IN THE BEGINNING, GOD

0 sing to the Lord a new song because he has performed wondrous things! His right hand and his holy arm have gained him victory. The Lord has made known his salvation; He has unveiled his righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his loving-kindness and his faithfulness to Israel's descendants. All the ends of the earth have witnessed the salvation of our God...

Let the sea in its vastness roar in praise, the world and its inhabitants! Let the rivers clap their hands and the mountains sing praises together before the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with justice, the peoples with unfaltering fairness..

Psalm 98:1-3 and 7-9, Berkeley

There is a God in heaven... God is with you. God conceals himself... God reveals mysteries.

The Lord is King; the people tremble... He has pity on the weak and poor.

The high and lofty One who inhabits eternity... inhabits the praises of Israel.

The world and all that is in it belong to the Lord... the cattle on a thousand hills... Rich as he was, he made himself poor for your sake.

God is ready to judge the living and the dead. Our God is a consuming fire... He will save his people from their sins.

I am your God -- let nothing terrify you! God remembers those who suffer. God is wise and powerful! Praise him for ever and ever. He reveals things that are deep and secret; he knows what is hidden in darkness, and he himself is surrounded by light. How deep is God's wisdom and knowledge! Who can explain his decisions? Who can understand his ways?... All things exist through him and for him.

The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise. The Lord is all I have, and so I put my hope in him.

In view of all this, what can we say? If God is for us, who can be against us? Nothing can separate us from God's love. God, the source of my happiness.

(Daniel 2: 28; Isaiah 45: 14-15; Daniel 2: 29; Psalm 99:1 and 72: 13 -- all GNB; Isaiah 57: 15, RSV; Psalm 22: 3, KJV; Psalm 24: 1 and 50: 10; 2 Corinthians 8: 9; 1 Peter 4:5 -- all GNB; Hebrews 12: 29, RSV; Psalm 130: 8; Isaiah 41: 10; Psalm 9: 12; Daniel 2:20 and 22; Romans 11:33 and 36; Lamentations 3: 22-24; Romans 8: 31 and 38; Psalm 43:4 -- all GNB)


The novelist Katherine Mansfield, an atheist, woke up one lovely morning at her villa in the south of France, looked out her window at the beauty of it all, and said: 'How I wish there were someone to thank!'

There is, Katherine. And God heard you... Who is God? Where is God? What is God like? When you come into contact with the God depicted in the Bible, you'd better be ready for some surprises. We define reality in terms of our limited experience and, if that experience was flawed by bad relationships, 'bad luck' or bad life-management, we may create expectations about God that are also flawed. We know only in part and see through a glass darkly. So our 'God-talk' suffers from severe limitations.

Who is God? The German mystic Gerhard Tersteegan wrote: 'A god understood, a god comprehended, is no god.' After all the words and theories, preachings and theologies, God is still incognito and beyond our comprehension. 'We cannot see light,' wrote C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves, 'though by light we can see things. Statements about God are extrapolations from the knowledge of other things which the divine illumination enables us to know.'

The Eastern Orthodox tradition has always held that God in his essence is unknown; he is discerned through his works and words.

'God' is not a static noun but a dynamic verb. It's like trying to understand a train trip by studying the timetables: you have to take the journey to experience it. Nicolas Berdyaev, the Russian philosopher, reminds us that theological doctrine is not necessary for faith, but that faith is necessary for theological doctrine. Believing is seeing.

According to Paul the apostle, the God of the Bible is one who can make the things that are out of things that are not: he can make the dead come to lffe again. God is the sum of all possibilities.

God is love and God is just. God's justice, says C.S. Lewis, is his love labouring to make us lovable. When our sin is abhorrent to us as it is so manifestly to God, we may understand a little of his holy anger against that which is destroying us. He has given us ten commandments (not ten suggestions) to preserve a moral environment in which humans can survive. God's kindness and severity (Romans 11: 22) are joined together in the Bible, and what God has joined together let not the Pharisees or the sentimentalists separate (even if there is great mystery here). The judge of all the earth will act justly, he can do it without our help, and that's comforting.

Where is God? In heaven, in sacred places and religious celebrations, yes, but also within us, as the ground of our being (Tillich), in ordinariness and in crisis, in the variegated beauty of creation, in others and uniquely in Jesus of Nazareth -- 'God was in Christ'. We think about God in terms of transcendence -- ('out-thereness') -- and immanence ('down-hereness'). God is not merely far away, beyond the bright blue sky; he is closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. God is the life in every living thing -- Justin Martyr says he is 'present in all his works though still unseen' -- but as Creator he is greater than the sum of all his creation.

But the more urgent questions are: 'Where is God when it hurts?' and 'Is God deaf?' From biblical times, God's apparent absence or silence have puzzled and pained his people. In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, 'God', we assume, does not come. Since Auschwitz we wonder if we can still praise him. And today, in many parts of the world, his servants are ridiculed, tortured and killed. And the cries of the martyrs are still louder than those protesting the injustices done to those martyrs.

God is not deaf; he is listening. He suffers with his people and hears their cries. 'Where was your God when my son was killed in a car accident?' asked the distraught mother. The pastor quietly replied, 'The same place he was when his son was killed.'

What is God like? Our hunger for God was articulated by Philip: 'Lord, show us the Father, that is all we need' (John 14: 8). Jesus' answer was breathtaking: 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14: 9). What is God like? He is like Jesus. Jesus is God for you, near you. Your faith depends on him from start to finish (Hebrews 12: 2). He cannot stop loving you. He thinks you're beautiful, he delights in you, so in the joy and comfort of this total acceptance, make room for surprise and hope and wonder and the unexpected and, above all, the warm certainty that you are loved for ever.

And never forget, as an old mystic said, if you have God and everything else you have no more than having God only; and if you have everything else and not God you have nothing.



No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.'

C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Some people want to love God in the same way as they love a cow. You love it for the milk and the cheese and for your own profit. So do all people who love God for the sake of outward riches or inward consolation. But they do not love God correctly, for they merely love their own advantage.

You are looking for something along with God, and you are behaving exactly as if you were making of God a candle so that you could look for something. When we find the things we are looking for, we throw the candle away. Whatever you are seeking along with God is nothing. It does not matter what it is -- be it an advantage or a reward or a kind of spirituality or whatever else -you are seeking a nothingness and for this reason you find a nothingness.

Meister Eckhart

God is a lover different from human lovers, who give a gift which is exterior to them. God is working in all his gifts, giving of himself as a sign of his love. Creation is an ongoing process and God is patiently working from inside each creature in the potentiality he has poured into that finite creature. He is the ground of being directing all creatures to their full actuality...

George A. Maloney, Alone with the Alone

The God of the gospel is the God... who again and again discloses himself anew and must be discovered anew... In this he is, without doubt, a God wholly different from other gods. Other gods do not seem to prohibit their theologies from boasting that each one is the most correct or even the only correct theology...

The God of the gospel is no lonely God, self-sufficient and self-contained... He is our God. He exists neither next to us nor merely above us, but rather with us, by us and, most important of all, for us... The content of God's Word is his free, undeserved Yes to the whole human race, in spite of all human unreasonableness and corruption.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology

People become like their gods. It is not that we, since the creation of the world, have created gods in our image. Rather we have imagined the sort of gods who might be useful for us. If we want to conquer our enemies, our god will be warlike; if we need to feel okay when we've done wrong, then our god will be appeased through sacrifices.

The gods of the American Zuni Indians are kindly and beneficent; so these people have no sorcery, they dance a lot and life is a constant celebration. The Ojibwa gods, on the other hand, have to be bargained with and bribed; their religion is fear motivated; life is selfish and there is an abundance of black magic...

The god of the Pharisees is stern and legalistic, so life for them is governed by 'decency', authority and duty, and their preaching aims to induce guilt. The God of Jesus loves sinners, so Jesus enjoys partying, life is zestful and spontaneous, the kingdom is one of feasting, of joyful celebration. For the Pharisees 'repentance precedes acceptance'; with Jesus it was the other way around.

William Temple once wrote: 'If your conception of God is radically false, then the more devout you are the worse it will be for you... You had better be an atheist.' A legalistic religion is a heavy burden to carry. Jesus' religion carries us...

Rowland Croucher

The appropriate stance in relation to the Holy One is utter openness and flexibility and high sensitivity. We humans must prepare for God's coming with silence, emptiness and receptivity.

To me, God is the Holy One whose other name is Surprise. The willingness to let the Ultimate assume whatever form he will and come in whatever manner he chooses is absolutely crucial, and it must be coupled with our trust that God wants to become known to us and is able to communicate with us, if we will allow it on those terms...

The bumper sticker 'Let God be God' states 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? Every day of our lives the God who made us does battle with the gods we have made... Only the Creator can fully satisfy and genuinely fulfil a creature. As St Augustine said so long ago, 'You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.'

John Claypool

The self we love is not the self God loves; the neighbours we do not prize are his treasures, the truth we ignore is the truth he maintains, the justice we seek because it is our own is not the justice that his love desires. The righteousness he demands and gives is not our righteousness, but greater and different.

He requires of us the sacrifice of all we would conserve and grants us gifts we had not dreamed of... repentance and sorrow for our transgressions rather than forgetfulness; faith in him rather than confidence in ourselves; trust in his mercy rather than sight of his presence; instead of rest, an ever-recurrent torment that will not let us be content; instead of the peace and joy of the world, the hope of the world to come. He forces us to take our sorrows as a gift from him and to suspect our joys lest they be purchased by the anguish of his Son incarnate again in every neighbour. He ministers indeed to all our good, but all our good is other than we thought.

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

...God is still the God who evokes reverence and awe. It is a distorted Christianity which in the midst of the joy of the heavenly journey forgets the awe and the dread... 'Our God is a consuming fire' (Hebrews 13: 16).

Michael Ramsay, Be Still and Know

[When young I used to say to myself] 'If God does not punish me for my sin, he ought to do so.' I felt that God was just, and that he knew that I did not wish him to be anything else but just; for even my imperfect knowledge of God included my recognition that he was a just and holy God. If I could have been certain of salvation by any method by which God could have ceased to be just, I could not have accepted even salvation on those terms; I should have felt that it was derogatory to the dignity of the Most High and that it was contrary to the universal laws of right.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Great Texts of the Bible

'I love you,' said a tiny voice. I looked around. No-one was there. Just a chain link fence with a sign that said 'Humpty Dumpty Nursery.'

Then I saw a little girl, almost hidden, perched in a bush. Her friendly, chocolate-covered smile peeped out among the leaves. I felt warm inside... like a squeezed teddy bear. She loves me, eh? But she doesn't know me.

But wait. She wasn't evaluating me; she was expressing herself.

God says, 'I love you.' But we don't believe it. How could he love us? He knows us. We forget God's declaration isn't a judgment about us, but a revelation about him.

Wes Seeliger



Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you. For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me and broke upon my deafness; and you sent forth your light and shone upon me, and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for you: I tasted you and I now hunger and thirst for you; you touched me, and I have burned for your peace.

St Augustine of Hippo

Lord God, Creator, Saviour and friend, I see glimpses of your creative beauty in the stars, in the mountains, in trees and birds and flowers. The sun sings your praises, the moon gives you glory, the oceans, storms and thunder join the mighty chorus to extol your majesty.

You are the One in whom I live and move and have my being: you are not a remote unfeeling deity but, amazingly, are deeply concerned about all my ways. I even 1, can experience your healing presence in my valleys, my lonely nights and my grievings.

In my waywardness when I am inclined to self-destruct, your grace covers a multitude of sins. Your will is my peace. To obey you is perfect freedom. Your energising power gives my life purpose and meaning, and the promise of your nearness offers renewing hope. Thankyou for your gifts of fresh new mornings, work and play, laughter and cheerfulness, rest and sleep. Above all, thankyou for your word to guide me, strength to love, the fellowship of your people and the sure promise of eternal life.

Lord, may I give you the same place in my heart that you have in the universe.

Eternal God, the light of the minds that know you, the joy of the hearts that love you and the strength of the wills that serve you; grant us so to know you, that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

St Augustine of Hippo



A Benediction

May the 'Lord of all being, throned afar' be enthroned within you. May he whose 'glory flames from sun and star' be glorified in your life.

May the 'centre and soul of every sphere' be centre of all your thinking and speaking and acting. May the One who is near each loving heart stay close by you, for ever. Amen.

By Rowland Croucher, chapter one in High Mountains Deep Valleys, ed., Rowland Croucher (Albatross/Lion).

LOOK AT LIFE AS GOD SEES IT

Look At Life As God Sees It (Michel Quoist)

'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord.

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for if you gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.

If you want to be first, you must be the very last, and the servant of all. Whoever is least among you all is the greatest.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

Let God remould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good.

Now we see but a poor reflection; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him' -- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

(Isaiah 55:8; 1 Corinthians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:25; Matthew 16:25-26; Luke 12:22 and 23; Mark 9:35; Luke 9:48; Matthew 5:44-45; Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Corinthians 2:9)


Have you read today's newspaper yet? How much of a mention did God get? Probably not a lot. A clergyman in trouble, a religious war, maybe even a scripture verse tucked away amongst the small ads. But no hint that world events and individual lives are acted out in the awesome presence of God. No suggestion that the one in whom we 'live and move and have our being' is directly involved in those situations which are so graphically reported. And maybe that isn't too surprising. As T.S. Eliot said, humankind 'cannot bear very much reality'.

That partial reality seems to come to us from every direction: the media, conversations at work, even our human environment. All, in a fallen world, give us a distorted picture of reality. So, like the navigation system of an aircraft, our map of reality needs constant and conscious correction. Wrong attitudes need to be challenged, existing priorities re-ordered, new values adopted. Only in that way will our map be accurate enough to enable us 'to negotiate the terrain of life' (M. Scott Peck).

God, in his grace, has provided those re-programming opportunities if only we will take them. Meditation on the scriptures, fellowship with the Holy Spirit in us, the re-orientation brought about in our worship together - none of them are new or original. All of them can be empty ritual. But when received gladly they are God's means of helping us to see things as they really are. And that involves no less than us having 'the mind of Christ' (1 Corinthians 2: 16).


Patients tested for glaucoma are shown a circle which represents their visual field and then asked to point out the areas they can see. The disease typically darkens the centre of the field, while leaving some vision on the periphery. The fallen mind's view of the world is like that of a glaucoma patient. Its view of all things is darkened and distorted by sin, but it has a sort of twilight vision of the periphery of life. In the inner circle of ultimate concerns, however, it is in deeper darkness.

Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life

[Bubu, a tadpole, argues with a frog about the reality of the world beyond the pond.] Something akin to pity filled the frog's eyes as he looked at him.

'But Bubu,' he said quietly, 'the world up above that I talk about is real. I can't explain it, but in a sense it's more real than the watery universe we live in.' 'More real to you.' 'More real to anybody, Bubu.' 'But not at all real to me.' The frog had lost his bantering manner entirely.

'Bubu, the world would be there whether I could feel it or not. It's still there even though you don't believe in it.'

John White, 'Metamorphosis'

Fortunately, truth does not cease just because people give up believing it.

Edward Norman

In 1952 when I was twenty-one and still an atheist studying philosophy at Yale, I picked up a copy of Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain... As I read, my mind became enlightened by the reality of the presence of God . . . it seemed as though a window in the depths of my consciousness, a window I had never seen before, had suddenly been opened, allowing a blazing glimpse of new orders of existence. My mind was suddenly filled with streams of thinking which reordered my understanding around the central fact of God, streams which I knew were not rising from any source within my natural awareness, which now seemed a desert by comparison.

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

To live in the Spirit is to be agonisingly aware of the contrast between what is and what should be.

John Taylor

The religious man is forever bringing all affairs of the first level down into the Light, holding them there in the Presence, re-seeing them and the whole of the world of men and things in a new and overturning way, and responding to them in spontaneous, incisive and simple ways of love and faith.

Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion

Do we, as Christians, mentally inhabit the world presented to us by the faith of the Church as the real world? Do we mentally inhabit a world with a Heaven above it and a Hell beneath it; a world in which we are called to live daily, hourly, in contact with the God whom neither space nor time can limit? Do we as Christians mentally inhabit an order of being which is superior to decay and death?

Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

C.S. Lewis, 'The Weight of Glory'


Where is the reality, Lord? Is it in the hourly radio headlines or the beckoning salesmen or the ambition of my friends? Where is it?

I guess it's the wrong question I've asked. I only know true reality when I think your thoughts, look at the world through your eyes. But how can I do that in the face of the onslaught that hits me every day? Who am I to resist those overpowering voices and listen to you?

Thank you for the fixed points, the times to take stock, to reorder my thinking, to see things as you see them. Forgive me for neglecting those times. And even more, forgive me for avoiding the reality I would rather not face. Help me today to see the world in the light of your truth. Amen.


A Benediction

Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord.
For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.
Then give us power to grasp how long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge. Amen.


Rowland Croucher ed., High Mountains Deep Valleys (Albatross/Lion) chapter 42

SEND MY ROOTS RAIN

Send My Roots Rain (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

But I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God... Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face... Now that I have prepared my case, I know I will be vindicated. Can anyone bring charges against me? If so, I will be silent and die. Only grant me these two things, O God, and then I will not hide from you: Withdraw your hand far from me, and stop frightening me with your terrors. Then summon me and I will answer, or let me speak, and you reply. How many wrongs and sins have I committed? Show me my offence and my sin. Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy? Will you torment a wind-blown leaf? Will you chase after dry chaff?

Then Job replied to the Lord: 'I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, "Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?" Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, "Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me." My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.'

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They hurl insults, shaking their heads: 'He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.'

(Job 13: 3, 15, 18-25; Job 42: 1-6; Psalm 22:1-8 -- all NIV)



'It's not fair,' my five-year-old daughter used to declare. And I had to agree with her that life is very seldom fair. But we have the conviction that God, at least, ought to be fair. If we serve him faithfully, there should be the rewards of service, some blessing, some recognition that we are doing well. On the other hand, we agree with David that evil men ought not to prosper. The schemers, the manipulators, the self-seekers ought to be punished as they deserve.

Yet anyone who has been some distance on the Christian way knows that it does not always work out that way. Often our best efforts meet with disappointment and failure so that others say to us, 'Is it really worth it? What are you achieving?' I suppose we should not be surprised at this situation, for Jesus never promised us 'success' as a result of our ministry; quite the reverse. And there are plenty of examples in scripture of those who walked by faith, yet saw no mighty 'results'.

It doesn't make us feel any better about it. How can God treat us this way, when we have tried with our whole hearts to obey and serve him? Is it his fault or ours?

God does not defend himself or answer our complaints. But he does come close to us and reveal himself to us.



I struck the board and cried, 'No more; I will abroad. What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free; free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn Before my tears did drown it; Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it, No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted, All wasted? Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands. Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands Which petty thoughts have made; and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Away; take heed; I will abroad. Call in thy death's head there; tie up thy fears. He that forbears To suit and serve his need Deserves his load. But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling, 'Child!' And I replied, "My Lord.'

George Herbert, 'The Collar'



Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end? Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh the sots and thralls of lust Do in spare house more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See banks and brakes Now, leaved how thick! laced they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build -- but not I build: no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'Thou art indeed just'

Sometimes the establishment of this degree of prayer comes by way of a painful inward struggle and aridity; what St John of the Cross has described as 'the night of the senses' -- a period of distress and obscurity in which it seems to the soul that it is losing all it had gained of the life of prayer... It meets and must conquer many resistances in the active mind, must cut for itself new paths; and this may involve tensions and suffering and the apparent withdrawal of the ordinary power of prayer.

Evelyn Underhill, Collected Papers

The mystics down the centuries have often referred to 'the dark night of the soul'. This describes those periods when God seems strangely silent and absent in spite of personal need. We wonder what he is doing, why he is withholding his presence from us. We pray to him, but the heavens seem as brass and we feel trapped by the prison of our own dark moods. 'The greatest test of a Christian's life is to live with the silence of God,' wrote Bishop Mervyn Stockwood in a letter to me recently. How far can we keep trusting God when we have no experience of his love? Is it enough to take him at his word when we feel no reality behind those familiar phrases?

David Watson, Fear No Evil

It's no fun, Lord, I can't keep anything for myself, The flower that I pick fades in my hands. My laugh freezes on my lips. The waltz I dance leaves me restless and uneasy. Everything seems empty, Everything seems hollow, You have made a desert around me. I am hungry and thirsty, And the whole world cannot satisfy me. And yet I loved you Lord; what have I done to you? I worked for you; I gave myself for you. O great and terrible God, What more do you want?

Child, I want more for you and for the world. Until now you have planned your actions, but I have no need of them. You have asked for my approval, you have asked for my support, You have wanted to interest me in your work. But don't you see, child, that you were reversing the roles. I have watched you, I have seen your goodwill, And I want more than you now. You will no longer do your own works, but the will of your Father in heaven.

Michel Quoist, Prayers of Life

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face, questions die away. What other answer would suffice?

C.S. Lewis, Till We have Faces



Lord, all our lives we have been taught to believe that when we needed you, you would always be there. We have grown up with the idea that if we seek to do your will, you will surely bless us.

But it doesn't always work out that way. It is so hard to understand that we may be in your will and yet fail. It is so difficult to stand by and see others riding the crest of the wave while we struggle and flounder. We confess that we resent it. We blame them. We blame you. We blame ourselves. We demand explanations. We sink into waves of depression until we are near drowning in our own tears.

In our hearts we know we cannot put you on trial. You do not have to defend yourself. But in your love, O Lord, draw near to us. Fill our emptiness with your presence, so that we do not need to be filled with the gratification of success. Make us content to be yours, and to leave the answers in your hands.

Amen.



A Benediction

Now may the God, who blesses us in ways we do not always recognise -- who himself, in Jesus, bore the pain of rejection and desolation, who through the Holy Spirit draws near to fill our emptiness -- send the rain to seep through to our roots and bring us to life again.

Amen.

High Mountains Deep Valleys, ed. Rowland Croucher (Albatross/Lion) chapter 6.

MORNING HAS BROKEN

And there was evening and there was morning -- the first day. Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn. But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love. Morning by morning, O Lord, you hear my voice, morning by morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. As morning breaks, I look to you O God, to be my strength this day.

His anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like-calves released from the stall.

And the day shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala went to the tomb and saw the stone had been removed from the entrance.

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realise that it was Jesus. He called out to them, 'Friends, haven't you any fish?' 'No,' they answered. He said, 'Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.' When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish... Jesus said to them, 'Come and have breakfast.'

(Genesis 1: 5, NIV; Psalm 57: 8, NIV; Psalm 59: 16, NIV; Psalm 5: 3, NIV; Psalm 30: 5, NIV; Lamentations 3: 22-23, RSV; Malachi 4: 2, NIV; Luke 1: 78-79, RSV; Mark 1: 35, NIV; John 20: 1, NW; John 21: 4-6,12, NIV)


A friend in the midst of a black-as-night depression once sent me a Christmas card from a psychiatric hospital. It was inscribed with the words, 'the sun of righteousness shall dawn upon you with healing in his wings.' It was these words, she said, that had kept her going. We need to know that tears will run their course, even when etched deep into our cheeks, and that each morning is another chance, an opportunity to get up and dance or at least take one hesitant step forward. The resurrection is the assurance that there will be a morning of rejoicing and healing.

Morning is the time to greet the day, to receive our lives afresh again, direct from God's hand. It is the time to arise and pray, not as a way of earning our way into God's good books, or because evangelical tradition decrees so, but as a way of receiving the day as sheer grace, and not taking it for granted. It is to recognise the wonder of it all, that we are alive and awake, not still asleep, dead or non-existent as we could quite easily be. From the womb of the morning, of the resurrection morning, we are brought to birth and new birth, day after day.

We can then face each day as an act of daring, of defying death and depression, of rising to new life with Christ. We can face it even when worn out after a night of heavy and fruitless fishing, worn out by the work of the kingdom. We can face it utterly dependent on the risen Jesus, standing on the shore, giving us courage to lower our nets once more, listening for a word to show us the way to abundant and fruitful ministry and mission. But above all, any considerations of ministry or mission productivity aside, he is the one who invites us to breakfast with him. Let's join him.


Morning has broken
ike the first morning
blackbird has spoken
like the first bird.
Praise for the singing,
praise for the morning,
praise for them, springing
fresh from the word...

Mine is the sunlight;
mine is the morning
born of the one light
Eden saw play
Praise with elation
praise every morning
God's recreation
of the new day.

Eleanor Farjeon, 'Morning Has Broken'

Beloved, it is morn! A redder berry on the thorn, A deeper yellow on the corn, For this good day new-born: Pray, Sweet, for me That I may be Faithful to God and thee

Emily Henrietta Hickey, 'Beloved, it is Morn'

The day does now dark night dispel;
Dear Christians, wake and rouse you well,
Give glory to our God and Lord
Once more the daylight shines abroad,
O brethren let us praise the Lord,
Whose grace and mercy thus
have kept The nightly watch
while we have slept

We offer up ourselves to thee,
That heart and word and deed may be
In all things guided by thy mind
And in thine eyes acceptance find.

Bohemian Brethren:

'Ere yet the dawn hath filled the skies
Behold my Saviour Christ arise.
He chaseth from us sin and night,
And brings us joy and life and light. Hallelujah!

Reformation hymn

What do we today, who no longer have any fear or awe of night, know of the great joy that our forefathers and the early Christians felt every morning at the return of light? If we were to learn again something of the praise and adoration that is due the triune God at break of day, God the Father and Creator, who has preserved our life through the dark night and wakened us to a new day, God the Son and Saviour, who conquered death and hell for us, and dwells in our midst as Victor, God the Holy Spirit, who pours the bright gleam of God's Word into our hearts at the dawn of day, driving away all darkness and sin and teaching us to pray aright -- then we would also begin to sense something of the joy that comes when night is past and brethren who dwell together in unity come together early in the morning for common praise of their God, common hearing of the Word and common prayer. Morning does not belong to the individual, it belongs to the Church, to the Christian family, to the brotherhood...

For Christians, the beginning of the day should not be burdened and oppressed with besetting concerns for the day's work. At the threshold of the new day stands the Lord who made it. All the darkness and distraction of the dreams of night retreat before the clear light of Jesus Christ and his wakening Word. All unrest, all impurity, all care and anxiety flee before him.

Therefore, at the beginning of the day let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought and the first word belong to him to whom our life belongs. 'Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light' (Eph 5: 14).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

I wake up, rested, jump out of bed, grab a cup of coffee, and rush out the door to get things started. The first thing I discover (a great blow to the ego) is that everything was started hours ago. All the important things got underway while I was fast asleep. When I dash into the workday, I walk into an operation that is half over already. I enter into work in which the basic plan is already established, the assignments given, the operations in motion.

Sometimes, still in a stupor, I blunder into the middle of something that is nearly done and go to work thinking I am starting it. But when I do, I interfere with what has already been accomplished. My sincere intentions and cheerful whistle while I work make it no less a blunder and an aggravation. The sensible thing is to ask, 'Where do I fit? Where do you need an extra hand? What still needs to be done?'

The Hebrew evening/morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace. We go to sleep, and God begins his work... We wake and are called out to participate in God's creative action. We respond in faith, in work. We wake into a world we didn't make, into a salvation we didn't earn.

Eugene H. Peterson, 'The Pastor's Sabbath'

. . .As earth waits patiently for sun's warmth, so must my soul, expectant, wait in silent, unseeing trust. Only if Love wills shall his finger find me and piercing darkness, bind me.

Merle Davis, 'Morning Prayer'


Lord, you have already passed this way, And laid in wait the coming day. The tassels of your robe have brushed The dust away. And though the storms you have not hushed Nor spared the troubles, Yours is a wondrous strategy.

Help me to see The people placed in awkward corners By your grace, The kindly loan, The warmth of voice on the telephone, The love in each new smiling face.

Help me then to throw to you beyond the wall, The ball of each new day; For only then can I unfettered, child-like play, As through time I go.

Pauline Young, 'A Prayer'

Creating God, as the curtain of night is drawn back, and the golden robes of the day arrive over sea and mountain, expel from our minds all sour thoughts, that we may greet this new day as a gift fresh from the hands of creation, and filled with hope, and bright with gladness, and glorify the One who makes all things new: Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

As the fieldlark rises at daybreak to offer its praise high above wheatfields, trees and farmhouses: So may we, in this hour of awakening, let our gratitude ascend to you O Lord Most High.

God of the inner light, come to us on the golden rays of the morning, warming moods that are frosty; enlightening minds that are gloomy; and, as the sun swings higher, so may our lives rise to you in the active praise of this day's duties: through Jesus, our risen Light.

Spirit of new life, grant unto us this day the grace to recognise new life breaking through in unlikely events; and, in so recognising it, to be ready to trust it and delight in it: through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Bruce Prewer, Australian Prayers


A Benediction

May the God who makes each morning like creation's first morning, give us grace to greet every day in the light of the Resurrection morning, to grasp its unique opportunity with eager hands, to experience it as gift and calling before demand, and so to pass it on as a gift to others.

Amen.

Rowland Croucher ed., High Mountains Deep Valleys, Albatross/Lion, chapter 26.

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THE FOOD OF GOD

And God spoke all these words: 'I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.'

Present the offerings made to the Lord by fire, the food of their God.

The true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise -- the fruit of lips that confess his name.

Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion. These men are blemishes at your love feasts.

To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna.

(Exodus 20: 1-5; Leviticus 21: 6; John 4: 23; 1 Peter 2: 9; Hebrews 13: 15; Jude 11 and 12; Revelation 2:17 -- all NIV)



God himself first identified the offerings of the priests as his food. It's not that God needed actual meat and grain to eat. The satisfaction he sought ascended to him through the obedience of prescribed worship laid down in the tabernacle sacrifices. He wanted worship. As often as his people expected to eat, God expected his meals of praise.

Whereas demons demanded sacrifices of others as a basis for their food, God prepared his own menu -- Christ. All of the work at the altar pictured God's work in Christ. The implied message is clear: God wants to be richly rewarded with worship. It is like food to him. He wants it lovingly prepared, generously offered and faithfully renewed. Nothing but Christ satisfies him.

God's method is simple: feed the people on the truths of the work of Christ and they in turn should praise him for what he has done. In the wilderness, God's singular menu of manna strengthened the people to offer him food. Now, since the cross, no better food than Christ can be found for God's servants because he is the essential ingredient of elective worship.

Those who commune with God know the value of Jesus' flesh and blood, but so do God's enemies. Demons who have been robbed of the human attentions they crave have not been able to stop the church from filling God's plate, but in many cases they have managed to spoil the taste. Tainted food will not do for God.

Offering God the praise he deserves for the unmatchable work of Christ is the true worshipper's daily work and this is God's food. For this he bought us and for this we must live. In a sense God is leading us to join him in truly living on love: his love to us in Christ and our love to him for Christ. Here is a feast of love for every day.



Old Testament saints understood that sacrifice was central to worship and it is wrong to assume that Christian worship is not also sacrificial. Although our Lord Jesus made the one final sacrifice for our sins, never to be repeated, we are to offer what Peter calls 'spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ'. And this can be done only when one's whole attention is focused upon God, 'lost in wonder, love and praise'. Then, in fact, the worshippers receive far more than they can ever give, because the paradoxical fact is that there is no experience more completely blessed than true, spiritual worship. But it is absolutely crucial to keep these matters the right way around. Come to give, not to get. It is the only proper way!

Stuart A. Frayne, What is Worship?

As we come before God, we shouldn't come with empty hands. We should bring him a sacrifice! This does not mean an animal sacrifice, for Christ himself has offered himself as our sacrifice for all time. But the Old Testament principle is still true. We should bring God something. Often people get nothing out of worship because they don't come to give something to God first. The sacrifice we should bring is the sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise. And when we bring praise to God we find his presence draws near to us in a special way. Praise him that he is a great God! Praise him that he is King over all gods, the Lord over all the earth! Praise him for what he has made -- the majestic mountains, the deep valleys, the rolling seas! Let's thank, praise and honour him for who he is! This focuses our attention on him and prepares our hearts for worship.

lan Malins, Come Let Us Worship

Break thou the bread of life, Dear Lord, to me, As thou didst break the bread Beside the sea. Beyond the sacred page I seek thee, Lord; My spirit pants for thee, O living word!

Thou art the bread of life, O Lord, to me, Thy holy word the truth That saveth me. Give me to eat and live With thee above, Teach me to love thy truth For thou art love.

Mary Artemisia Lathbury and Alexander Groves

Soren Kierkegaard... watched his contemporaries in nineteenth century Denmark go to church ritualistically and participate much as they would in a theatre. The worshippers saw themselves as essentially spectators. They understood the clergy and the choir to be the main performers in the service and, if God were present at all in the process, he was a remote prompter, off in the wings somewhere. In this frame of reference, of course, the whole interaction was horizontal. It was people watching other people do certain rituals, with little depth, little awe, little real involvement on the part of the individual worshippers. To this whole way of conceiving worship, Kierkegaard thundered: 'Not so!' A church and a theatre are not similar processes at all. To worship is to do something quite different than going to a concert or a play. For one thing, the worshipper is the prime actor and God is the audience. The role of the clergy and choir is that of prompters, standing alongside the process reminding and suggesting. Worship is not something done by the clergy for the worshippers' perusal, but something worshippers do for God out of their own depths.

John Claypool, Worship as Involvement

To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of humans is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about his love for them, and his service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of himself -- creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like his own, not because he has absorbed them, but because their wills freely conform to his. We want cattle who can finally become food; he wants servants who can finally become his children. We want to suck in, he wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; he is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to him but still distinct.

Screwtape in C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

I'm deathly afraid of personal spiritual deterioration, of having a name that I'm alive when I'm really dead... The present crisis won't be solved by Christians who get their food and weapons secondhand. It will be solved by people who walk with God, who feed on his word, who have strength for the battle, and who know how to use the sword of the Spirit. We need a return to the oldfashioned spiritual disciplines of life.

Warren Wiersbe, The Integrity Crisis

We're here to be worshippers first and workers only second. We take a convert and immediately make that new Christian a worker. God never meant it to be so. God meant that a convert should learn to be a worshipper, and after that he or she can learn to be a worker... The work done by a worshipper will have eternity in it.

A.W. Tozer, Great Quotes & Illustrations

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe to all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us he waits so long, so very long, in vain.

A.W. Tozer in The Best of A.W. Tozer



Heavenly Father, I rejoice in the immutable, absolute truth of your word. In your grace, keep me from knowing only the letter of truth and sound doctrine. Let it enter my spirit, let it control my mind, let it stabilise and energize my emotions. I will to apply your truth aggressively and to depend upon its power to defeat all of my enemies. Through the intercessory work of the Holy Spirit and in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you for hearing this petition. Amen

Mark Bubeck, The Adversary

Grant, almighty God, that as we are inclined not only to superstitions, but also to many vices, we may be restrained by thy word; and as thou art pleased daily to remind us of thy benefits, that thou mayest keep us in the practice of true religion. 0 grant that we may not be led astray by the delusions of Satan and by our own vanity, but continue firm and steady in our obedience to thee, and constantly proceed in the course of true piety, so that we may at length partake of its fruit in thy celestial kingdom, which has been obtained for us by the blood of thine only begotten Son. Amen.

John Calvin



A Benediction

May the Father show you his mercy by enriching you in the grace which enlightens your eyes to the greater glories of Jesus so that you may be refreshed in the communion of the Father's love and overflow with praise and thanksgiving. May the Spirit of Truth capture your mind and heart with an ever deepening knowledge of the holy.

Amen.

Chapter four in Rowland Croucher ed., High Mountains Deep Valleys, Albatross/Lion.

HIGH PRAISES FROM LOW PLACES

Why are you downcast, 0 my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.

As for me, I will always have hope...

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

In all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.

I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love towards me; you have delivered my soul from the depth of the grave.

(Psalm 42: 11; Psalm 71: 14; Philippians 4: 6; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18; Acts 16: 25; 2 Corinthians 6: 10; 2 Corinthians 7: 4; Psalm 40: 3; Psalm 59: 16; Psalm 86:12 and 13 - all NIV)


As creatures of the world we share in its sorrows, strains and struggles. So often we are subject to its din and disturbance, its wars and its woes to the point where our personal lives may become clouded or cluttered with doubts and difficulties, problems and pain, sorrows and suffering. At such times there is always a choice to live under or over the circumstances, to concentrate on self or refocus on God, to worry or worship.

Worry can't change the past, but it can ruin the present and the future. It won't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but it will empty today of its joy. Worry is the only game in which if you guess right, you don't feel any better. It's like a rocking chair that gives you something to do, but doesn't get you anywhere. It is unbelief parading in disguise, trying to interfere with God's plans.

Worship on the other hand is, as William Temple says:

to quicken the conscience with the holiness of God, to feed the mind on the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

'It is never more helpful to us than when it is most difficult to offer, and it is certainly most acceptable to God when it costs us the most' (Fred Mitchell).

When we choose to worship, we and our circumstances are usually transformed. Furthermore, as we determine to do it, it may be easier for others to find God and difficult for them to forget him.

We become '...more than conquerors through him who loved us' (Romans 8: 37, NIV).

~~~

We were created for God's pleasure, to express his worthiness, to give him pleasure (Revelation 4: 9-11). We are made for worship.

Editorial, Restore

To worship God must be the consuming passion of the heart, whether we express it in old ways or new ways, in silence or with shouts, in stillness or with dancing.

Graham Kendrick, Real Worship

As we praise and worship, God steps out of his mystery into our history and we move from our history into his mystery.

Source unknown

All too often our faith is earth-bound and we find it hard to believe that God can do anything that our minds cannot explain. It is only as we spend time worshipping God, concentrating on the nature of his Person -- especially his greatness and love -- that our faith begins to rise.

Like a plane soaring through the dark rain clouds into the fresh beauty of the sunshine, so our faith rises, stimulated by worship and by the new vision of God that worship brings, until we begin to believe that God can work in ways that may be beyond our present understanding.

Throughout the early chapters of Acts we find the constant blend of worship and wonders, praise and power... There are countless examples in the Bible and in Christian biography where a sustained time of praise prepares the way for the Lord to demonstrate his power.

David Watson, Fear No Evil

Praise releases the power of God into our lives and circumstances, because praise is faith in action. When we trust God fully, he is free to work, and he always brings victory. It may be a victory that changes circumstances, or a victory in the circumstances.

M.R. Carothers, Power in Praise

Praise clarifies your vision. The focus of your attention is drawn from the complexity of the problem to the adequacy of God's resources; from the urgency of your need to the power of the Lord to meet your need. As you praise him, you begin to remember how he has helped you on other occasions and your faith rises in expectancy. The more you praise, the smaller the mountain you are facing appears in the light of God's greatness. Almost unconsciously, you are casting your burden on the Lord (Psalm 55: 12).

...Praise lifts your eyes from the battle to the victory, for Christ is already Victor, and you have the Victor in your heart that you might have his victory in your life and in your prayer.

...Praise honours God, brings joy to the angels and strikes terror in any evil spirit which may be around. Praise clears the atmosphere, washes your spirit, multiplies your faith and clothes you with God's presence and power.

. . .If the Lord is inhabiting the praises of his people, the influence of the enemy must be driven away. Satan and his demons fear the presence and authority of Jesus. Praising Jesus puts the demon hosts to flight. Expect Satan to run from you (James 4: 7)... Praise is the Christian's heavy artillery. Praise is a strategic way to victory.

W.L. Deuwel, Touch the World through Prayer

When we magnify God, we view the circumstances around us differently. When we focus on all the greatness and goodness of God, it lifts us out of our surroundings and gives us an eternal perspective and a view into the heavenly realm. That perspective helps us to deal with our circumstances more objectively, because it shows us reality from God's perspective.

Gary Browning, Restore


Worthy of praise from every mouth, of confession from every tongue, of worship from every creature Is thy glorious name, 0 Father, Son and Holy Ghost; Who didst create the world in thy grace and by thy compassion didst save the world. To thy majesty, O God, ten thousand times ten thousand bow down and adore, Singing and praising without ceasing, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts; Heaven and earth are full of thy praises; Hosanna in the highest.

Nestorian Liturgy

Gracious Father, I have made my decision: I will, by your grace, worship you and seek to glorify your name. Please make me a transformer. May I be used by your Spirit to make a difference wherever I am.

May great glory come to your name as saints unite in worship and sinners trust the Saviour. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

W. Wiersbe, Real Worship



A Benediction

I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able:
. . . to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
. . . to make grace abound,
. . . to help those who are being tempted,
... to save completely those who come to God through him. Therefore Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Amen.

Chapter 2 of Rowland Croucher ed., High Mountains Deep Valleys, Albatross/Lion

HOPE

We always thank God... because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.'

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Colossians 1:3,5; 1 Peter 1:3-4; 1 Peter 1:21; 1 Peter 1:13; Colossians 1:23; Lamentations 3:22-24; Romans 15:13; Romans 5:5; 1 John 3:2-3.


Victor Frankl was a young psychiatrist who had just begun his practice when the Germans took over his native Vienna and shipped him and his fellow-Jews off to a concentration camp. Then began the awesome task of survival. With his trained psychiatric eye he noted that many prisoners simply crumpled under the pressure and eventually died. But some did not, and Frankl made it his mission to get to know these special people and discover their secret. Without exception, those who survived had something to live for. One man had a retarded child back home he wanted to care for. Another was deeply in love with a girl he wanted to marry. Frankl himself aspired to be a writer, and was in the middle of his first manuscript when he was arrested: the drive to live and finish the book was very great. Frankl did survive, and has contributed greatly to our understanding of the human 'will to meaning'. He developed a process called 'logotherapy', which, expressed as a simple question is: 'If the presence of purpose or meaning gives one the strength to carry on, how do we human beings get it touch with it?'

The Bible's answer - for an individual or a church - is, in one word, HOPE. Humans are 'hopeful beings'. Where there's hope there's life. That's because our God is a 'God of hope' (Romans 15:13). 'My hope is in the Lord' was the Psalmists' confident affirmation.

The God who called Abraham and his family to leave the land of Ur and go to the unknown land of Canaan is the same God who is ahead of us, too, beckoning us to the land of 'not yet'. 'Hope' or its equivalents are mentioned 125 times in Scripture - often linked with faith and love (1 Corinthians 13:13, Colossians 1:4,5, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, Hebrews 10: 22-24). We can 'place our hope in the living God' (1 Timothy 4:10). Those who do not know Christ personally are 'without hope' (Ephesians 2:12, cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13). On the other hand hope is so much an essential part of Christianity that Paul says without it the Christian is the most miserable of all persons (1 Corinthians 15:19).

In fact, the notion of hope is woven like a golden thread through the whole fabric of God's creation. An experiment by psychologists at the University of North Carolina found that rats soon drowned if they were put in a large bottle without an apparent escape. But put the rat in a jar with the lid half cut away, and it will swim for about 36 hours before drowning from exhaustion!

In 'South Pacific', Mary Martin sings 'I'm stuck like a dope with a thing called hope, and I can't get it out of my heart.' Nor can any healthy living organism.

The essayist Pope put it well: 'Hope springs eternal in the human breast'. It does, and it was put there by God. Hope sustains the farmer when he ploughs and sows, the student when she studies, the athlete when he trains - and, the first person in whose body an artificial heart was placed. He was chosen, the doctors said, because of his 'attitude to life'. Give up hope, and you may die - literally! I once pastored the downtown Central Baptist church in Sydney, Australia. Around that city-area, many men (and some women) slept in parks, in drains, in railway tunnels, or in abandoned buildings. They were called 'no-hopers'...

What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning - and existence - of human life.

A visitor to Chartwell, Winston Churchill's old home in Kent, asked the guide (who was an old friend of the family's), 'Did Winston Churchill ever lose hope?' 'No,' she replied, 'hope was built into him. He never expected anything but victory.' Nor can the Christian!

The absence of a living hope is the essence of despair. The person who's simply 'given up' believes there's no ray of hope anywhere. All the possibilities have been exhausted. That's a false assumption for a believer in the living God. He's 'the God who is there', who will never leave us or forsake us, in whose vocabulary the word 'hopeless' cannot exist! He's the 'God whose other name is surprise', and he's the God of the Easter-event...

So hope is more than optimism. The New Testament talks about the 'patience of hope'. Christian hope is deep; mere optimism may be shallow. Optimism may be a good natural trait - and have no religious connections at all. 'Hope', says John Macquarrie in his little book The Humility of God, 'is humble, trustful, vulnerable. Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent... Our hope is not that in spite of everything we do, all will turn out for the best. Our hope is rather that God is with us and ahead of us, opening a way in which we can responsibly follow.'

Hope is not conditional upon trouble being removed. Hope means God is with us in trouble and in triumph. Resurrection hope means God is with us in life and death. Hope means the God who was with his people in the past will be with them always.

Once when Martin Luther was feeling depressed, his wife asked if he had heard God had died. Luther replied angrily that she was blaspheming. She retorted that if God had indeed not died what right had he to be despondent and without hope?

Hope, says Martin Buber, is 'imagining the real'. It is not fantasy or wishful thinking - like Mr. Micawber's 'hoping that something will turn up'. It's not 'she'll be right mate'! Hope deals with imagining possibilities, then having the faith to work hard to see those possibilities realized.

That is why, at funeral services, you hear the biblical affirmation of 'a sure and certain hope'. Even in death our hope rests on God, not on human philosophy, or luck, or fate. It is a dynamic, transforming quality, not only 'hoping to see my Pilot face to face, when I have crossed the bar' (Tennyson), but providing deep meaning to life's struggles before that time. Christian hope says 'History is His story'. God's divine purposes for the world and its inhabitants can't be thwarted by the evils humans perpetrate. The hope for our sick, tired world is the Kingdom of God, for which we wait, but which we also experience now. Hope assures us that there is a 'joy seeking us through pain'. It's not based on a kind of utopia-idea, but rather issues in active, productive obedience.

The Power that can raise the dead can also conquer evil. This sort of hope is the mainspring of our confidence in God, especially when the traumas and troubles of life come in upon us.

Have you ever heard the little poem by Victor Hugo?

Let us learn like a bird for a moment to take Sweet rest on a branch that is ready to break; She feels the branch tremble, yet gaily she sings. What is with her? She has wings, she has wings.

Hope provides the Christian with wings.

You see, life is difficult. Morning to evening, each day is a problem-solving period. No one's life is problem-free. No, life is problem-solving, and problem-solving is life. Someone has said that 'our human choice is never between pain and no pain, but rather between the pain of loving and the pain of not loving.' To be human is to have problems. But to be Christian is to have problems - and hope.

Life, wrote Baudelaire, is a hospital in which patients believe they will recover if they are moved to another bed.

That's not the Christian life. Hope, for the Christian, is not just 'the icing on the cake'. It is the cake! It helps him or her 'face forward'. (Have you heard about the poor man in Denver who was stricken with a strange mental illness that forced him to walk backwards all the time?' Predictably, his form of hysteria ended him up in hospital). We aren't going backwards, or living life looking over our shoulders. We can face the future - and the present - with confidence, with hope.

Can human beings really live in the reality of this sort of hope when the going's really tough?

'In February 1945,' says one observer, 'I was one of hundreds of British and American POWs thrust into Stalag 3A at Luckenwalde, just outside Berlin. Unlike us, who rated some protection under the Geneva Convention, the Russians were helpless. Underfed, denied medical attention and forced to do hard labour, their death rate was staggering. Although we had no communication with their compound, each morning we watched in fascinated horror while a truck collected its daily quota of corpses.

'The days of tribulation ended on April 22, 1945, when we were all liberated by the Ukrainian army. Within hours, the Russian barracks in Stalag 3A were emptied; hundreds went off to fight again, while those too sick to volunteer remained behind. We then entered the Russian compound. It was a scene of indescribable horror. But in the heart of a barracks block they had wrought a miracle - they had built a church.

'We stood breathless. A great golden crucifix flashed from the altar, its radiance reflected in prismed chandeliers hung the length of the nave. The windows were a splendour of stained glass, and along the walls were the Stations of the Cross, fashioned in coloured mosaic. It seemed incongruous. How could starving, dying men have created so magnificent a place of worship? Then we looked closer and all was explained. The golden crucifix was two pieces of slim timber, painstakingly sheathed in gold-foil paper salvaged from the refuse dump. The chandeliers were creations of thousands of tiny slips of cardboard, each covered with silver paper and suspended by almost invisible threads. The stations of the cross were crafted not from Florentine porcelain tile but from bits of coloured paper snipped from magazines rescued from rubbish bins.

In the constant presence of death, and from scraps gleaned from the dump, they had built a church. God had illumined it with a divine authenticity.'

In Calcutta, Mother Teresa cares for the dying in a building called 'The House of the Living'. On a visit to Australia she said, 'I picked up a man dying in an open drain. He said, "I have lived like an animal all my life but now I will die like an angel".' That's hope too.


Hope is not a kind of 'everything will be all right' wishful thinking - considering something to be so because we desire it to be so. It's not a holiday-maker's 'It should be fine tomorrow' nor the politician's 'the economy should pick up by the middle of next year'! Those sorts of statements may or may not be based on demonstrable grounds for hope, but merely on the desire that things should turn out that way.

Perhaps, however, wishful thinking is better than not thinking at all. A lonely refugee child, told that his parents were dead, still believed they were alive and went on searching for them. As it happened, he eventually found them. His 'wishful thinking' wasn't based on anything concrete, but it drove him on.

Christian hope is not an 'airy fairy' thing, building castles in the air. It's not merely 'such stuff as dreams are made of'.

No, our hope is certain because 'we can trust God to keep his promise' (Hebrews 10:23). It is based on the character - the trustworthiness - of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is rooted in our understanding of who God is, and how in history he has proved himself utterly reliable. It is based on fact, not fantasy.

F.W. Boreham in one of his essays tells of his boyhood expectation of finding a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. 'I never met another boy,' he wrote, who actually found a pot of gold, but what had that to do with it? Such an irrelevant circumstance could not keep me and my brothers from setting out in quest of that magic spot on which the many-tinted pillars rested... What castles in the air we erected as we made our way to the rainbow's foot.'

Many people have searched vainly for El Dorados, or Loch Ness monsters, or what-have-you, and their 'hope' has been baseless. Ours is grounded on the trustworthy promise of a trustworthy God.

Rowland Croucher, from an unpublished sermon on 'Hope' in 1 Peter.

This is why I say the word 'humility' is in order when it comes to our kind of creature projecting hopes onto the future. We simply do not know enough about 'the length and breadth and height and depth' of reality to be dogmatic about what must and must not be. What may seem light to me from where I sit could turn out to be darkness, and what seems dark may well turn out to be unimaginable good. Thus, not only because of what God is - mystery of mysteries - but also because of what we are - creatures who know in part and prophesy in part, who see through a glass darkly - the stance of balancing genuine confidence with radical openness and flexibility is alone the authentic stance of hope...

It is precisely in this dialectic of knowing and yet not knowing that I find the authentic image of hope, and how hard it is to maintain this delicate balance of confidence and flexibility and not tip over completely to one side or the other. Abraham was called on to believe that God would give him a larger future than either past or present while not being sure at all exactly how this would come to pass, and that remains to this day the challenge of authentic hoping: how to be confident without getting too specific in our expectation, and thus altogether miss or be dissatisfied with the gift of the future when it arrives.

John R Claypool, Learning to Hope, unpublished sermon preached at Northminster Baptist Church, July 23, 1978.

Therefore, it is time to move from Nazareth to Capernaum, from the place of despair to the place of hope. Stop setting limits on what can and cannot be. Behold our God! He can make the things that are out of the things that are not. He can make dead things come to life again. Neither empty wombs nor empty tombs are too much for him; which means neither are your problems, whatever they may be. Therefore, lift up your hearts. Be not afraid. He goes before us into Galilee and the future. What are we waiting for? Let us go out in hope.

John R Claypool, Easter and Despair, unpublished sermon, Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, March 30, 1975.

Our hope lies not in the man we put on the moon, but in the Man we put on the Cross.

Don Basham, ACTS International Encounter, April, 1989, Vol 20, No 4, p.4.

God has not placed despair in our hearts - he has placed hope in us. Even though we see everything around us falling apart, our hope is not built upon what we see, but rather upon what God has hidden deep in our hearts - and that is hope. It is that hope that causes us to be excited and enthusiastic in a very despairing age. We are not linked to despair. We are linked to what the Scriptures call 'the God of all hope' (Romans 15:13)...

The Bible is a book of hope. Jesus Christ came to earth to be King. He went to the cross, not in defeat, but in victory. He will not go out of history defeated, nor will his people. He arose from the grave in triumph, and the hope of the Church must be more than that of being rescued to Heaven. God's people are called to victory...

God wants a people who will overflow in expectancy of what God is going to do, but that will only happen through the power of 'the Holy Spirit who was given to us' (Romans 5:5). We may have thought the power of the Holy Spirit was only for miracles and supernatural signs and wonders. But I believe that one of the greatest signs of the Holy Spirit in this despairing generation is the man or woman overflowing in hope.

We must not stop where we are and go no farther. We must not be contained. We must move from this place on into his declaration of who we are and what he wants us to be. My prayer for all of us is this: May the God of all hope grant us joy and peace as we fully trust in him, and may we overflow in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit until we see him - the hope of glory.

Bruce Longstreth, A hope that won't give up

There have been great and glorious days of the gospel in this land; but they have been small in comparison of what shall be.

James Renwick, martyred Feb 17, 1688. A Choice collection of Prefaces, Lectures and Sermons 1777, p. 279.

Without the event of the third day, hope would have no grounds for understanding Good Friday as `good' or Holy Saturday as `holy'. Jesus would have been one more good man, swallowed up in defeat and death. But because of what we have come to call `the resurrection', Christian hope understands the death of Jesus as the manifestation of God's transforming love touching our existence at its most hopeless point. Such hope understands his being dead as the power of that compassionate love to penetrate the depths of human defeat and isolation in order to engender a new creation.

Tony Kelly, Touching the Infinite, Blackburn: Collins Dove, 1991, p.105.

If we take at all seriously the vision of life given to us in the Bible, we have to look to the future not only in openness but in hopefulness as well. Why do I say this? Because the God disclosed in the Bible is both the Source and the Fulfiller of all creation. He did not begin this world carelessly or irresponsibly. He is not the kind of God to start something and then lose interest in it or to find he is incapable of completing it. NO, he is the one who is both willing and able to finish the good project he began back at the beginning. This is what the flow of history is all about - a movement from incompleteness toward fulfilment.

John Claypool, The Light Within You, Texas: Word, 1983, p.89.

I don't know Who - or what - put the question. I don't know when it was put. I don't remember answering. But, at some moment, I did say Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour I was certain that existence and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, Tr. W H Auden and Leif Sjoberg, London: Faber and Faber, 1964, p.169.


Help me in my unbelief, O God, and give me gifts of patience and hope. Make me more constant in my love for you and my trust in you. In loving let me believe and in believing let me love; and in loving and in believing let me hope for a more perfect love and a more unwavering faith, through Jesus Christ my Lord...

O God, I hope, each day, for the lessening of sin's hold upon my will; for my growth in grace and in true holiness; for a more perfect holiness, and when this earthly life is through, for an experience of knowing even as also I am known.

And until I experience a triumphant welcome on the other side, thank you for your comfort and protection in all the days of my life so far. Your blessings outnumber the leaves of autumn or the stars in the sky. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whose loving kindness we have been born anew; born to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; born to an inheritance which will never perish or fade away, kept for us in heaven. Amen.

.....

A Benediction. May the eternal God, who has been the hope and joy of many generations, and who in all ages has invited men and women to seek him and in seeking to find him, grant you a clearer vision of his truth, a greater faith in his power, and a more confident assurance of his love.

May he who out of defeat brings new hope and new alternatives, continually bring you new life. For his greater glory. Amen.



Bible Study: Using 1 Peter 1:1-9 as your text, develop a sermon/study on the subject of hope. Here are some suggested headings: biblical hope is certain, living, a resurrection hope, and it's practical. Study the background of this epistle: to whom was the author writing about hope? What might have been their circumstances? How can we be encouraged to 'live in hope'?

Rowland Croucher