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Running with angels' laughter - (John Hazelwood)
There is no condemnation for those who are united with Christ Jesus, because in Christ Jesus the life-giving law of the Spirit has set you free from the law of sin and death. I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths -- nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Speak to one another in psalms, hymns and songs; sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord; and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ give thanks every day for everything to our God and Father.
Don't worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart. And God's peace, which is far beyond human understanding, will keep your hearts and minds safe in union with Christ Jesus.
Praise the Lord, my soul! All my being, praise his holy name!
Praise the Lord, my soul, And do not forget how kind he is.
He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases.
(Romans 8:1, 38-39, NEB; Ephesians 5:18-20, NEB; Philippians 4:6-7, GNB; Psalm 103:1-3, GNB)
The thirteenth of October 1982 was the tenth anniversary of a plane crash in the Andes with forty-five people aboard. Seventeen died immediately. Twelve died in the following days. Seventy days after the crash, sixteen young men who survived were rescued. Twenty-nine-year-old Uruguayan Gustavo Zerbino said on the tenth anniversary: 'The mountains drastically changed our scale of values. I am in society and must be concerned about economic realities. But I try to emphasise the spiritual and human part of life. We lit fires with money in the Andes. Money may help attain goals, but it isn't a goal in itself.' Fernando Parrado, thirty-two, whose mother died in the crash and whose sister agonised for five days in his arms before dying said, 'I'm no preacher. I don't go around telling people to enjoy what they have while they have it, but that is what we learned.'
These two men are not speaking with the same breadth as Paul in his letters but there is a hint of angels' laughter in their approach to life. The shadows of the crash, the deaths, the cold still hang over them. But they are not defeated by the memories nor absorbed by what they now have. They are like Paul in this, that they know the reality of God, as if he were standing astride everything, bearing them up in his arms.
For my purposes I take it that the Caroline Divines are clergymen or bishops of the Church of England who lived, taught and suffered through the years of the reign of James I and Charles I up to 1650... Saints have a resiliency that runs with angels' laughter over the machinations of other men's greed, pride and polity. These saints, enshrined where they are in the dangerous minefields of Stuart and Puritan civil strife and Roman Catholic threat, hold hands with the saints of the fourteenth century in that they see the relationship of God with men shining through the natural world...
John Hazelwood, from the chapter, 'The Spirituality of the Caroline Divines' in Anglican Spirituality.
Hurrah for those who never invented anything;
Hurrah for those who never explored anything;
Hurrah for those who never conquered anything;
But who, in awe, gave themselves up to the essence of things,
Ignorant of the shell, but seized by the rhythm of things
Not intent on conquest, but playing the part of the world.
by the Caribbean poet Aime Ceasaire
From the standpoint of the Christian faith, the potential of the world for beauty and squalor, for wonder and terror, for many shades and varieties of meaning, is an authentic potential -- as authentic as the potential of radio waves to become sounds. Beauty and squalor and other varieties of meaning are not merely projected upon the world by man's imagination; for the Creator himself has given to the world not only power of being but also power of meaning, not only existence but meaningful existence. So man, in perceiving meaning in the world, perceives what is really there. He sees -- no doubt in a distorted or limited way -- what God sees: at least he sees the dimension -- the dimension of meaning -which God sees. He becomes a point at which God's perception of the world is, as it were, caught in a tiny mirror and projected back to God; so that, if a flight of imagination may be permitted, God sees before him not only the world which he has made in all its depth of meaning but also myriads of points at which something of that depth of meaning is received by human consciousness and reflected back to him. God creates a world which includes among its infinite variety of wonders this culminating wonder -- that there are points within it at which, in the consciousness of men, its wonders are received and recognised.
W.H. Vanstone, The Stature of Waiting
Some were bearded but no one in that company struck me as being of any particular age. One gets glimpses, even in our country, of that which is ageless -- heavy thought in the face of an infant, and frolic childhood in that of a very old man.
C.S. Lewis, in a description of heaven in The Great Divorce
The spring blew trumpets of colour,
Her green sang in my brain,
I heard a blind man groping
tap-tap with his cane.
I pitied him his blindness
but can I say I see?
Perhaps there walks close by a
spirit that pities me.
A spirit that sees me tapping the
five-sensed cane of time;
Amid such unguess'd glories
that I am worse than blind!
Harry Kemp, 'Blind' in Great Poems of the English Language
Let then our first act every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: 'I shall not fear anyone on earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill-will towards anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth and in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.' Mahatma Gandhi
At the beginning of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, we set up a voluntary car pool to get the people to and from their jobs. For eleven months our car pool functioned extraordinarily well. Then Mayor Gayle introduced a resolution instructing the city's legal department to file such proceedings as it might deem proper to stop the operation of the car pool or any transportation system growing out of the bus boycott. A hearing was set for Tuesday, November 13, 1956.
At our regular weekly mass meeting, scheduled the night before the hearing, I had the responsibility of warning the people that the car pool would probably be enjoined...
When the evening came, I mustered sufficient courage to tell them the truth. I tried, however, to conclude on a note of hope. 'We have moved all of these months,' I said, 'in the daring faith that God is with us in our struggle. The many experiences of days gone by have vindicated that faith in a marvellous way. Tonight we must believe that a way will be made out of no way...'
[Next day] in anxiety and hope, I read these words in the court release: 'The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Montgomery, Alabama.' My heart throbbed with an inexpressible joy. The darkest hour of our struggle had become the first hour of victory. Someone shouted from the back of the courtroom: 'God Almighty has spoken from Washington!'
Martin Luther King, in a sermon 'A Knock at Midnight'
The Prayer of the Goldfish
O God, forever I turn in this hard crystal,
so transparent, yet I can find no way out.
Lord, deliver me from the cramp of this water
and these terrifying things I see through it.
Put me back in the play of your torrents, in your limpid springs.
Let me no longer be a little goldfish
in its prison of glass, but a living spark
in the gentleness of your reeds. Amen.
Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, Prayers of the Ark
Father, I thank you that Jesus never lost his bright hopefulness even when everything was at its darkest. I remember how he held to you when the devil tempted him in the wilderness, how he cared for children when the disciples impatiently dismissed them, and how he endured the cross because of the joy that was set before him.
Father, help me to live joyfully when today's Pharisaic attitudes threaten to make me doubt your love for all things great and small. Show me how to run with angels' laughter over all arrogance, bigotry, meanness and manipulation -- in myself and in others.
A Benediction
The Lord be within you to strengthen you; over and around you to ward off your spiritual foes on every side; under you to hold you up in your goings; behind you to guard you from the assaults of the past; before you to lead you on. Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 135-139
Hope in time of abandonment - (Jaques Ellul)
What, then, can I hope for, Lord? I put my hope in you. For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. O God of our salvation, who art the hope of all the ends of the earth. Don't stay so far away, O God; my God, hurry to my aid! May those who attack me be defeated and destroyed. May those who try to hurt me be shamed and disgraced. I will always put my hope in you; I will praise you more and more. I will tell of your goodness; all day long I will speak of your salvation, though it is more than I can understand. Remember my affliction and my bitterness, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.'
So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he interposed with an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God should prove false, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you...
Rejoice in hope. (Psalm 39:7, GNB; Psalm 62:5 and 65:5b, RSV; Psalm 71:12-15, GNB; Lamentations 3:19-24, RSV; Hebrews 6:17-20 and 10:23, RSV; 1 Peter 1:3-4, RSV; Romans 12:12, RSV)
To hope is as human as to love. We were made to face the future just as we were made to face each other. Even in the darkest situations we still hope. Once off the coast of Newfoundland a mini-sub sank. Divers managed to locate it and tapped on the side to see if there was any sign of life. In Morse Code a message came back: 'Is there hope?'
'Is there hope?' is a question we all ask, whether in the crises of life -- 'Is there hope, doctor?' -- or in the daily despair of a difficult marriage, prolonged unemployment or useless employment.
Unlike optimism, Christian hope doesn't opt out when faced with harsh realities. The reason for the realism of Christian hope is the fact that it is cast in the mould of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
Christian hope can face any situation, because it is not based on changeable circumstances, but a settled conviction that nothing can overtake us that Christ hasn't taken care of. It is willing to risk all on the reality of the resurrection. We welcome the future, because it bears the face of Jesus.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.
Alexander Pope
Hope -- the uncertain goddess.
Pericles
Hope is the enemy.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
In the subsequent years of ministry in England I have often been asked: 'What is the greatest difficulty you faced in moving from India to England?' I have always answered: 'The disappearance of hope'. For the elderly and middle-aged there is, for the most part, only the hope of keeping reasonably comfortable amid the disintegration of so many of the familiar values. For very many of the young there is only the terrible spectre of nuclear war, with nothing beyond.
Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, The Other Side of 1984
Can true biblical hope serve as a warning against false hope? In a society filled with immanental hope of social engineering, of human potential, of political revolution, we need to hear the great themes of Old Testament hope. Our hope is in the Lord, who is also our salvation; all other hope is hopeless.
David Hubbard, from an article entitled Hope in the Old Testament
With this third world war which might break out one day, with this wretched gathering which our planet now is, despair returns to tempt me. The idea that we'll never be done with it, that there's no purpose, only petty personal ends for which we fight. We make little revolutions but there's not a human end. Nothing concerning man, only disorders. One can't think such things. They tempt you incessantly, especially if you're old and can think, 'Oh well, anyway, I shall die in five years at the most'. In fact I think ten, but it might well be five. In any case the world seems ugly, bad and without hope. There, that's the cry of despair of an old man who'll die in despair. But that's exactly what I resist, and I know I shall die in hope. But that hope needs a foundation.
Jean-Paul Sartre less than a month before he died in 1980
All utopias of the kingdom of God or of man, all hopeful pictures of the happy life, all revolutions of the future, remain hanging in the air and bear within them the germ of boredom and decay -- and for that reason also adopt a militant and extortionate attitude to life -- as long as there is no certainty in the face of death and no hope which carries love beyond death.
Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness,
I dare not trust my sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus' name,
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
Edward Mote
Who could believe in a God who will make everything new later if it is in no way apparent from the activity of those who hope in the One who is to come that he is already beginning to make everything new now?
Edward Schillbeeckx, God the Future of Man
The hope towards which the Bible moves promises a new creation that radically transcends man's own possibilities. But in promising this it also encourages him to take the steps that are within his power in the direction of this goal, and to refrain from the steps leading in the opposite direction. Anyone who wants to reach the new world across the sea will start off for the port of departure on his own feet and with the means of transport at his disposal in this old world, even though he realises that very different forces will be needed before he can land in the new world and become its citizen. The promise of the hope of God is finding strength to meet a double disappointment: some tell people to put their trust in the next world, and disappoint them by declaring that the present is hopelessly unalterable; others claim that they can realise the heaven of total salvation by their own strength, and disappoint because they ruin the present in a completely inhuman way. On the other hand man, who is of his very nature orientated towards the future, can -- trusting in the word of promise -- remain radically hopeful within the relativity of 'a step at a time'.
Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament
To us is given the promise of eternal life -- but to us, the dead. A blessed resurrection is proclaimed to us -- meantime we are surrounded by decay. We are called righteous -- and yet sin lives in us. We hear of ineffable blessedness -- but meantime we are oppressed by infinite misery. We are promised abundance of all good things -- yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst. What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope, and if our heart did not hasten beyond the midst of the darkness upon the path illumined by the word and Spirit of God!
John Calvin
Hope leads us into life, into the whole of life. It encourages faith so that it does not degenerate into faintheartedness. It strengthens love so that it does not remain enclosed within itself and with those who are like it. Thus Charles Peguy said:
Hope leads everything.
For faith only sees what is.
But hope sees what will be.
Charity only loves what is.
But hope loves what will be --
In time and for all eternity.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Experiment Hope
Pardon for sin and a peace everlasting, your living presence, to cheer and to guide; strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow - these are the blessings your love will provide. Great is your faithfulness...
T.O. Chisolm (1866-1960)
As we grow in faith, love, and hope, help us to understand that no planning for the future, however necessary, no programme, no matter how carefully conceived, can relieve us of the necessity of going forward into a future that cannot be planned of risk, of danger, of hope in your incalculable grace.
Lord, be for us the truth on which life and death are built, the hope that cannot be destroyed, the freedom from which love and justice flow and the joy that has eternity within it.
Amen.
Terry Falla, Be Our Freedom, Lord
God of hope, we confess that we have fallen prey to false hopes; hopes of success, prestige, influence; we have invested ourselves emotionally in them only to be disappointed,
We pray for those we see deceived by the illusions of false hope; led by false shepherds, political and psychological messiahs who promise much, but deliver little.
We praise and thank you for our true hope, a sure and certain hope in your Son, and pray that each morning we might rise ready to live each day in the light of the last day. Help us not to be nostalgic for the past nor possessive of the present, but to hold each day open to the future heritage of your Kingdom. Amen.
A Benediction
And now unto him who is able to keep us from failing and lift us from the dark valley of despair to the bright mountain of hope, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy; to him be power and authority, for ever and ever. Amen.
Martin Luther King
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 123-128
My tears have been my food day and night, while others say to me continually, 'Where is your God?'
My thoughts today are resentful, for God's hand is heavy on me in my trouble. If only I knew how to find him, how to enter his court, I would state my case before him and set out my arguments in full; he rubbed my face in the ground and broke my teeth on the gravel. I have forgotten what health and peace and happiness are.
I tell you the truth, unless an ear of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds... every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful.
We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
(Psalm 42:3, NIV; Job 23:1-4, NEB; Lamentations 3:16-17, GNB; John 12:24, 15:2 NIV; 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, NIV)
When misfortune strikes us -- illness, unemployment, deep depression, failure in personal relationships -- God can seem to be very distant and uncaring and our inner lives begin to wither and die. The ancient Hebrews expressed their feelings in a particular form -- that of the lament -- often directed to the God whom they no longer experienced!
Today, our tendency, when something goes wrong, is to try to locate the cause of the problem and treat or rectify it. We feel more comfortable looking back over our shoulders than engaging in another common biblical practice, looking in anticipation to the creative work God is going to do up ahead as in John 9:2-3.
Two of the most severe forms of physical pain are giving birth and having kidney stones. Women will willingly become pregnant; but only a masochist would want kidney stones. It makes all the difference when suffering has a desirable, constructive purpose.
Suffering, particularly where it is the result of injustice or where it occurs through no fault of the victim, can lead to anger and bitterness. It can easily block off the flow of practical trust in God. Such pain needs to be expressed if it is to become a resource rather than a liability and achieve its purpose in the fruitful growth of the person or community concerned.
The work of God is built upon the ruins of a man's life.
F. Fenelon, spiritual adviser to Louis XIV of France, source unknown
When building a skyscraper you have to go down before you can go up.
Anonymous
It seems to me that the priest or layman who is not constantly harassed by thorns is underprivileged. His thorns may be in the form of little Hitlers, cynics, critics and professional opposers; or they may be in the form of illness, impediments, scars and disfigurations; or they may be in the form of lost love, betrayal and disillusionment; or they may be in the form of wounded pride, humiliation and ignominy; or they may be in the form of poverty, hunger and destitution; or all of them put together... A thorn usually leads to the cross, and the cross to the confession of sin, and thence to freedom and incomparable strength. But before we can feel the strength of Christ we must know that there is no health in us insofar as our own personal power goes -- that of ourselves we can but eventually fail, but in Christ we can know nothing other than final victory.
Austin Pardue, Why Learn to Pray
God wounds deeply when he wills to heal.
Herman Kohlbrugge
And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
to dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn.
God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Untitled sonnet
As good go anywhere, they say,
As to benumme
Both knees and heart in crying night and day,
Come, come, my God, O come,
But no hearing.
O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To crie to thee
And then not hear it crying! all day long
My heart was in my knee
But no hearing.
George Herbert, Deniall
It is not easy, Lord, to follow after you.
While you take the hard road
with joyous leaps and bounds,
I stumble over every stone
and slip into every rut.
You calmly weather each storm
and walk fearlessly through the night.
I am burfeted by the winds,
and I falter in the darkness.
And you always have answers, Lord,
for those who confront you.
My tongue is thick and clumsy.
I cannot articulate what I feel
or what they need to hear.
You have the wisdom and the power
to meet the needs of those about you.
But I am foolish and ineffective,
and my brothers turn away from me in disgust.
I have really tried to relate to people about me,
to reach out in love and concern.
I have shared their sorrows and their joys.
I have shelved my ambitions
to respond to their needs.
But when I fail to produce what they want,
or when l am limited by my humanity
and incapacitated by my personal problems
they will have nothing to do with me.
I feel as if I have been used only to be abused.
I am squeezed dry and then cast aside
as if I were of no further value.
Yet I must continue to follow you, O Lord.
It is a hard path to walk,
and I will falter at times.
I long intensely for an occasional oasis
along this journey through wind and sand.
I need desperately your touch of joy and enrichment
as I labour amidst the blood and tears
of this distorted world.
I am empty, Lord.
Enable me to sense your fullness a
and grant me the grace and the courage
to be faithful as your child and servant.
Psalm 35 from Psalms Now by Leslie Brandt
A Benediction
O God, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright; grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Book of Common Prayer
Rowland Croucher, ed., Still Waters, Deep Waters, (Albatross/Lion) chapter 19
(Genesis 1:26-28 and 31 and 1:20b-24, JB; Malachi 2:15, NIV; Mark 10:6-9, NEB)
God did not stop at creating a man; he also created a woman to produce what might be called a divine duet. In creating man and woman, God brought into existence things which had no previous existence. The divine duet formed the crown of creation. Humans were made in God's image, with two sexes. The exalted nature of this relationship is shown by the fact that the two sexes were intended to reflect the relationship between Christ and his church as we discover in Ephesians 5:25-33. Within the bounds of a family God's love can be reflected in a beautiful way. God created man and woman for each other in the divinely instituted arrangement called marriage. God made the family the foundation of the social order, and family ties are sacred and should not be tampered with.
The small Claviger beetle moves inside the ant hill, unalarmed by the fact that ants are one of its most ferocious enemies. The ant hill offers easy access to life's necessities: it's warm inside and the ants stock a variety of tasty foods. The beetle soon stops in its tracks -- it spots a fast-approaching ant, one of the hungry predators that call this hill home. The ant, in turn, stops when it reaches the motionless beetle. But, instead of striking out, it strokes the beetle. A secretion then appears on the beetle's body; and the ant eagerly consumes this and goes on its way, leaving the visitor unmolested. These two species, the Claviger beetle and the meadow ant, have a pleasant arrangement; biologists call it 'symbiosis'. Though they should be enemies they live together in a mutually beneficial way. The beetle gets a warm home with a lot to eat, and the ant has its portable refreshment stand. We might expect the church and family to display some of this, to work together in a sort of social symbiosis. Yet, these two institutions haven't always gotten along so well, nor contributed to one another's welfare as they should. In fact, I know of many church members who have sacrificed their family life to build the life of the church. And it is quite obvious that many churches fail to offer much to enrich their families.
Charles M. Sell, Family Ministry
The problem is not with the institution of marriage. The problem lies with the individuals within that structure and their attitudes toward it. Richard Lessor wrote, 'In the twentieth century it is not a matter of marriages having been tried and found wanting. Marriage is deeply wanted but largely untried.' Today in place of exerting consistent effort and determination to make one's marriage work, the solution is to 'bail out'.
H. Norman Wright, Premarital Counseling
It does not hurt any of us to discover our idols have clay feet. Children can tolerate easily and can genuinely grow from a recognition that their parents occasionally make mistakes, become confused and discouraged, and need the support of others. This may even increase the impact of that which is truly solid about us, that which is genuinely our strength. On the other hand there is no need to suggest that we are 'hollow men'. If this is in fact true, it may be hard to hide anyway, but to reveal weakness of such proportions is not to contribute to the stature of those entrusted to our care.
Armin Grams, Changes in Family Life
But, there is a romance appropriate for every age and stage, and it is vital that we keep romance in marriage if it is to succeed and if we are to achieve happiness for ourselves and our children. We must take real care, lest 'moonlight and roses' become 'daylight and dishes'! A movie star has been quoted as saying that 'marriage kills romance'. That ought not be and is not true if romance is understood rightly. Someone has defined romance as 'a long story of love'. The dictionary defines it as 'a dreamy imaginative habit of mind tending to dwell on the picturesquely unusual'. Both of these definitions are realistically true! Romance in marriage is to be found in the long story of love that began before marriage and found fulfilment after marriage. It is to be found in the wonder of relationships that are colourful, thrilling and practical. The romance of marriage includes all the joys of marriage as well as the hazards. It is a way of life for a couple within the bounds of responsible marriage.
T. Cecil Myers, Happiness Is Still Home Made
Every person needs a sense of personal identity or worth. But we live in a time of great confusion and contention over the question of one's worth. Striking workers insist they are worth more pay. Protesting demonstrators insist they are worth a fairer stake in the economic and social scheme of things. Teenagers insist they are worth more respect and consideration in home and school. Parents feel that they are entitled to more respect. The overall emphasis in much of this is upon one's rights. A person has a certain number of rights which he can claim because he's worth something. God begins at a different point. He begins not with our rights, but with our duties.
Larry Christenson, The Christian Family
Gracious Father, as I share with my family day by day, grant me a much deeper insight into what family life is all about. Help me to set aside my selfish desires and my foolish ways so that I may place my family first and not insist on pushing forward my ingrown plans, thus robbing other members of the family of their due rights as part of the family.
Help me, loving Lord, to see Christ in the other members of my family. Give me spiritual eyes to see their needs, spiritual ears to hear them calling for help when they need it. Prevent me from being so busy with myself that I fail to be aware of the needs other members of my family have.
Strengthen me, dear Saviour, so that I may have the courage to live constantly for you in the family. Make me a stepping stone for my family so that l might encourage them in the things of God. Use me to help my family grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord.
A BENEDICTION
Continue to transform this family, O heavenly Father. Mould them more and more into your will. Build them up this day so they may reflect the life and love of your Son our Saviour. Pour out your Spirit on this family so they may uplift your honour and glory. Amen.
Rowland Croucher, ed., Still Waters Deep Waters (Albatross/Lion) chapter 17
'All things are lawful for me' but not all things are helpful. 'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be enslaved by anything. 'Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food' -- and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, 'the two shall become one.' But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you... ? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
(1 Corinthians 6:12-20, RSV)
One of the great themes of Christian faith is that God himself made his home in a human body. It is tragic and ironic then, that many of us battle so hard to be at home in our bodies. I am body as well as spirit and I dare not think of myself as split apart. And when I live as though I were, I bring into disrepute the very robe that God himself chose to put on. I wonder what went through your mind as you read this well-known passage from Paul? Unfortunately, Christians in the past have often failed to give the body its rightful place. Taken the wrong way, this passage can lead to a terrible distortion of our faith and our humanity. It has often been interpreted to mean that the pleasures of the body -- food, wine, sex, dancing, even sport -- must be denied, because, after all, the body is meant for the Lord.
But Paul's emphasis is twofold: 'The body is meant for the Lord' -- yes, but 'the Lord is meant for the body'. His riches extend to our bodies as well as our spirits. One reason why Paul condemns prostitution is because it is an act that calls for the fragmenting of the self. It is based on the distortion that I must split myself off from my body in order to gain pleasure. But because it involves this splitting up of the person prostitution is a foretaste of hell, not of heaven. For in heaven all things will be united in Christ, including all our parts: body, mind, spirits, emotions, wills. But, because new life has been born in us, we can already have little tastes of this glorious vision of unity.
How much at home are you in your body? It is an important Christian question to ask yourself. It is one that many nonchurch people are taking very seriously. In part, the rise of such fads as jogging, aerobics and health foods represents a concern shared by many of our contemporaries to reclaim the body -- to give it its rightful place as integral to who I am as a person. The less at home I am in my body, the less possible it is for me to be whole and joyful and the less saved I feel.
I am not talking here about the silly tendency in our society to idolise the so-called 'body beautiful'; that tendency is just as much a distortion as the one that despises the body. Both distortions spring from the same source, the fear of death.
Because our bodies are subject to decay and to wounding of all kinds, they give us probably our most immediate sense of the end to which we are all heading. If we fear death, it is unlikely that we can be at home in this fragile flesh. And so we make the mistake of trying to build it up so that it appears invulnerable or we try to ignore it.
Think for a moment of the last time you had a strong sense of being at one or at home in your body. It may have been an experience in the shower or bath. Perhaps you were playing sport, dancing, bushwalking or holding someone.
Have you ever been by yourself at the beach or in a pool and had that experience of slowly easing yourself into the water? You begin to feel that you are at one with the water, perhaps even with the scene itself. It is exhilarating. And one reason why this is so is because it is a foretaste of heaven. For God intends that we, along with 'the whole of creation', will become one in a new kingdom where our present experiences of fragmentation, separation and suffering come to an end; where our bodies will be new bodies, resurrected bodies.
Then we will have harmony between our new bodies and our new selves, between men and women, between nature and humanity, between humanity and God.
Our bodies provide us right now with a marvellous anticipation of the pleasure and fulfilment that will one day be fully ours. 'The Lord is meant for the body,' says Paul. So, 'glorify God in your bodies.'
It was as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real one: yet at the same time they were somehow different -- deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean.
C.S. Lewis, from his children's story, The Last Battle
The Rainbow
Even the rainbow has a body made of the drizzling rain and is an architecture of glistening atoms built up, built up yet you can't lay your hand on it, nay, nor even your mind.
D.H. Lawrence
How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden! You are stately as a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its branches.
Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine and the scent of your breath like apples, and your kisses like the best wine that goes down smoothly, gliding over lips and teeth. I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields, and lodge in the villages; let us go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love.
The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and over our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.
Song of Solomon
A colleague has recently described to me an occasion when a West Indian woman in a London flat was told of her husband's death in a street accident. The shock of grief stunned her like a blow; she sank into a corner of the sofa and sat there rigid and unhearing. For a long time her terrible tranced look continued to embarrass the family, friends and officials who came and went. Then the schoolteacher of one of her children, an Englishwoman, called and, seeing how things were, went and sat beside her. Without a word she threw an arm around the tight shoulders, clasping them with her full strength. The white cheek was thrust hard against the brown. Then, as the unrelenting pain seeped through to her, the newcomer's tears began to flow, falling on their two hands linked in the woman's lap. For a long time that is all that was happening.
And then at last the West Indian woman started to sob. Still not a word was spoken and after a little while the visitor got up and went, leaving her contribution to help the family meet its immediate needs.
That is the embrace of God, his kiss of life. That is the embrace of his mission, and of our intercession. And the Holy Spirit is the force in the straining muscles of an arm, the film of sweat between pressed cheeks, the mingled wetness on the backs of clasped hands. He is as close and unobtrusive as that, and as irresistibly strong.
John Taylor, The Go-Between God
O God, you created all things good. Thank you for this flesh -- for its beauty, its strangeness, its fragility. Thank you for the warmth of another's arms, for the power of touching, the wonder of holding and being held.
Help me to experience my body in all its splendour; to care for it as l would care for your dwelling-place; to enjoy it, as l would enjoy your nearness, to keep it fit for the tasks to which you call me.
And when it fails me, when it reminds me of the transience of this present life, when it trips me up and warns me of my mortality, may I then have the grace and wisdom to give you thanks -- thanks for your unseen purposes, for your great drama of redemption that will one day lift all faltering things into newness of life and riches beyond imagining.
A Benediction
O God, who was pleased to dwell in mortal flesh, raise me with your son to new abundant life in my body. May his body, broken for all, preserve me through the change and decay of this present life. May your indwelling spirit bring me the fullness of joy that is mine in this life and in the life to come. Amen.
Still Waters Deep Waters, ed. Rowland Croucher (Albatross/Lion) chapter 16.
Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
So Jesus addressed the Jews who had believed him, saying: 'If you abide by what I say, you are really disciples of mine: you will understand the truth, and the truth will set you free.'
Everything is permissible for me -- but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me -- but I will not be mastered by anything... Though I am free and belong to no one, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's Law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to everyone so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
Freedom is what we have -- Christ has set us free! Stand, then, as free people and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.
For you were called to freedom; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.
(Mark 10:43-45, NIV; John 8:31-32, Moffatt; 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 9: 19-23,NIV; Galatians 5:1, GNB; Galatians 5:13-15,RSV)
Christian freedom has limits. The Christian only remains free while a servant. When we refuse to obey we lose our freedom. As William Barclay points out, 'Christian freedom is not licence for the simple but tremendous reason that the Christian is not the person who has become free to sin, but the person who by the grace of God has become free not to sin.'
Christians are called to be responsible people. There are two sides to the coin of Christian living: first, Christians have been set free from slavery to sin; second, they are called to serve Jesus Christ. Freedom is one of the most frequently used words in our world. What do we mean by it? Millions are crying out for freedom, with many different ideas of what freedom is. People want to do what they like. Albert Camus once said that basically all rebellion is, at its root, rebellion against God. This truly is the spirit of our age -- rebellion, revolt against authority. Ordinary people say, 'I'll do as I like.' In taking such an attitude they become slaves to sin and incapable of real freedom. Believers on the other hand are free to serve Christ (John 8:32 and 34-36; 1 Peter 2:16).
Man is really free only in God, the source of his freedom.
Sherwood Eddy
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make his love too narrow,
By false limits of our own
And we magnify his strictness,
With a zeal he will not own.
Frederick W. Faber
True freedom comes only through Jesus. The New Testament presents Jesus as the totally free person who can liberate us. Other people and ideas may understand some aspect of freedom, but Jesus incarnated the total freedom offered by God. Jesus inaugurated freedom in his earthly ministry, but the full actualisation of freedom will come at the consummation of history... We are often impatient with the gap between the freedom we experience in Christ now and the final realisation of freedom. Our culture teaches us to demand satisfaction now. Christian freedom is both present and future. Our demand for instant freedom may cause us to ignore the freedom we already have in Christ. Jesus is our guide to freedom.
Warren McWilliams, Free in Christ
If we want this freedom, we must pay the price. And the price is unreserved surrender to him, in decisions big and small. It sounds hard, but it is not unreasonable, if you come to think of it. After all, he made us; he gave us the qualities, the aptitudes we possess. He knows how they would be best employed. Is it not wise, therefore, to entrust the choice of your career to him, rather than blunder along with your own guess? Is it not wise to entrust the decision about your marriage to him? That is a sphere where we get so easily carried away, and where we greatly need his guidance. Not that Christ wants to interfere; but he wants the very best for both our personal happiness and for our joint usefulness. Both could be wrecked by a foolish choice of a life-partner. 'Remember any girl can sleep, choose one who is some good when she is awake, 'said Martin Luther. Christ will enable you to do just that -- if you share the decision with him.
Michael Green, Choose Freedom
Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, used to preach to prisoners in Basel, Switzerland. These sermons were published under the title, Deliverance to the Captives. As he went in and out of that prison he noticed how heavy the doors were and how thick the walls. One Sunday afternoon he said to those prisoners, 'Frankly, we are all together great sinners. I stand ready to confess being the greatest sinner among you all; yet, you may not exclude yourself from the group... And we are prisoners. Believe me there is much worse captivity than the captivity of this house. There are walls much thicker and doors much heavier than those closed upon you.'
Quoted by Chevis F. Horne in his sermon 'Liberation'
Freedom means much more than the opportunity to do what we like or go where we want. A lot of people do what they like but seldom like what they do. Some have all the goods of life, it seems, but no life. They have everything to live with but nothing to live for. Handling freedom is like handling nitroglycerin. It may be a good feeling to have so much power in your hands, but you'd best be careful, or it will destroy you. Too many feed the hunger in their hearts -- that appetite for living -- with junk food, ways of living that destroy. The result is an unhealthy lifestyle which is anything but free.
Frank Pollard, Keeping Free
We talk about our freedom... But we are not free from God... We see this truth when we think of-the 'laws of nature'. There is no freedom in this universe except perfect obedience to the laws of the universe. Science seeks to know how the universe behaves, because only by knowing her ways can we know how we must obey. Perfect obedience gives us more 'freedom', not from laws, but through obeying laws. Those who say 'knowledge is power' are half wrong. The truth is that knowledge plus obedience to Nature's laws is power.
Frank C. Laubach, Christ Liveth in Me
Lord of all, give me a greater understanding of the fact that my only real freedom is found in Christ; for only when he is in me and I am in him can I really have the power to be free. Only through Christ can I be free from the shackles of serving evil; only when I seek to obey the will of my heavenly Father can I really know what freedom is.
Father, help me to hand over my life more fully to your keeping so that my ways may become your ways, my thoughts your thoughts, my acts your acts. May your image be implanted upon my mind so that I will start living the kind of life you would have me live. Forgive my foolish ways and my past insistence on doing my own thing.
My ways, gracious Lord, are not your ways. My ways lead in the wrong direction and I find myself caught up in failing to do your will. Quickly I become once again a servant to sin. Help me, l pray, to seek your will, obey your will and follow in the ways of Jesus Christ your Son, my Saviour.
A Benediction
O loving Lord, grant that I may much more closely follow in your footsteps and refuse to follow a different way. May your powerful Spirit keep my feet walking in the path you have chosen for me and may I never be found in strange places where I would be ashamed. Amen.
Rowland Croucher ed., Still Waters Deep Waters, (Albatross/Lion) chapter 13
Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who... emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.
Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling-block to the weak... When you sin against others in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.
If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more?. But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
'Everything is permissible' -- but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible' -- but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek their own good, but the good of others.
If any would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
But in your society... if anyone wishes to be great they must be your servant; if anyone wishes to hold the first place, they must be everyone's slave.
I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another's feet.
(Philippians 2:5-7, RSV; 1 Corinthians 8:9,12, NIV; 1 Corinthians 9:12, NIV; 1 Corinthians 10:23-24, NIV; Mark 8:34, RSV; Matthew 20:26-27, Barclay; John 13:14, GNB)
We live in a world that is drunk with rights. Women's rights, children's rights, land rights, human rights, animal rights, civil rights, the rights of the unborn: the varieties crowd around us like bottles on the shelves of a liquor shop. And having imbibed, we reel down the street, unable to distinguish tree from lamppost, unable to walk a straight line. Like alcohol, 'rights' have become for some a panacea for all our social ills.
Into this intoxicating environment, the words of the Bible crash with all the gentleness of an axe wielded by a temperance crusader in a bar.
Jesus and Paul are not wowsers on a rampage, however: the concept of 'rights' has some value for expressing spiritual truth and focussing efforts for social change. But their calls to servanthood move us beyond the chimera of self-assertion to the reality of a love so concrete it is prepared to sacrifice for the sake of others even things to which we have a right.
Here is one of the touchstones of true servanthood. Are we prepared to give up legitimate and treasured pastimes, possessions, prerogatives if love for someone, Christian or non-Christian, asks it?.
The idea is appallingly practical, appalling because it is practical. We know that in so many ways we are capable of it. But time and again we refuse it, choosing instead the road of self- indulgence and pride and delusion.
Giving up our 'rights' is a kind of death: a death to self. And dying is hard. But in the end, despite our unwillingness to believe so, it is the way to life. The only way.
I need to be so utterly God's, that he can use me or hide me, as he chooses, as an arrow in his hand or in his quiver. I will ask no questions: I relinquish all rights to him who desires my supreme good.
Helen Roseveare, Living Sacrifice
We are neither big nor small but what we are in the eyes of God, and as long as we surrender ourselves totally then God can use us without consulting us. We like to be consulted but letting him use us without consultation is very good for us. We must accept emptiness, accept being broken in pieces, accept success or failure.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love.
Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water
The Learner: How often am I to surrender myself, Lord, and in what matters am I to leave my own preferences behind?. The Beloved: Always; at every moment, in small things as much as in great.
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Our whole personality can be established, strengthened, settled, given a sure confidence, only when there is a basis of abundant love.
Leon Morris, 1 and 2 Thessalonians
Mechanical, the
Amber cricket makes her way
Across the concrete:
Eggs must be laid and there is
So much dying to be done!
Andrew Lansdown, Counterpoise
We must see the difference between choosing to serve and choosing to be a servant. When we choose to serve we are still in charge. We decide whom we will serve and when we will serve... But when we choose to be a servant we give up the right to be in charge.
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Condescend to all the weaknesses and infirmities of your fellow-creatures, cover their frailties, love their excellencies, encourage their virtues, relieve their wants, rejoice in their prosperities, compassionate their distress, receive their friendship, overlook their unkindness, forgive their malice, be a servant of servants, and condescend to do the lowest offices to the lowest of mankind.
William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
Oh, beware of the mistake so many make, who would fain be humble, but are afraid to be too humble. They have so many qualifications and limitations, so many reasonings and questionings, as to what true humility is to be and to do, that they never unreservedly yield themselves to it. Beware of this. Humble yourself unto death. It is in the death of self that humility is perfected.
Andrew Murray, Humility
But the Christian knows from the outset that the salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world: and as for superiority, he knows that the vulgar since they include most of the poor probably include most of his superiors.
C.S. Lewis, article on 'Christianity and Literature'
The Church... will have to take a strong line with the blasphemies of hubris, power-worship, envy and humbug, for these are the roots of evil. She will have to speak of moderation, purity, confidence, loyalty, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, content and modesty.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
No one has any right to claim a right, to indulge in a pleasure, to demand a liberty which may be the ruination of someone else... A pleasure or an indulgence which may be the ruin of someone else is not a pleasure but a sin.
William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians
This attitude -- the willingness to give oneself away, to give up good things for the sake of the better... is loss only in a limited sense. On the one hand it is real loss because what we lay aside in redeeming the world is in fact laid aside -- time to enjoy an artistic talent, to read a book or to make a garden. This is not insignificant. At times it causes great longing and heart-searching and is a source of temptation just as the devil used life itself to tempt Jesus when Peter said, 'This [suffering] shall never happen to you' (Matthew 16:22). We must not underestimate this loss. Yet in another sense we lose nothing. We do not experience only loss now, for God honours the imitation of his love.
Ranald Macaulay and Jerram Barrs, Being Human
Lord, your gentle words are strong enough to break me. They ruthlessly expose my duplicity. Deep down, I want to love and serve you; and equally deeply, l resist you.
This double-mindedness has wounded me. Lord: heal me. And it has wounded others, little ones for whom Jesus died: heal them where I have harmed.
I confess that many times I have heard your call to servanthood but have pretended to be deaf to your voice. I confess that often, when l have committed myself to serve you, as soon as you have faced me in one of your children I have withdrawn my service. I am like the man who put his hand to the plough but looked back; I am not fit for the kingdom of God. Your mercy is my only hope.
There are things in my life, Lord, that are legitimate and good, but that I have clung to and even now would be reluctant to give up for the sake of love. I name them before you... Lord, these things stand like sea-walls between me and the ocean of your love; I renounce them, and pray for the strength to live out that renunciation.
Jesus, you are king of the universe, yet you wrapped a towel around your waist and washed the smelly feet of your disciples. This is not only an example for me to follow; it is an offer for me to accept. Yet like Peter, I have often refused your service, being strangely reluctant to let the one who drips love like water from his hands touch my feet. Give me a vision of your desire to serve me, so that -- like Peter -- I will come to accept this astonishing love and be transformed.
A Benediction
Go under God's mercy, knowing that when you are faithless he is faithful, and that when you fail he can redeem your failure. All things are possible for him, and 'he will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Corinthians 1:8, NIV).
Rowland Croucher ed., Still Waters, Deep Waters (Albatross/Lion), chapter 11
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