at the end of the day and the quietness of a safe rest in the night. Open our eyes each day to fresh beauty in a small space that shows our satisfaction with where we are placed.

Surround us with enough peace and joy in our place today that tomorrow will be worth living for ourselves and others. Amen.


A Benediction

Go out into the world with a determination to live with contentment and hospitality wherever your place may be. May your roots go deep into the lives of others and bring forth the fruit of friendship that will endure to the glory of God. Amen.

Rivers in the Desert Ed. Rowland Croucher pp. 90-97

THE LAST ENEMY TO BE OVERCOME

Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy victory?

O death, where is thy sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1 Corinthians 15: 51-56, RSV)


Paul's great triumphant shout of joy, well-known enough, is better known still because of the bass solo version in Handel's Messiah -- so well-known perhaps that we overlook the depth of meaning.

For what can it be, this victory over death given to us? Not that since Jesus died and rose again we do not die. Of course we will die, all of us. Nor that we simply disregard death, pretend it does not happen, call it by another name. True, some may be able to welcome it:

Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate around the world serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each
Sooner or later, delicate death.

Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love -- but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Walt Whitman, When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd

That is appropriate enough for someone who has lived a long and fruitful life, or for someone whose suffering has become unbearable. But what about the violent death of an accident victim, the despairing death of a suicide, the slow starvation of a child who never had a chance In life?

Not for nothing did Paul write of death as the enemy, the last enemy to be overcome, an enemy not just in itself but because of the way it can threaten us. It has the power to distort our relation to God, the source of life itself.

The very fact of death -- its arbitrary nature, to whom it comes and when -- can threaten faith in God. So the cry is heard when a loved one dies, 'Why him, why her, where's the justice in that?' Or the cry when one does not die soon enough, lingering on in agony, 'How can there be a loving and caring God?'

And the fear of death can threaten faithfulness to God. 'Life's so short,' we hear it said. 'Why make it miserable by having to be obedient to God? You only live once; live it up while you can.'

So death is an enemy, not just because it stands at the end of life, but because it has this capacity to invade life, diminishing life's possibilities in the present. Death is the last enemy to be overcome.

But, Paul is now affirming, death has been overcome. Not that we do not die, but that death does not have the last word. Not that death has been eliminated, but that its power to destroy us has been destroyed. Not that death is no longer real, but it is no longer to be feared.

For people fear death because they do not know what is in store on the other side of death, or know only too well that if they are judged, then they will be found wanting. Our wrongdoing in this world will cut us off from life in the next. The sting of death is sin; sinners are afraid to die.

But as forgiven sinners we need have no such fear, for the great good news of the gospel is that God does not desert us or cut us adrift. He came to us in Jesus Christ, who shares our grief, our sorrow, our suffering, our temptation and our death. He died, as Paul said, even for the ungodly. He died for us. And God who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us to new life in him.

So if we trust God with our life, we can surely trust him with our death, for the one who meets us at the end is none other than the Good Shepherd who gave his life for the sheep and would not rest until all were gathered into the fold.



[The Bible's position is] that God is the creator of death as a natural event. But an untimely death is a form of suffering which has, intervened between the Creator and the universe he sustains. During the age of this world, which is the age not of God's creation but only of his preservation, it is in Adam and not simply in God that all live; and it is in Adam that all die...

The New Testament is candidly silent about the conditions that will obtain following our [death]. But it is unequivocal about the truth which is of major importance: the God who does not intend our untimely death will have the last word about death... For this purpose Jesus Christ took death upon himself, 'that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.'

Carl Michalson, Faith for Personal Crises

Who is there who can be ready for the future which God gives? Are we so free from anxiety that we cease to cling to the transitory and perishable? Are we free from our own past, from ourselves? There is only one power which can free us from the bondage of self, and take away from us both our fear and our self-despair. It is the power of love...

This love of God is not a goal toward which we strive -- who could ever obtain it by striving? But it is the power which already enclasps us and enfolds us, and to which our eyes have only to be opened; and we are to turn our gaze and our meditation on him in whom it has appeared incarnate, Jesus Christ. To know oneself to be sustained by this love means to be free from the bondage of the past, from the fetters of oneself, free for the future which God will bestow and for the glory which will be revealed to us.

Rudolf Bultmann, This World and Beyond

All my hope on God is rounded;
He doth still my trust renew,
Me through change and chance he guideth,
Only good and only true.

God unknown,
He alone
Calls my heart to be his own.

Joachim Neander

Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts, let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

Soren Kierkegaard, The Prayers of Kierkegaard

A famous tennis player used to spend a great deal of time on the court, not with racquet and balls but just walking around, or standing and looking at the lines. 'Why?' he was asked.

'How can you play your best game if you haven't got a feel for the boundaries?' he replied.

If we do not consider that we shall die; if we do not press on from this truth to the required openness and resolution; if we do not let it forbid us to lose time and command us to make time for ourselves, then we are not genuinely and properly what we could be. We must consider that we shall die; otherwise we cannot be wise. And without wisdom, the true and proper life for which we are destined is quite impossible.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics

Treat the living as though they were dying.

Anonymous

The unsuppressed knowledge about death unveils the deepest and most crucial possibilities in life. Philip of Macedon turned this realisation into a kind of one-a-day brand elixir. His slave had a standing order. Every morning he was to enter the quarters of his king and shout, 'Philip, remember that thou must die!'

Carl Michalson, Faith for Personal Crises

Lord, in the strength of grace,
With a glad heart and free,
Myself, my residue of days,
I consecrate to thee.

Charles Wesley

Give me, O Lord,
A steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards;
An unconquered heart, which no tribulation can wear out;
An upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside.

Thomas Aquinas

To number our days, to remember that we must die means in the first place... to acknowledge and endure our predicament... The wise heart belongs to one who knows that in the hour of death we have nothing to rely upon except God's mercy.

But there is another thing to be remembered. What happened in the death of Jesus did not happen against us, but for us. What took place was not an act of God's wrath against us. Quite the opposite holds true. Because in Jesus, God so loved us from all eternity -- truly all of us -- because he has elected himself to be our dear Father and has elected us to become his dear children whom he wants to save and to draw unto him.

Therefore he has in the one Jesus written off, rejected, nailed to a cross and killed our old self who, as impressively as it may dwell and spook about in us, is not our true self. God so acted for our own sake.

Karl Barth, Deliverance for the Captives

It is precisely in the face of death that God's power hidden in the world is revealed. We cannot work out for ourselves the resurrection from the dead. But we may in any case rely on this God who can be defined as a God of the living and not of the dead; we may absolutely trust in his superior power even in the face of inevitable death; [we] may approach our death with confidence. The Creator and Conserver of the universe and of humankind can be trusted, even at death and as we are dying, beyond the limits of all that has hitherto been experienced, to have still one more word to say: to have the last word as he had the first.

Hans Kung, On Being a Christian

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4, 16-18, RSV

Fixed on this ground will I remain,
Though my heart fail and flesh decay;
This anchor shall my soul sustain,
When earth's foundations melt away;
Mercy's full power I then shall prove,
Loved with an everlasting love.

Johann Andreas Roth

Help me, O Lord, not to make too much of my own death, nor too little. Save me from coasting through the rest of my life, thinking that the best is behind me, not believing in creative possibilities yet to come, disappointed by hopes unfulfilled, longings unanswered.

Strengthen me in prayer and action for those who find life a living death:

* accident victims and others paralysed, trapped in a body that seems like a tomb; tortured by minds that mislead, confuse and terrify them;

* sons and daughters caring for aging parents, resentful that they have to do so much, yet guilty when they cannot do more;

* men and women stuck in jobs they long to change, or overcome with work demands they cannot meet, obsessed by work that dominates them, distraught at work they cannot find.

I am so thankful that my life has been free of that living death. Most of my time has been given to study and work that I find worthwhile and rewarding; I've had time for family and friends; my body and mind have enabled me to know and to share the joy of your creation.

Help me to show my gratitude in a life lived more fully to your glory, more committed to the needs of others, more open to the future, more accepting of what is yet to be, echoing in my life what I affirm with my lips:

'The best of all is, God is with us.' Amen.



A Benediction

And now to God who was in the beginning and will be at our end; who in Jesus Christ died and rose again to overcome the last enemy; whose Spirit breathed life into us and will give us life anew; to Father, Son and Holy Spirit we commit ourselves and those we love, trusting you with our death as we trust you in life, world without end. Amen.

Rivers in the Desert ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 245-251

THE HAZARDOUS JOURNEY

In due time their foot will slip. Their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.. The Lord will judge his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees their strength is gone.

But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do -- this I keep on doing.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare.

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death... But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.

The Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared.

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me... Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. I stay dose to you; your right hand upholds me.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.

Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; for your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth. My feet stand on level ground; in the great assembly I will praise the Lord.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Deuteronomy 32: 35-36a; Psalm 73: 2-3; Romans 7: 18-19; Ezekiel 36: 25-26; Psalm 25: 15; Psalm 13: 2, 3 and 5; Daniel 11: 35; Proverbs 3: 26; Psalm 51: 10-12; Ephesians 2: 10; 2 Corinthians 3: 17; Psalm 63: 1, 6-8; Psalm 139: 17-18; Psalm 26:2-3 and 12; Psalm 32: 8; Psalm 37:4 -- all NIV)



There is a view of Christian guidance that I learnt in youth group that God is in control -- commend the day to God, sit back and see God's hand at work. This optimistic view is expressed by Alexander Pope in a poem which concludes, 'Whatever is, is right.'

So I wove my way through life -- thankful for God's goodness, trying to be loving, avoiding the nasty things and knowing God is achieving his purposes. I look back now and feel God would not have been impressed by this 'loyalty' which avoided taking my responsibilities and sinfulness more seriously. But it was a case of 'Give as much of yourself that you know, to as much of God that you know.'

The innocence of this approach vanished when I could no longer weave around problems and 'crashed' into little pieces, and others were involved in my accident -wounded, hurt and wondering about 'my' God and 'my' faith. Was this a God achieving his 'good plan' or was he just a monster? I had betrayed him badly to myself and others and needed to reorientate my life, discovering again his forgiveness, his unconditional love and care in putting the pieces back together in his good time.

For me this involved taking responsibility, little by little, for myself -- my actions and decisions. That was tough when I wanted everyone to like me. This involved finding new paths to follow and learning to live with tensions -finding a balance between extremes of dependence and independence; acting and reflecting; death and life. The simplicity of the past had been replaced by a creative tension in the present which is reflected in the sign on my bathroom mirror:

You are looking at the face of the person who is responsible for your happiness today. Good morning, Jesus; thank you for loving me; what have you got going today?

Yes, on some mornings this has been tough to face as I have felt lonely, not knowing who I really was; concerned as to what others thought, as making choices was tough and living with the consequences somewhat frightening. So what way to go often involved scary paths as Robert Frost suggests in his poem, 'The Road Not Taken':

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Obviously there will be surprises, particularly in who you may find on this road. In expressing this journey I wrote the following:

As I look up and down this tortured path there are climbers labouring hard and long.

There is a joy and peace that lights up their faces both fresh and veined, their voices are music to me.

Can you hear?

Yes, of course, for you hum the tunes, those travellers' songs.

It all takes a lot of getting used to, reorientating attitudes while trying to be open. Choices just had to be made day by day in ways that often led to new paths while I was also facing old hurts, questions and consequences of decisions. Gordon MacDonald speaks of this pain:

It was not a one-time choice. We made it again and again as time passed. A score of ways could be found to bring back the pain. And each time the choice had to be made again. Would we fight the pain or permit it to be the environment in which God speaks? Usually, we chose the latter. And when for a moment we strayed toward the former, something seemed to happen to soon remind us that there was a better way.

That better way involved picking up the pieces with God's support and this is how I saw it while meditating on Psalm 34:

I need your helping hand again, 0 Lord,
for I feel thrown down, not able to rise... Lead on, my Lord!



A guilt complex is not another name for a sense of sin. Indeed, a guilt complex can sometimes obscure the reality of our sinfulness. It causes us to look within ourselves or at those around us, and it tempts us to seek excuses for our sinful behaviour ('I can't help it: I'm made that way'). A sense of sin, on the other hand, points us to God and leaves us with nothing to say about ourselves except that we are sinners.

John Gunstone, Free in Christ

Because I am human, I will fall; because I have been redeemed, I am able to rise again. To listen with my mind already made up is an empty gesture. Only when I allow the voice of God to release my inner freedom from the bonds of pride and wilfulness that enslave me can I discover the purpose for which I alone was made. My role in the world: to be his servant, inspiring others by my relaxed and joyful incarnation of Christ within the limits of my abilities.

Adrian Van Kaam & Susan Muto, Am I Living a Spiritual Life

And then he allows some of us to fall more severely and distressingly than before -- at least that is how we see it. And then it seems to us, who are not always wise, that all we set our hands to is lost. But it is not so. We need to fall, and we need to see that we have done so. For if we never fell we should not know how weak and pitiable we are in ourselves. Nor should we fully know the wonderful love of our Maker.

In heaven we shall see truly and everlastingly that we have grievously sinned in this life; notwithstanding, we shall see that this in no way diminished his love, nor made us less precious in his sight.

The testing experience of falling will lead us to a deep and wonderful knowledge of the constancy of God's love, which neither can nor will be broken because of sin. To understand this is of great profit.

Julian of Norwich

So we are called to wholeness and simultaneously to recognise our incompleteness; called to power and to acknowledge our weakness; called to both individuation and interdependence. Thus the problem -- indeed, the total failure -- of the 'ethic' of rugged individualism is that it runs with only one side of this paradox, incorporates only one half of our humanity. It recognises that we are called to individuation, power and wholeness. But it denies entirely the other part of the human story: that we can never fully get there and that we are, of necessity in our uniqueness, weak and imperfect creatures who need each other.

M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum

'There are only two ways out of chaos,' I will explain to a group after it has spent a sufficient period of time squabbling and getting nowhere. 'One is into organisation -- but organisation is never community. The only other way is into and through emptiness.'

M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum

We can never escape from obedience to God... When we have the feeling that on some occasion we have disobeyed God, it simply means that for a time we have ceased to desire obedience. Of course it must be understood that, where everything else is equal, we do not perform the same actions if we give our consent to obedience as if we do not; just as a plant, where everything else is equal, does not grow in the same way if it is in the light as if it is in the dark. The plant does not have any control or choice in the matter of its own growth. As for us, we are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

Simone Weil, Waiting On God

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home -Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene -- one step enough for me.

John H. Newman, 'The Pillar of the Cloud'

The way we see, interpret and react to whatever happens to us is the important thing. Sometimes the very worst thing that may happen to us can bring about the best thing that could ever happen in us. And we must assume this responsibility for what happens in us. We must assume responsibility for our attitudes. Only if we accept this responsibility can we grow through the various circumstances of life.

John Powell, The Christian Vision

There are men and women who reach their twenties with a strong sense of dependence motivating their life. They are afraid to take charge of their own being and consciously or unconsciously find themselves in a relationship or situation of continuing dependence... The dependent person may remain so throughout life. A significant proportion, however, begin to emerge from their dependence in the mid-thirties to the fifties. Gradually they find the confidence to take increasing charge of their own life. They seek greater control over their destiny and they challenge authority..,. The challenge can be defiant or quietly assertive, but a new life is certainly born whose resolution is implacable.

Gerald O'Collins, The Second Journey

Self-knowledge, the beginning of wisdom, is ruled out for most people by the increasingly effective self-deception they practise as they grow older. By middle age, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. Yet there's a surprising usefulness in learning not to lie to yourself.

John Gardner, Self Renewal

We grow in self-awareness not only by introspection but by tackling the jobs that lie to hand, by measuring our strength and skill against taxing work and difficult people. In middle and later Life after the heat of the struggle to succeed is over and such measure of success as we have attained has lost all its novelty and most of its charm, then especially we are ready to devote energy to the task of gaining deeper self-awareness. Until we know ourselves, we cannot really possess ourselves. And until we possess ourselves and have the inner peace that comes from self-possession, we shall find it impossible to relate to other people except either by trying to possess and dominate them or by letting them possess or dominate us.

Christopher Bryant, The River Within

C.S. Lewis wrote, 'To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.' He goes on to say that if you keep your heart intact, it will become 'unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable'. Because the more I commit myself to a person, the greater the pain I shall feel when he lets me down or hurts or rejects or avoids me.

Also, it is only when I am close to another that I see the 'speck' in her eye and then learn the painful truth that the speck in her eye is simply a reflection of the log that is in mine. I haven't yet met a Christian anywhere in the world with a deep mature love who hasn't gone through considerable suffering in the area of relationships. So, the pressures and pains in our relationships can, if we learn to forgive and be forgiven, produce this rare and fragrant love.

David Watson, Through the Year with David Watson

But in life, wherever else we are, we are always also on the Delectable Mountains from which we can catch a glimpse of the Celestial City... The necessary conflicts of our life are for the time being resolved. And we experience a foretaste of their final and permanent resolution.

God, we believe, accepts us, accepts all persons, unconditionally, warts and all. Laughter is the purest form of our response to God's acceptance of us. For when I laugh at myself I accept myself and when I laugh at other people in genuine mirth I accept them. Self-acceptance in laughter is the very opposite of self-satisfaction or pride ... In laughing at my own claims of importance or regard I receive myself in a sort of loving forgiveness which is an echo of God's forgiveness of me.

Altogether, I suggest that laughter is the best and clearest reflection we ever get in this world of God's love for his creation. In laughter we see the Celestial City in what is more than a passing glimpse.

Harry Williams, Tensions


O Lord, journeying is fun sometimes, but at other times I'm exhausted and discouraged. I come to you for strength: physical, emotional and spiritual. I need to sort out a few things first. The way you do things is often so mysterious; why do you allow me to stumble along and fall down ? At other times your protection is breathtaking. I find you have saved me yet again -- Thanks! I am slow to learn that your ways are different to my limited ways of thinking and acting. Thanks for being patient, merciful and forgiving! I am not sure I am honest with you and others. Lord, help me to deal with anything I'm resenting in others that I haven't honestly faced.

Lord, I don't want just a surface change, so please reach into the depths of my being -- to cleanse, reorientate and transform with your healing hand. I don't want to wander around in circles and get nowhere. Lord, unless you give me light, I will never know who I am. So please help to find more unity between my conscious and unconscious that will help me find wholeness and direction for the journey ahead.

Lord, take your knife and cut away at the tendency towards dishonesty and self deception. Thank you for the assurance of your forgiveness. Please take my hand and lead on through the 'valley of the shadow' as well as the treacherous hillside. Guide my feet across the rocky terrain and around the many traps. Thank you for journeying with me. I don't want to leave your side for the rest of my life, so Lord, please lead on. Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Benediction

For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when some of his sheep have been scattered abroad, so I will seek out my sheep; and I will rescue them... And I will bring them out... and gather them... and I will feed them... I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep... I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.

Ezekiel 34: 11-16, RSV

Rivers in the Desert ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 117-126

IDOLATRY AND THE IMAGE OF GOD

Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the Lord your God and I tolerate no rivals.

Be certain that you do not forget the covenant that the Lord your God made with you. Obey his command not to make yourselves any kind of idol, because the Lord your God is like a flaming fire; he tolerates no rivals.

Our ancestors refused to obey him; they pushed him aside and wished that they could go back to Egypt. So they said to Aaron, 'Make us some gods who will lead us. We do not know what has happened to the man Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.' It was then that they made an idol in the shape of a bull, offered sacrifice to it, and had a feast in honour of what they themselves had made.

You know that while you were still heathen, you were led astray in many ways to the worship of lifeless idols.

'It is my opinion,' James went on, 'that we should not trouble the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write a letter telling them not to eat any food that is ritually unclean because it has been offered to idols...'

So then, about eating the food offered to idols: we know that an idol stands for something that does not really exist; we know that there is only the one God. Even if there are so-called 'gods', whether in heaven or on earth, and even though there are many of these 'gods' or 'lords', yet there is for us only one God, the Father, who is the Creator of all things and for whom we live; and there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created and through whom we live.

(Exodus 20: 4-5; Deuteronomy 4: 23-24; Acts 7: 39-41; 1 Corinthians 12: 2; Acts 15: 19-20a; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 -- all GNB)


The belief that God is not to be depicted in the form of an image is integral to the biblical worship of God. Its basis is in the Mosaic Law. The idea of the jealous nature of God is usually mentioned in connection with idol worship.

God is not to be conceived of as essentially remote from the world and therefore in need of material representation. Rather he is a God that we cannot master or control, least of all in visible form. Imagination is not permitted free rein when it comes to describing God, for all things have been created by him, are subject to him and cannot, therefore, be compared with him.

In the New Testament, idols are not merely alternative gods, but unreal gods and therefore false as distinct from real gods. Paul believed there was not truth or reality in the gods represented by idols. He believed demons were behind idol worship. Offerings to idols are in fact offerings to demons. Demons are not the same as the gods the idolatrous worshipper worships; rather demons deceive worshippers into acknowledging them to be gods. John in his apocalyptic vision sees the whole of humankind worshipping demons and idols (Revelation 9: 20). Satan is behind all paganism -- sophisticated or primitive, materialistic or magical.

Humans are not free to choose whether or not they will worship gods. In this sense there are no atheists. We are all committed to someone or something within or outside ourselves. The choice we make is between the true and living God, and one or more from a pantheon of false gods. Some 'gods that are not God' are noble. They may include service of our fellow-humans, or attainment in the arts, or the advancement of knowledge. But when these -- or anything -- become ends in themselves, we are worshipping idols.

The most common, and most insidious, idol is the self, the ego. When we are enslaved to ourselves, we may become famous or rich or influential, but decrease in stature in the process.

Idolatry, then, is the worship of anything created, instead of worshipping the Creator. In our culture, modern rivals to God include the 'five p's' -- popularity, power, prestige, prominence and patriotism -- together with wealth, physical beauty and bodily pleasure. Idols are objects of extreme devotion, whether they be the 'almighty' dollar, sport, drugs, sex, science, or whatever.

Idols detract from God, and distract us from worship of him alone. Idols do not point us to him: none yet have extolled his greatness and power and glory. God is jealous, not because he has some personality defect that requires our adulation, but jealous for our good. Right here is the most important single issue for any human person or group: to let God, not gods rule us; to worship and enjoy him -- not them -- forever.

The Christian faith does not argue there is nothing good in other religious traditions or teaching. Christians do not say there are no points of common understanding between various religions. The followers of Christ do not say Christianity is all light and all other ways are, in fact, systems that are entirely in the dark. What Christians claim is that God has revealed his plan of salvation in and through the Christian faith and that the locus of that salvation is to be found in Jesus Christ.


God is immediately near in his created world. There is a mystic immanence which touches all. The Holy Spirit of God is near to all. He is touching us at every moment. And, in response, some may be touching him. Even so, there may be touch but no truthful perception, no vital fellowship and no living relationship. The Divine may be near but not apprehended. There may be contact but no communion. Pregnant events may be near to birth but nothing is born.

Graham Houghton, 'Idolatry and the Image of God'

Now, what if that which you are worshipping as a god -- that is, looking up to and relying upon in an ultimate sense -- is not in fact God -- that is, does not have the power to sustain and satisfy and fulfil your life? This is at the bottom of all human tragedy -- people set their ultimate hopes on that which does not have the power to save or fulfil. And when this happens, just as Jesus said, that which is 'built on sand' collapses and goes to pieces and ends up in disintegration.

I once saw a bumper sticker that said: 'Let God be God.' On first glance, a phrase like that sounds like so much religious doubletalk and 'gobbledegook'. But on deeper reflection, I realised it stated the most important imperative of life. What could be more important, really, than letting one's god be the true God -- letting the One who is God by nature function as one's god, in fact?

John Claypool, 'God for Each of Us'

Idolatry is the practice of ascribing absolute value to things of relative worth... Idolatry is always popular among religious people, but idols made out of things like the Denomination, the Bible, the Liturgy, the Holy Images, are apt to seem so limited in real power even to their idolaters that there is always the hope that in time they will overthrow themselves.

It is among the unreligious that idolatry is a particular menace. Having ushered God out once and for all through the front door, the unbeliever is under constant temptation to replace him with something spirited in through the service entrance. From the moment the eighteenth-century French revolutionaries set up the Goddess of Reason on the high altar of Notre Dame, there wasn't a head in all Paris that was safe.

Frederich Buechner, Wishful Thinking

What about people who say 'I believe in God' when their mental orientation, overall purposes and conversational obsessions reveal that in fact they believe primarily and earnestly in the ladder of promotion, the achievement of the maximum number of personal comforts and the promiscuous pursuit of the opposite sex? Conversely, what about those who say 'No, I don't believe in any God', then their mental orientation, daily activity and daily chatter reveal that they believe passionately and profoundly in money, cars and betting on horses? Surely they, too, are guilty of lying. Their gods are money, cars and gambling. To call one a believer (a theist) and the other an unbeliever (an atheist) would be most misleading... For practical purposes they are both polytheists.

Harry Blamires, 'Where Do We Stand Against Current Idolatries?'

It is painfully apparent that radical Christians have not always been true to the whole counsel of God's judgment. An ideological selectivity intrudes, a political bias which undermines the credibility and power of prophetic witness. The idolatries of the establishment are attacked while the idols of the anti-establishment receive less critical treatment. The evils of the majority culture are assailed, but the sins of the counterculture are often passed over. The political prisoners of right-wing dictatorships seem to generate more interest than those languishing in the gaols of leftist regimes... Prophecy is, in fact, profoundly anti-ideological.

Jim Wallis, 'Idols Closer to Home'

In Latin America, the doctrine of Seguridad Nacional [means that] every trend toward change is interpreted as a threat to 'national security', every proposal to extend food and shelter and education to those now denied it is seen as a communist plot. Consequently, in the interests of national security, any measures are legitimate to thwart the proponents of change, from persuasion to arrest to exile to torture to execution. It is carefully concealed from the people that such 'security' is only for the few who have power and want to keep it, and that it really means insecurity for the rest...

The doctrine of national security is what the Bible calls 'idolatry', which is a fancy name for worshipping a false god. It says that in this case, the nation has become a false god, and that won't work. Whenever we say 'anything goes...' in defending a nation, we have made the nation into a supreme object of our allegiance, and that is what we call a god. Our national temptation, in other words, is never atheism, but always to polytheism, to the creation of other gods in addition to the true God.

Robert McAfee Brown, Creative Dislocation

Idols [such as] work, alcohol, consumerism, pornography [and such like] mottle so many of our lives. The one God who is the maker of heaven and earth is not in competition with our decent, proper use of any creatures. Both we and all other creatures come from this one God, so in God's eyes there is no strife among us... The problem of idolatry is that we easily lose perspective, lose our sense of God's overriding presence and so fixate on something less than God. This something less can be our selves, with their so many virtues and anxieties, or it can be something external that we think will make us happy...

We are not what we eat, what we wear, what we earn, what others think of us. We are possibility, the potential, the humble yet wonderful creature of God brought into focus and warmed from the core by a force, a most gentle power, that we cannot see or grasp or name or deny, a force that has given us the best moments of our lives, the times we knew why Genesis says that God looked on our creation and called it very good.

John Carmody, Towards a Male Spirituality

A poor French sculptor had just completed a very beautiful clay model. That night it became bitterly cold and wet, and he was afraid that the model might be damaged by the frost. At length he took his blankets and, wrapping them around the model, lay down again. In the morning he was found dead, but the model was intact...

Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Spiritual Life

We are made in the image of God. And while sin has marred that image to a greater or lesser degree, it means that, despite where and how we might worship God, there remains something of that image in us, calling us, attracting us to reaches higher than ourselves... to higher plains of moral integrity and being than that of the gods we worship.

Graham Houghton, 'Idolatry and the Image of God'

To reach satisfaction in all
desire its possession in nothing.

To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing.

To come to possess all
desire the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing.

St John of the Cross

The English Cloud of Unknowing develops the picture of the soul suspended in prayer between two 'clouds': below is the cloud of forgetting, the veil which hides created concerns and lesser loves; above, the cloud of unknowing, the darkness of God which can be passed through only by the 'dart of longing love' answering the obscure ray of grace which kindles it like a 'sparkle from the coal'.

Rowan Williams, A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality



Lord, help me to understand that an awesome war is going on inside me all the time, as the God who made me does battle with the gods I have made.

Lord, you are the divine surgeon, who is horrified by that which is destroying me, who desires my wholeness and fulfilment, and who labours unceasingly to get rid of any spiritually cancerous growth which is taking over my mind or spirit.

Only you, my Creator, can fully satisfy and genuinely fulfil me, the creature. You have made us for yourself -- not for other gods -- and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

Rescue me from depending for my salvation on anything which does not have the power to save, or relying ultimately on something that is ultimately unreliable.

You, Lord, are my God. Help me to love you with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. May you be my heart's desire, the object of my greatest devotion, now and always. Amen.


A Benediction

Now may God who is the living God, the Creator who made all things, who redeems us from all idolatries, who gives us peace, make us holy in every way and keep our whole being - spirit, soul and body - free from every idolatry at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls us will do it, because he is faithful. Alleluia. Amen.

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 (adapted)

Rivers in the Desert ed. Rowland Croucher pp. 187-194

ON LOVING GOD

by Rowland Croucher

Scriptures: 1 John 4: 16b; 2 Corinthians 5: 14-15; John 14: 15; Psalm 31: 23; Psalm 73: 25; Psalm 42: 1-2a; 1 Peter 1: 8; 2 Thessalonians 3: 5.

Evangelical Christianity invites people to 'accept Christ' (a term, incidentally, not found in the Bible) but needs more urgently to encourage them to love Christ. We are ushered onto church committees, given church jobs, and are rarely asked 'How are you and God?' The great commandment is still to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength... Rather than seeking religion, even the Christian religion - we should be seeking God.

Believing in God is good, but the devils also believe, and tremble. Being acquainted with God is good, but you can be acquainted with someone without really loving them. When a little girl said, 'God's my best friend!', she was uttering something that is at the heart of true spirituality.

Brother Lawrence was a lame, clumsy man who went to a monastery to atone somehow for his disabilities. He was put to work washing floors and kitchen pots and pans. In the midst of all this he 'practised the presence of God'. When he was dying, his friends asked what he was thinking about. He replied, 'I am doing what I shall do through all eternity - blessing God, praising God, adoring God, giving him the love of my whole heart.'

The Bible suggests about seven tests to measure our love for God.

First, we love God by loving other people. As an old saint put it: you love God just as much as, and no more than you love the person you love least.

Second, Jesus said, you prove your love for him by obeying him.

Third, if you love someone you'll want to linger in their company. Sheila Cassidy in her Prayer for Pilgrims says real prayer is not just spending time with God, but wasting time with him. And real prayer is listening more than talking.

Fourth, our words are an index of our loves: out of the fullness of our hearts we speak.

Fifth, to love someone who's absent is to keenly anticipate their return.

Sixth, there's the test of idolatry. An idol is whatever you worship, whatever you've committed your life to achieving, whatever you get excited about, whatever turns you on.

Finally, there's the ultimate test - martyrdom. What am I prepared to die for? Jesus said you can't have any greater love than being willing to die for someone. The martyrs in the Apocalypse did not cherish their own lives even in the face of death (Revelation 12: 11).

Charity, says the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, 'is nought else but love of God for himself above all creatures'.

I love you, Lord not doubtingly but with absolute certainty. Your Word beat upon my heart until I fell in love with you and now the universe and everything in it tells me to love you .... (Augustine of Hippo)

A century ago, a hymn by John Newton was often sung in the churches, the first stanza of which ran like this:

Tis a point I long to know Oft it causes anxious thought: Do I love the Lord, or no? Am I his, or am I not?

The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord... Jesus told his disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of his sayings would prove that we loved him, and the failure or refusal to keep them would prove that we did not. This is the true test of love... Not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Love for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling...


Some quotes from the spiritual masters (and others):

If we would turn from fine-spun theological speculations about grace and faith, and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves, and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: 'Do we love the Lord or no?'

A W Tozer, Love's Final Test

Perceiving, as [others] have not perceived, the burning love of God, the saint gives God love for love. He cannot help it. Certainly, it is not the fruit of labour. Having seen the love of God, his own love leaps in response. His heart is drawn out of him and lost in God's immensity. No mortal can love as God loves, but the saint loves with all that there is of him... It is by love that the saint becomes free - free of that awful self-centredness which is the mark of most mortals. . . It is by love that we come to freedom, and there is no other way.

W.E. Sangster, The Pure in Heart

He had always been governed by love, without selfish views; and having resolved to make the love of God the end of all his actions, he had found reasons to be well satisfied with his method. He was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking him only, and nothing else, not even his gifts... 'I did not engage in a religious life but for the love of God, and I have endeavoured to act only for him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, 1 will always continue to act purely for the love of God. 1 shall have this good at least, that till death 1 shall have done all that is in me to love him.'

Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

0 God, 1 love thee, 1 love thee -
Not out of hope of heaven for me
Not fearing not to love and be
In the everlasting burning.

Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me.

And thou couldst see me sinning:
Then I, why should not I love thee,
Jesus, so much in love with me?
Not for heaven's sake; not to be
Out of hell by loving thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that thou didst love me
I do love and I will love thee:

What must I love thee, Lord, for then?
For being my king and God. Amen.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

A fearful person said, 'I fear lest I should be cast into hell.' Another anxious person said, 'I dread lest I should be deprived of the joy of heaven.' A third was very happy and contented. [He was asked] 'What is the secret of your joy and peace?' He said, 'My constant prayer to God is that he may grant me to love him with heart and soul, and I may serve and worship him by love alone. Should I worship him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve him from desire of gaining heaven, may he keep me out. But should I worship him from love alone, may he reveal himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with his love and presence.'

Sadhu Sundar Singh, The Spiritual Life

'When thoughts come, welcome them; and when they do not flow freely, simply rest back and love, and grant me the shared joy of being loved by you. For I, too, by my very nature, am hungry with an insatiable hunger for the love of all of you, just as your love reaches out at your highest moments to all the people about you.'

'So child, I, even I, God, whom people have foolishly feared and flattered for my gifts, I want love and friendship more than I want grovelling subjects. So while we love each other, child, my share is as keen as yours.'

Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic

Thou knowest not what, saving that thou feelest in thy will a naked intent unto God. . . this darkness and this cloud... hindereth thee, so that thou mayest neither see him clearly by light of understanding in thy reason, nor feel him in sweetness of love in thy affection. And therefore shape thee to bide in this darkness as long as thou mayest, evermore crying after him whom thou lovest. For if ever thou shalt see him or feel him as it may be here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness. Smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.

The Cloud of Unknowing

When the next step comes, you do not take the step, you do not know the transition, you do not fall into anything. You do not go anywhere, and so you do not know the way by which you got there or the way by which you come back afterward. You are certainly not lost. You do not fly. There is no space, or there is all space: it makes no difference.

The next step is not a step... And here all adjectives fall to pieces. Words become stupid. Everything you say is misleading - unless you list every possible experience and say: 'That is not what it is', 'That is not what I am talking about.'

What it is, is freedom. It is perfect love. It is pure renunciation. It is the fruition of God. . . It is freedom living and circulating in God, who is Freedom. It is love loving in Love. It is the purity of God rejoicing in his own liberty.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds Of Contemplation

To the few who are converted, goodness is pleasant and needs no sanctions. It needs no authority, for it has been verified by experience. But when people have to be coerced into goodness, it is plain that they do not care for it.

Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals

Marvellously close, God, help me to keep thinking of you all day today, as love crowding gently as the ether, warm as the sunlight, into every nook and cranny of my thoughts, words, looks, acts - love pressing in, and oozing out, floating like perfume out to others.

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

'My child, this makes me happy. Now let love flow out to my world of needy people all about you. Despise not one of the least. Do not see colour or clothes, just souls and my children. Do not hear titles or languages, just hear me speak through them. I call from behind every eye, I float upon every wave of speech and song and sigh. See me in people, for I seek to make them grow in Christlike love.'

Frank Laubach, Learning the Vocabulary of God

In Graham Greene's novel, The Heart of the Matter, Scobie is torn between love for his wife and his mistress, and decides to commit suicide. Sitting in his car, he holds a very moving conversation with God, acknowledging that he is guilty before God and that he can no longer face the altar. 'You'll be better off when you lose me once and for all. You'll be at peace when I'm out of your reach,' he tells God.

God replies. . . 'You say you love me, yet you'll do this to me - rob me of you for ever. I made you with love. I've wept your tears. . . and now you push me away, put me out of your reach. I am as humble as any other beggar. Can't you trust me as you'd trust a faithful dog? I've been faithful to you for 2000 years... Can't you trust me to see that the suffering isn't too great?'

Ivor Bailey, Live and Let Love

I no longer want to build empires, to ascend thrones, or to be number one in my little kingdom. I want to love you, and to respond to your love for me by communicating such love to others. This is what I want, 0 Lord, but you know my soft spots, my hang-ups. May the victory be yours today, 0 Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Leslie F. Brandt, A Book of Christian Prayer

I arise today Through God's strength to pilot me God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me... Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise. Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity

St. Patrick


Prayer:

Lord, I am your child. In some mysterious sense, my Father, you are hungry for my love. Your love is mediated through words and the Word, through sunsets and rain and the whispering trees, soft shadows on the water. I was created for friendship with you, my Creator. I was redeemed for friendship with you, my Saviour. I am cared for for friendship with you, my ever-present Friend. Lord, it's not a self-improvement course I want, but you.

We taste thee, 0 thou living Bread, And long to feast upon thee still. We drink of thee the fountainhead, And thirst our souls from thee to fill.

I have tasted a little of your goodness, Lord, and it has both satisfied me and made me hunger for more. My desire is to desire you more. Give me a gift of love - for you and for others. And to journey towards the final self-forgetfulness to revel in your love forever.

A Benediction:

Keep yourselves in the love of God, as you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy to give you eternal life. May God's grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with undying love.



From Rivers in the Desert: Meditations and Prayers for Refreshment, by Rowland Croucher. Published by Lion (U.K.), Albatross (Australia), 1991/1993, Chapter 5.

SHORT CUTS ARE RISKY

Now when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the road towards the Philistines, although that was the shortest; for he said, 'the people may change their minds when they see war before them, and turn back to Egypt.' So God made them go round by way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea.

For the moment all discipline seems to be painful rather than pleasant. Later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing towards you, not wishing that any should perish.

I do not claim that I have already succeeded or have already become perfect. I keep striving to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself. Of course, beloved, I really do not think I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. So I run straight towards the goal in order to win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above.

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

'All this I will give you,' the devil said, 'if you will kneel down and worship me.'

My brothers, whenever you have to face trials of many kinds, count yourselves supremely happy, in the knowledge that such testing of your faith breeds fortitude, and if you give fortitude full play you will go on to complete a balanced character that will fall short in nothing.

You should try your hardest to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with fortitude, fortitude with piety, piety with brotherly kindness and brotherly kindness with love. These are gifts which, if you possess and foster them, will keep you from being either useless or barren in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Exodus 13: 17-18, NEB; Hebrews 12: 11, RSV; 2 Peter 3: 8-9, RSV; Philippians 3: 12-14, GNB; Hebrews 5: 8, RSV; Matthew 4: 9, GNB; James 1: 2-4, NEB; 2 Peter 1: 5-8, NEB)



In these days of instant cash, it is well to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as instant Christian character and maturity, and that attempts to find short cuts in these matters can lead to a good deal of disillusionment and frustration. It takes a lifetime to grow to what Paul calls 'the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ'. We are still 'being saved', and the whole process is attended by growing pains and obstacles which may not be dispensed with without stultifying the whole thing. There are no short cuts.

We fall into this trap in many ways. For example, there are some among us who think that all the problems which beset our world would be solved overnight if everybody suddenly became Christians. It is not as simple as that: they would still need to be worked at and thought out by consecrated minds. And many of what we see now as problems, God surely sees as opportunities.

Even Jesus was tempted to try short cuts to his goals: 'All these I will give you if...' But he deliberately took the long way round, past Galilee and Judea, past the high priest's palace, past Gethsemane, past Pilate's court, by way of the cross to the tomb in Joseph's garden. 'It became him, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering -- not 'in spite of it', but 'by means of it'.

God does an infinitely bigger thing for us than giving us a short cut through our difficulties and instant solutions to our problems when he makes us wise enough and strong enough to find our own way through these things. Which of us, in our better moments, would rather stand without sweating on some mountain peak which God had reduced for us to the size of a molehill, than climb to the peak of some mountain of achievement, with torn hands and bleeding feet, but thanking God for the strength he gave us to get there? To people facing the problems of that age, Jesus apparently gave no specific directions, no easy solutions, but he did tell them how to become the kind of people who would know in their hearts what had to be done. And there are no short cuts to that condition of mind and heart.

Think now of some of the ways in which we tend to become victims of this very human failing; when we become a little impatient with bereaved people passing through the long and painful process of working through deep grief, and try to cheer them up, thinking that it is 'time they pulled themselves together'; when we hang labels on people and put them in categories, without the prior arduous attempt to understand them in depth; our giving glib advice on important matters without really listening to the questions; our inadequate ideas and practice of evangelism; our wrong expectations of prayer and guidance, imagining that these are to save us from the often painful task of thinking through our problems, and acting on our own God-given insight; our craving for quick 'results' in God's work -- all that comes into Bonhoeffer's concept of 'cheap grace'. In all these ways we try to find easy short cuts through our difficulties. (An imaginative reading between the lines of the fragment of the story of Paul's second missionary journey in Acts 16:6-9 is to be recommended.)


If the way to the goal of our dreams sometimes seems to be unnecessarily long and devious, and we think that we can find a more direct route, may we have the faith and courage to obey him, believing that when God is leading, the longest way round is indeed the shortest way home. Short cuts are as risky in religion as in hiking, but not nearly as harmless. I have just spent three hours with a young man who was 'soundly converted' at an evangelistic rally some months ago. Now that the emotional excitement has died down, he is back where he started, indeed further back. The glow has faded, and he is distressed because he has fallen down on his conversion, broken his vows and dishonoured Christ...

As we talked, it became obvious to me that here was a young man accepting a premature solution to a problem that had not been sufficiently explored... he had come to terms with Christ on too narrow a front... It was not the whole person who was committed to Christ, but that part which stood in obvious and pressing need.

W.B.J. Martin, Five Minutes to Twelve

There is no expeditious road
to pack and label men for God,
And save them by the barrel load.

Francis Thompson, A Judgment in Heaven

The trouble is that the modern world is so dynamic and explosive that we cannot continue for long without becoming conscious of our need for answers to ultimate questions. When we do, our chief danger is that, in our desperation and inexperience, we try to take religious short cuts, like the idolaters of the ancient world. There is already plenty of evidence that this is just as much one of the dangers of the modern world as so-called ‘irreligion’.

Daniel Jenkins, The Christian Belief in God

In the language of psychoanalysis, we are in conflict with ourselves, in the grip of neurotic patterns. How wonderful it would be if we could be saved from the pain of such conflicts! Well, there is help at hand... fanaticism, drugs, religion, sex, power: all of these will help relieve the pain of inner conflict, and save us the trouble of striving for a mature way of being in the world. They will also enable us to elude love, and will prevent us from finding our way 'home'.

Alan Jones, Soul Making

There are no supersonic flights to the Celestial City or even to the Palace Beautiful. Increased awareness can only be obtained by a journey on foot by way of the Slough of Despond, the Hill Difficulty, Doubting Castle and the rest.

H.A. Williams, 'Theology and Self-Awareness'

Nothing is too early or late for me which is due time for thee.

John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer

...the devil urges upon [Jesus] the well-tried methods of all human reformers. They had failed only because they were not able to back their programs with the power to carry them out. But link the irresistibility of the divine omnipotence to the politician's dream of universal plenty, or to the known ability of sheer display to dazzle the human mind... or to the 'realism' of skilful diplomacy -- and with any such program how could he fail to win the world? But Jesus rejects in turn each of these suggestions... There could be no short cuts to the kingdom of God.

John A.T. Robinson, Twelve New Testament Studies

One of the most important factors in the Gesell studies is their working hypothesis that the stages of growth [in children] are not evenly related to each other. There is a jagged rhythm of growth. There will be a spurt of growth and activity, a time of breaking out and vigorous expansion, a time of... troubled and confused behaviour, and a time of rounded, balanced, smooth and consolidated behaviour...

Parents tend to interpret the behaviour of children as being good or bad in terms of the spurts of growth and the periods of quiescent consolidation. Growth is considered to be times of difficulty, badness and unmanageableness... On the other hand, the times of quiescence and consolidation are likely to be identified with goodness, virtue and perfection in behaviour.

Wayne E. Oates, The Psychology of Religion

It is not for you to turn the buds into blossoms.
Your touch spoils them,
You tear the petals and scatter them in the dust.
He who can open the bud
Does it so simply.

D.T. Niles, The Preacher's Task and the Stone of Stumbling

What all life does say to us is that God does not conduct his rivers, like arrows, to the sea. The ruler and compass are only for finite mortals who labour, by taking thought, to overcome their limitations, and are not... infinite... The expedition demanded by humanity's small power produces the canal, but nature, with a beneficent and picturesque circumambulancy, the work of a more spacious and less precipitate mind, produces the river. Why should we assume that, in all the rest of his ways, he rejoices in the river, but in religion, can use no more adequate method save the canal?

John Oman, Grace and Personality



The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties... Help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry. [Enable] us to go blithely on our business all this day; bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.

R.L. Stevenson

O God, in whose strong hands are the threads of every person's life, I thank you that you have a purpose for the world, and that in that purpose my little life has its place and a part to play. Forgive me that so often I want life on other terms than you have granted, and that so often I seek the easiest way through the obstacles that beset me, thus robbing myself of the real fruit of pain and frustration. For often I forget that these experiences are the means by which we grow into the likeness of our Lord, who learned obedience by the things he suffered. Keep me from seeking easy short cuts, and from the snare of cheap, quick results from the service I try to render. Let me never forget the way Jesus deliberately set himself. Let my life fulfil your gracious design, and increasingly display the qualities of the life he seeks to live in me. Amen.

Book of Prayers for Students



A Benediction

Be thou within me, Lord, to purify me; above me, to draw me higher; beneath me, to sustain me; before me, to lead me; behind me, to restrain me; round about me, to protect me. Amen.

Book of Prayers for Students

Rivers in the Desert ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 195-201