GOD IS A SEA

God is our shelter and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not be afraid, even if the earth is shaken and mountains fail into the ocean depths; even if the seas roar and rage, and the hills are shaken by the violence.

I am the Lord: why don't you fear me? Why don't you tremble before me? I placed the sand as the boundary of the sea, a permanent boundary that it cannot cross. The sea may toss, but it cannot go beyond it; the waves may roar, but they cannot break through.

Come and see what God has done, his wonderful acts among us. He changed the sea into dry land; our ancestors crossed the river on foot. There we rejoiced because of what he did. Who is a God like you, who pardons sin... You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

There will be strange things happening to the sun, the moon, and the stars. On earth whole countries will be in despair, afraid of the roar of the sea and the raging tides... Then the Son of Man will appear... When these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is near.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth... and there was no longer any sea.

(Psalm 46:1-3, GNB; Jeremiah 5:22, GNB; Psalm 66:5-6, GNB; Micah 7:18-19, NIV; Luke 21:25-28, GNB; Revelation 21:1, NIV)


Every day we are made promises. Advertisers promise us cheap peace, translating our wants into needs. A trouble-free existence is ours, for a price. Sometimes preachers, too, promise serenity without strife, tranquillity without turmoil, resurrection without Gethsemane or Calvary. Whilst we must not let anyone crucify us who cannot resurrect us, Jesus said there is no life except through death. As one mystic put it, the Spirit of God and our own spirits strive together in a storm of love. In this 'strife of love' each spirit is deeply wounded by love. Gethsemane is not a detour. The primal sin of Adam and Eve was to try to get knowledge without working for it, to 'arrive' without the pain of the journey, to attain 'instant godliness'.

God is a sea, says Ruysbroeck. The sea, for the ancient Hebrews, was a turbulent place where danger lurked. (So the Jews did not make good sailors; they left that to the Phoenicians.) Deliverance from the Red Sea was a recurring theme for wonder-full recollection. Apocalyptic writers pictured great beasts coming out of the sea. In heaven there will be 'no more sea'. But the 'second death' is symbolised by a 'lake of fire' (Revelation 19:20, 20:14).

So the sea of love, where we meet God, is sometimes a fearful place. Love is always enhanced by courage and hard work. The objects of temporal love eventually die, so the more we love, the more risks we take. The opposite of love is inertia, doing nothing.

As we begin this journey, sometimes through uncharted, unfamiliar seas, let this text encourage us: 'When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you; your troubles will not overwhelm you... for I am the Lord your God, who saves you' (Isaiah 43:2-3).


Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end.
Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond
these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of
man hath scanned...
Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom
with venturous glee,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in all
the sea.

A.C. Swinburne, 'On the Verge', from A Midsummer Vacation

The enlightened man shall go out and observe God in his glory with all saints. And he shall behold the rich and generous outflowing of God, with glory, and with himself, and with inconceivable delights towards all the saints, according to the longing of all spirits; and how these flow back, with themselves, and with all that they have received and can achieve, towards that same rich oneness from which all bliss comes forth.

This flowing forth of God always demands a flowing back; for God is a Sea that ebbs and flows, pouring without ceasing into all his beloved according to the need and the merits of each, and ebbing back again with all those who have been thus endowed both in heaven and on earth, with all that they have and all that they can.

Ruysbroeck, quoted in David Walker, God is a Sea

The ebbing and flowing of the tide is a continuing phenomenon. Each day the tide comes in and draws out. It is the same with the divine tide. The Father has not simply poured his graces into our hearts on an isolated occasion in the past; he continues to do so in the life situation of each person. The divine love floods the universe. Each situation is a graced situation, a sacrament in which the divine is present, open to us, reaching out in love. This ever-present divine love draws us to itself within each situation. The love of the lover draws the beloved to a love of which he alone is not capable.

There are two attitudes with which we can confront this overwhelming truth. We can be like the beach over which the tide flows and ebbs. It is open and unresisting; it receives and it gives; it lets its mood be determined by the tide. On the other hand we could be like the rocks on which the same tide runs but which are hard and stand fast, resisting -- even fighting -- the tide and refusing to be affected by it. We must imitate the openness and unresisting character of the beach, for it is only then that the divine power within the Father's approach is able to draw us to him... So long as the beach awaits patiently the inflowing of the tide and yields generously to its ebbing, the pattern of nature is fulfilled. In the same way, it is only when the person patiently and humbly opens himself to the divine approach and lets himself be drawn out in response by the divine power within it that the divine plan achieves its fulfilment.

David Walker, God is a Sea

Don't let yourself be torn between yesterday and tomorrow.
Live always and only God's today.

Dom Helder Camara, A Thousand Reasons for Living

Acknowledging mystery, then, does not prevent authentic 'asking and seeking and knocking', but it does not stop there. It also encourages one to take the best light one has and do what one can to bring glory and not resentment out of any given situations. We do not have to understand perfectly why the waves flood over us to make certain creative responses to them. There is much that can be done with what we do know now that need not wait fuller explanation.

John Claypool, adapted from a sermon 'Absurdity, Causality and Mystery'

God is good... he who gives us our lives not only rules over us but loves us, likes us, is for us and not against us. Out of this realisation comes the ability to receive the events of life with gratitude, not resentment, and to regard them as expressions of mysterious love rather than as acts of hostility. It is amazing the difference a stance of gratitude can make in the way we cope with difficulty. If we begin to look on the things that happen to us as good gifts of a Father, then even the problems take on a different shape. Instead of seeing them as hopeless obstacles to our happiness, we come to see them as the challenges that give life its meaning and excitement. What would our existence be like, really, if no effort were ever called for or no challenges ever posed?. Such a levelled-off existence would be intolerably boring. G.K. Chesterton was right in saying that a positive challenge is a difficulty rightly understood. Problems cease to be overwhelming when we see them as something to be received in gratitude.

John Claypool, The Light Within You

Just as it is the nature of the tide to flow in and to draw out again, so it is the nature of the Father not only to reach out in love but also to draw all things to himself. The Father is the fountain and source of all life. He shares that life with his Son and his Spirit in a communion in which what comes forth returns to him. It is this same life which the Father extends through the Son and the Spirit to mankind in a communion in which what comes forth from him is meant to return to him. The Father presents himself as love, openness, self-offering, invitation, sharing, in a way to which every person has the capacity to respond and to find in him his ultimate goal.

David Walker, God is a Sea

Accept surprises that upset your plans, shatter your dreams, give a completely different turn to your day and -- who knows7 -to your life.
It is not chance.
Leave the Father free himself to weave the pattern of your days.

Dom Helder Camara, A Thousand Reasons for Living


Lord, I am prone sometimes to imagine that the tides of my life are buffeting me without purpose, tossing me to and fro without meaning, battering me painfully against the hard rocks cruelly.

Sometimes the storms really are fierce, the skies are grey, and you seem to be absent. It's just not true that 'my life is all sunshine in the sweetness of the Lord'.

Lord, remind me that you have never promised to deliver from struggle and agony and conflict. In the world we shall have trouble. Your own experience of life among us was a parable of struggle in hope.

But in that struggle you overcame the world. Just as a stone becomes beautifully smooth only in constant friction, so in the mystery of your purposes for us, you create a thing of beauty only in our chastenings. Conflict is the price to be paid for spiritual creativity and growth. That which resists us perfects us.

So Lord, when the waves are huge, and I feel so helpless, let me not move against them in rage, or go under them in helplessness, but flow with them in faith and hope.

'You have given so much to us, give us one thing more, a grateful heart; for Christ's sake. Amen'(George Herbert).


A Benediction

May you experience the peace of God in your trouble, hope when you are tempted to despair, joy through your pain, faith and courage when the heavens seem silent, and the sure knowledge that the Lord has been through it all too. He understands, he cares, and he loves you, very much.

Lord, may we live by faith, walk in hope, and be renewed in love until the whole world reflects your glory, and you are all in all.

Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.

Rowland Croucher, from Still Waters Deep Waters (Albatross/Lion) chapter 18.

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