Pickle-osophy

Reconciliation

2012-01-28T14:57:00.001+11:00

I thought that I had God figured out. I was pious, I was careful, and I made sure that every ‘I’ of my life was dotted, and every ‘t’ was crossed. And not just my own life: I interceded for my children and made sacrifices on their behalf, lest, in their unwitting youth, they offend that same righteous God who once sent a flood out over all the world in His anger at human sin. When I look back now, there must have been moments, probably very frequent moments, when my fussiness and pedantry drove my family crazy. My name was a byword in the community for meticulous godliness and righteousness. And the truly shocking thing was that, when calamity came, it didn’t help me one little bit.

Has anyone else lived through such a day? I have a feeling that, in years to come, my name will be a byword for suffering – and that was certainly not how I intended it to be. One after the other, before the messengers had time to even draw breath, I learned that, in a series of horrific events, I had lost my oxen, my donkeys, my sheep, my camels, and many of my faithful servants. Finally, and most dreadful of all, all 10 of my children died at once when the house collapsed on top of them!

I was devastated. How could such things happen to me when I had always been so careful? I tore my robe, I shaved my head, and I sat down in the dust of despair. Even then, in my wretchedness, I was careful not to sin with my tongue, and piously offered worship to the God who had brought me so low. But torment was not finished with me yet. Days later the pain of my life was compounded by the pain of my body, and I broke out in disgusting sores from head to toe. Truly my life was sheer misery. I continued to proclaim God’s righteousness (and my own), but all was darkness and horror to me.

And my friends stopped believing me. If I was suffering so much, mustn’t there be something I was being punished for? Shouldn’t I simply confess my dark sin and be reconciled to God? In all fairness, I would probably have believed the same thing myself once. But now I was in a place where my theology fell short, and my heart became a desperate plea to God for my vindication. The most unbearable part of my pain was the silence of God in the face of this vast injustice.

But God did not remain silent, and when he spoke it was like a mighty rushing wind overturned all the neat constructions of my mind, blew them all into chaos, and then his glory shone in through the holes and dazzled and overwhelmed me. How can my minuscule wisdom stand against the one who sings through the beauty of the stars and created strange and marvelous creatures for his own good pleasure? My knowledge was ignorance, and my understanding more futile than that of the brute beasts. He was not a God who could be contained by the structures of my own righteousness, beyond my neat patterns he was burning love and holy light. He was not answerable to me, and owed me nothing, and yet he came to me, and in his coming I repented of my former small-mindedness, as a desert-dweller repents of his knowledge of water when he first beholds the ocean. The deepest reconciliation possible comes when our falsehoods are overrun by truth and our hearts are broken into joy.

And if all this were not enough, and more than enough, he then restored every blessing that had been taken from me.

The River

2012-01-21T16:15:00.000+11:00

1.
It was the final barrier before the Promised Land, and this was a new generation, 40 years later, who had not known the Great Redemption of the crossing of the Red Sea. The priests and Levites went first, carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and the people started following behind, wondering what to expect. Joshua did not do as Moses had done, stretching forth his staff across the waters. It was a new day and a new way of doing things, for the presence of God was in the Ark, which carried the record of His commandments and His mighty deeds. It was the season of harvest, and the river was in flood, but when the priests carrying the Ark set foot in the water, the water upstream stopped flowing, piling up at a distance; the water downstream flowed away, and the whole nation crossed over into the a place where they had never been before. They had walked through a miracle into a promise, and victory lay just ahead.

2.
The people came, from all walks of life. Oh, the gawkers and the idlers came to check out the new sensation, but they weren’t the only ones. The spiritually hungry came, and so did the ones who were crushed by the Law. The busy and the responsible came, for this was something new in Israel. Roman soldiers came, and also tax collectors. Many came because they knew that something was badly wrong, and they were desperate to find the keys to a new beginning. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to criticize, and when he called them a brood of vipers, there were gasps at his boldness, but also many quiet nods. For the wise know that when something is rotten at the core, one should question the leadership.

But perhaps the strangest thing was what he didn’t say, for he made no claim to be the Messiah, unlike many before him. The Messiah would be among them very soon, he said, and meanwhile their job was to repent, to enter the waters of baptism as if they were strangers and foreigners, joining God’s covenant people for the very first time. So they came to the river, and the waters did not part but closed over them as they renounced sin, and when they emerged from the waters some of them realised that this was the beginning of a new people of God, and the promises of God meant something more than just the physical land in which they already stood.

3.
He has braved the way before us, our great High Priest who was, in his own self, the presence of God entering the darkest waters, the place called death which is the antithesis of that He is – the Living Lord. He has passed through, and he has made a way before us, for death itself has been destroyed. We must each come to the river, and our flesh may well recoil from its cold, harsh waters, but we know that He has been there before us, and the glorious fulfillment of every promise lies on the other side, for all the promises of God (yes, all of them) are yes and amen in Him. And so we come, and there are tears, for in mortality we taste the full bitterness of our fall, and the waters close over our heads. And we will rise from the waters to know our heart’s desire, and glory in the wonder of it. And there shall be no more death, for the river itself is transformed, and the water of life will flow forth from His throne. And all will be wholly well.

The Day I Fed Jesus

2012-01-07T13:44:00.000+11:00

Normally my mother wouldn’t have let me go off like that, but she was busy with the new baby and just wanted some peace and quiet. So when she knew I was going to be with the neighbours, and had made me promise not to wander off on my own, she gave me some lunch and sent me on my way.

Now, let’s be honest, listening to preachers isn’t my favourite thing to do (synagogue on Sabbath is normally quite enough, thank you) but there’s something about the excitement of being in a big crowd that gets under your skin and makes you feel all prickly waiting for something to happen. And when I actually started listening to the teacher instead of just watching everyone else, I was surprised. I found I actually wanted to listen to him. Not that I understood everything, mind you, but as I listened to him, I started getting ideas that I’d never had before. The rabbis always taught us a list of rules for pleasing God, which they called the Law. But when I listened to Jesus I no longer saw the law as a boring dreariness that wanted to suck all the fun out of life, but as something like an egg. This egg is pure and perfect and white, and very easy to break, but it was never meant to be polished and shiny and sitting on a shelf. An egg treated like that grows cold, and the life inside it dies. Eventually it is rotten, but people spend their whole time tiptoeing around it at a distance, for fear of knocking it down from its shelf and shattering it. The stench is terrible when that happens.

But that is not what it is for. An egg is meant to be kept warm, close to the heart, so that it can nourish life. And then, at just the right time, it hatches, and out of it comes the light and life and love of God, enough to fill the whole world. And this teacher, Jesus, was the hatching of the egg, but so many people couldn’t see it because they wanted their egg, I mean the Law, just the way it had always been.

The day wore on, and people were starting to get restless and hungry. I could see Jesus quietly talking to his disciples out the front, and, being only small, I slipped between people to find out what was going on. When I got close I realised that they were talking about how to feed so many people. Suddenly I knew what I should do. It seemed ridiculous, when I took it out and looked at it, one boy-sized meal, two dried fish and five little loaves. What use could it possibly be? And did this mean I would go hungry? For a moment I thought of slipping off and eating it myself, but I remembered what Jesus had been talking about, and the picture in my mind of love and life and glory, and I wanted to be a part of that, so I offered up my lunch.

After that, things happened fast. We were all seated in groups on the ground, Jesus gave thanks to God for the food (my lunch!!) and then the disciples started handing it out . It seemed ridiculous, maybe a few people could have some if they had only a mouthful each, but it wasn’t even enough to feed Jesus and all his disciples! Except it was. I still don’t understand how it worked, but Jesus did something amazing, because there was plenty of food for everyone. I got my lunch back again, all I could eat, but I could hardly eat in the excitement of watching my lunch stretch to feed so many people. It was like the feast of Heaven. And sometime in the middle of it all Jesus looked at me with a smile so big that it held all the wonder and love and life he’d been talking about. I knew that even though I was just a little boy, I had understood him properly.

The Lover

2011-12-31T14:58:00.000+11:00

(an imagined juxtaposition of Hosea and Picasso -- the Picasso parts are based on actual quotes from the artist)

Picasso:
I create by destroying, I give to the world by taking. The broken are the fools who do not believe in their own genius. He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law. I acknowledge no other. I am because I am, and I am sufficient. It is enough to be me.

Hosea:
You have called me to love as You love, and my heart is broken. I am not God, I am a man, and my heart cannot stretch this far without breaking. You have given me a broken woman as my wife, a woman who has no interest in fidelity, a person reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold. How can I even be certain that my children are my own? Nothing is truly mine, yet all is Yours, and I fall into the hole between desire and fulfilment—yet even this crevasse is not so deep that Your love is not deeper! I have seen, not just in the faithlessness of Gomer, but in the shallowness of my own heart how weak and fickle a people we truly are and how great is your constancy.

Picasso:
There are only two types of women, goddesses and doormats, and I know what to do with each. Fidelity? What is that but a crude form of bondage? Only the masters matter, those who create. God? He is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. Love? Love is the greatest refreshment in life. It serves me, I do not serve it.

Hosea:
How shall I speak of Your love? We flail, we flee, we fall apart into infidelity, and you remain constant. We cannot fall outside the compass of your love. You are the husband who is faithful to His faithless bride, the father who cannot give up on His errant child. I have held the pieces of my heart in their bleeding confusion through the lonely watches of the darkness, knowing that the one I gave my own name to is revelling in another’s arms. And I have seen that my Gomer is Israel writ small. But, in response must my love grow to be as tender as yours? And as I grapple with betrayal I dare to wonder a thing I scarcely dare to put into words: is there some sense in which the maker of the universe, the almighty Lord of Hosts, has a broken heart?

Picasso:
Truth? Why do people make so much of it? If there were only one truth you couldn’t paint a hundred canvasses on the same theme! The world today doesn’t make any sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? We all know that art is not truth, art is a lie that makes us realise the truth. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.

Hosea
You alone are truth, and your love is the highest truth that we can know. You love us as a husband who stays true to an untrue wife, as a father who cannot give up his wayward and rebellious children but holds them still closer in His heart. We stumble gracelessly through the motions of living, constructing our own truths, but that is a folly which ends in dust and ashes. Choose our good for us, Oh Lord, for you are the only one who is wholly right the only one who is holy.

Picasso
If I had been a priest I would have become pope, but I am an artist so I became Picasso. It is all about me – I am!

Hosea
Lord, heal our waywardness and teach us to love as you love. We are nothing without you

Through the Long Night

2011-12-24T14:01:00.002+11:00

He watched them walk away, out of the garden, down the hill, and tasted the pain of that moment. Even with their first glory withered, they were strong, and beautiful, the crowning glory of His creation. But their light had gone out. Though the sun hung vivid and burning in the sky, they were walking into that darkness their descendants would call history. They had, themselves, become that darkness. It was a darkness full of petty evils that would grind their souls to dust. It was the kingdom of death, and the end of the beginning

And, as the long night continued, it grew darker, and darker and darker – violence, lust, hatred, murder, and the twisted worship of perverted things. Downward the world spiralled, away from its only source of light and hope, and the tears of its children were more bitter than the saltiness of the sea. And the day came when the waters covered all the earth, and the grossest evils were washed away – but the darkness had not been defeated, and the small group of people on that lonely boat carried it still, each within them.

Years passed. A man was called out, in obedient faith, and stumbled, in broken love, to follow the calling. Children were born, a nation grew, small lights shone in the darkness like faint and distant stars. But few saw the light, and they clung, by choice to the darkness, even though it cost them everything. There was a great redemption, the calling forth of a race of slaves to become the people of light, but even at their best they were fitful followers, and sometimes their darkness was very dark indeed. He sent leaders and prophets, torchbearers into the darkness, and there would be a momentary flare of light, a brief flash of understanding, before the darkness descended again. And the night endured. And through the long night the faithful endured, hoped, prayed and wept.

Then there came a night when light invaded darkness – and the heavens themselves were afire with praise. For He, Himself, the Light of the world, the light from beyond all worlds, came down to become one of them, to live inside the darkness, under the heavy burden of the shadow of death. Could it possibly be that the long, long night was finally drawing to a close? He came in the darkest hour of night, bringing life, and that life was the light of men. But, locked in darkness, they did not understand, and they rejected the light. And thus He entered into the deepest darkness, and the light-bearer became the sin-bearer, and the light of the sun was hidden, and the darkness of death swallowed Him up. And there, in the deepest night, He overcame, and returned to the light, bringing the promise of morning with Him.

And so we wait, through the long night, and we know that the darkness is no longer such a terrible thing, for He has promised the morning shall come, and the glory that shall break upon us on that day is His glory, and night shall be no more. And there shall no longer be any need of sun nor moon, for the Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings, and he has said, and will say, “Let there be light!”

Advent

2011-12-17T12:53:00.002+11:00

Come, bright star, now is your time. For this purpose you were created at the beginning of time, and have bided for aeons hidden amongst so many others, far away, where men must stretch their eyes to notice you at all. When Abraham was called to look up at the countless stars, his eyes slid straight past you, there was nothing to distinguish you from myriads of others. But now is the perfect moment of God’s eternal plan. It is time for you to catch resplendent fire, so that those who watch the heavens will read your meaning, and will follow you through the desert places to have the privilege of worshipping the newborn Desire of Nations.

Come, old woman, priest’s wife bowed under the burden of barrenness. Your husband is struck dumb, but you will feel the wonder in your own flesh, for a son will be born to you, past hope or expectation, the forerunner long foretold. And you will tingle with the awe of those who walk amongst miracles, for by this sign of life within a long-dead womb, you will know of the approach of the Messiah. And you shall know the favour of the Lord, and his Spirit shall come upon you, and you will give comfort and strength to the virgin mother in her time of need.

Come, sheep in the Bethlehem pastures. In just a few short months your feckless, woolly lives will be interrupted by the jubilation song of Heaven. For a little while the angels of God themselves will watch over you, while your shepherds speed to the town to see this wondrous sign, a child wrapped in swaddling bands and lying in a manger. For He, Himself, has come to be the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep, and the day will come, years from now, when no more of you will be dragged from your flocks to lie beneath the knife of the priests, for there will be no more priests, no more temple, no more altars – just the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the whole world.

Come, little, ordinary Judean town. Once you were the birthplace of a king, but now all your bustling is to prepare yourself to obey the edict of a distant emperor. His word is law, but in your midst a greater king than David will be born; one who has come to overthrow the law of sin and death, and His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and He shall be called the Prince of Peace. But though He shall be among you, and kings from a far country will come to give their homage, you will know nothing of him, and when Herod’s soldiers come with their cruel swords, you will have no idea why your children die. But for a little while you will give shelter to the Son of Man who has nowhere to lay His head.

Come, carpenter of Nazareth. You must take to wife the woman who bears our only hope in her womb. Things you do not understand will happen all around you, and you must be steadfast. It is not asked that you should comprehend these things, (could any man do that?), it is only asked that you should be faithful to your charge, to protect the one who was born to die through these vulnerable years, until it is His time to give His life as a ransom for many.

Come, busy world, cease your strife for a moment to hear the prophets’ promise and the angels’ song. Through these aching ages you have battled thorns and thistles, and seen your greatest hopes return to dust. You have sought on the high horizons for the glittering things you prize, but when you get closer, they fade like a mirage. But He will come, in the darkness, and you will not even see Him. And He will be despised and rejected of men. He is the answer to the questions you are too afraid to ask. And He will call you to come to Him, and you will turn away your eyes. But He will love you still, though death and hell shall get in the way. For He is coming to you to be the Saviour of the world, and to plant His deathless kingdom in your midst.

A Sure and Certain Hope

2011-12-10T14:24:00.002+11:00

She lay there gazing at the child in her arms. Isaac they had called him, meaning laughter, because she had laughed with incredulity at the impossible announcement that she would bear a child. But the doubts were over, and the miracle lay in her arms, and now she did not know whether she laughed or cried.

It had been a long journey, and the physical journey from Ur had been the smallest part of it. She remembered the night that Abram had first come to her and spoken of his encounter with God. It had been a frightening and wonderful adventure to leave behind the only world she had known: a world of comfort and opulence and familiarity; but also a world where she knew that she was scorned and belittled behind her back for being a childless, aging woman. These promises seemed like a dream, Abram’s dream (though Abram always preferred to call them God’s dream), and they would lie there at night and ponder their meaning: to become a nation, (how could one do that without a child?), to bear a great name (something men seemed to care so much for), to be under God’s direct protection (yes, every step of the way she had seen that) and, most intriguingly of all, to be a source of blessing to all the nations of the world.

And they had gone on; and on, and on and on, for twenty five years. And as time went on, the word of God to Abram became more explicit: the heir of these promises would be the child of his own body. The whole idea seemed crazy – who were they, barren all their lives, to suddenly produce a child in the weary dryness of old age? That was like expecting fruit on a dry branch ready for pruning. She had made a mistake then, assuming that from his body meant not from hers. And Ishmael was the price of her want of faith.

But then the promise had been reiterated, and Abram (now Abraham) had undergone circumcision. Again, it seemed preposterous at the time, though she had been awed by how willingly Abram had obeyed. Surely it was a kind of madness, this symbolic token which implied a giving up of human potency and strength as the very seal upon the promise that potency, strength and fruitfulness would be given to the flesh beyond the very boundaries of hope? There had been tears in her eyes for her husband that day.

Then, beyond hope, she found herself with child. At first it was too hard to believe, and she ascribed her symptoms to all kinds of diseases. But, when the child quickened there could no longer be any doubt, and she had stood at the door of the tent, gazing out upon the stars (those desert stars whose uncountable fiery numbers were supposed to symbolise the number of their descendants), until she could see them no longer because of the tears of wonder prickling from her eyes.

And now the child was born, healthy and strong, from her body too old and worn to have nourished such vigour as his, and she knew, flesh to flesh, the life-giving power of the promise of God. She had doubted for so long, not with active unbelief, but with a weariness that turned away from the effort of daring to hope one more time. And the child was given anyway – the mercy of God to a barren stock. She held him and she marvelled, for if this impossible promise came true, beyond the dark expiry point of all normal human hope, then why should she doubt any other part of God’s given word. And she thought of the promise of the Blesser of all nations, the Restorer, who would one day come from their descent and somehow bring the broken peoples of the earth to God again, and she knew that this was not a mad fantasy, but, beyond human understanding, a sure and certain hope.

In the Rain

2011-12-03T16:57:00.001+11:00

It was a terrible time to live in Israel. No one remembered a drought like this, and we who still cared about the words of God could find no record of something this bad. But we did find out why, and that frightened us. If the Lord had turned against us, what hope could we have? There had been warnings before, of course; but it seemed that most people didn’t care anymore.

Way back when our people first came to the Promised Land, we had been told by Moses himself that the rain that fell upon this land was God’s direct blessing, a sign of our dependence on Him. It was part of the covenant. If we were faithful in obedience, keeping the covenant, then the Lord would be faithful in sending the bounty of the rain upon this rich and fertile land, and we would be blessed with fruitfulness and prosperity. But, of course, there was a flipside to the promise. If we turned away and worshipped other gods and bowed down to them, then the Lord would shut up the heavens against us.

And now it had happened. The prophet Elijah had appeared before King Ahab and warned him, but did they take any notice? Ahab had married the heathen woman Jezebel, and from all accounts was completely wrapped around her little finger. What did he care if the nation deserted the God of our fathers? Other nations around us worshipped other gods: Baal and Asherah, and even more abominable gods like Moloch and Chemosh. And those nations were more powerful and prosperous than we were. So he encouraged the worship of Baal throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the people suffered from a terrible drought.

But so perverse had things become in Israel, that many of those around us, instead of repenting from their idolatry, turned the tables on us and blamed those of us who remained faithful to the Lord. Apparently we were making Baal angry, by refusing to worship him, and so it was Baal who withheld the rain. Frightened starving people quickly become angry people, and as the drought went on we had to worry about the potential of violence from our neighbours, as well as where our next meal was coming from. They were terrible times, and the death toll was mounting.

It was Elijah’s reappearance that saved us in the end. He set up a terrible showdown on top of Mount Carmel between himself and Jezebel’s priests. While gathered Israel watched fearfully, the drama of the day was played out, and Elijah (or rather, Elijah’s God) was shown to be totally victorious when the fire from heaven consumed not only the sacrifice but the altar and the very ground around it. No one emerges unscathed from the sight of God’s holy fire, and even those of us who had remained the faithful remnant were awed and overwhelmed by the sight.

Afterwards we milled around uncertainly. Elijah had ordered the priests of Baal to be taken away and killed; the king and his intimates were eating and drinking. What do you do in the aftermath of a battle between the gods, when the terror of the moment is still upon you? We marvelled that Ahab could feast himself so readily, as if these things had not shaken him in the deepest places. We were starting to make desultory moves towards home, not saying much to each other, because the mundane words of everyday seemed suddenly lifeless, when there was an interruption. Elijah’s servant came running through the crowd to inform the king that it was time to depart, the rain was on its way. Word spread from lip to lip, and realising how difficult the way home would become in heavy rain, we quickly dispersed.

But now, as the waters of blessing and restoration pour down from the skies, I stand here, soaking wet, almost feeling the revival of the land all around me, and I wonder. The priests of Baal may have been destroyed for now (though there will always be more), but what about the little Baals so many Israelites still worship in their hearts? Isn’t the root of idolatry a longing for a God who is small enough for us to understand and manage? Has that changed? Yet God has sent the rain, and the gift of life is returned to us. What does it mean? Where do mercy and judgement meet without destroying one another? And how is the Holy Lord of the covenant the same God who now sends rain on the just and the unjust alike?

Breaking the Rules

2011-11-26T14:42:00.000+11:00

I was a woman of the shadows, living on the borders of life. My place was on the edge of the community, but never part of it. For twelve years I had been unclean, because of my bleeding, cut off from the life of my own people, shunned from the feasts and the worship. After a while I came to believe I was shut off from God as well. If He loved me, if He wanted me, why did He curse me with this shameful condition that left me alone in the darkness?

Twelve years of bleeding. Twelve years of mess and discomfort. Twelve years of always feeling tired and weak from the loss of blood. Twelve years of feeling like I had failed at being a woman. Twelve years of seeking out every doctor in the district, hoping one of them would have a cure. Twelve years of being subjected to painful and humiliating “cures” that never solved my problem but just added to my suffering. Twelve years of spending money I could not afford in order to seek healing, until all my money was gone. Then the doctors lsot all interest. Twelve years of watching my neighbours withdraw from me, and the judgemental looks in their eyes. Surely I had committed some terrible sin to be so afflicted? Twelve years of questioning my own heart and life, trying to understand what my terrible sin had been. Twelve years of despair, and loneliness, and pain.

Sometimes, when the town was busy and crowded, I would slip out and mingle with the crowds. Under my veil, nobody noticed me. I knew I was breaking the rules, since anyone who came in contact with me in the crowd would be unclean also, but if they didn’t know, did it matter? Yes, God would know, but since I was already outcast from His presence, unable to venture near synagogue or temple, I didn’t really care.

And this day there was a special reason for the crowd. Jesus was here. I had heard the stories – how He taught like nobody else taught, and healed like nobody else healed; and the thought came to me that if only I could touch the hem of His garment, maybe, just maybe, I would be healed. It was madness, of course – the very idea of an unclean person, and a mere woman at that, going up and touching a rabbi was insane. It broke all the rules I had known since infancy. But in a desperate situation, you think of possibilities you would never have dared consider otherwise; and I had nothing left to lose. So, veiled and hidden in the shadows of my own garments, I forced my way through the crowd. It was unladylike; but in that milling excitement no one really noticed.

And then – I touched Him. I brushed the hem of His garments with the tips of my reaching fingers, and the bleeding stopped immediately! Not only that, but the lassitude and weakness was gone from my bones, and felt as if I could stand up tall and strong. I thought I would melt back into the crowd and disappear into world of shadows to study whether I still carried shame.

It was not to be. “Who touched me?” He demanded, and in the end, seeing His insistence, I had to step forward and, shamefaced, admit what I had done. I was a mess of misery and embarrassment, for here all my shadowed places were being held up to the light. What I had failed to understand was that light added from a different direction can make the shadows disappear.

And so it was.”Daughter”, He said, with infinite tenderness, “your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” It was only then that I dared to raise my eyes and look into His, and my whole world changed. I had feared judgement and longed for mercy, but this was more than mercy. It was understanding and affirmation. It was love. He had healed so much more than my body.

The Sacrifice

2011-11-19T13:50:00.002+11:00

It is easy to give away something you haven’t got, or is it? Certainly my husband thought so. When my womb quickened with the child I had desired for so many years, and I told him of my vow, his first response was to shake his head in incredulity. He thought I had done something very foolish, which I was going to regret enormously once I had to relinquish the child to the priests. He did not understand that, even deeper than my longing for a child, was my fear that God had forgotten me; that I had been somehow overlooked in the divine plan, or else that was simply unworthy to ever receive the gift of a child.

But the Lord had heard me, had understood me, and responded to my desperate prayer. My husband did not understand the depth of my grief; man-like he had said to me, “Aren’t I enough for you?” How could I answer that? And my rival, sleek in the triumph of her motherhood, would goad me with her taunts until my every thought oozed bitterness and grief. And the priest thought I was a foolish drunkard, profaning the tabernacle with my inappropriate behaviour. But the Lord heard my prayer and had mercy on my grief, and gave me the child I had been aching for. And I had promised to give the child back to Him as soon as he was weaned.

It was too much for my family. My husband, who already had sons and daughters aplenty from Peninnah’s womb, said only that I must do what seemed best to me. And my rival? She was silenced by my choice. No longer could she mock me for barrenness, but my choice to give the child away totally confused her. All her married life she had used her children as weapons, a means of keeping score against me because she knew Elkanah loved me more: now, having conceived, I had chosen an inconceivable action which undid her whole system of thinking. But we had never understood one another.

Yes, of course there were hard moments – moments when I looked at my nursing child and wondered if I would ever have the strength to let him go. But then, all motherhood is a journey of letting go, from the moment the child exits one’s body, through learning to walk, weaning, learning, growing .. all the way until they marry and leave home. Every step is a step away from the circle of their mother’s arms. My Samuel was just going to go through the process faster than most.

Then came the time of his weaning and the journey to Shiloh. I had expected it to be difficult, but to my amazement it was not. The child seemed to understand perfectly – so perfectly that I had to believe that the Lord himself had been preparing Samuel for the place he had been called to – to serve at the Tabernacle of the Lord all the days of his life. When the moment of parting came, and I presented the child to Eli, instead of being torn and broken by the grief of farewell I was filled with joy: wild, fierce and exultant like the cry of the eagle soaring into the wind. It was a joy that could not be contained and, to the astonishment of all who knew me, I burst into a song of praise to the God who turns man’s injustice upside down! In that moment I knew the whole point and purpose of the surrender God had asked of me – that this child would grow to be his great servant in Israel, prophet priest and judge, set apart to Him from birth. And my arms would not be left empty, I would go back to bear more children in thankfulness and joy.

Finding Courage

2011-11-12T16:13:00.002+11:00

One does not say to God “You’ve got to be joking!” but I came very close. It was such an improbable, crazy command. This man was our sworn enemy, a leading agent in the persecution of the saints, and now God was asking me to go to him and heal him?? It didn’t make any sense. And what did God mean “he is praying”? Everyone knew that Saul was a devout Jew. Of course he prayed!!

I repeated the instructions over in my head, to make sure I had heard it right. I was to go to the house of Judas and ask to see Saul of Tarsus, because he had been praying (!) and the Lord had given him a vision of me coming and restoring his sight. “Why me??” was my other immediate thought, but I knew better than to say it, not because I feared some dire punishment, but because I knew enough to know it was a waste of breath. God’s reasons are often inexplicable to man.

Inexplicable? Yes, but not back-to-front-and-inside-out crazy. If our enemy had been struck down (and rumours had been running rife that something very strange had happened to Saul on the way here), wasn’t that the time to rejoice that God had rescued us from the hand of the enemy, not reach down and help him up so he could attack the saints all over again? I paused for a moment, while a heavy lump of fear consolidated inside me. Then, choosing my words carefully, I pointed out to the Lord the obvious problem: there had been many stories circulating about how this man had set about the persecution of the Jerusalem church, and it was a known fact that the temple authorities had sent him up here to do the same, and arrest in their name the followers of Jesus. Surely going to visit him was as insane as walking deliberately into the wolf’s den?

But the Lord wasn’t interested in my fears, however reasonable they seemed to me. He commanded me to go and lay hands upon this bitter enemy, because he (the Lord) had chosen Saul to carry the gospel into the nations of the gentiles and “show him how much he must suffer for my name.” There was no room left for argument.

If anyone ever writes the story of that day, they will simply say that I, Ananias, went to the house and entered it, laid hands upon Saul, prayed for him and he was healed, both in body and in spirit, as the Holy Spirit did His mighty work in him. And that is, of course, the truth. But it leaves out the struggle within me, the slow reluctance of my steps, the shaking of my sweating hands or the way I walked up and down the Street called Straight several times before, having run out of other options, I went up to the door. It was the hardest thing I have ever done – the bare word of God versus everything that my heart and mind could tell me. In the end, faith and courage are nothing more than taking the next step because it is the only step, and God was already waiting there for me, on the far side of my fear.

It was only when I entered the room and approached Saul that the power and love of the Holy Spirit filled me, and I knew exactly what to say and do. And the miracle occurred. But the greater miracle had already taken place in each of our hearts.

No Going Back

2011-11-06T18:39:00.000+11:00

No going back at all, my hand in His
Is held fast close for all eternity;
Nor would I turn aside if that I could,
His love is all the universe to me.

All of this striving, all this wearing thin,
Falls from me like dead leaves at Autumn fall,
All swept away with yesterday’s debris
At that small moment when I hear His call.

All the complaining of my jaded heart,
All of this grief because in dark I dwell,
All of this jarring noise He has caught up
In the vast harmony of His song’s swell.

No going back – not because I am brave
But because He continues to the end
And holds me still, myself continuing
All that I am into Himself to spend.

Forward and frontward, upward and afar,
Over soft meadows or through piercing stone,
I shall go on, there is no other way.
I shall go on, afraid but not alone.

Even when darkness weaves its bitter doubts
Even when fear destroys my solitude.
Still, in the poisoned night I cling to Him:
My only rest lies in His amplitude.

I – who am I and what shall I become?
Who is this mystery that I call me?
What shall I be when love has had its way?
What is this song in its entirety?

No going back till every note is made
Beautiful in His loveliness made whole.
He is the song, and I a tuneless voice
Wrapped in His music, mind and heart and soul.

Except a Seed ..

2011-10-22T14:43:00.002+11:00

Only now did she begin to understand. All his words which had made no sense before now began to make shape and meaning, a shape that was both terror and glory. She had never really understood before how intimately the wonder and the horror, the good news and the bad, were interconnected, at least on this earth. But now, having lived through the crucifixion, the knife-twisting moment of the empty tomb, and the moment, almost too much for human flesh, when he had called her by name and she had come face to face with Resurrection; she began to understand, with her heart before her head, what this salvation he had talked about actually looked like.

It did not begin with keeping the law. No wonder the law keepers, the self-appointed righteous of the nation, had hated him so much. Long before his disciples had any real grasp of what he was talking about, their defensive fear had recognised the threat he posed to them. They were not the centrepiece of God’s kingdom, and never could be, for the one who stood in their midst showed up all their carefully orchestrated piety for the shallow window-dressing it really was. He himself was the centrepiece just by being who he was. But even then, it would not have mattered at all if they could have let go of their pride and listened and believed. Nicodemus had managed it, so had Joseph of Arimathea. But Caiaphas and his ilk could no more go there than a camel could fly (or pass through the eye of a needle, perhaps?). In order to say ‘yes’ to the Master, they would have to say no to themselves, and that was the one thing which they would not, could not, do. And that, right there, was the heart and nub of the issue.

The Master himself had said it, “Except a seed fall into the ground and die, it abides alone.” There was no holding on, any attempt to cling to this shadow of life, this shadow of having and being, was nothing less than a death grip which would strangle your own soul. Hold onto the stuff of this world, the things, material and immaterial, from which we build our little gestures of would-be security, and one would have no hands left to take the hand which God Himself was holding out. One must let go, be willing to fall down into the darkness of abandoned hope, face the bad news of utter loss, but do so in faith because there was a glorious dawn to follow the darkest night.

The Master had said it so clearly, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” At the time the words had just added to her painful confusion, now that he himself had walked through death to life again, he had made a way for whoever would follow him to take up their own cross until He became their whole life. There would be grief, there would be suffering, for the children of God are not immune to the pain of this broken world, but there would never again be a pain which he did not inhabit, a tomb to dark for his life to meet you there and bring you through to resurrection.

“Do not cling to me,” He had said; and now she understood why. To cling to him was to cling to the earthly human comfort, the warmth of a friendship like no other. To cease to cling was to receive, instead, the Son of God, the Resurrection and the Life, the Eternal Lover who would never let her go. Her hands might be empty, but his hands would never be, and he would hold her fast forever. This was the Good News and the Joy that waited for her on the other side of all this death that she must pass through. The night had ended, and the morning had come, and the very leaves on the trees whispered “Alleluia!’

The Pursuit

2011-10-15T16:34:00.002+11:00

It had been a long, hot day. The Shepherd was tired, the sheep were tired. Now, just as the lowering sun became a giant orange ball hovering above the western hills, they had returned to the sheepfold. Some of the other shepherds had already returned, and, having stowed their sheep safely for the night, and were sitting on the ground, relaxing, bringing out food and drink. The sheep, both in and out of the fold, were making comfortable noises, knowing that darkness and rest were very close.

As he always did, the Shepherd stood in front of his flock and counted them as they went in. He knew every one of his one hundred sheep by name, and the order they normally walked in, so, while he counted, he spoke a word of reassurance and comfort to each one. Every sheep would rest in the fold that night secure in the comfort of the Shepherd’s love. But what was this? ... 97 ...98 ...99 ...? There was a sheep missing! The Shepherd knew exactly who it was: Needgrace, a sheep of poor wool, straggly appearance and, for a sheep, cranky temperament. If any of the Shepherd’s flock were going to wander off on their own, this would be the one. All the shepherds knew Needgrace, and most of them saw him as unattractive and worthless. When the Shepherd said he would go and seek his sheep and bring him back to safety, they laughed at the very idea. “Why would you bother with him?” was their consensus.

But there was one factor they had overlooked – the Shepherd loved his sheep, even one as apparently useless and difficult as Needgrace. He would leave his 99 safe sheep and go forth into the night to find the one that was lost. The others tried to dissuade him. There was lightning flickering on the hills, and a dusty breath in the air that was the first sign of the storm’s rising wind. But the Shepherd would not be dissuaded, he would pursue that one, foolish sheep, whatever it took, until he had found it and carried it home to safety.

The night grew dark and wild. The Shepherd was already painfully weary, but how could he leave his sheep in this? There were wolves in the hills and thunder close at hand; under the fierce roiling of the clouds there was no light of moon or stars, only fitful jags of lightning to confuse the sight. But the Shepherd kept on, his ears constantly alert for the faintest bleat. The rain came in short, sharp torrents, punctuating the icy wind. But the Shepherd kept on. The stones were sharp under his sandals, and he had to prod with his staff to be sure he wasn’t stepping off the edge of the cliff in the dark, but the Shepherd kept on. His heart was overflowing with tears and prayers for his lost, foolish sheep. If he didn’t keep on, he might never find it in time.

Finally, after weary, bitter hours, he heard the faintest sound through the clamour of the storm. It was the voice of Needgrace so faint with misery that only the ears of love could hear it. With deliberate speed the Shepherd pursued that voice across the slippery rocks, calling out reassurance as he came. By the time he reached his needy sheep, the Shepherd was badly bruised and bleeding, but his torn hands reached down and untangled the trapped creature, and with a mighty effort he pulled it free. And just as he hoisted it onto his shoulders, the clouds parted and a watery dawn showed through. The pursuit was over, the sheep had been rescued from his own folly, and as the Shepherd took a direct path back to the sheepfold, he called out in gladness, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep!”

The Stumbling Block

2011-10-08T14:42:00.000+11:00

It was all his brother’s fault. Abel, Abel, it was always Abel. First to do whatever their parents asked, first to try new things or bring home new gifts, and now the first in God’s favour. It wasn’t fair! He was the firstborn, he should be the one to come first in everything – the eldest son of the human race. It was only fair that he should have the pre-eminence. But Abel was always there before him, with his quick smile and his kind words. Through many seasons Cain had watched the eyes of his family light up at the sight of his brother in a way that they never did for himself. Once or twice he had stepped forward and said, “I should be doing that!” Abel had simply stepped back with a slightly bewildered smile and let him have his way. Somehow it hadn’t felt much like a victory.

And now Abel had offered a better sacrifice. Of course Cain had offered what he had, from the fruit of his crops, but once again Abel had waltzed in ahead of him, choosing the very best he had, and Cain’s offering had not been acceptable. It was all Abel’s fault, he was the stumbling block to Cain’s success. Even God did not understand, warning him that sin was lying in wait for him. Couldn’t God see that it was Abel who was in the wrong, stealing the love and favour that belonged to his brother? The only possible solution was to get rid of him.

It was all too easy. An invitation to go out into the field, a surprise attack (Abel was always so trusting) and hiding his body away, and it was all done. There was a strange, stomach-lurching moment when he looked down on his brother’s damaged body, as dead as any brute beast, and realised that this was the first time a human being had ever died. But it was done, the stumbling block was removed, and he could be first in everybody’s love.

It surprised him when God Himself questioned him, but he had his prepared answer: “How should I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?” That should have been the end of it, shouldn’t it?

But it wasn’t, and his stomach twisted as he heard the Lord’s reply. Rather than being moved to the front of the line, the favourite of God and man, he had become accursed. The ground he had tilled, the fruitful earth into which his brother’s blood had soaked, would now reject him and no longer yield its bounty to him. Rather than being received into the central place in his family, their joy and their delight, he would be an exiled creature, abandoned and alone.

He cried out in protest, “My punishment is more than I can bear!” God was taking away from him everything he had thought to gain by removing his brother, the stumbling block. And if he was driven from the land, wouldn’t he also be driven from the presence of God altogether? And that would mean away from His protection – and how long would he survive?

But God had made provision for that as well, marking the murderer and outcast with the seal of his protection, and as Cain stumbled, despairing into the darkness that would endure all his days, a terrible possibility gripped his mind. What if the stumbling block to all he had dreamed of had never been Abel? What if it had been himself?

Going Home

2011-10-01T13:30:00.001+10:00

He was going home. It wouldn’t be very long now, only a matter of days at most until the soldiers would come to his cell and drag him out to the executioner’s block. Death was still the last enemy, but Jesus had conquered death and hell and made them captive. There was no fear. His work was done, and he was ready to be with Christ, which was far better. He would be home, and nothing could ever separate him from the love of God.

He watched the moving light of his one poor candle flame reflected on the damp walls of his cell, and thought back across the life that he had lived. It was not at all the life he had expected, the comfortable, respectable life of a successful, influential Jewish rabbi; instead he had been imprisoned many times, flogged, stoned, shipwrecked, and lived a life of constant danger. But it was a life with Jesus at the centre of it, and he did not regret it for a moment. He pondered.

“I have fought the good fight ..” Yes, there were so many bad fights out there that a man could spend his life in: fights for riches, prestige and power. And there was the worst fight of all: fighting against God. Even now, after all these years of grace, he winced just a little at the memory. He had been so zealous, so eager to serve the Holy One, and he had totally misunderstood what God wanted. He had totally misunderstood who God was. And God, in mercy, had stopped him in his tracks and turned him round in the opposite direction, and had given him something worth more than his own life to fight for. And then, as if that wasn’t wonder enough, He had armed him for the battle in the armour that was Christ Himself.

“I have finished the race ..” Yes, that was true too. There had been so many times when he wished it was over, and he could go home to the God who had captured his heart. But he had a job to do, and a race to run, and the victor’s crown was for those who persevered to the end. Only God knew where the finish line was. So he had kept on going, as single minded as an athlete running in the games, but for a prize immeasurably greater, a crown of righteousness that awaited him.

“I have kept the faith ..” Yet it was not he who had done it, but Christ who so laid hold of him. He had kept the law so keenly, seeking to prove and promote his own righteousness – then he had seen the righteousness of Christ and known that the best he could ever do was rotten to the core. But it didn’t matter, because what he could never have done, Jesus had done for him. It was as the bond slave of Christ Jesus that he had learned the glorious liberty of the children of God. And he jealously guarded the churches, lest they, in turn, should trade in their dependence on Jesus alone for a bowl of legalistic pottage. And now Christ, whom he had clung to as a drowning man clings to a spar, would carry Him home as the spoils of his triumph.

He smiled in wonder, acknowledging once again, that it was love that mattered. The battle, the marathon, the fidelity – they were only possible because God Himself, with love beyond all comprehension, had reached out across the darkness of sin and death, and planted such responsive love in his own heart, that everything else was dust and ashes in comparison. And in that love he was always, already, at home.

The Protector

2011-09-23T09:44:00.001+10:00

All he had ever expected or desired was to lead an ordinary life. After all, what could be more ordinary, more mundane, than the life of a village carpenter in a distant province of the empire? Steady work, a loving, virtuous wife, in due course God’s precious gift of children, and, underlying all of this, the security of knowing what God required – wasn’t that all that any sane man would anticipate?

He couldn’t remember exactly when he had begun to notice her, but over time he became aware of her, and started to court her. He was a good prospect, her parents approved, and they became betrothed. He thought she was the most special girl in the world, she had a beauty of tranquillity that touched some deep place within him, and for her sake he wanted to be the most caring, tender and responsible husband he could possibly be. But he had no idea how uniquely special she was going to prove to be, or what would be required of him.

It started the day she told him that she was with child. While he gaped at her, unable to take it in (she was the last girl he would have expected of any unchastity, five minutes ago he would have been prepared to swear that she was the purest woman in Nazareth) she proceeded to tell him a story about God, a visiting angel, and becoming the mother of the Messiah. She told her story with the calm conviction of someone who was simply report6ing what had happened, but her voice faltered and grew silent when she saw that he did not believe her.

He was resolved to treat her as gently as possible, and divorce her without public scandal, but that night the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and declared to him that every word she had said was true. She was, indeed, to be the mother of the Promised One, and he was to be – what? – her husband, her support, her protector through these vulnerable years. He was to be (and his mind reeled at the prospect) the earthly protector for the infant Son of God. How did a totally ordinary man end up in such a role? How could he ever be adequate?

For a while he thought that, despite the strangeness of the situation, things might resolve themselves into a semblance of normality, at least for the next few years. But nothing went according to his plans. Caesar (or God?) had other ideas. There was the census-required trip to Bethlehem with a pregnant wife, and the birth itself, in an outbuilding, with no women to attend her in her time of need, but strangers, shepherds and angels, celebrating the deity, and amazing mission, of this quite ordinary-looking baby.

There was a time of normality then, at least a little breathing-space, and Mary and the baby were, to the inhabitants of Bethlehem, just another mother and child. But it didn’t last. The strange kings came, with their heavy accents and unsettling gifts, and then he had the dream. He was to take Mary and the child and flee to Egypt, there was no other way to escape Herod’s insane jealousy.

So here he was, in the middle of the night, swiftly packing their meagre belongings, and thankful that at least he knew which direction Egypt lay in. And as Mary, accepting his explanation, lifted the child and wrapped him tight against the night air, his heart swelled. He was uncertain, he was afraid, but he understood the job that God had given him to do. He would protect and guard this woman and this wondrous child until the day when he could bring them back to the safety of Nazareth.

The Impossible

2011-09-22T13:16:00.004+10:00

What am I to do with a God like you?
All day I beat myself
Against the rock of your improbable truth
Battered to despair;
Then you touch me
(It doesn’t matter: sunbeam, butterfly,
The soft new leaves of Spring)
And I am broken once again
By the tenderness that comes and carries me.

Both law and gospel
Scour me out precisely with the curette’s blade
Till I am nothing
A hollow thing
Deflated.
And then, oh wild wind of the Spirit,
Sun, moon and stars,
Music defying gravity,
Love, yourself, bursting through creation,
Entering my emptiness
Overturning death,
Scattering my altars till my heart laughs with you.

There is no walking with you
I must learn to dance,

Where angels fear to tread.

The Return

2011-09-17T13:54:00.000+10:00

This was what the angels would have been waiting for, if they had been certain what to expect. He had come back to his throne, and he would reign forever and ever.

It had been 33 years they had been waiting, plus those nine months before that which their minds could scarcely compass. That the Lord of all creation should confine himself to the limitations of a human being was enough to beggar their understanding, but at least, despite the confines of that finite flesh, to be human was to be made in the image of God. But that he should be so much less again, an insentient egg taking root in a woman’s womb, how were they to understand that? They marvelled and they worshipped afresh at the greatness of a God who could make himself so small.

There was no part of being human that he had exempted himself from. The ordinary childhood, the refugee experience, the learning to work by his “father’s” side, supporting his widowed mother until his brothers were ready to take over the responsibility. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, frustration, the daily burdens of the children of Adam: he had born them all and done so without sin. And then he had gone forth to do the Father’s will on a larger stage. He had spoken the very truth of God into the ears that would hear, declaring judgement on the bondage of the empty traditions of men, and mercy and forgiveness so enormous that the souls of the self-righteous were offended. And, just as he spoke the words of the kingdom, so he did the deeds of the kingdom, making the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the lame to walk. He spoke in authority to the storms without, and the wind and the waves obeyed him; he spoke authoritatively to the storms within, and demons relinquished their claims on the hapless and helpless. He had even raised the dead.

And then ... well, if angels could cry, they would have cried at the horror of it: the betrayal, the traitor’s kiss, the malicious mockery of a trial. Who did these creatures think they were to stand in judgement on their Creator? And then, the utterly unbearable – the beating, the mocking, the humiliation and the crucifixion; and the angels could not bear to watch as the Beloved himself became the sin-bearer, alone, forsaken and tormented on that dark and dreadful hill.

But now he had returned, triumphant, and sin and death and hell were captive in his train. That did not surprise the angels, they knew who he was and had never doubted his transcendent power. But there were two things that did amaze them, two things that were now changed forever within heaven itself. The first was that he still bore the scars of his torment, and those wounds were too bright to look upon, for from them the love that was before all worlds poured itself out upon the loveless, and this was the greatest beauty they had ever seen.

And the second thing was also a great mystery, for though he returned in the full glory of his godhead, he also returned in his humanity, carrying the race of Adam in himself to the very throne. The beloved son was also the firstborn of the new creation, going ahead of his brothers and sisters to prepare a place for them, and to intercede for them as their great high priest. And the angels bowed their heads and marvelled.

The Reluctant One

2011-09-10T18:53:00.002+10:00

I came, I saw, I did nothing -- and that is my greatest shame. Somewhere, deep inside, I think I knew the truth a long, long time before that crucial day when I finally admitted it, but the fact is that I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to have my comfortable world disordered and disrupted. And I especially dreaded the condemnation of my fellow Jewish leaders. I had far too much to lose. In short, I was afraid. But if I didn’t know the truth, then how can I explain my preoccupation – no, make that total fascination – with that man?

Oh yes I came – again and again and again I came, to stand on the verge of the crowd and watch and listen. At first I came with my fellow-members of the Sanhedrin – that was part of our legitimate business, to check out a new teacher, but then I couldn’t stay away. I was careful, either I would quietly be there with a group of other Jewish leaders, or I would hide myself in the midst of a large crowd, on the same principle as hiding a leaf in a forest. Dressed in un-ostentatious clothing, I would not be noticed or recognised among so many. But I think Jesus knew, a couple of times he looked straight at me, almost as if he had deliberately sought for me, and I felt as if his searching eyes could see every secret conflict of my soul.

And conflict it surely was. His teaching made so much sense – he talked about God comforting the mourners and giving victory to the meek, and looking below the surface to see whether our hearts, not just our visible actions, were guilty of lust and murder and unbelief. He spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, and it was like a fresh breeze blowing through my soul, overturning all the musty formalism of my world – a kingdom of righteousness and justice, growing as inexorably as the leaven works its way through the dough. And when he spoke of God, the loving father who welcomes the wanderer home, who sends out an invitation, right across the universe, to let go of our religious foolishness, and come back to Himself, I could feel that same invitation tugging at my heart.

And that is not even to mention what I saw – the sick healed, the hungry miraculously fed, the blind and the deaf made whole. I even saw the dead raised to life again. What right has any man to doubt after seeing so much?

But I was afraid. I had lived my life secure and comfortable, a member of the Jewish religious elite with a secure place in the system and the approval and acceptance of my fellows. And I knew how vicious they were to those who did not conform. I was not ready to take the risk, and my heart was torn. Even when I overheard fragments that suggested they were plotting to kill him, I still held my peace, though my heart was sick within me. I was immobilised, in thought and action by my dread, as if some terrible sickness had bound up my mind and heart.

It was only when I saw him hanging there, dying on that terrible cross, that I was released, only to find myself in a different kind of sickness – an absolute horror at my own cowardice, and the way in which it had all played out. Then, in the midst of my despair, I heard him cry out “Father, forgive them ..” and when I looked up, from the distance where I stood, I imagined (for no one could see clearly in such darkness) that he was looking straight at me, with a pity that understood me and loved me even in my brokenness. I was glad of the darkness then, for no one could see my tears.

When it was all over, I asked Pilate’s permission to take his body for burial. With reverent sorrow I laid his body in the tomb I had bought for myself. He did not need it for very long.

Renunciation

2011-09-03T15:57:00.002+10:00

We left everything for his sake. I remember the day so well. It wasn’t the first time we had met him – that was when, hungry to learn more of God, we had been down at the Jordan, where John was baptising. Jesus appeared, John greeted him, strangely, as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, and then, after a moment’s disagreement, John led him into the water and baptised him. It was hard to see and hear exactly what happened next, but it looked like a dove came down and hovered over him, and there was a sound, which we now know was a voice from heaven, but at the time we were simply confused. Then he walked away, and we rubbed our eyes and wondered what it was we had just seen.

We didn’t see him again for quite a while. We had our nets to return to and fish to catch – and he had just vanished from the scene. Later we learned that he had fasted in the desert for forty days, but at the time we had other things to think about – like our families and where our next meal was coming from – all the normal concerns of everyday life. And yet .. we couldn’t forget him either, even though we couldn’t articulate why. But we had seen something that day by the Jordan that had touched our souls forever.

And then, one morning, he was there –walking by the shores of Galilee as comfortably as if he knew every pebble of the strand. We were casting our nets, at the time, it was just another working day after all, and then we looked up and saw him. We glanced at each other, and there was no need to say, “It’s him,” we could read in one another’s eyes the hidden longing to encounter him again.

And we looked back towards him and he was coming straight towards us, with that look in his eyes that has taken us 3 years to understand, as if the deepest sorrow of earth and the most transcendent joy of heaven were all contained in him at once, in a single moment, without contradiction or conflict. And, yes, he was heading straight for us! And he looked at us directly, man to man, eye to eye, and said, “Come and follow me and I will make you fishers of men!” It sounds crazy even to say it, but it was as if we had been waiting for that invitation all our lives. We didn’t stop to consider it, we didn’t stop to weigh the pros and cons, we simply left our nets and followed him. It was absolute action, taken without measure or reserve.

Of course, the testing times came later – weariness and rejection, the enmity of some and the misunderstanding of others, but by then we never doubted our choice, for we had learned to love him. What did any of the things we had put aside matter compared to that? Even on the day when the thronging crowds turned away from the challenge of his truth, and he asked us if we would also leave him, Peter was speaking for us all when he replied, “Where would we go? You are the only one who has the words of eternal life!”

And that said everything that ever could be said. Yes, we turned aside from so much else when we chose to walk with him, but it rarely mattered. You can’t have it all, there are always choices to be made. And when are privileged to meet the one who is Life itself, everything else seems a small price to pay for the privilege of knowing him.

Commitment

2011-09-01T12:56:00.002+10:00

I shall not walk away,
Though the waves break over me,
And I go down into silence,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Though the words grow bitter,
And the air is torn with cruelty,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Though the needs are wrapped up,
And the whitewash clogs my breathing,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away
Though the paths are darkened,
And I grope, confused, to reach you,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Though the heart grows heavy,
And the feet too tired for dancing,
I shall not walk away.

I shall not walk away,
Till the true dawn brightens,
And a nail-scarred hand receive us,
I shall not walk away.

Conversation ..

2011-08-27T13:07:00.002+10:00

She didn’t see him until she had landed on the twig, angling her wings to catch the warmth of the soft spring sun. His green, segmented body was well-camouflaged against the leaf stem, but she saw his familiar, hunching movement. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that she herself had been exactly the same ..

He looked at her, then quickly looked away. She recognised the signs, she had once felt exactly the same shy awkwardness. It seemed wrong, on such a beautiful day, that he should be left feeling such awkwardness and doubt, when there was a wonderful secret she could share with him. She paused, wondering what she should say, then his furtive, sidelong glance decided her.

“Hello,” she said gently, “isn’t it a beautiful morning?”

“Yes,” he answered, then, with a sudden rush of words, “it must be wonderful to fly in the sunlight on such a day!”

It was her cue, and she took it. “It is wonderful. There’s such freedom being able to fly. I can remember how it felt when I was like you, and had to crawl everywhere. I used to dream of being able to fly, and it all seemed such a ridiculous, impractical thing to dream of.”

“Well,” he replied, “it is. Some are born with wings, and some without. We all have our place in this world. We live, we eat, we enjoy light and warmth while it is given to us, and make the most of every juicy leaf, then the day is over and the darkness descends. One by one our friends disappear, becoming dry and lifeless lumps. This is who we are, this is all we have.”

“Oh no, it isn’t really like that at all. It only looks like that. We go into that darkness like a great sleep, a sleep that feels like death – but it is not. We come out the other end as a new creature; it’s like getting born all over again”

“That old fairytale? We tell that to the new hatchlings, the one-day-you-can-be-whatever-you-like story, but then we outgrow it. I guess that some people like to dream that there is something more than this, but they’re only fooling themselves. There is nothing more than this, and wishful thinking only spoils the pleasures of now. Take what you can, enjoy this life you have, and don’t muddle the moment with vague philosophies. That’s as silly as trying to tell a chicken that it’s going to grow up to become an eagle!”

“But what if it is?” She saw him roll his eyes and realised she had not expressed herself well. “I mean, what if it turns out that it really isn’t a chicken after all, but a baby eagle?”

“Baby eagles still have wings, “ he replied, obviously growing tired of the conversation, which was interrupting his continuous lunch. “You might note that I do not have any wings – see, none!! – and I am self-evidently not a baby butterfly. I don’t know what game you’re playing, or why, but please leave me alone. I don’t have a future destiny, and I’m very hungry.”

The butterfly flew sadly away, wondering why it had to be so difficult. Was there no way to convince a caterpillar that there was a greater reality than what it could see immediately before it?

The Nonconformist

2011-08-22T11:03:00.003+10:00

The Nonconformist

Walking amongst the outward forms, I tripped,
Swirling down through the layers of knowing
Towards the black silence.

Set upon by the lachrymose beasts
And pummeled with emotions not my own
In search of proper feelings which I cannot find,
Is motley out of fashion?

Transparency appears the last defence
But, even so, the image is a lie;
Revealed by the proper reflection.

I would go as the wind goes
But, having too much substance,
Dismiss the childish fantasy in search of solid self –
Yet Thine is the glory ..

Me? Oh I would roll upon the hills of paradise,
But that would be to circumvent the journey,
And that is not allowed.

Gather me then, in the tendrils of your promise,
More solid than this fleeting earth;
And carry me, however long it takes,
Learning Your honesty.

Going Down

2011-08-20T13:45:00.001+10:00

I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t he know who I was? Apparently he didn’t even consider it important enough to come out and speak to me in person, just send a message via his servant. If he didn’t appreciate my high rank, and the might and majesty of Aram, surely it mattered that his own king had sent me to him? But Israel is a strange place, where it seems that prophets rank higher than kings, and have no qualms giving orders to them. The least he could have done was come out and speak to me in person; perhaps pray over me or whatever it is these outlandish prophets do to minister healing! Apparently I wasn’t important enough to be worthy of his time and attention – even though his own king had taken my request very seriously indeed (and quite mistaken my objective)

But it wasn’t just the mode of the message that rankled, it was the message itself. “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan’” I was told, as if that most ordinary of rivers, where the common people did their washing and fetched their drinking water, was somehow more magical, more powerful that the great rivers of Damascus.

I was furious. This whole journey had been a complete waste. And I was the more angry because it meant so very much to me to be healed. Honour and glory and the favour of the King I had amassed in plenty, but it was all useless to a leper. Soon those little patches would spread, soon they could no longer be concealed beneath my clothing, the disfigurements would appear, and, instead of being one who rode forth resplendently to the cheering of the crowd, I would be an object of scorn and loathing. All men must die, and who knows that better than a soldier, but leprosy is the sentence of a living death, and, under my bravado, I was terribly afraid. This is a fate that would unman the bravest.

It was my servants who talked sense back into me, and surely there is a deep moral there, for my whole path to healing has been dependent on humbling myself. It was the little Israelite slave girl who made the first suggestion; now it was my own faithful servants who tactfully pointed out that I had nothing to lose. If he had demanded from me some daring or difficult deed as the means to my healing, of course I would have consented (and claimed the credit for the healing to my own courage). Therefore (they suggested very carefully) why should I refuse to do something so easy as wash in the nearest river? There was no possible answer to that which didn’t sound ridiculous when put into words, so, with an ill grace to preserve the remnants of my pride, I went down to the Jordan.

And there, in the river whose very name means “going down”, I washed myself seven times, as the prophet had instructed, and was cleansed of my leprosy and washed away my foolish pride. Well might I be a high ranking commander in the King of Aram’s army, but before the God of Israel, the God of Elisha, I was nothing but a broken leper, desperately needing to be cleansed and healed. And how could I receive His healing until I had let go of myself and gone down to acknowledge my true emptiness and need?

The Confession

2011-08-13T14:02:00.002+10:00

I was a fool – a right royal fool if you like. I had seen the power of Israel’s God before and only a fool crosses swords with a God so mighty. That is a loser’s game, and I did not get to be king of this vast empire by choosing to be a loser. I knew (or thought I knew) how to vanquish every earthly power, and what are my priests and diviners and all their crowd of hangers-on for, if not to keep me in the favour of the gods of Babylon? Give them their appointed festivals and sacrifices, and they seem well content. A king can do business with gods like that, and know where he stands. They have their sphere of power, and I have mine.

But Israel’s God is different. I thought He was nobody, the god of a defeated people, the god of an empty temple – like we found when we ransacked Jerusalem. But it seems that this God, who has no statues, no representation except an empty altar stained with blood, wants more than any other God. He is not content with the forms of worship, He wants the submission of our hearts – even kings have to bow to him. I should have known, I had seen what happened when those three young men refused to worship my statue, and were thrown in the fiery furnace. He walked in the flames with His servants, and the worst I could do to them was set at nothing . Even then He was demanding my submission; I had made a decree that none should blaspheme Him, but even that was not enough. He wanted me.

He even sent a dream as warning, and gave Belteshazzar the wisdom to interpret it. And still, even then, in the pride and folly of my heart I ignored Him. I still worshipped myself, and my own achievements, more than any god. And the day came when I looked out over Babylon, that great city, and saw it as the living proof of my own glory, and spoke the words of my own sublime praise. And in that moment, in my very act of speaking the highest untruth, that glory and honour belonged to me, rather than Him – in that very moment my sanity departed, and I became as a beast of the field, and was driven forth from the society of men. I ate grass like a brute beast, and this body of mine, perfumed and pampered, for seven years was washed by nothing except the dew of heaven, and my hair and my nails had no servants to care for them. All my kingliness that I thought made me so great was gone in a moment. I had no authority any more, and, it soon became apparent, even my humanity was not my own accomplishment, but could be taken away from me. There was nothing left for me to boast in; only my life was preserved. All those things that identified me as human had been stripped from me, and the meanest beggar in the street was more fit for the throne than I was.

And then, after seven years of humiliation, I lifted my eyes to heaven, and I was restored. I have learned, and those who watched what happened to me have learned, that I am not king of this great empire through any virtue of my own, but because god, the great God, the only true God, has chosen to let me rule. And I was a fool to ever believe that all glory, honour and dominion did not belong solely to Him.

The Tree

2011-08-06T16:45:00.002+10:00

In the beginning, it was placed in the garden. No one knew where it came from, but, like all of creation, it was sourced in God Himself. Perhaps it was more truly of Himself than any of them realized then. It was there, in the centre, right at the heart of all things, the only companion, in that holy place, to the tree which was forbidden. And its beauty was something beyond their understanding, something they were not yet ready for. It was too subtle, too complex for their dawning minds to grasp, and somehow just a little frightening.

But the other tree, ah, that was different. God had spoken His ‘No!” into the very fabric of creation, but there was a beguiling ‘Yes!” speaking louder and louder in their minds. And, in the end, they took of the fruit, and they ate, and the world was broken. Their hearts were shattered by their own doing, and God’s pronouncement when it came was confirmation of the death they had already accomplished. And they were sent forth from the garden, and the cherubim descended, sword aflame, and the way to the tree of Life was barred from humanity. Yet the very action of their being sent forth invoked promise as much as penalty, for it was said that there would be a life beyond this death, and a hope beyond this hopelessness.

Centuries passed. Men laboured and men fell. Some looked upward, and beheld the beauty of God and put their trust in the One whose promises outlast the stars; but others looked around at the heaving world, or inward to the clamour of their own desires and embraced death by the very means they sought to defy it. And finally, while men looked the other way, the tree returned. It was no longer a thing of beauty, it was stark and dead and terrible. As it had to be, for the way to life leads now through death, and it could appear no other way within this world. It was no longer living wood planted by the hand of God, but old, dry boards, pushed back forcibly into the ground by human hands. Its only fruit was the body of a dying man, and it was blood, rather than the sap of Life that flowed from it. It no longer grew in holy sunlight, but stood under the descent of a terrible darkness. Men cried and wept at its presence, but many were so inured to death that they mocked instead. And by the planting of that terrible tree, Life returned to the broken human race.

It has not wholly vanished since, though the world sees only the symbol and not the substance. The eyes of faith see the life that is given to them in this death, they eat and drink of its fruit and find His life flows into their present body of death.

But even this is not the end of the story. One day the whole creation shall be reborn, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth and the city of God, fair as a bride, shall be revealed. And in the midst of her the Tree of Life shall stand, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Every tear will be wiped away. There will be no more mourning or crying or pain. There will be no more death.

The Girl at the Window

2011-07-30T14:55:00.000+10:00

She dreams, and in her dreaming is her becoming. Softly, softly, life whispers to her, calling her by name, but she does not yet know how to follow. She is not even certain yet that her name is really her own, she has not yet staked her claim on a definition of her self. That will come later, with time, with life, and, most of all, with love. Love will bring her boldness, to say that this much is me and this much is mine. In the desire to give herself away, she will discover the boundaries of her own being. But not yet; not yet.

Now is the time for dreaming, for wondering. She has known fear, she has known doubt. Night comes, as surely as morning does, and in the night there is uncertainty. There is a world around her whose demands she does not always understand, requiring her to do and to be what an adult world expects of her. It is confusing sometimes, and already her soul is a little bruised, for she dwells in a place where love has not yet been made perfect, where anger and folly and impatience are woven into the very fabric of time. And those who strongly maintain that the sorrows of childhood are insignificant, have forgotten how it feels to be a child, when one’s whole existence is contracted to a crushing word or an upraised hand..

But where the sorrow dwells, the promise and the comfort dwell also, and joy still comes with the morning. In the loveliness of the early light, still unsullied by crossness and crassness, she gazes out upon a world transfigured into beauty, and the shadows of fleeting nightmares are swiftly burned away. And there are some for whom beauty will ever be an open door to faith, for when the heart is lifted up it must respond, however tenderly and uncertainly, with praise and wonder towards the one who has made this possible – the one whose hand is revealed by the thumbprints of glory he leaves on creation.

Not that she has thought it through that far. She is simply a child looking out at the yard. But the deep peace and thankfulness that well up inside her when the light caresses her face with a touch like a blessing make her think of the bible stories she has learned, especially the one about Jesus saying ‘let the little children come to me!’ She has thought, for as long as she can remember, that his lap would be a very safe place to be. It would be exactly the same as that other place they have told her that the bible speaks of – the one where there is no more pain and every tear is wiped away. That is a good place, the best place.

But this here-and-now world is not a bad place either. There is laughter, and shelter and warmth, the satisfaction of accomplishment and a sense of belonging. Sometimes one does not need words to dream, or a certain image of the desired future, it is enough to rest in the bounty of the present moment and lean upon its peace. It is enough to say ‘yes!’ to the coming day. It is enough to reach out tendrils of trust towards the Maker of all things. It is enough to be learning to move one’s hands with compassion and one’s lips with truth, however slow and long the learning. It is enough to be alive and live each morning as a fresh springtime.

Forgiveness

2011-07-23T18:10:00.002+10:00

I am an old man now, and tomorrow they will lead me out to die. A few bitter hours, and then I shall be with Him forever, just as, in this broken world, whether I knew it or not, He has always been with me. It is strange to think that once the fear of death was the strongest thing in my life, stronger than love or truth. For fear’s sake I denied Him, and the acid shame inside me afterwards corroded me like death. But it was what happened after that which changed my life forever.

It was early morning, up in Galilee, when spring was at its fairest. Locked in my shame, thinking myself an outcast, I had returned there to pick up the pieces of my broken life. I was a failed disciple, but at least I still knew how to fish, or thought I did. Perhaps if I was unfit to be a fisher of men, as He had once called me, I could at least go back to being a fisher of fish?

But we had caught nothing. Even that last refuge was denied to my pride. And then the stranger on the shore in the blurry light of dawn commanded us to throw our nets on the right side of the boat. There were more fish than we could haul aboard, and, in the abundance, we recognized our Lord. Once before He had done that, and I had said to Him, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man!” This time, already exhausted by the knowledge of my sin, I only wanted to come to Him so, without thought, I jumped into the water and made my way to Him.

It is so hard to understand when I think about it rationally, yet when my eyes were fixed fast on him, it seemed somehow in the strange new order of things that the Lord who had overcome death and risen again in glory should cook our breakfast for us on the beach. I was almost beyond the capacity for further humiliation, I was willing to accept His grace gifts on whatever terms He chose to give them. I was not worthy to be called His disciple, but He was still my Lord.

It was after breakfast that He turned to me and, gesturing towards the rest of our catch of fish, asked me, “Simon bar Jonah, do you love me more than these?” Was He kidding? Hadn’t I given it all up once before to follow Him? I replied positively, not even stopping to think. “Feed my lambs,” He said.

He asked me again and I answered the same, Then He asked me the third time, and I was hurt. Didn’t He believe me? Was He playing games with me? Or had I only been playing games with Him, ready to desert the moment that real trouble threatened? His questions lanced open my reservoir of shame – three times I had denied Him, three times He questioned my love. He had every right to, but I could not bear it. How easily I would give all this away to follow after Him forever! But did He still want me? In the end, all I could blurt was, “Lord you know all things. You know that I love you.”

And in saying that, I realized that He knew my whole heart – the love and the fear and the shame. He knew every inch of my soul more clearly than I did. And did He brand me with my failure? No, He called me afresh to follow Him and to be one who gave His grace to others, and to follow Him all my days through to this place of death and loss – not only was I restored in His love and forgiveness, but I now had His sure and certain promise that I would continue to follow after Him all the days of my life. And so, by His grace, it has proved to be.

The Valley

2011-07-16T15:04:00.002+10:00

I feel like I have been here forever, in the valley of my desolation. Every hope has turned to dust and ashes, every gain has turned to loss. This is not the Valley of Death, for this aging, aching body of mine still lives and breathes and goes through the motions of daily life, but it is surely the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for Death has touched me and mine so very closely, that now I live forever shrouded in its gloom – a woman without a hope or a future, and a past that is woven from tears and futility. What right has the sun to shine so brightly, or the rain to fall so softly, or the wind to blow with the fragrance of spring flowers, when all my heart and my hope has become sightless unfeeling stone?

It was different once. I loved my husband, Elimelech, and there was joy in our going forth together. When he suggested that we leave famine-stricken Bethlehem, with the two fine sons who were our blessing from the Almighty, and settle for a while in Moab, where there was no shortage of food, it seemed like high wisdom to my ears. I was tired of scraping and struggling and making do, and have never doubted that the same Lord who brought our people to this land meant us also to use our intelligence, and when there was trouble and disorder in the land, it was prudence to remove ourselvesfor a time to a safer and more plenteous place.

For a while all seemed richness, but then my beloved took sick and died, leaving me a widow with two sons. But even while I grieved, I rejoiced in these fine young men. I thought of returning to my own people, but the boys were young men by then, and both were courting local girls, and where should I be but with my own. And they were fine girls too, heathen Moabites they may have been, but they were willing to learn of our God and His ways, and real love grew between us. Not every woman is so blessed in her daughters-in-law, and, recalling the story of our foremother Rebekah, and how grieved she was by Esau’s wives, I gave thanks for Ruth and Orpah, and waited for the grandchildren they would bring me.

But they never quickened, and the childless years passed by while I watched and wondered. Then the blow fell: both my sons dead in the prime of their youth. There was nothing left for me here, it was time to go home, back to my own people, and conclude my empty days in Bethlehem. I thought I would go alone; the girls were young, and lovely still, they would find other husbands among their own kind. After a little while Orpah was persuaded to do just that. But Ruth is of another kind, and nothing I could say would dissuade her. She insists on coming with me, no matter what, and truly, I am glad of her patient love and steadfast faith. It is odd that this Moabite girl now clings to the God of my fathers more closely than I do, for grief and bitterness have loosened my hold.

For she is steadfast, and as we walk this weary journey, she gives me the courage to continue. She tells me that God hasn’t finished with us yet, that though the way seems hard He can lift up every valley and lower every mountain till we walk in a straight path. And as we rest in the night she looks up at the everlasting stars and tells me that even in this valley, shadowed by death, God is still with us, watching over us, and like all true shepherds He will lead us home to Himself.

Stillness

2011-07-09T13:46:00.000+10:00

It is still. It is dark. It has always been dark. The waters cover the formless world, and they are calm and still, for the Spirit breathes over them. There is no life or voice or movement in this place. There has never been change or growth or the counting of days. But this is about to end. The presence of God is in the stillness. A voice of command speaks into the darkness saying, “Let there be light!”. And there was light. And there was evening and there was morning, and it was the first day.

It is still. It is dark. The stars are out. The old man, childless and aching with longing, stands and looks up at the stars. In the clear desert air he can see so many, and each one shines fiercely. He stands there, and the presence of God is in the stillness. And God speaks, “so shall your offspring be.” The old man trembles in wonder, but he believes the word of God. And so it came to pass.

It is still. It is dark. The shepherd boy looks out over his flock, watching with alert eyes for any predator. But the moon is bright tonight and the pastures are at peace. The presence of God is in the stillness. He is aware of the Lord’s protection, compassing him round, holding him fast in love. God is watching over him constantly, just as he watches over his sheep. Now it all seems so clear to him, this love in which he lives and moves and has his being. He takes up his harp and strums softly. He starts to sing, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ..”

It is still. It is dark. In the small cold hours after midnight, the crowded little town has settled down. There is the occasional sound from young children and restless sleepers, but here, in the outhouse with the animals, it is very still. The woman lies exhausted on the straw, waiting, between heartbeats, for the final pain that will bring delivery. The man stands there, tense with watching, there to help if needed, but awed to silence by the wonder of the moment. There is nothing he can say and do, she is in the hands of God. The stillness presses in on them, and the presence of God is in the stillness. There is a final pain, a moment when the whole earth stops and listens, and then the thin cry of a newborn child, overtaken by the glorious music of angels. God himself has entered our darkness and come to dwell among us. Salvation has entered the world.

It is still. It is dark, but then it is always dark in here when the stone is rolled across the entry. The battered, tortured, murdered body lies where reverent, loving, tear-spattered hands have placed it. Life and hope have fled, and the Light of the World seems to have gone out. But the presence of God is in the stillness; and this tomb is a holy place, for the True Sacrifice has been accepted, and death itself is about to come undone. Glory will overtake despair, the stone will be rolled away, and love will have the victory. The dark stillness of the silent tomb is about to become the womb of a new creation.

The Widow

2011-07-02T15:43:00.000+10:00

All was lost. I thought my life was over and my joy extinguished when my husband died, but I had still had my son to live for, my only child, and he was both the reason to keep going and the means to be able to. The years had not been kind to me. I had married with such hope. My husband, hardly known to me, was well-respected in the community as a good worker. His wife would not go hungry. I would be mistress of my own home, albeit a small one, (but what did that matter? I had lived just above poverty all my life), I would have children, many children, a woman’s glory, and maybe, just possibly, I would be the mother of the Messiah. That was of course the secret tender hope, the one no one dared put into words for fear of being laughed at. But just because every other daughter of Abraham had dreamed that dream for hundreds of years didn’t make it impossible. It had to happen some day! I had no idea, as I prepared for my wedding, that the Messiah had already been born, that was something I would only learn in the darkest hour.

We settled in Nain, and the years passed. After several years of barrenness and much desperate prayer, remembering the story of Hannah, I had one child, a fine, handsome boy. I never had another that made it to birth. My marriage was not the wonderful dream I had imagined as a naive young bride, but it was better than many. He was kind, e was fair-minded, and he never reproached me for our lack of children. I sometimes wondered if he was secretly relieved not to have too many mouths to feed, for while he worked hard the returns were poor and the Roman taxes were ruinous. We had enough, but never the abundance I had dreamt of. But this was the real world, and what more could anyone expect?

Then, just as our son was approaching manhood and learning his father’s trade, my husband started to weaken. At first he grumbled about pains, and even found fault with my cooking (which he never had before), but over the course of months it became clear that this was no mere indigestion. Before my eyes he shrank away, the little pains grew to big ones, and he could no longer work at all. I remember the day that I realised that he was dying, and how, in the midst of that tight, cold misery, I gave thanks to the God of our fathers that He had given me a fine son to take care of me and I would not be left alone and destitute. For I was a woman withered before my time, with no prospect of bearing more sons, so no other man would ever want me.

He was a fine son, who never shirked in his duty, and between us there was tenderness and laughter. I knew that I was blessed – here was no Messiah, but a good boy nonetheless, and I loved him dearly. He had brought joy into the bleakness of my life, and if still, in the silence of my heart I asked God that I might one day see the Messiah face to face, well, isn’t that the heart-longing of all our people?

Then the fever came. In the morning my son struggled to rise from his bed, in the following night he died. And when he died, I died with him, though my feet still walked above the ground. There was nothing left for me in this world, and I knew God had forgotten me. I was never more wrong.

I am not sure why there were so many people coming with us as we carried his body out of the town, but the sudden death of someone young, healthy and strong is bound to attract attention. But with so many people around, it is not surprising that I did not notice the arrival of the strangers. Besides, I felt as if it was my own heart being led out to the coldness of the tomb, and, blurred with the tears that were the most alive part of me, my eyes were downcast and saw no reason to ever be raised again. “Don’t cry,” he said.

There were no cheap emotions in those words. Many times I have heard people say ‘don’t cry’ when what they really meant was ‘don’t disturb me with feelings that make me feel uncomfortable’. This was different; this was a compassion that knew not only the death of my only son, but all the other deaths that were happening inside me. This was the heart of God meeting with my broken heart right where I was and changing the great No to a Yes. I raised my eyes in wonder, and watched as the stranger walked over to the coffin. Everyone was standing still. Everyone was barely breathing.

He touched the coffin, he spoke to my son and told him to arise. There was such authority in those quiet words that it felt as if the very universe itself could not deny him. And my son lived. My. Son. Lived. Just like that; with no effort, no spectacle, no struggle, death itself was overturned. There was clamour around us, people were declaring the presence of a great prophet, were marvelling at the mercy of God. But, in the still centre, I heard none of those things. I looked at him and knew that I had met the Messiah, and he knew and loved me. I gathered my bewildered son in my arms, and gazed into the eyes of the stranger who had met with death on my behalf. God himself was walking on the earth and he had come here just for me.

The Music ..

2011-06-25T17:35:00.000+10:00

She could not escape the music. All her life she had tried to ignore it, to refuse it; even while it penetrated the very rhythm of her blood and bones. She had seen others succumb – her parents, her siblings, the people in the village – some sang the words of their lives to it, others danced its steps, with a little jig here and there. And some were so consumed by it that they could move only into its frenzy, and danced away to the battlefields, overcome by its passion and pain. She had watched, all her life, and she had grown afraid.

She had been criticised for her distrust of the music. The left-leaning media said it was harmless, simply a part of the natural environment and one that united the community; the right-leaning media said it was good for the country, and it was unpatriotic to criticise it. So she said nothing. The academics went further, of course, and were much more nuanced. Doctoral theses had been written on such subjects as “The Necessary Rhythm of Being”, or “The Music as an Evolutionary Correlate”. A while ago, a group from a prestigious university had investigated whether flowers grew better with the music or in a soundproof container. The soundproofed flowers had all died, which had seemed conclusive until someone had realised that the soundproofing also rendered the container devoid of all light. No one had been anxious to repeat the experiment. A whole branch of philosophy had been dedicated to speculating on the source of the music, it sounded remarkably like a stringed instrument, but neither instrument nor player had ever been seen. The currently fashionable theory tried to integrate the frequency of vibration of the celestial spheres with distortions caused by the earth’s magnetic field and modulated by the phases of the moon. Nobody actually understood that.

She knew they were wrong. Bone deep, soul deep she knew that the music was evil, though she could not articulate why that was. But she knew that it hurt to resist it, whilst the ones who accepted it, who allowed it to flow in and out and through them, looked as if they dwelt in frenzied gaiety, as long as you didn’t look too deeply into their eyes.

But she also knew that she was weak. How long could she resist? It both attacked her and seduced her. There were days when she believed herself a fool for resisting. Who did she think she was to imagine that she knew better than everyone else in her world? What presumption! And she was only flesh and blood, just like everyone else.

Then, one day, she found a dusty old book, and as she read it she was amazed by the story it told, of the man who had not only resisted the music, but walked the earth singing a different song. And the real makers of the music were so enraged by the challenging beauty of his song that they had taken him out and put him to death most cruelly. And in that book she read enough of a description of that song to be able to begin to imagine what some of the notes might have been. And even in the faint reconstructions of her imagination she was so moved by its beauty that she realised that if she could constantly listen to that song then the evil music would have much less power over her – for how could it compete with something that, even at its furthest remove, was beautiful enough to break her heart?

Only after she had wrestled with this thought for some time did she realise something else: perhaps the music was so loud and insistent precisely so that it would drown out the true song. And maybe that meant that the song was still there, more primal, more true, more real than the music she had been hearing all her life? Then it followed that what she really needed was for some part of herself to be changed, to be attuned to the beautiful song instead of the deathly music of the world. She found herself crying out, from the deepest part of her being, that the Singer, wherever he was, would come to her and set her free, and deliver her from sinking into cacophony.

The Dream

2011-06-18T15:39:00.000+10:00

It was no good. He had failed – utterly and totally failed – and all his dreams and plans tasted like choking desert dust in his throat. All his life he had resented being second son, second best, and the one who stood outside the straight line of blessing. Why should he matter less to God because, in the final tussle to leave the womb, he had been born moments after his brother?

And he had tried so hard, done everything he humanly could to get the blessing for himself, even got it, by force of trickery, and it was all for nothing. Instead of gaining favour, he had lost it, had lost everything, and, at his beloved mother’s advice, was fleeing for his life. Everything he had striven for had come to nothing, and now he was a homeless wanderer. What use was a father’s blessing that was only given freely in the act of sending him away from home – a home he could never safely return to as long as his brother was alive?

He was tired, horribly, heavily tired, and the weight of his disappointment made every step a dragging effort. Surely tonight, despite all his discomforts, and the lurking fear that even now Esau might be pursuing him with murderous intent, he would be able to sleep? He must, it was a long, long journey to Haran, and he must conserve his strength. So, as the daylight died, he found a comparatively level place on the ground, selected a smooth rock to serve as a pillow, wrapped himself in his cloak and composed himself to sleep.

It took him a while to settle. The desert night was chilly, the ground was hard and the deep misery inside him was even colder and harder. But exhaustion won out, and he slept, and, as the night folded in on its darkness, he dreamt. In his dream he was still in the same place, nothing had changed about him and his position; and yet, at the same time, everything that really mattered had changed utterly, as if the whole universe had changed around him while he remained cowering in his desert of mind and body.

There was a stairway, a ladder, an endless succession of steps rising from the very earth beside him into the far reaches of heaven beyond the limits of mortal sight, or rather, perhaps more accurately coming all the way down from heaven to touch at the miserable spot where he lay. They were not empty stairs either, the very angels of God were constantly ascending and descending. And then, or so it seemed, as Jacob dared to raise his eyes, he saw that the Lord himself was standing at the summit of the stairs – the very God whose blessing he had tried to finagle for himself. Even in his sleep he trembled, fearing he was about to be cut off from God, as well as his family. But then the Lord spoke.

It was not the message Jacob had expected to hear. The very blessing that he had tried to steal was what God was freely giving him! The God of his forefathers was declaring him to be in the line of the promise given to Abraham, that he would be the father of many, and the one through blessing would come to all the peoples of the world. That was miracle enough, but it was not all, for the Lord also promised his own presence. Yes, Jacob was going into exile, but he was not going alone, for the God of all gods would be with him, and would bring him back safely, one day, to the very place he was fleeing from now. Wherever he went he would never be outside the blessing of God.

He awoke overwhelmed, with tears in his eyes. All the time while he had been wandering in despair God had not let go. He had been there the whole time; it was Jacob who had been blind to his holy presence.

Over the Waters

2011-06-12T20:15:00.002+10:00

She flew, weary-winged, over the endless expanse of water. Only a week before she had done the same thing and it had all been so tiring, so pointless. There had been nothing but the waters of death, as far as her eye could see. Was this just more of the same?

It hadn’t always been like that. She remembered a time before she was shut up in the boat, when the world had been lush and green, dotted with trees to roost in, and many other birds, just like herself, had flown amongst them, enjoying the gentle sunshine and abundant food. Then, one day, a strange compulsion had seized her and she had flown far to find herself in a strange valley, gathering together with every other species of creature she had ever seen. At the words of an old man they had all lined up, in their twos and their sevens, and entered the ark. She had never been inside a building before, and at first she was frightened, but these people were gentle and quiet, and she soon lost her fear. And when the strange noises began – the drumming of the rain, the creaking of the boat as it moved upon the rising waters – she was glad of the warmth and safety.

But it had been a long time now, and the world outside had changed beyond anything she could comprehend. There was no grass, no flowers, no trees, only endless water under a clear and arching sky. Once water had been a friend, a welcome drink, a place to splash and cool oneself on a hot day: now it was the enemy, the destroyer, the chaos that had overtaken a once beautiful world. Was there no respite from this watery wilderness, no hope of a new beginning?

Her wings were so tired, if she didn’t turn around now she might not have the strength to return to the safety of the Ark. Exhausted, she would fall into the darkening waters, and her small life would be spent. One last time she scanned the waters, hoping crazily for something that would prove the possibility of a new beginning. What was that dark speck? She flew closer, her energy renewed by a surge of curiosity. It was the topmost branch of an olive tree, with a few new leaves showing bravely forth. Trembling with emotions too great for her tiny heart, she perched there and rested. But it was not enough to have found herself a momentary refuge, she must bear back with herself the proof that the world was beginning to change again. She rested till sufficient strength returned, then she reached down and carefully, using her beak, sheared off a twig with a young olive leaf growing from its tip. Moving her head until the twig was securely held, she lifted her body and her wings, replenished and triumphant, bore her back towards the Ark. And the name of her burden was “Hope”.

The Leader

2011-05-07T20:25:00.002+10:00

Fugitives don’t sing. It’s too dangerous, especially when you don’t know whether the enemy pursuing you is within hearing distance. But his enemy could not hear the song welling up inside his heart, and could not understand it, by the very nature of his enmity. All day David had had his old songs running through his mind: the Lord is my shepherd, my protector, he will fulfil his purpose for me,, rescue me from evil men ..”

They knew that Saul and his men were nearby, it is impossible for 3,000 to be completely silent, and even more so when their leader is erratic and obsessed. But the area was full of crags and caves, so they chose one of the deepest and darkest and hid well back in the gloom. And David wondered what would happen next ..

Then the cave mouth darkened with the shadow of a single figure, and Saul entered – alone. David scarcely dared to breathe, lest he interrupt the moment. And then he realised what had happened, the King had entered the cave alone in order to relieve himself. Where could a king be safer alone than in an empty cave in the middle of the wilderness?

Except that the cave wasn’t empty. Saul was in more danger at that moment than he had ever been anywhere except on a battlefield. David didn’t need to see the looks on his men’s faces to know what they were thinking. He could the pressure of their wills. One of them leaned across and whispered to him, “This is the day that the Lord spoke of when He said to you, ‘I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.’”

David could feel the conflict. What should he do? If he did nothing he would be disgraced in his followers’ eyes; if he simply did as they said he was no longer their leader, but their puppet. Besides, Saul looked so pitiful, so pathetic. This enemy who pursued him, who had driven him out to the wilderness by his desire to destroy him, what was he in the end except a tired, tormented man whose fear was bigger than he was? What a terrible thing it must be to be Saul, at one and the same time the tortured victim of an evil spirit and the anointed of the Lord, Spirit-breathed and set apart! Saul was a man at war with his own heart, who had turned away from reliance on the Lord and took his cue from the phantasms of his foolish jealousy instead. Yes, he wanted to destroy David, but his crazy fear of David was devouring him instead. The Lord had brought him into David’s hands this day, but for what purpose? To kill him? No, not only was Saul a man to be terribly pitied, he was the anointed king of Israel. To become King by murdering the previous king – was that any way for David to become the kind of ruler God was calling him to be? Wouldn’t that make him, in the end, just another Saul, broken and haunted by evil?

He could not do it. And yet, to do nothing was also a wrong response to this God-given moment. There must be a third way. That was when he saw his way: a path as simple, yet previously unknowable as the melody of a new song. He raised a hand to still his men in an unmistakable gesture, then, easing his sword into his hand, crept forward until he was within reach of the king. His sword, sharp as the sunrise on the desert rocks, sliced out and cut a corner from the king’s robe. The king had felt nothing, and, scarcely breathing, David eased himself back to safety.
He suddenly found himself trembling at the enormity of what he had done. He had raised his hand against the one whom God had set apart to be his king! Quietly he spoke of his horror to his men, and they were rebuked for lusting after Saul’s life.

And now he knew exactly what to do, and why God had set things up this way. When Saul left the cave, he would follow him at a safe distance, then hold up this portion of the royal robe to prove that he had had Saul completely in his power and had done him no harm. For a while at least, the jealous rage in the King’s heart would be stilled, and David and his men might have time for a little peace, a little respite. And in his heart he felt a new song stirring, a song of praise and thanksgiving to the One who had always provided for his children in the wilderness, and this day had performed an even greater miracle, by keeping David free from a terrible sin.

The Choice

2011-05-02T22:22:00.000+10:00

Under cover of darkness the spies departed via a rope let down from the window, and she was finally alone to ponder the situation. How had it come to this? She knew in her very bones that life had changed forever.

Of course, the change had really happened when the rumour first reached them that the Israelites were coming. Nobody quite understood why these people, who had been many years in the wilderness, without a land to call their own, should suddenly change direction and start heading towards civilisation, but it had something to do with this mysterious God of theirs. Of course the priests of Jericho were invoking all kinds of charms and sacrifices to keep the armies of Israel at bay, but she knew they were only fooling. Long ago she had stopped believing in the gods of Jericho; she had known too many of the priests in her bed, paying her poorly to degrade and mistreat her, and she knew them for weak, venal man, serving weak, venal gods whose commands seemed to strangely match the desires of their priests. It was hard in her profession to believe in anything, it was harder still to survive believing in nothing.

Then the stories had started. Living where she did, right on the wall, she was visited by many merchants and travellers, and the stories they told her were more authentic than the versions that soon circulated in the marketplace. And those stories needed no embellishment – the cold, daylight facts were quite amazing enough on their own. Many years before, a race of slaves, known as the Hebrews, had escaped from Egypt, the mightiest country in the world. Strange events had preceded their going, plagues and miracles and death. And stranger still was what happened next: the might of the Egyptian army pursued them to the shores of the Red Sea, the sea opened up a path of dry land for the people to escape on, and then closed again on top of the soldiers, drowning the might of Pharaoh’s army. Then, for a long time, not much was heard about them.

But now they had a new leader, a man called Joshua, some spectacular victories to their credit, and they were encamped just across the River Jordan, far too close for comfort. It looked like they had Jericho in their sights, and the city was growing nervous. Rahab had been worse than nervous. She thought she had given up all belief in gods, but the God of these Israelites was different. From all she had heard, and the questions she had asked those who really knew something, He was nothing like the Canaanite gods. Instead of using worship as an excuse for every kind of debauchery, He demanded restraint and purity from His people. Sacrifices were regulated, and all human sacrifice was forbidden, even the sacrifice of children. She had once had a baby the priests had taken away and murdered; this aspect of their God impressed her deeply.

Only the day before she had looked around this city, where she had spent all her days, and, knowing it was destined to fall to the Israelites, seen it as a forlorn, hopeless and hollow place. It had become her prison, the wreck in which she was doomed to sink and drown. She had found herself crying out to the unknown God of Israel that He would rescue her, then laughed scornfully at herself – for whoever heard of a god who won battles listening to the prayer of a woman? Maybe he would take notice of a queen, but who had ever listened to the prayers of a prostitute?

And yet ... the impossible had happened! The Israelite spies had come to her door, out of all the doors in Jericho! She had hidden and protected them, and, in return, exacted a promise that she and her family would be spared when Jericho fell. They had left her a scarlet cord to hang in her window, so that the army of Israel would know which household to spare.

She ran the cord through her fingers thoughtfully, wonderingly. Her life hung by it. By the hanging of this cord she would make her choice to belong to a new god and a new people. And if this mighty God was willing to listen to the prayers of a prostitute, then maybe His people would be willing to love and accept her. Maybe (was it possible?) she could become a respectable woman, even a wife? This scarlet cord, as bright as blood, was her hope her only hope, of freedom and dignity.

The First Day

2011-04-23T15:56:00.002+10:00

John needed time to clear his head, to take in the enormity of it. Too much had happened too quickly – in the space of a mere 3 days he had moved from deadly, grinding despair to dizzying wonder, and he felt overwhelmed. What did it all mean? It was the first day of the week, but now it was also the first day of something else. Something had changed forever, and now, while the markets bustled and the soldiers marched, it was a different world .. a (he fumbled for the concept) .. new creation. Yes, that was it, a new creation – the first day of a new creation!

Since he was a small child he had known the creation story, and how, on that first day of all, the Lord had spoken, “Let there be light!” and light had shone into the darkness, and wherever light shone, the darkness retreated, for the darkness could not overcome it. Light was stronger. And now, in the darkest place of all, the tomb, the sealed off place behind the stone, light had broken forth. Death was no more the unbreachable darkness, for Jesus Himself had gone down into death, into the terror and the horror, and had overcome them with His life. Death had been broken. Life had broken forth, and that life was the light of men.

He remembered how he had heard Jesus speak of Himself as the Light of the World; at the time it had seemed poetic and attractive, now he saw it was nothing less than the literal truth. There was a hideous, skulking darkness in the heart of each human being, and its tentacles reached out and sucked the life from everything that human beings tried to do and build together. It was a darkness so great that many were unable to recognise the light of Light when he stood in their presence; he had come unto his own people, the children of Abraham, and instead of loving the light they had turned their backs on it, on him, and done whatever it took to make that horrid light go away, even to the point of crucifying him.

John wept. Even in the wonder of this golden morning, that wound was still too raw. So short a while before they had leaned close together, and shared from the same dish as they recounted the ancient story of deliverance: how only the blood of a slain lamb, painted on the doorposts, had stood between the firstborn of Israel and death. And then .. his body .. so horribly broken .. the rage.. the cruelty .. the spitefulness .. the petty meannesses of their injured pride .. all had been poured forth on him, had broken over him like a mighty wave of destruction, a storm that had pulled him down to the depths of Hades. The darkness had not understood Him, and where it did not understand, it hated. And they had strung up his body on that hateful cross, as if to prove that they had finally utterly beaten him. And, through blinding tears, John had watched him die, and all their hope die with him.

And yet .. Jesus Himself had said that if he were lifted up he would draw all men unto himself. At the time it had meant nothing – what could it mean? – but now the sense of it was starting to form a pattern in his mind. The Passover lamb, dying in the people’s place, the creator beginning a new creation, and calling them to come and join him, skipping over the darkened hills of their distress towards a dawn that was breaking over history. If death could be overcome, what else was possible? The same Word which had spoken the world into being on that very first day had walked among them for a season, the Father’s own glory walking in their midst; and then, in their place, had walked, deliberately, into death itself, that there he might speak that word by which death should be destroyed.

And this was just the first day.

The Bride

2011-04-15T10:32:00.002+10:00

They waited many years for her to be born, and when she finally came into being, she was born from a scene of blood and horror. Not that there was any other way she could have come – not with that promise, not in this universe. She was born in the darkness, in the middle of the day, when the terrible spear did its piercing, tearing work, and the blood and the waters of her birthing poured forth, and the world was shaken. She came from the very flesh of the one who would one day be her husband – but is that really so surprising? Wasn’t it also true of the very first bride of all?

For fifty days she was hidden from the world, a newborn creature, learning how to walk in the gentle darkness, washed clean by the death of death and prepared for her great baptism. Then the day came, the great festal day, and her Lord had gathered together people from all the surrounding nations to be the witnesses of her coming forth. And he prepared her to face the world with the fire of his presence and the great wind of his coming. She was borne forth by the power of the first whisper of the promise of his love, and that power released in her the ability to speak, and so she went forth, and stood among the very people she had hidden from before, and spoke of her beloved in tones of wonder. There were some among those who had travelled from the east and the west who were amazed, and moved, and changed by her words, and from that day she started to grow.

But she was still weak and small, and seemed defenceless, and there were those who, being of the same mind as Pharaoh and Herod before them, thought it would be easy to destroy her while she was young and helpless. And some hated her because they were jealous, and thought that she had come to steal the Bridegroom’s love from them; and others hated her because they had first hated her Bridegroom, and they would not acknowledge that they had already done their uttermost to destroy him, and failed completely. And so they harried her, and persecuted her, and in her own strength she would have died. But the more they hurt her, the more closely and desperately she clung to her Beloved, and the more she was transfigured by his love, and those who had eyes to see trembled at her beauty, and she grew, and was strengthened, even as her enemies sought to cut her down. And the Great Dragon gnashed his teeth, and abided for his moments of attack.

And in the great lust of his malice he conceived another plan, and as the years passed, and she hungered for her Bridegroom’s coming, fretting because she had not learned the patience of eternity, there came another kind of enemy, armed with terrible cunning, for this one did not seek to murder the bride but to seduce her, and turn her heart away from her Beloved, who was the very reason she existed in the first place. And sometimes they almost succeeded, but then her Beloved would pull her back to him again, and she would still survive.

She still waits. The years have been long and weary, and the mud of the world sticks to her. She is tattered and ragged, there is blood on her hands, and often foolishness in her heart. And the world glances at her with contempt or indifference, and walks on by. Only some see the beauty of her Beloved shining through her exhausted eyes. Yet she waits for him, for he has promised that he will return, and his promises never fail. He has gone now to get her home ready for her, and when all is complete he will come back to fetch her. Their wedding will be the consummation of all history, and their great wedding banquet will be the beginning of the marriage she has longed for, and her Beloved has bled for.

And on that day, face to face with her Beloved, she will be transformed. The garish robes and smutty bandages of this world will fall away to nothing, and she will stand there radiant, pure, perfect and complete. She will wear the white robes of his perfect righteousness, and her face will reflect back to him his perfect love. Her tears will be wiped away, and she will be beautiful beyond description. And her bridegroom will say to her, “Enter into the joy of your Lord,” and she will do so, and never go forth again. And her glory will never fail.

The Battlefield

2011-04-09T16:37:00.002+10:00

The centurion felt confused. Wasn’t he, an experienced soldier, a valued officer in the mighty army of Rome, an expert on battlefields? Wasn’t that his profession? Yet now he wasn’t so sure.

He remembered the big staged battles against the Gauls: the tightly regimented Roman formations, with every spear and sword sharpened and ready, and every man in his assigned position, trained to know exactly what to do when the moment came. The cavalry were off to one side, and a fine showing they made of it, their banners fluttering in the morning breeze, their horses, controlled and still. He had often thought how afraid he would be if he were on the other side, seeing the silent, relentless might of Rome arrayed against him, waiting in perfect discipline for the order to advance. But then, he had always found that time of waiting before the battle to be the most nerve-racking part. Once they were engaged, weapon to weapon, with the howling, screaming hordes of the enemy, there was no time to think, only react with every trained muscle moving by instinct. And that was what a battlefield was like. It was noisy: deafeningly, overwhelmingly noisy, with uncouth battle cries, the clash of weapons, the pounding of hoofs, the screams of injured men and horses. And the smell of battle: hot metal andall sorts of unpleasant human odours, but, overriding everything, the smell of blood – salt-sweet, metallic and utterly sickening. A man needed a strong stomach as well as a strong arm to survive in battle. And the sights of battle? Well, sometimes as a commander you got to step back and see the big picture, but mostly it was a kaleidoscope of close-ups – the sword thrust you parried back instinctively, the screaming face that was almost in yours, the body you sidestepped carefully so as not to slip in the gore and ooze. Yes, that was what a battlefield was like.

But now he was not so sure. Could an even greater battle possibly be fought in near silence, with just the marks of dried blood down a single, ordinary body to track the subjugation of the victim?

The men on the other two crosses gave him no concerns. He had supervised many crucifixions; it was an unpleasant but necessary part of the job. And these two were typical victims, the one who yelled out his anger and hate, cursing and swearing at the world that had brought him to this; the other one moaning and trembling and seeking only release. But the one in the middle? He was different. He was calm and still, in the middle of his suffering, and yet when he did speak, he spoke with incredible authority, and .. he struggled for the right word ... compassion? awareness? kingliness? In the end he decided that the right word was love. And that frightened him. Why were they crucifying someone who loved?

The man had had a hard time of it too. They had beaten him, and not lightly either. He had seen hardened soldiers die from a beating like that. And that crown of thorns they had pushed down on his head? Yes, it was a little thing compared to the larger tortures, but a cruelty just the same. And yet, somehow he wore it with more dignity than many the centurion had seen bedecked with crowns of gold. And then there wasthat placard above his head proclaiming him king of the Jews. It was supposed to mock him, show him up as ludicrous and totally defeated, but that wasn’t the effect at all.

Then the darkness fell, absolute and terrifying. Something was terribly wrong, and he had a growing conviction that it was all to do with this man hanging here from the vicious nails. But a Roman soldier does not desert his post. So he stood there and he watched (as best one could in the dark) and he wondered. And he recalled snatches he had learned about the mystery religions of the Greeks who said that sacrificial death led to life, and the things that the Persians said about the battle between darkness and light. Could one man alone, nailed and dying, constitute a battlefield?

He remembered a conversation he had once had with a Jewish teacher. He had tried to convince the obstinate old man that their mysterious God must be weak and powerless since he had let them be conquered by Rome. The man had looked at him with disconcerting amusement. “Do you really believe that Rome’s victories make her greater than God?” he had asked. Then he had quoted something from their wisdom literature, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ..”

Somehow he found himself believing that a cosmic battle was being played out right before him: light against darkness, good against evil, life against death. The man cried out one final time, “It is finished!” And even as he spoke there was an earthquake, and the soldiers fell to the ground.

The centurion rose slowly to his feet. Somehow fighting Gauls and Germans seemed like the sport of little children, compared to the battle this man had fought, and won, on his own. He shook his head to clear it. There was much he needed to learn, much that was difficult for him to understand. But of one thing he had no doubt. “Truly,” he said, “this man was the son of God.”

The Still Waters

2011-04-02T19:31:00.002+11:00

I was born into an unhappy flock. Oh, my mother was tender to me when she could be, but she had little energy to spare, for the pasture was sparse and the ground was stony, and other stronger sheep jostled and shoved for the best pasture and the sweetest grass. Being merely a young lamb, the least of them, weak and undernourished, I was often pushed aside and ignored.

It was a hard life. The strong rams, determined to snatch the best grass for themselves, would often trample destructively all over the more fragile pasture as they fought each other for the choicest sections. That meant there was even less left for the rest of us. And likewise they would charge straight into any safe water they could find (sheep will only drink from still water). By the time they had finished bullying their way in, they had churned it all up and the rest of us had nothing to drink until the waters settled again – and that could take hours while we waited in the heat of the day.

And the shepherds? They were no help to us at all. They took what they wanted from the flock, fleecing us for their own profit, but they took no care of us in return. They should have led us to rich pastures, where there was more than enough for everyone, and plentiful water for us all, but it was too much trouble. They would rather flirt with the girls, and practice their music, and rest in the shade of the trees. It is only now, when I know how a good shepherd cares for his flock, that I realise how very bad it was.

They took no care of the weak or the sick, and there was anarchy in the sheepfold. Sometimes sheep wandered off on their own, hungry for better pasture, tired of being pushed around and abused. The shepherds never even cared enough to notice they were gone, let alone go to the trouble of seeking them and bringing them back. We never saw those sheep again, and what became of them I have no idea.

One day a wolf crept up on the flock, and helped itself to a half-grown lamb. The sheep scattered in terror, panicked by the smell of blood and bleating with alarm. Eventually the commotion disturbed even the shepherds, who had been lolling under a tree eating figs and laughing at each others’ jokes. For a moment they remained stupefied, then one of them yelled, “It’s a wolf!”, and, instead of rushing in to save the sheep, they lifted their robes and bolted. We were utterly alone in a fierce and desolate world. The wolf, having eaten his fill, slunk off, and we huddled in uncertain little groups. It was a cold and dreadful night.

For several days we wandered, gradually drifting apart from one another, and one morning I woke to find myself alone. I was terrified. Surely others of my flock must be nearby, over the next hill, or the next? I started running, frantically bleating, and then ... I slipped. I could have been broken on the rocks below, but I landed on a ledge just a little way down, shaken and bruised, but still alive. And there I lay, for a day and a night, too frightened to move, and whimpering softly. Then, just as the grey dawn started to blush, there were footsteps, and a kind voice, and strong arms reaching down to lift me. The True Shepherd had come. He bound up my wounds and carried me home on his shoulders.

It is all so different now, for this flock is led by Love. This shepherd loves his sheep so much that he would even die for them. He gave me a name (I never had a name before), and that name is who I truly am. Whenever he calls me by that name, I will follow him. Sometimes the paths are hard and steep, but he will always help me when I am ready to falter. And then he brings his flock to a spacious place, where there is rich pasture for us all. We rest there, where there is no pushing or destroying, for there is abundance, and we are at peace. And at the rising and the setting of the sun he brings us to the still waters, the pools of his plenty, and our deepest thirst is satisfied. With this shepherd I fear no evil, for his love holds me and protects me all the days of my life. I am his forever.

A Rock and a Hard Place

2011-03-26T20:00:00.002+11:00

I was so afraid. Fourteen years I had been King of Judah when the crisis came. We all trembled at the name of Assyria in those days. Their armies trampled the world like giants, and left nations crushed and broken in their wake. Eight years before they had crushed Israel, and Samaria is now a city clamouring with false gods because of the foreign nations that Assyria settled there in place of the former inhabitants. I assumed that we would be spared because I earnestly sought to lead my people in godliness, and when they didn’t come near us that time we all breathed a sigh of relief and got back to our ordinary busy lives.

But this time it was different. This time they were right on our doorstep, 185,000 of them – the terrible might of Assyria, focused on us. The glorious days of David and Solomon, when we were a people mighty in exploits, have long since gone; we are a little people now, small and weak and as easily crushed as a mouse at harvest time. There was no human way we could ever defeat them. But they gave us a choice, a cruel choice, and malice dripped from their commander’s words as he offered it to us. He was a man of many words, who enjoyed spinning them out to try and get a reaction from us. He thundered and he taunted like the most skilled of verbal bullies, but the gist of his message was simple and horrible: your god will not save you. He claimed that God himself had commanded him to march against us, and the only way we could avoid total annihilation was to make peace with Assyria, and allow them to deport us to another land. That was our stark and terrible choice, my stark and terrible choice, since I, Hezekiah, descendant of David, am the king in Jerusalem, the city where God’s temple stands.

What should I choose? On the one hand lay death and destruction, as cruel and vicious as these devotees of malign deities could make it – torture, rape, terror and the murder of little children, the annihilation of the descendants of Abraham-- and, on the other, a different but equally terrible death as they took us forth and scattered us among the nations. How many of our people would stay true to the Lord in that scenario? How many of their children, let alone their children’s children, would even know that there is a God before whom all the gods of the nations are as nothing, who created the heavens and the earth by the word of his power, and calls his people into covenant with him?

I have no words for the dark fear of that hour. How can a man walk when every step leads on to death and horror? I will keep the story short, the comings and goings, the prophecies, the letters – a drama of hope and fear that no man would ever want to relive. Sennacherib mocked our God; he taunted us with the history of all those other nations who had fallen to Assyria, whose gods had failed to save them. Why should our God be any different? Why should the words of our prophets mean anything more than mouthings on empty air?

Oh Sennacherib, you trusted in your armies, your horses and your chariots! And, in the end, for all the glory and terror with which you bestrode the earth, they were useless. We were desperate, we were afraid, we had no weapons to bring to the battle except our prayers, and that was enough, and more than enough – not because we were mighty spiritual warriors, but because we prayed to a mighty God. The prophet declared that God himself would defend our city, and he did. We lay on our beds in fear through the hours of darkness, some had the faith to sleep a little and some did not, but all our fears were banished by the sunrise. We looked out upon the Assyrian camp and found a few men breaking camp and fleeing. The rest? It took us a little while to understand that eerie stillness, that preternatural quietness; it seems that however desperately we cry out to God, we are still unprepared for His actions. The camp was full of the dead – 185,000 of them! That same angel of death who once delivered us from Egypt, passing through and taking the first born, had passed in the night through the camp of the Assyrians, and once again delivered us. Faced with an impossible situation, we cried out to God and found that He is still our shield, our refuge and our very great reward. A man, a nation, may be caught between a rock and a hard place, but God can reach down from above and lift us out of the crushing darkness into the spacious liberty of his grace.

The Holy Thing

2011-03-19T15:28:00.002+11:00

The King was tired. The King was bored. The King felt miserable all the time. Sweet tasted like sour to him, and fresh bread tasted like old straw. His beautiful gardens seemed dingy, the birds kept maddeningly singing the same old songs, and he couldn’t see the point of signing all those pieces of paper every day. He had trouble sleeping at night, because there was nothing worth dreaming about; and he had trouble getting up in the morning because there was nothing really worth getting up for. The Physician said he should eat more carrots and green vegetables; the Major-General said he should go riding with the guards every day. The Prime Minister just looked shocked – he couldn’t imagine a world where one wasn’t eager to sign papers all day long, especially with such a beautiful, flourishing royal signature. In the end, the King called the Archbishop, who looked very thoughtful and said he would pray about it.

The next day the Archbishop came back, looking even more thoughtful than before, and said that he believed that the King should go and speak to the hermit in the forest, because he would know what the King needed. The King privately thought that this wouldn’t help very much, but he had nothing else to do except sign all the Prime Minister’s pieces of paper (where did that man get them all from?), so, after moaning about it a bit, he said that he would come if the Archbishop would show him the way. The Archbishop wasn’t quite sure he knew the way either, but when his servants asked around, one of the scullery boys, called Tom, knew where the Hermit lived, so, with Tom leading the way they set off into the forest, and, much sooner than either the King or the Archbishop expected, they found the hermit’s cave.

To the King’s surprise, the hermit (who looked exactly like he had imagined a hermit would look) seemed to expect him, and, after formal greetings were exchanged, looked him directly in the eye, and told him that, in order to be cured of his soul’s malaise, he would have to spend his time looking at something that was truly holy. And, having said that, he turned around and walked off into the forest.

The King looked at the Archbishop in utter perplexity. “I know no more than you do, Sire,” the Archbishop said quickly, “but I know that he will not tell you any more than what he has said.”

“Not even if I send my soldiers after him to bring him back?”

“I think you know, Sire, that that would be worse than useless.”

The King bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of this, and they returned home. The next morning (after another sleepless night) the King summoned his court and told them that whoever could find the holy thing that would cure the King’s despondency by next three months time would be rewarded with ten thousand golden coins. This was to be proclaimed throughout the kingdom.

“I thought that a year and a day was the normal time for such quests,” somebody grumbled.

“I can’t bear to wait that long,” replied the King.

For the next three months, people all over the kingdom were busy looking for something holy. Some went seeking the relics of saints, others found expensive bibles or other writings, and some even took the crosses and chalices from churches. And, while all this was going on, Tom the scullery boy, looked around and noticed people. There were elderly people, twisted with arthritis, who couldn’t stop working or they would have nothing to eat. There were little children, who should have been in school, begging on the streets. There were widows and orphans, the sick and the lame and the cold and the exhausted, and Tom began to think how much he could help them if he only had the ten thousand gold pieces that the King had promised. But how could a poor scullery boy find the most holy thing?

So Tom started thinking very hard. He listened to sermons, he tried to remember what he’d heard from the Bible, and finally, he thought to do what no one else in the kingdom had done, and go and ask the Hermit for advice. A great idea began to form in his mind, and he wondered if he’d really be brave enough to do it.

At last the day came. It was a great holiday, and people from all over the kingdom had come to the palace, many of them just to watch what would happen, because this was the most exciting thing that had happened in the kingdom for years. And Tom stood there in the crowd, still hoping he could find courage when the time came.

The trumpets blew, the heralds made their announcements, and, one by one, the people came forward with their offerings of holy things: lords and priests and knights and rich merchants, all in splendid clothes, and with their offerings richly presented. One by one they presented what they had brought to the King, and he would look hard at it, then sadly shake his head. As the day went on he slumped in his throne, and he was obviously finding it hard to keep paying attention. Then the long line came to an end, and the herald asked if there was anyone else who had something to show the King. Tom paused, trying to psych himself up, but then he looked at the King’s face and the King looked so desolate that he felt sorry for him, and, swept by a wave of compassion, he stepped forward boldly.“Yes, I do,” he said.

The people looked surprised, for Tom didn’t have any special clothes; he was just an ordinary, grubby servant boy. But they waited politely, for this was a day when they had come prepared for surprises. “What do you have to show the King?” asked the weary herald.

“Myself,” said Tom, loudly and clearly, and this time you could hear the gasps of amazement, and some people started to laugh. How ridiculous! The herald looked down his long, superior nose, and prepared himself to say something withering about wasting everyone’s time. But he never got the chance, for the King was leaning forward in his seat, fascinated, and it was he who responded, leaving the herald to stand there in slightly huffy silence.

“What can you mean?” asked the King.

“Sire,” said Tom, with a slightly wobbly bow, “until you get to Heaven and see God Himself, and all the angels in their glory, I am the most holy thing you will ever see, because I am a human being. And every human being in this place today is holy too!” There were confused murmurs in the crowd at this, but some of the older priests were starting to nod their heads. They knew what he meant.

“Go on,” said the King, frowning. It was the frown of someone trying to remember something he had heard a long, long time ago.

Tom wasn’t used to long speeches, but he couldn’t stop now, so he did his best to remember the things that the Hermit had told him. “Firstly,” he began, counting the points on his fingers to help him remember, “I am holy because God made me. Second, I am holy because god said to Noah that every human life is precious.. Third, I am holy because the Saviour died for me and bought me back for God. Fourth, I am holy because god sends His spirit to live inside everyone who believes, so I am now a temple. And fifth, because one day, when there is no more dying or crying, I will be perfect and wonderful.”

“And sixth,” added the King, very gently, because you have shown courage and wisdom and faith, and they are holy things too, which come from God.”

And the King stood up from his throne, with an energy he had not shown in years, and there was a light in his eyes and a smile upon his face. And he came down from his throne, and embraced Tom, and led him up to sit with him, where they talked together quietly for several minutes. Then the King turned to the Archbishop and asked that a service of thanksgiving be held in the cathedral that very afternoon. And, while all the important people bustled away, the King sat there quietly, gazing around in wonder.

Satis (Enough)

2011-03-12T20:12:00.002+11:00

1.
It is hard going through the Lenten Lands. The Pilgrim pauses, and shifts his staff in his hand. He tries to remember when he received a walking stick – it was certainly not there when he started out – but his memories are dim and confusing. And now this stick is part of him, he can scarcely manage a step without it. Without it he could not continue his journey and, over the years, the journey has become his whole life. But it is hard. His throat is caked with desperate thirst, his eyes ache from peering through the dimness, his hand shakes on the top of his staff. Some days, if the wind is against him or the sun is desperately hot, he hardly makes progress at all. Above all, he is so desperately tired, tired of struggle, tired of sameness, tired of carrying his unrelenting pain. “Isn’t this enough?” he cries out to the unseen heavens, “haven’t I endured enough?”

2.
She aches with weariness, every joint in her body feels like it is at war with the connecting bones. All day she must labour, rewarded only with criticism and blows. To be a slave is to have no self, to be just another possession of her master, to be used, used up, and thrown away. Darkness is behind her, and darkness is before her, and darkness brings, not rest from labour, but greater and deeper fear – the final violation. Cruel toil is bad enough, but, always, one endures what one must in order to survive. It is this other thing that breaks her spirit and tears at her soul, this violation which she cannot sleep through – her master’s lust for a broken girl. She knows little of any god or gods, but she believes that somewhere beyond this world there must be a terrible pity which will one day make things right, otherwise the whole world would break apart from the weight of its vast injustice. And every night she cries out to the light which is beyond all darkness “Let this be enough. I have no endurance left.”

3.
He hangs between heaven and earth, life nailed to death. His is the extremity of pain and loneliness, bearing a burden that is not his own, except that he has freely chosen to carry it. He has become anguish, torment of body and soul, yet his heightened, overwhelmed senses are aware of the scorn of those who mock him, and the flooding, suffocating shame of his helplessness. He has looked into the pit of hell where his enemy awaits him and even now approaches. This enemy comes with a cold and desolate darkness, and the name of this enemy is Death. Yet the nailed One does not fight him by clinging to life, but by yielding totally to his opponent, carrying sin and shame and every one of their horrible offspring down with him into the darkness. This is a strange battle, which can only be won by his utter defeat. The whole of creation holds its breath, waiting for this act of un-creation to happen; the necessary forerunner to re-creation. It is enough, it is time, and in the triumph of his yielding he cries out, “It is finished.” And the Father declares it is enough, and more than enough.

4.
They come from every corner of the world. Some shuffle uncertainly, some limp beneath the weight of the pain that they must carry, and some walk, head erect and shining-faced, with eyes full of hunger and wonder. And some are so broken or so weak that they cannot walk at all, and are carried by those who love them. Some come by the straight road, and some through many twists and turns. But they come, one by one and two by two, a family here, a group of friends there, they come. Some are brought by the pursuit of their enemies, and some are carried by angels, but they come, and keep on coming, until they are a multitude no man can number. And they come and they kneel, dressed in their tears and their hope, and he comes and meets them there, with a servant’s towel and nail-pierced hands. And as they wait, in the holy silence, he comes with outstretched hands, and the huge questions of their pain are answered, as he feeds his beloved ones with bread and wine. It is not yet journey’s end, but they know, as they look back at him with love, that it is enough. Oh yes, it is truly enough.

Seeing ..

2011-03-05T20:49:00.002+11:00

He could have watched it all day – rejoicing in the sheer wonder of it. He knew enough now to know it was a bird, but he had no idea what kind. A five year old child would probably have laughed at his ignorance, but then he had only had his eyes opened for a matter of weeks – as a mature adult he was still learning to see the world for the first time. All that time he had lived in darkness, enduring the confusion, and poverty, and the petty malice of people who jostled or tripped him, or deliberately set him off in the wrong direction. He had developed patience (there is no point trying to retaliate when you cannot see your opponent) and a quick tongue, because, after all, a man had to develop whatever he did have, and use it to smooth his way however he was able. And darkness was the only world he had ever known. But he had never realised how much he lacked, had never understood (since he was born blind) what the concept of ‘seeing’ was really all about. And now? His soul was flooded with beauty – it seemed a waste of time to do anything else in life other than simply look.

And look he did. This bird, whatever it was, was magnificent. Every line of its body was a graceful curve – the tilt of the head, the arch of the neck, the lift of the wing. He had spent ten minutes watching it move across the ground, pecking here and there for scraps of food, then, with a tiny tremble, it had spread its wings and soared. He watched with deep awe as it moved across the sky, repeating so nonchalantly the incredible miracle of flight, and then shook his head in amazement that no one else stopped to look. He was realising there was more than one kind of blindness.

He was seeing other things too, things that he had never realised before he had eyes to see for himself. He was seeing that some people had so much more than others. He was seeing the hardness on the faces of the Romans, and the coldness on the faces of the Pharisees. He was seeing children who did not have enough to eat, and women who scuttled in the shadows of shame. He was seeing that the temple was beautiful, but despite all the rituals of the law, the presence of God was not there. He was seeing beggars who were sons of Abraham cringe and crawl before the contempt of richly dressed priests and temple officials who were also sons of Abraham. Sometimes his newly healed eyes were full of tears of pity or anger.

But there was something else, or, rather, Someone else, who had changed and affected his vision -- the Rabbi, the Teacher, the Healer, the One he now called Lord. Only twice had he met Him, only once had he seen Him, but those encounters had changed his life forever. The first time the Healer had simply put something on his eyes (mud, as it turned out) and told him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. It was, on the face of things, a crazy request, yet he did not feel it as a request, but as a command that went right down to the root of all things. And, somehow, he was healed – after a lifetime of darkness he could see! His mind reeled with the sensory confusion of shape and colour. That was the first time.

The second time didn’t come till later, after the authorities had questioned his parents, and then himself, and finally thrown him out after he stuck to the facts of his story and questioned their attempts to rewrite it. By then he had realised that there were far worse forms of confusion than being overwhelmed by the form of things – there were those, supposed to be the teachers of Israel, the guardians of truth, who seemed to be totally confused about the substance of things, and couldn’t recognise Truth when He walked in front of them.

It was only after all this that he met Him again, and this encounter was to change him, and deliver him from blindness, even more than the first one did. When he tried to explain it to his family, they just looked confused. How do you explain to someone who hasn’t been there? It was like someone trying to describe the flight of a bird to him when he was blind. He had met his Healer, he had seen His face, he had heard Him name Himself, and that was the truest, deepest healing, but all he could say, in the end, was, “I have seen the Lord!” And that was everything, and ever after he saw the world not merely by the light of the sun and the moon, but by the Light of Love in the eyes of the One who had sought him and healed him and called him to worship.

The Fire

2011-02-26T10:59:00.002+11:00

The desert is a hollow place, reverberant with the regrets of the past, and as he led his flock through the sparse pastures near the ancient mountain, he felt overcome with desolation. How had he wasted his life, thrown it away because he believed that the pain of his people was too much, and he had a responsibility to do something about it? How did it all go so badly wrong? Surely he had an obligation to use his power and privilege to help them?

But forty years of caring for his father-in-law’s sheep in this lonely backwater of the world had taught him better. How had he ever presumed that his own rash actions would solve the problem, that he could just waltz in and do as he pleased and it would all come right? How dared he imagine that he himself, a pampered prince, was the God-given answer to their need? Somewhere deep inside, he was a broken man. And still his people suffered.

But what was this? He smelt the thin tang of smoke in the air, and heard the crackling, before he turned his head and saw the fire: a small bush ablaze. Such a thing was not unknown in the hot dry air. Following his train of thought, he remembered how his people had sometimes thought of themselves as the Lord’s planting – seeded in Canaan, the land of Promise, then transplanted to the alien soil of Egypt. And now they were in the furnace of affliction, ill-treated as slaves in the very place that had once been their shelter and protection. What could he do? He had already proved himself worthless to help them, how long would it be until they were burned up and burned out by suffering? Would all those promises that God once made to Abraham come to nothing?

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the dawning realisation that something strange was happening here. It was normal for a bush to burn; it was not normal for it to keep on burning, unchanged. Normally it would flare up quickly into flame, and just as quickly burn out and die down. That was the way things worked, just like the quick flare of his anger against the Egyptian overseer that had so quickly burned out into futility. But this bush not only continued to burn with hot, fierce flames, but, when he peered harder, he could see that its leaves remained green. The burning did not consume it. Turning his head to check that his flock were grazing safely (and keeping their distance from the fire), he then walked over towards the bush to take a closer look at this strange thing.

But as he came towards it, a voice spoke from the bush, calling him by name. “Here, I am,” he responded, and realised in that moment that he was referring to far more than his location here near Horeb. He was here, in this place, because of his own failure – failure to achieve either the liberation of his people or even the wealth and honour for himself which he had once taken for granted. He was here because His people, God’s people, were being persecuted, and Pharaoh, if he could, would like to utterly destroy them. He was here because there was nowhere else in the world left for him to be.

“Do not come any closer,” said the voice from the bush, and he was glad to obey. He was suddenly very afraid. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing id Holy Ground.”

He complied, and as he did so, his mind was reeling. This was Holy Ground. He stood in the presence of God. And where was God to be found? In the heart of the burning bush, in the midst of His suffering people. The bush was not consumed because the Lord Himself was present; the people of God endured through slavery and persecution because He was there with them. Moses had abandoned them and fled to preserve himself, but God, Almighty God, the Maker of heaven and earth, had not stood off afar from them. He was there, He suffered with them; dimly Moses sensed that in some way, yet to be revealed, the people of God would endure forever because God would suffer for them.

This was holy ground indeed, the place where God dwelt in the very sorrow of His people. And Moses understood that only God was great enough to stoop so low, to endure so much, to save so completely. But where in His divine purposes could there possibly be room for a man like Moses, who, with the best intentions, had got it so terribly wrong? He waited, listening, and who was there, in the desolation of the desert, to notice that his knees trembled and his face was wet with tears?

Christchurch Earthquake, Feb 2011

2011-02-22T17:57:00.003+11:00

The beautiful is crushed,
The lovely is brought low.
Through streets of woundedness
The broken waters flow.

The cry of humankind
Reverbs with fresh dismay
Where flowers decked the square
(‘Twas merely yesterday).

The twisting of the roads,
The rubble all around
Where grief and pain and death
Are waiting to be found.

Tonight the stars bend low
Above this broken place:
For our crushed agony
Is haunted still by grace.

Where mercy seems far off,
And hope a broken lie;
The faithful stars shine still,
They shine and do not die.

At devastation’s heart,
Where death has torn us wide,
We find Him waiting there
For us, the Crucified.

Sigh ..

2011-02-22T10:52:00.000+11:00

This poem is rooted in a fictitious scenario: imagine a person goes to the beach for a day (or a holiday) in expectation of something good happening (romance? acceptance by a group of friends?)but it doesn't work out that way. Instead, cruel or careless words are said, and they are badly hurt ..

Sigh for the cries of the children, sigh
For the slow, soft burn of the afternoon,
For the gulls and the waves and might-have-been,
For a laugh that broke off all too soon.

Sigh for the hope of the sweet sea breeze,
For the sun too strong, and the sand too hot,
Sigh for the endless stretch of beach
And the things that were, though they were not.

Sigh for the salt on your lips, yes, sigh
For the salt in your eyes and the tears that fall.
Sigh for the failure of yourself,
And the pain that drowns, submerging all.

Sigh for the glamour that fades away,
Sigh for the cup, once sipped, withdrawn.
Sigh for the blood that must be shed:
The jeering words and the crown of thorn.

Sigh for the truth of your brokenness
The outward pain and the inward war
Sigh until there is no more sea,
And afterwards we sigh no more.

The Miracle

2011-02-19T19:30:00.000+11:00

For a moment my throat froze in terror, then I cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately He was there, catching me, holding me, lifting me up, and a small, crazy part of my mind marvelled that He should have such strength while standing on the water. I am not a learned man, but even as a boy, working in my father’s fishing boat, it had not taken me long to learn that I had little strength to drag in the nets if I did not firmly brace my body against the boat first. But Jesus never seemed to be bound by the ordinary logic of life that constrained the rest of us.

It made no sense that that should be the detail that bothered me. The whole situation was so enormously impossible. That a man should walk on water as though it were the solid earth beneath his feet, as though it were the sensible normal way to take a quick shortcut, that is an impossibility. That a man should calmly walk across the roiling, wind tossed waves as though they were the meadow grasses, is beyond impossible. That I, sinner, blasphemer and fool, should for some few seconds do likewise is an event that has no place in my understanding. And yet .. it happened .. and somehow my understanding of the universe must change to fit the facts.
Earlier the same day, we had seen Him feed 5,000. Another miracle. It is odd how blasé one can get about wonders and marvels. Five little loaves, two fish, and a multitude of people fed. Before we’d even had time to wonder what that meant (something to do with the manna in the wilderness perhaps?) He’d sent us off into the boat to go ahead of Him to the other side. By then we were too dazed, dazzled and totally exhausted to even ask how He was going to catch up with us. Without a boat it’s a very long walk around the edge of the Sea of Galilee...

It never occurred to us that He would take a more direct route. We should have known by now; our expectations are almost a challenge to Him to do the unexpected, the utterly unthinkable. It was about the fourth watch of the night when we saw that pale figure, luminous in the moonlight, walking on top of the waves. Of course we had no idea what was happening – the possibility of such a shortcut didn’t exist in even our wildest imagination. Instead, we were overwhelmed by crazy fears, ghosts and suchlike, as though being with Jesus had opened our minds to the possibilities of the supernatural, but not had yet grounded our hearts and imaginations in the certainty of the goodness of God. No wonder our lack of faith is sometimes painful for Him.

Of course, seeing our fear, He called out in reassurance. It is what happened next that I cannot explain – how I asked Him to bid me to come to Him, and He called, and I came, and for a few brief moments, with only Him in view, I did the impossible and walked on the waves, until I realised the impossibility and began to sink. Oh I understand why I sank, that part is easy, normal and human. But that I, Peter bar Jonah, (fisherman, sinner, fool), for a few moments walked on the waves, walked like God, this is beyond my understanding.

But in those moments I learned something I had never thought of before. Participating in the miraculous (the true miracles of God) is not really about the spectacular, flashy things that people get excited over. They are almost incidental, completely extraneous to the real issue. When the other disciples asked me later, “so, how did it feel to walk above the waves?” I couldn’t really answer. It wasn’t really about that. When I started to focus on that, the miracle moment was over. So what was it about? In that moment, I walked with God. I stepped out of my own brokenness, and into Him. I breathed the air of Eden, I was aware of the love that completely enveloped me, love that upholds every particle of the world and holds it in being.

I slipped and fell, I could not stay in that place. But to have been there is a promise that one day, through Jesus, the change will be forever. Then we will not need the sun or moon, for He Himself will be our abiding light, and we will fully know that we are loved. And we will never fall out of the knowledge of that love again.

The Storm

2011-02-13T16:07:00.003+11:00

A storm was coming. The sailors knew it by the heavy stillness in the air, and the leaden colour of the sea. They knew it would be a bad one. But their passenger slept below, giving no thought to the weather. Sometimes sleep is just another way of escaping from uncomfortable truth. And the sailors gave no thought to their passenger; they had far too much else to do to ready their ship for what was coming. But they kept looking over their shoulders as they worked – there was something menacing about that grey, unnatural stillness.

The storm drew close. The waves moved unevenly, the wind came in sharp, irregular gusts, and the sky was so dark that some of the sailors were already muttering invocations to their gods. The old-timers looked uneasy, something was not quite right, this did not feel like the sort of storm they should expect at this season. For once they did not make fun of the blanched faces and the muttered prayers; they just looked grim and set about their tasks with a cold determination – the only survival tool they really knew. And the passenger slept on below, oblivious.

The storm hit. Lightning sizzled the air, and the thunder rattled through their bodies. A mighty wind drove the waves to a terrifying pitch, and the boat they had been so proud of only hours ago was tossed like a child’s plaything between mountains of water. They began to doubt that the timbers could hold together under such a horrifying force. In desperation they began to pitch their cargo overboard, the same cargo which had been the raison d’être for their voyage, and the promise of a very handsome profit when they reached Tarshish. But no financial gain counted for anything when their own lives were at stake. But the passenger, amazingly, still slept, and it was only at this juncture of despair that they called him to mind. Why wasn’t he at least praying for their survival? The captain himself went down to fetch him.

The storm intensified. By now they were convinced that this was no natural storm at all. Some deity was pursuing them with terrible anger. No sailor led a blameless life, they took their survival and their pleasure wherever they could find it. Had one of them offended some god? If so they would know which god must be appeased, , so that all of them might survive. But, to their astonishment, went they cast lots, the lot fell on their passenger. Who was he? What had he done? How could such an ordinary (and sleepy) guy provoke such divine fury?

When he told them he was a Hebrew, their awe only increased. They knew that the mysterious god of the Hebrews was not like any other god – he had no image, and only one temple, yet claimed lordship over all that was. How could a man dare to trifle with a god like that? How could he think to run away from the domain of a God who had no boundaries or limitations? They were even more frightened than before.

Yet the passenger was not afraid. “You must throw me into the sea,” he said. How could they dare? This man was obviously sacred to his strange god in some way beyond their understanding – what would such a god do to them if they should harm his servant?

The passenger insisted, and there was a strange peace about him, that was more convincing than any great emotions would have been. This, he insisted, was simply the only thing they could do. Any attempt to solve the problem by normal means would be just as futile as his own “escape” had been. In the end they had to agree, and with anguished prayers for forgiveness from his God, they complied, half-fearing that a thunderbolt would strike them down as they did so.

Immediately, the sea was calm, the tempest vanished as if it had never been. Overwhelmed, they were moved to pray to this God, who was so obviously in total control, and, absorbed in prayer, they did not see what happened next – the enormous fish that appeared and swallowed him whole. They did not see that what God wanted was not the destruction of His disobedient servant, but his obedient witness, to go forth and tell the world that at the heart of the tempest of destruction and judgement lay an offer of salvation so vast that no human being could delimit or delineate the passionate love that sought them.

Hands

2011-02-04T16:39:00.002+11:00

The nurse plumped her pillow, and stroked her cheek for a moment, before bustling off to the next patient, and she found herself thinking about how precious it was to touch and be touched. She closed her eyes in weakness, but her mind did not shut off. Instead she was picturing those slim, capable hands which, just now, had been intent on making her feel more comfortable. There had always been hands, all her life, touching her, reaching her, communicating love or unlove ..

She supposed, though of course she could not remember, that the very first had been the midwife’s hands, guiding and supporting her tiny body as she came forth into the world. And then, for seven short years, her mother’s hands, gentle and careful, cleaning her, dressing her, feeding her, holding her. Her clearest memory of her mother was when she had tried to practice shaping her letters, but couldn’t quite control the pencil, and her mother, seeing her frustration, had put aside what she was doing, and , sitting down beside her, had put her hand over hers and guided it, until she could feel the rhythm and balance of it for herself.

But then her mother had died and she had been sent to live with a distant aunt. Aunt Prue had too many children of her own, and really didn’t want another one to deal with, especially one who meant nothing to her. Consequently, her hands were always rough and impatient, slapping her, shoving her into place, plaiting her hair too tightly. She had left there as soon as she was 16 and had got herself a nice, respectable office job.

But the hands continued. There were the hands of friends, tugging her along into life and new experiences, and the hands of various stammering boys (long since faded in her mind into an awkward, weak-chinned conglomerate) who took her to equally forgettable movies and groped for her fingers in the dark. And then she remembered the hands of Miss Elizabeth, her neighbour, swollen-jointed and impossibly wrinkled, that still played such exquisite music on her old piano.

And then there were his hands – lover, husband, friend – hands that caressed her, that worked for her, that had reached out to her in comfort at every difficult moment. They were large hands, calloused from work, whose stumpy fingers never looked quite pristine because they spent every spare moment in his beloved garden. These were green-thumbed hands, coaxing flowers and veggies to grow in a yard that had once been a wasteland of shrivelled grass, full of bindies and paspalum. And they were the hands that put that plain gold band on her finger, promising love and fidelity. He had kept that promise.

Her children’s hands had touched her heart almost as deeply, from the day a nursing baby reached up and patted her cheek, to the day when those nervous knuckles first held too tightly to a steering wheel. How many times had they slipped those little hands into hers, for comfort or reassurance, to cross roads or deal with scary situations? Even in her present tiredness, she found herself praying that her own hands had always responded with love. She really couldn’t remember ..

Now there were other hands that touched her increasingly helpless body: nurses, therapists, nurses’ aides, who lifted her carefully while they changed her sheets or placed her in a wheelchair to give her a change of scene. Soon, very soon now, she would be beyond feeling their touch. They would lay out her body, the undertakers would perform their mystery shrouded office, and this flesh, which had been her burden and her being for over eighty years, would not contain her any more.

But there was one more pair of hands that awaited her then, hands that would welcome her home with love beyond her comprehension. And she would know those hands when they reached out for her, know them by the scars they bore on her behalf – the imprint of the nails that had once been driven through them, puncturing the whole futility of human history and letting in the glory.

The Resting Place

2011-01-29T19:28:00.002+11:00

He had always wondered why his parents called him “Rest”, especially since names were supposed to be prophetic. His father, Lamech, had decreed at his birth that he was to be a source of comfort to those who were weary with the toil of working in a world whose very ground was cursed by sin, but he had never been able to see how that applied. Not only had he needed to work just as hard as everyone else just to survive, for the last hundred years he had worked even harder, spending every spare minute on “the boat” – either putting hours of labour into building it according to God’s meticulous instructions, or earning extra money to pay for all the materials. Even if help had been available (and it never was) he wouldn’t have felt right about entrusting this work to anyone except himself and his family. It was a holy task, as well as being a difficult one.

But even all that hard work wasn’t the core issue that disturbed him. He was never at rest because no one would give him any. His neighbours mocked him for a hundred reasons, especially his refusal to give his worship or allegiance to anybody except the God of his fathers, and once he started to build the boat, they thought he had gone completely mad. And when he learned to ignore all their jeering and jibing, they started on his sons. Once they even succeeded in doing some damage, after that he and the boys took to working in shifts, so that the great boat was always guarded. He used to look at his old father sometimes and wonder what the poor man must be thinking. Life seemed to have worked out so differently from everything that was prophesied.

The boat wasn’t finished till five years after his father’s death, and then a whole new labour commenced. Food was needed for all the animals that were going to come, and for themselves; it must be bought or gathered and packed away securely so that it would not rot or spoil. Then they themselves moved into the ark, and still the neighbours jeered. When the animals came, the neighbours were silenced at first by the remarkable spectacle, as, two by two, or seven by seven, all kinds of beasts, familiar and unfamiliar, came towards them in orderly procession. Even Noah felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling with awe.

But these were a jaded people, for whom the newest wonder was already tired and outmoded, and they soon found a way to ignore the evidence of divine agency. Their jokes now centred around the fact that Noah had no human friends left, and so he was going to live with the animals. The measure of prospective truth that was in that nearly broke his heart, and he made a last ditch plea for them to change their minds. That went down even worse than any of his previous attempts to persuade them, and he found himself with nothing left to say.

And now? Torrents of water were falling from the sky, and rising from the earth. He had never seen, or heard of, anything like it. It was a terrifying moment when the waters grew deep enough to lift their boat from the earth, and they found themselves floating on the deep. It was only then that he realised that he had no way of steering or controlling the boat. There were moments when the wind and the waves were terrifying, but as they continued to float through chaos, terror was slowly replaced by an uneasy monotony. Was this the prophesied rest?

It was only then that he began to understand. Yes, despite all the labour of keeping so many creatures fed and cleaned, here, in this boat, this ark, there was truly rest from the horror that raged without. But it was only a symbol. The true resting place wasn’t this physical structure of wood and pitch; the true resting place was where he always had been, in the hands of God. So long as one lived in this broken world there was no rest from toil or pain or disappointment, but there was a deeper place where rest already existed; where peace and love wrapped his broken heart in the comfort of hope; where all the labour and weariness and incompleteness of this world were fulfilled and made complete by God himself, and where even failure was not the final word, because one day God would break through into humanity’s brokenness, and all would be made right. There was a resting place, and it was his, and now that he knew it he realised that nothing in all creation could ever take him away from it.

Slave

2011-01-22T16:21:00.002+11:00

I was born a slave, though I did not know it, I thought myself the freest of men. I had all the advantages of a privileged upbringing -- the best education that money, hard work and devoted parents could supply. I was still very young when they decided that Tarsus was too provincial to develop my talents, and sent me to Jerusalem. I was -- and I can say this now without the disclaimers of false modesty, for I know how little it matters -- the kind of student any rabbi would rejoice to have: bright, eager, quick to learn, and taking my studies and their subject matter very seriously. I was very devout at an age where most young men are more interested in pursuing pleasure than wisdom, and with all my heart I sought to earn approval – the approval of my distant parents, and my teachers, but, most of all, the approval of God. If I knew that who I was and what I did was absolutely pleasing to God, then it would never matter what anyone else thought of me.

And that, of course, was slavery of the darkest kind, for how can a prideful, foolish human being ever hope to please God? But I thought that I could do it; I thought that by study and effort and tremendous zeal I could be all that God required, putting all lesser men to shame. I was a slave to the Law, and I did not even know my bondage.

All went well until the Christians came along. I had never met their Founder, who was executed by the Romans when I was not in Jerusalem, but the followers soon became deeply offensive to me. It wasn’t that they disobeyed or disparaged the Law exactly (this is hard to put exactly into words) it was more that .. somehow .. they had superseded it, moved it away from the centre .. turned their focus away from all the sacred commandments as the rabbis had explained them for centuries, and put a mere human being, this Jesus, who died the death of a common criminal at the centre of things instead. I was there when one of them was stoned for blasphemy – it disturbed me deeply – not the stoning, you understand, but the man himself. It was then I decided that this Christianity must be exterminated: for the sake of God’s holy name, I told myself, but it was really for the sake of my peace of mind. I had found something that seemed to work, and invested my whole self in it; I was not going to let anything or anyone spoil it for me! And, for a little while, it worked: I channelled all my unease into fiercer zeal, and became the scourge of the nascent church.

Then came the day when it fell apart, and God Himself stepped in to smash the chains of my old slavery. Memory is a strange thing. I remember so clearly the white heat of the day, and the taste of dust in my throat, yet I cannot remember who was with me, and what they said or did. But I remember the light, which made the midnight sun seem as night, as if light from beyond this world had gathered itself together, to assault and overcome my deliberate darkness.

But most of all, I remember the voice. If love has a sound, that is how it sounded, pure and perfect beyond all human understanding. And the voice told me I was wrong, utterly and terribly wrong. I had tried to rid the world of those who challenged my hard-won, deeply invested understanding of God, but it was God Himself I was fighting. He was not who I thought he was. I had read the Law, I had studied the law, I was in thrall to the Law, but I had never understood the Law. The Law could never make me holy, but this Jesus could. He was who the Law had been about. Somehow I had imagined it was about me.

Yes, I am still a slave. But this slavery does not bring death, but life. On that day on the road to Damascus, I fell to the ground in horror, and found I had fallen at the feet of Love. And Love will never leave me, and there is nothing in all creation that I desire compared to him, my Saviour and my God. I will seek his will and follow his word till the end of my days, though the whole earth rise as one against me. For now I am bond-slave to the one whose service is perfect freedom, perfect peace, and everlasting love.

Eulogies

2011-01-18T12:02:00.000+11:00

Because sometimes the story they tell at the funeral is so far from the hurt and hurting person that you knew ..

Always I used to despise
The old lies:
Honey-coated sentiment
Dripping in sunlight silence,
Smelling faintly of polish and dust.

Dust to dust we are,
And the movement
Is lubricated with kindness
In the face of the abyss --
So often abysmal.

Laughter sounds forced
In the organ-toned solemnity.
Yet the flavor of memory
Wears a smile that jerks our hearts
(Unless a jerk).

Crude apotheosis
Anaesthetizes conscience from afar
For those whose memories are wrapped in silk,
And piled into the coffin of their fear,
And left to rot denying rottenness.

But for the others,
This is sandpaper on the scream of their injustice….

Now that time
Has imitated wisdom
I think again
Remembering
How hard it is to be human in this place.

Always the mind rewrites
Busily scribbling
The graffiti of our feelings across the barren facts
Trying to see the unseeable
Through the fog of our confusion.

And the deeper yearning,
Sword inescapable,
The cry to be forgiven –
Knowing the merciful
Are those the given mercy.

Let us be gentle
One to another
In the household of our grief:
Surrendering the pain
That can never now have closure.

Though our hearts may fracture differently,
Believe the Resurrection and the Life
Whose Kingdom has no end.

Illumination

2011-01-15T15:03:00.002+11:00

She would light a lamp and put it in the window. Wasn’t that what you did if someone was lost in the darkness? A light to guide them back hoe again, no matter how terrible the storm? Did it make any difference if the someone who was lost was yourself?

She sat down heavily, elbows on the table, head in her hands. How had it all gone so terribly wrong? She didn’t want to remember, the whole sequence of events left her sick to the core of her soul. It hadn’t been her fault to start with, but one man’s misuse had left her vulnerable to another’s – once a woman had been shamed there was no road back to purity and virtue. There was only darkness and disgrace and pointing fingers, and a succession of men, each one crueller and coarser than the one before.

And she had believed their lies – that if the path to virtue and honour was closed to her, at least the path she was embarked on would lead to riches and comfort. What a fool she had been to believe them! Such men as would take advantage of a woman’s vulnerability cared nothing for her well-being. Their words were merely tools to control her and bend her to their desires, not promises they saw themselves being under any necessity to keep. Once, younger and not yet completely defeated, she had dared to protest at a broken promise – the response had left her too afraid to ever voice such a complaint again. They were creatures of darkness, dragging her done into their night, and she did not believe there was any way she could ever experience light again.

She had come to live in Jerusalem because there was a certain anonymity in the city. At least, as long as she kept herself veiled, she could scurry about in the daylight and draw little attention. Not like the village where she had grown up, where women would draw their skirts aside and spit on her if she ever appeared on the streets.

But here she was more lost than ever – another used and discarded woman, drowning in shame, struggling to survive. How could she put a candle in the window when she had no window and no candle and no idea how to find her way?

Unable to bear it anymore, she got up and went out into the city. She was tempted to kill herself, to put an end to this grinding misery, but what if God was no more merciful than men? Then she would be locked in horror forever.

She wandered aimlessly until she came across a gathered crowd. She cringed back because she saw Pharisees there, some of whom would recognise her from their sordid transactions. She could not bear to face the condemnation I their eyes. But they weren’t looking at her, they were looking at a man who stood in their midst, who was addressing them in clear ringing tones. Even at the edge of the crowd she could make out his words.

“I am the Light of the world,” he said, and she heard the scornful laughter of the teachers of the Law. But He was not abashed. He just looked at them a little sadly, as if they were the ones who were being foolish. Could a person be a light? Was that possible? Was it true what He was saying, that it was possible to never walk in darkness again? Did he know how terrible the darkness was? Never had her darkness looked so awful – something that clung to her and she could never be free of it again.

She had lost track of what he was saying, it was hard to follow. Then he looked, very sternly, at the Pharisees. “You judge by human standards,” he said. (But they had always told her it was God who condemned her for being a woman of sin.) “I pass judgement on no one” he continued, and as he spoke he looked straight across the crowd to where she was cringing in the shadow of the building, and met her eyes. For one brief moment he smiled at her, and in that moment her whole world fell apart. There was a light that shone in the darkness, and the darkness could never put it out. And the name of that light was Forgiveness.

She turned to a nearby stranger and asked, “Who is that man?”

Love Came

2011-01-08T17:58:00.002+11:00

Love came, but they didn’t notice. They were too busy weaving armour from barbed wire – first the left arm, then the right, and a triple thickness to guard the heart. Love wasn’t wanted.

Love came, but it wasn’t invited. Generals and admirals were invited, and canny politicians, and young men angry with the whole wide world. Self-love paraded openly, obscene and garish, and they all applauded his dizzying pirouettes. But when Love was noticed it was thrown out the door, and they all congratulated themselves. “This is no time for weakness,” intoned the politicians, clutching their lapels, and the journalists nodded, frantically taking notes. They decided to hold a street parade to prove their point, but there were armed security guards to make sure love didn’t slip in anywhere.

Love came, and was laughed at. “How can you possibly be serious? Love them? Ridiculous!” Love was obviously the most absurd idea that the universe had ever heard of. You mustn’t allow frivolity to undermine the morale of the troops. And they marched in tune to the drumbeats of their hate, and the thumping of their feet sent forth a shockwave of fear. Not one of them had the power to cast out fear, so they breathed it and transmuted their weakness to a cold and bitter strength.
Love came, and watched. In Ethiopia, in Sarajevo, in Rwanda, on the West Bank, in Auschwitz, on the slave ships, in famine and pestilence, wherever there were sieges or witch hunts, in the pogroms and the race riots .. Love watched. And Love wept – so many, many tears that all the oceans of the world were turned to salt. Love wept for the terrified and the lonely, and the ones who writhed in agony, for the violated women and the broken men, for the little children and the abandoned elderly, for the missionaries of hate whose hearts had turned to ice, and were too afraid to thaw.

Love came. In the loveliness of sunrise and the innocence of birdsong, Love whispered to the world. Love held the hands of the dying, offering them a promise, and breathed courage into the tortured and bereft. Love found a language to convey the horror of the moments, to proclaim it to the conscience of the world.

Love came and spoke to the harbingers of hate and told them of the folly. And the haters were angry, and declared Love to be a traitor, seeking to turn the hearts of men away from their righteous cause.

And still Love came. And they poured out all their hate and anger on Him, they lashed Him with their bloated pride, and scorned Him for wearing their pain. They hurled Him into their darkness, and did their utmost to destroy Him. They thought that they had done with Love forever.

And still Love came – and the darkness could not contain Him, or turn Him aside from His purpose. All the tears of the world are in His keeping, and he will call in the accounts for every drop of blood that has been shed, and for every heart or mind that has been broken. He has stretched Himself to meet the measure of our night, and declared all the sorrow of the world to be a thing that shall pass like a cloud on a summer’s day.

And then the night shall end, and Love shall shine in splendour. Love has come.

A New Beginning

2011-01-01T17:08:00.001+11:00

She had never known any other life. Her whole world was bounded by the domain of the Spider – a domain of terror, distress and infinite weariness. All her life the Spider had been there, penetrating everything she did, going before her everywhere she went. Its sticky webs wrapped round her, and the more she tried to move, the tighter they bound her, until the only way she could move at all was in a slow-motion, zombie-like shuffle.

She had not noticed it so much when she was a child. Then the webs had been looser, less constraining, and had seemed to be her security rather than a limitation. All children had limitations placed upon them, it was the nature of the world, and she had not realised that the ones placed on her were qualitatively different from the ones placed on others.

But she was an adult woman now, and that made all the difference. There was an energy rising within her that did not want to confine itself to the helpless dependency of childhood. She wanted to be her own self, and not a carbon copy of someone else’s expectations; she wanted to try things and do things that had never been permitted. Yes, if she exerted all of her strength she could probably tear herself at least partly free from these multitudinous strands. But she was afraid to try, for she fully believed that she would rip off her own skin, at least, and possibly her internal organs as well, disembowelling herself in the process. She no longer knew where she ended and the webs began; she was scared that the very thing she longed to rage against was her own inescapable self.

For the sticky entanglement was not the Spider’s only weapon – just the most obvious and superficial. Far more deadly, and infinitely more subtle, was its poison, continuously dripped into her through the initial wounds that had been inflicted when she was too small to remember. It was a poison that kept her weak and helpless, continually dripping toxic ideas into her mind:
‘you are useless’
‘Nobody wants you’
‘it’s all your fault’
‘who do you think that you are?’

This poison caused a great deal of agonizing pain, and induced paralysis and confusion, and effectively prevented any healing taking place. The spider took great pleasure in watching her writhe while it worked on new refinements of the torture, feeding its own sense of grandiosity on her every nuance of helpless anguish.

The torment kept growing. She was reaching the limits of her endurance. In the secret places of her heart she began to cry out for deliverance, without any hope or expectation. She was so close to annihilation – the total closing down of her thinking and feeling.

It was then that He appeared – not the bright shining Knight she vaguely dreamt of, but another helpless victim like herself, who walked deliberately into the web and wrapped the strands around Himself, as if they would not stick to Him of their own power, they way did so readily to her. She felt the tremor in the web as the Spider approached Him, almost shaking with delighted greed. The Spider bit Him, injecting, all at once, a fatal dose of poison. She felt the web tremble again as His body drooped and shriveled. It felt like the darkest, most horrible moment she had ever known.

But suddenly she felt a new tremor in the web. Was this the Spider coming to finish her off? She scarcely dared to look. But then she had to, and could hardly understand what she was seeing. He was no longer a mere husk, but a being overflowing with light and life, and as she watched, He grew to enormous size, and tore the web apart. Then, even as she watched in amazement, the webs that bound her lost their grip and fell from her body. He was looking straight at her, and she began to move her atrophied limbs in response.

It was time to let Him teach her how to walk

Perfect light

2010-12-26T17:23:00.002+11:00

I have waited so long.
I have seen the darkness gather
In our hearts and in our hands.
I have walked the streets and felt the pain,
The sorrow in the stones;
And known this Jerusalem
Has not been built to last.

I have felt the anguish of the prophets
And groaned in the loudness of the temple
Where hurrying priests have blood on their hands
And piety on their lips.
The desolation is with us even now
And yet we do not know.

O my God I have waited
Through the fat years and the lean
Knowing all Israel broken
Till her consolation comes....
And rested on your promise
Through the night.

And now this stretched flesh
Rejoices in wonder.
I have seen your salvation
With my own tear-worn eyes.
I have breathed in your glory
In the clear gaze of a child.

And now I can let go.
For my prayer has been answered
And another bears the load –
Bears the burden of us all.
And the light shines in the darkness
That the whole world may behold.
Perfect Light.

Bondage

2010-12-22T12:30:00.000+11:00

Walking backwards to Jerusalem,
I did not know her nearness.
The sun beat down in waves,
The moon was silent,
And all our yesterdays hung in the dust –
Choking my cracked lips.

I am no Chanticleer,
Briskly proclaiming morning with bright relish.
I camp where the ghosts sleep
In the country of regret.
Declining stony pillows
Lest the angels break my sleep.

Frozen ponds
Mock my cold thirst.
It is always winter in the tyranny of silence:
Down where the slow fish gnaw
In numbing cold,
And daybreak never comes.

Still, O Jerusalem,
Your lovely streets torment me.
There is no way I can raise
Your sweet foundations
Here in this frozen wallow
Where the sunlight never comes.

The Star Speaks..

2010-12-18T13:17:00.000+11:00

Without words, I have been watching for centuries – simply watching. From a clear sky I watched the first ones as they left the garden, just as the cool of the evening turned to night, holding each other and blindly weeping as they stumbled down the hill. Those were the first tears, and they were the shape of all that has followed. It was not time for me to react, but I saw how their pain was part of an infection that turned the whole world drear and miserable.

There came a day when my sight was obscured by more than darkness, when great grey clouds covered the earth, and the rain fell and fell, till you would have thought it was impossible for there to be any more water left. And when the clouds finally cleared the whole world was awash, with only that little boat, bobbing on the water, containing all that was left of humanity. Within a year, it was the rainbow’s turn to speak.

I was there the night that God called Abram to come out and count the stars. His gaze passed across me as he looked up in the clear desert night, awed by our overwhelming numbers. He did not notice me in any particular way, it was not my turn, I was content to wait the millennia until God’s appointed moment. Why are humans always so impatient that they cannot wait for God’s beautiful time? Is it because death is always breathing down their necks, whispering in their ears that the time is short and they dare not wait? Is death always louder in their lives than God’s own words?
I have watched and I have seen, and if a star could weep I would have shed great tears of fire for the folly and the ruin that humanity has wrought. I have seen them give their lives and their children’s lives to gods who were no gods, but spirits of evil, seeking only to devour. I have seen famine and disease and pestilence; I have seen war and rape and torture, betrayal, mockery and indifference. But I am a star, and not subject to the tyranny of Death, I am free to listen to the music of God, the chords of glory that undergird the universe, and unlike the humans I know that all these horrors are transitory things; in a little while they shall vanish, overcome by the triumph of everlasting love.

And then it was my turn to speak – no, not with words but with signifying action: to blaze with a great light and to travel across the sky from east to west at a precise speed to reach a precise place at a precise time. As usual, the humans didn’t get it quite right, stopping off at Jerusalem on the way, but God had providentially known even this, and in the end it all went exactly as He ordained.

This was the thing He had created me for. I had seen the birth of Death, but now I was the herald of the birth of the one who would strike Death dead, the one who would, in due course, willingly enter into death, and shatter it from the inside out. God Himself would do this impossible thing. For who else could? Without words I had watched the drama of human pain and futility unfold, but now the Word Himself had been made flesh, constraining Himself to grow within a woman’s body, and the heavens themselves moved to announce this wonder.

My great light has dimmed now, but I await another Day, another entry of Almighty God Himself into the world that He has made. Then there will be a whole New Creation and sin and death will be banished forever. And while I wait I remember how it all began, way back in the very beginning, when the morning stars sang together before the face of God. One day we will have words again.

The Mystery of Love

2010-12-11T15:57:00.000+11:00

Even though she meant to quietly slip into the back row of the church, so that her late arrival would draw no attention, she couldn’t do it. The aisle seats were taken, and no one seemed to be in any hurry to move across and make room for the latecomer. She started excusing herself and clambering through the small space between their knees and the back of the pew in front of them – that was embarrassing enough – but then she knocked over someone’s walking stick that had been left propped there, and down it went with an awful clatter. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, too loudly, and bent to retrieve it. In the process she dropped her hymnbook, which fell on someone’s foot. She assumed the kick on her shins was purely reflexive, but it hurt just the same. By the time she slid into her seat, her face was burning. She sat there, staring at her feet, ostensibly in prayer but really just trying to compose herself. Her stepmother would have something nasty to say about this too, she thought. And there she’d been trying to do the right thing for once ..
By the time she was really aware o
f her surroundings, the choir had risen and started singing “Christians awake!” – a rather eccentric choice, surely, for a Christmas Eve service, with it’s explicit reference to “this happy morn”? But no one else seemed worried.
“ .. rise to adore the mystery of love ..” they sang. The words gave her pause. Surely, by the time you were an adult, the only mystery about love was why you ever fell for it in the first place? She had learned her lesson, and learned it hard. No man was ever going to seduce her again with a lot of empty words about how much he loved her.

Of course, the family had no idea yet that she was pregnant. How could she ever tell them? The mere thought of her father’s pain and her stepmother’s scorn was unbearable. Far better that she should just get rid of it, and they need never know. Far better. The only sensible thing to do.

Then why didn’t she go ahead? If she didn’t do something soon, it would be too late. After all, her child was certainly no “Virgin’s Son” like the choir was blithely carolling about, and in the small-town, church-centred world of her family, that was still a matter for deep shame. So why not? Apart from being single, she was just at the difficult beginning of her career. There was simply no room for a baby in her life.

But then, wouldn’t Mary have said the same thing? Not only was she single, the man she was going to marry was not the father of her child. Mary would have had far more social shame to deal with than she could even imagine. And yet she said yes. It was a mystery.
And Jesus – how could He bear to come down to a world where people would have said such cruel evil, untrue things about His mother? Surely He would rather punish them than die for them? It made no sense. There was something going on here that she couldn’t get her head around. It was a complete mystery.

Just then she realised that the choir were finishing the carol with a repetition of the first verse. There it was again: “the mystery of love”. In spite of herself, she smiled ruefully. There was a mystery of love here: Mary’s love for God, who asked so much of her, and of the baby she was willing to risk so much for. Even bigger was the mystery of God’s love for evil, cruel human beings. How could he?

But if this mysterious love lay at the heart of all things, then there was mercy for herself as well. No, she wasn’t pure like Mary, but now she realised that she was utterly forgiven. And if so much mercy was given to her, shouldn’t she show mercy on her unborn child as well? Shouldn’t this child, made by the hand of God and nestling deep in her body, have the right to live, and breathe and grow into whatever sort of person God had created them to become? If Mary had been able to find courage for love’s sake, then surely she could do the same, could find it from the same source?

It was enough. Even if there was no room for her with her own family, in this great story of salvation there would be room for this little child. And God would show her what to do, and what would be right for the child. For at the heart of the mystery of love was courage and faith.

The organ crashed its chords, she rose with the rest of the congregation and started to sing: “Love came down at Christmas ..”

Older ...

2010-12-05T17:18:00.002+11:00

The womb is empty and the flesh is sere,
The bud burst long ago, now petals fall
Across the wind-stained clamour of the dust.
They earn no silence now, and that is all.

Once lions strode, and myths with brilliant face
Enacted promises and mystery;
But they have gone where all our childhoods go,
And left some little bones called history.

No words – except the ones we learned to speak,
And slide their nets across the vast abyss
Of those lost longings where the kraken dwells:
A murmured rumour that we dreamed amiss.

But what are dreams, except the soul’s lost song:
Stunted in darkness, wondering for light,
The habit of the heart immaculate,
Faith’s only mirror till we come to sight.

Therefore I will abjure the monochrome,
The grinding sameness locked in Mammon’s frame.
The revelation of my emptiness
Is space for the resounding of the name.

And though I fail, like every meteor fails,
That is no matter. Wind and wave obey.
These ligaments, undone, to darkness fall,
For a short moment, then it shall be day.

Before the Dawn

2010-12-04T13:33:00.000+11:00

It was still dark, and the air hung heavy with the promise of morning. In a while the sun would be rising, the day would begin, and at first light they must be off. The two servants were already up, and he had asked them to wake the boy, and tell him they were going on a journey. He couldn’t bear to do it himself, he had never lied to the child and didn’t want to begin now. If this ultimate breach of trust was looming between them, it seemed more important than ever to keep faith in the small things, to pour as much love and truth into his son as he could in the little, terrible, time that remained.

As his fingers fumbled in the cold with the leather straps of the donkey’s saddle, he owned himself a coward. He could justify their early start so easily – there was food and water to be organised, the donkey to be saddled, the wood to be cut to make the fire for the burnt offering. At a guess, Mount Moriah was about 3 days journey away, which meant about 6 days journey there and back (assuming there was a journey back – at the moment the whole world seemed turned upside down, and he was certain of nothing). Any prudent man would seek an early start.

But he knew that wasn’t the reason that he was out here, struggling to do the simplest tasks in the pre-dawn darkness. Fearing to face the questions in his son’s eyes was the least of it. Far more significant was the conversation he did NOT want to have with his wife, the boy’s mother. He had murmured something to her last night about going on a short journey and taking the boy, and she, abstracted with other tasks, had merely nodded. But his Sarah was no fool. One look at his face in the cold light of day and she, who had stayed by his side through so many impossible moments, would have the whole truth out of him in five minutes. And then what? How on earth could he possibly explain, possibly justify? There were no human words that could ever make sense of such a thing, certainly none that any mother could accept. Who was he fooling? There were no words that made any sense to him either as a man, as a father. And, when it was over, how would he ever come back to her?

He must keep busy. If he were to stop, if he were to pause, he would never be able to obey. To hesitate for a moment would be to find reasons to hesitate another moment, and in the end obedience wouldn’t happen. He must keep busy, fill his mind with practicalities, like how much wood did he need to take, how much food for 4 people (and would that be only 3 on the way back?). Anything, any detail at all to fill his mind and silence the scream that was rising inside him – a scream about the very God whom he had staked his life on. What do you do when the one to whom you have entrusted all that you are, all that you ever dared to dream or long for, turns around and cuts you down with a demand so outrageous that the very stars stand still for horror?
You try to figure it out. Didn’t God keep all His promises? Had any word of His ever fallen short? In God there was no division between speech and fulfilment, only the passing of time so that human eyes might see the fulfilment unfold. And had not this same God said that through this child, this miracle, this Isaac, his offspring would be reckoned? It made no sense unless God meant to restore the dead to life. How could this be? He did not know, but he had walked too far with God to turn away now. There was no other way to go, no other God to turn to. He must obey, though it cost him all that he was. But could God, high above all human suffering, have any idea of how it felt to give up your only son to die as a sacrifice?

Discovery

2010-11-06T15:37:00.000+11:00

Grotesque. It was the word that defined his whole life – his whole self. From the day of his birth he had been made to feel that he was an anomaly and an outcast. The cold, polite puzzlement of his mother was almost as rejecting as the sneers of his siblings. ‘Ugly’ was one of the first words they learned to say, and it still echoed in his head. He had become so used to being called ugly that it was only now, looking back, that he realised that his mother had never even given him a name. The others had all been given normal sorts of duck names -- Jackie, Bubbles, Pondie, Wiggler, Billbop – but he didn’t have a name at all. Just “Ugly”, and later on, when their vocabularies got a bit fancier, they started calling him things like Trollface and Featherfright. Did the fact that his mother never bothered giving him a name,( and never tried to stop the others from being mean to him) prove that she had never loved or wanted him at all? He knew she was terribly ashamed to have produced such an ungainly child, one that even the pigs could laugh at.

Why was he so different? He hadn’t set out to be ugly, he certainly hadn’t designed his own face or body! Maybe he was just the punch line of some obscure joke the universe was playing? For the thousandth time he told himself to make an effort to think positive, but he was running out of ideas to find anything to be positive about. Being nobody wasn’t so bad, there were plenty of nobodies around all merrily going about their business: the fish in the lake, the worms underground, the ladybug on a grass stalk who wished him a cheery good morning before she saw who (what?) he was when his shadow fell across her. Most of them were nobody important, some species didn’t even have names, but none of that stopped them from living with a twinkle. But he couldn’t. There was a secret here that he didn’t understand, something important that was hidden from him.

To call himself the reject of the universe seemed absurd – he wasn’t important enough to be the anything of the universe. In the old barnyard they probably didn’t even remember him. Spring was coming, the wind was growing sweeter every day, and somewhere, back in the old barnyard where he used to live, his mother would be checking her eggs to see if they were ready to hatch into a new family of ducklings. He hoped they would all be small and neat and yellow, and waddle the right way and that his mother would love them. It would be beyond bearing that there should be another one as sad as him in the world.

Winter had been hard, and lonely beyond bearing but it was over now, and he couldn’t be quite so desolate when the sunshine caressed his feathers like a whisper of kindness. The ice had almost gone, it would be good to get back in the water. But when he approached the lake there were two swans gliding across it. He looked for some rushes to hide behind, no one so beautiful should have to be offended by the sight of himself. But there were no big beds of rushes to hide in, and the swans had seen him. They were moving towards him, and he was too scared to raise his eyes to see the expression on their faces. Ah well! Maybe this was the best answer he could hope for, that these glorious white birds would kill him, and the whole sorry story would be over. He bowed his head and waited....

“Hello,” said one of the swans, “won’t you join us? You are so lovely!”

He looked around, who could they possibly be talking to? But no one else was there. As his head turned, he caught sight of his reflection. It couldn’t be!!!

He stared and stared, trying to take in this discovery. No wonder he’d been such a hopeless duck – he’d been born to be a swan! This was the secret that had puzzled and eluded him – the truth about himself. He did not have to sidle through the world in shame any longer. He had come into his birthright. Raising his head towards the dancing sky, he slid into the water and went to meet his new friends.

The Sparrow

2010-10-30T17:22:00.002+11:00

In the end, she found the courage she needed from a sparrow. Later, when she first tried to tell the story, the question inevitably came up: “Why a sparrow? Why not ... oh .. an eagle, for instance?” The question had confused her for a while, trying to find an intelligent response, but then she realised that the answer was actually simple, and lay inside herself. It was all a question of identification. Eagles were already strong, already magnificent, they didn’t need courage, at least not the kind that she needed, because they already had power and glory. She found no power and glory inside herself, only weakness, and fear and fragility. The eagles would always soar without her
But sparrows? Ah, they were different. They were small and timid and drab, the natural prey of bigger, fiercer creatures. She could feel a real affinity with sparrows.

She had lived all her life in bondage to grief and shame. All her life, wherever she was put, the same messages were repeated, messages of personal failure, of never being good enough. She had watched the bright ones and the beautiful ones walk off with all the prizes, while she cowered, forgotten in a corner – a drab little sparrow. There were times when she had almost felt the need to apologise for taking up air to breathe. And, like a sparrow at a cafe, she would make little darting forays around the periphery of life, picking up the tiny crumbs of kindness that happened to fall in her direction.

Once she had heard some preacher say that that a person was worth many sparrows. It was a nice idea, but she didn’t really believe it, at least not to apply to herself. She knew that she was worth almost nothing – because she had been told so all her life. It didn’t matter that she had a big, secret, wonderful dream, she knew that it would never happen to her, because how could she take the necessary first steps? Sometimes she would half-heartedly pray, but with no expectation that would ever be an answer.
But one day she saw the sparrow, and discovered hope. She had come into a cafe to get out of the weather, and was sitting in the darkest corner nursing her drink when the sparrow came. It was not just hopping and fluttering around the outdoor chairs and tables to cautiously seek the crumbs; it came right through the door, into the room, and perched on the counter. The red-faced man behind the counter saw it, reached down underneath, and brought out a small piece of bread, which he proceeded to crumble into a small neat pile on the countertop. And, whilst she scarcely dared to blink her wondering eyes, the sparrow hopped right up there, next to the man, and ate its little feast. Then, when it had finished, it flew once around the cafe then back past the door into the wild and windy world.

Afterwards, she was never quite sure at what point she had said to herself “if he can do it, so can I!” but by the time the sparrow had left, the decision was made. With unusual briskness she rose, paid her bill, and strode out into the spattering rain, with the first steps already formulating in her mind. As she raised her eyes, her attention was caught by a church billboard she was walking past: “I have set before you an open door which no man can shut ..”

It was enough, it was her answer and her miracle. Maybe, at least to God, she could be worth even more than that sparrow? She swirled the idea around in her mind, tasting its sweetness ..

No Roses

2010-10-23T16:45:00.000+11:00

Last time she was here there had been roses – bushes and bushes of them! Late summer it had been then, and heat hung heavy in the sticky air, but not as heavy as the perfume of the flowers. She had smelled them before she had seen them, and literally followed her nose to the source. He had come behind her, laughing at her enthusiasm, and they had stood there, almost drunk with sweetness, and while the bees buzzed hypnotically, he had asked her to marry him. He had turned and picked a blood red rose and placed it in her hand. In the excitement of the moment she didn’t notice that the thorn had caught on her finger, beading blood that almost matched the flower.

But now she remembered, and winced. There were no roses here, and the bitter sky promised sleet to come. Their sunshine had lasted such a short time before war had over-clouded it. He had done the decent thing, the expected thing, and signed up, because he was the kind of man who would always try to do what he believed to be decent and expected. Her tears were useless against the massive, ponderous weight of his good intentions. And as she waved him goodbye – so short a time a wife! -- she had felt the first cold clutch of fear.

And, for once, fear had been a truth-teller, though not in the way she expected. He had not died, mangled and shredded in an explosion of shrapnel, or cruelly corroded within by the fumes of evil gas, but there were shameful moments when she thought that might have been easier to bear. No, he had come back to her, but no longer as himself. The strong, clean-limbed body that had delighted her was now twisted and fumbling, and dependent on a wheelchair to travel more than a few yards. That was bad enough, but not the worst. The worst was that he was no longer the same person. Gone was the huge, laughing patience that had enfolded her in its glad confidence and, instead, there was this tetchy man with frightened eyes who seemed to be always seeking an escape route from reality. “Shell-shock” the doctors called it, but seemed to have no idea whether or not he would get any better.
She sighed deeply and shut her eyes, trying to ignore the tears that squeezed out when she did. Why had she even come here today? Even if the weather held a little longer, she would be soaked and bitterly cold by the time she made it back home. Once, she had stood here when the wild, warm breeze smelled of roses, today it smelled only of the salt wrack of a rising sea, and a beach of dying seaweed. Dying? Yes, that was the real word, the apposite word. She had held out her arms, in trust, to receive roses, and instead they had been filled with filthy slime, and now her life would never be clean again. She had wanted so much, dreamed so big, and now here she was, shackled to a broken man .. Was everything fair and lovely in this world so fragile? Would she never have any hope again?

She dashed her angry tears away with an unseeing hand, and, as she did so, her sleeve snagged and caught on something. She looked down, and saw it was a thorn, a very familiar kind of thorn. What had she been thinking? Had she imagined some murderous emanation of this foul wart had rampaged through the countryside, uprooting all the rose bushes? She blushed at her folly. Just because it was winter didn’t mean that the roses had vanished from the earth. Pruned back for the season they simply waited their time. One day summer would return, and the very air would sing of them once more. Now was the season of waiting, the season of pruning, the season for faith to fasten itself to the certainty of glories yet to come.

She looked closer. There, barely hanging on, was a rosebud – dried, frost-bitten, but definitely a rosebud. Even as she reached towards it, it fell, straight into her outstretched hand. Last time it had been her husband-to-be who put the flower in her hand. This time, she believed, it was God.

Lullaby

2010-10-16T17:09:00.000+11:00

Rest well. Here, in the darkness, away from human eyes, rest well in the Sabbath of God, the Sabbath that comes before the first day of Re-creation. Your eyes are shut now, that gazed unflinching on the horrors of death and hell; they shall open again to glory. You drank the cup, the cup is drained, the very last drop has been consumed, death has been swallowed up by Life.

Rest well. The evening closes in, the day comes to an end. It was the sixth day, the day of man and of the brute beasts. Adam’s task is done, and God saw that it was good. God has made all things good, He has made everything beautiful in its time. Then God rested.

Rest well. You were battered and bruised, a thing from which men turn away their eyes. You had no beauty that any should desire you. For you carried sin and death on your shoulders, and their darkness covered you. How odd that men should so callously destroy the Son, yet when the sun was darkened and withdrawn, they were dismayed! You, the altogether beautiful, were reduced to an object of pity and scorn. And now it is over.

Rest well. Life works its miracle in the dark and hidden places: the seed underground, the child hidden in the womb, the body in the tomb, the whisper in the soul. Rest well while we stand guard, awaiting the moment this created world has been aching for. The soldiers guard the stone outside, and have no notion how dark and futile is their watch. They think they have the power of death; they know nothing of the power of Life, and the power of Life for the dead is beyond their imagination. They guard a mere hollow in the rock; here, within, we are guarding the Most Holy Place. We stand like the cherubim on the ark: wings outspread, facing each other, gazing down upon the Mercy Seat which lies between us – the true mercy seat, the broken body of God.

Rest well. You have accomplished all that the Adam did not, could not do. He was exiled from the Tree of Life, You walked with deliberate tread towards the tree of Death, so that all the children of Adam may have life forever more. And the same Father to whom you surrendered all that You are will raise you up, to be the first fruits of them that slept. Creation waits, with hushed breath, for the moment of the miracle.

Rest well. Soon the Father will raise this body to Life, the stone will roll away and the world will be transformed. Soon your disciples will be overwhelmed with joy, and worship you in wonder. Soon you will ascend to the Father’s side and reign forever. But now we await the morning, like a woman waiting for her child to be born. We wait in the Peace of the Father for the coming proclamation of victory. Rest well, Oh Conqueror!

Merciful Rain

2010-10-09T15:42:00.002+11:00

I was a child when we left Egypt, but I remember the Nile. I remember how our neighbours would pray to the river, and to the other gods for its yearly flood, for that water was our life – our very existence. I remember the tumult of our leaving, most clearly of all I remember that dreadful passing across the sea bed with that mighty wall of water rising up beside us – a frozen wave just one motion away from crashing over our heads. And, of all the things to remember from the confusion of those times (I was a child, it was all confusing), I remember most clearly my parents explaining as we walked along that we were going to a land where no one had to pray to a river. A river could be spoiled, at the word of the prophet (the word of God Himself), the water of life could be changed to blood—the blood of all those Hebrew babies who had been thrown cruelly into its waters, But this land would be a land watered by God Himself. We would not pray to a river, but turn our eyes upwards to the clouds in thankful prayer, while the mercy of God rained down upon us, bringing fruitfulness, bringing life. For forty years I have cherished those words in my heart.

My parents did not live to see this land. In the starkness of the desert they became afraid, their hearts yearned again for Egypt where they had always been as sure as a slave can be that there would be food and shelter. They forgot the whips of the slave masters, they forgot the grief and terror when their baby boys were snatched away and drowned, in the terror of the desert they imagined that they had once been wonderfully secure. And in the long years of waiting they died, belonging neither to one land or the other.

But I was a child, and the desert was my playground and my great adventure. My memories of Egypt were memories of darkness, and I was glad to leave them behind. To me the vast skies and the searing winds were like a whisper of glory to come. For forty years I have been waiting – sometimes in hope, sometimes in fear, most often in deep weariness. And after forty years I am no longer a child. I have borne children, and my children have borne children, and still we are a nation without a home. I no longer question whether God can preserve us; I have seen His provision in the manna and the quail and the waters found for us in the midst of a dry and barren land. But I had begun to doubt if we would ever have a home, if that lovely land watered directly from heaven even existed. Perhaps it was just the dream-memory of Eden, before that other exile happened at the beginning of the world.

Today we crossed the Jordan. Today I did not see the miracle with the eyes of a child, but with eyes that have spent long years scanning the lonely horizons of the desert. This time I knew what the miracle meant, and as I walked across the riverbed my cheeks were wet with tears. That I should live to see this day! I thought of those who had finished their lives in the lonely spaces between Egypt and the promised land, and I knew that all of us together were called into the promises once given to Abraham. I knew that it was in this land that all the promises would find their fulfilment, for one who was greater than Moses would be born here. I lifted up my face in wonder, and then I was moved by an even greater wonder. For my cheeks were not wet because of tears alone. There was a fine rain falling from the sky, sprinkling all the people of God with the benediction of his mercy. I was not the only one crying. And while the priests and the Levites took their places, and the fighting men went on ahead, we women stood in the rain and wept for wonder and for joy. We had come home, by strange hard paths He had led us to the place where His promises became the solid ground beneath our feet. And we were where we had always been: in the centre of the mercy of God, and He, himself, is our life.

Daily Bread

2010-10-02T17:36:00.000+10:00

See them, so many of them, from all ages and all times. In their hearts there are questions, in their eyes, sometimes, there are tears, but they move forward, forward, towards the table, for they know there is no other place to go.

From back in the mists of time they come. See the old woman, her long years of self-doubt bursting forth in a moment of incredulous laughter, now holding the child who is so precious, and so impossible, that even his name means laughter. She comes. See the young man, whose brothers have learned to hate him because he would not know his place as the youngest (bar one) and the least. They have stripped his beautiful coat away, and befouled it to prove their lies, and he himself has been sold as a slave, and must trudge in desolation the weary miles to Egypt. He comes.

So does the man, forty years old, fleeing through the desert to Midian, and trying to understand where it all went wrong. He had wealth and he had privilege, and he wanted to serve his people. But somehow his anger and violence had been the worst thing he could have done for them, and now his name is murderer. He sees no future for himself except as a herder of sheep at the back of the desert.

And this woman, making a comfortable living as a prostitute, who has decided that her city and people have no future, and has chosen to throw in her lot with an alien people and their God. She places a scarlet cord in the window, and waits for the fated moment. She comes.

And still they come. Out of the myriads one can only notice a few individuals. See the little boy, sleeping alone in the temple, and missing the warm arms of his mother. A voice calls him by name in the night, and he learns to say ‘yes, Lord.’ In those words lies his whole future, his whole journey.

See the king, undone by the horror of his own guilt, crying out his wretchedness in a Psalm. See the prophet, so sure he knew all about godliness, undone by a single moment of vision. How could he ever have imagined that he himself was holy when the merest glimpse of God has utterly overthrown him. See another king, with the cruel enemy before his gates, crying out to God for mercy on his foolish, sinful city, and waking in the morning to find the angel of the Lord has been at work. And then, further on still, the young men, the captives, who refuse to worship the image of the earthly glory of a pagan king, and must face the horror of the fire. All of these come, pressing on, because they have nowhere else to go in their neediness and hunger.

And there are more. Shepherds shaken into a new reality by a sky full of angels. Lame people, deaf people, blind people, lepers, even, incredible though it sounds, dead people! A young Pharisee, falling from his horse in the heat of the day, and learning, through 3 days of blindness, just how blind he had been. He comes, and in his wake come a multitude, sentenced to death in cruel and grotesque ways, that the slavering crowd might know a moment’s amusement. After them come the faithful and the confused, the frightened, the lonely and the ones who sing with joy. They come and they keep on coming, and the sound of their song is like the roar of many waters, and as tender as the moment when a tear is wiped away.

They come to the table. Turn them away and their souls will starve. There is only one table, though it may be found in many places, and only one Living Bread from which all may freely eat – their daily bread, doled out with nail-pierced hands. They come and they eat, from Him who is the manna in their wilderness, and the only life which sustains them. Through pain and bitterness, through fear and many questions, they come, they eat, and the song within them is renewed. And as they come and eat they wait for the day when the doors are swung open and they enter the banqueting hall, and the eternal marriage supper is begun.

Hunger

2010-09-25T14:48:00.002+10:00

I have hungered for you, in the sullen afternoon.
Here where the old rocks grind against the sand,
Where the small things shudder, and retreat from the heart’s moonscape,
I have hungered for you in the sullen afternoon.

I have yearned for you in the dark place at the crossroad,
Where the shadows threaten, and the peacock screams against the moon,
And all is dust and ashes, acrid on the cold wind’s moaning,
I have yearned for you in the dark place at the crossroad.

I have sought you not in treachery’s cold stink,
Where the ant-men stoop reluctant underneath their load
Where the bullet’s whine traces the road of sorrow
I have sought you not in treachery’s cold stink.

I have claimed your love in the stillness of the twilight
In the raindrop’s smile, in the petal’s tinge of pink,
The glad exuberance of running water
I have claimed your love in the stillness of the twilight.

I shall breathe your name in the maelstrom of my being
When the whole world heaves, and hope is lost to sight,
Dragged by the chains of Life, I will believe in freedom,
I shall breathe your name in the maelstrom of my being.

I shall find at last my self, held in your hand
While I weep in broken darkness, incapable of seeing,
There is music in my mouth, in a language still unknown,
I shall find at last my self, held in your hand.

Nothing in my hands ..

2010-09-18T15:09:00.002+10:00

I have tried, Oh heaven, how I have tried. I planned my journey so carefully, investing in everything I could possibly need. There were the expensive walking boots, so I would not be tempted to give up by sore feet, and could brave the stony paths with brisk enthusiasm. I went to the best outdoor outfitters, and spent more than I should on good hiking clothes. I was told that layers were the way to go, so I could just add and subtract to adjust to every temperature variation. And the innermost layers were the most expensive, because moisture must be wicked away from the skin. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, or what dreadful thing would happen if I wore the wrong underwear, but a smart man knows when to take advice from experts, so I did just as they said. Socks, too, it was important to have good quality socks, and be able to change them when your feet got wet. Then there was the cloak, fully waterproofed and lined with thick wool, to keep me safe from the weather, and wrap around me at night if I ever needed to sleep outdoors. Not that I planned on doing that very often, there were hostels along the way (or so rumour had it), and, even if they were overpriced, I would have money. I was also advised to get a particular shade of grey, that would provide good camouflage if I ever found myself in a dangerous situation. And, since we’re talking about keeping safe, I chose my staff with particular care. A pilgrim is not allowed to carry a sword, there are strict rules about that, but if my staff should contain an insert of sharpened, toughened wood, well it’s not really a sword, is it?

Then there was the hat. One needs a wide brim to keep the sun off one’s face and the rain from one’s nose, and the fit must be just right – too loose and it will blow off with the first gust of wind, too tight and you will have a headache before the first day is over. Truly a matter of fine discrimination! Eventually I found one that was just right: high-crowned, with a bright gold buckle on the band, and a bright red feather sticking up. After all, I was journeying to the presence of a king, it would be important to make a good impression when I arrived. Buying a sturdy pack with a light, strong frame and well-padded shoulders was relatively easy,; working out what to carry in it took a lot more effort. There were the obvious things: containers for food and water, a microfiber towel, hand sanitiser, insect repellent (would there be insects? Best play it safe), a swiss army knife, a torch, water purification tablets, lots of money. Then I thought of others – a torch with spare batteries, a camera, to capture those special moments, a box of matches, a mirror to check I looked the part.. And so the list went on.

But there was one thing I really wanted that I couldn’t find anywhere – a map. I searched high, I searched low, even went into second-hand shops, but it was useless. Everywhere they told me the same story – that no map of that journey existed. Some tried to offer me a heavy black book instead, suggesting that this would be my sure guide, But the book was nothing but stories, poetry and songs, and it weighed me down, so I refused it. ..

And now – look at me! The boots were the first to go – sucked off my feet in the mud of a bog. It’s amazing how far a person can walk with rags tied round their feet. My hat blew away in a storm, I bartered my cloak for food, and all the contents of my pack were lost or stolen along the way. It’s probably just as well I lost the mirror, I think if I could see what I look like now, I would lose my last wavering thread of courage. My clothes are nothing but filthy rags, and the patent underwear got used along the way for wrapping my feet. My special staff was snatched from my hands the first time I tried to defend myself – and then they beat me with it before running off into the night. I have no idea how I made it this far, especially as I never had a clue where I was going.

I have nothing left. How can I come into the King’s presence like this? I am filthy, sick and useless. Once I thought the King would be honoured when I brought Him the gift of my service, now I know better. I have nothing in my hands at all, unless you count the scars and the dirt of the journey. And yet .. and yet ... I have nowhere else to go. If He will not receive me I will be a beggar at his door all the days of my life.

The Scarecrow

2010-09-11T15:44:00.000+10:00

I am the scarecrow, the tatterdemalion, the object of ridicule. By all normal human standards, I am a fool, and properly despised for my folly. You will not want to know me; still less will you ever want to be me. I have thrown away the tangible benefits of this world for some “good” which you cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch. Sometimes I cannot even tell you what that good is supposed to be, I just know that I must cast aside everything else for the sake of what I cannot even name. I have invited rejection, even anger, when I could have simply kept my mouth shut.

I am the one who spent a century building a boat on dry land. I am the one who, already an old man, left behind my whole world: city, family, friends to journey to another land and claim it, even though the only part I ever owned was a grave. I am the same old man, still childless in my withered years, daring still to believe that God would give me a child.

I am the one who gave up a life of comfort ease, wealth and position to lead a nation of stubborn slaves, who weren’t sure they wanted me as a leader anyway. I am the one who saw the army behind, and the waters in front, stretched my arm forth over the water and led a multitude of slaves across the bed of the sea whilst the waters towered up beside us.

I am the boy who went out with five little stones against a giant. I am the prostitute in the walled city who threw in her lot with a bunch of nomads worshipping a God she did not know.

I am the scarecrow. Laugh at my madness. I am the prophet who lay on his side; I am the prophet who wept for Jerusalem while she basked in peace. I am the young men who would rather be thrown in the fire than bow down to a glorious statue. I am the woman of shame who poured out her most precious possession at the feet of the young teacher while the rulers glared and mocked. I am the dreamer, the legion of dreamers, for whom this world, in all its finery, could never be good enough.

I am the joke of the universe, clinging to the hope that I will have the last laugh. I am the young, unmarried peasant woman accepting the burden and social stigma of a miraculous pregnancy. I am the unclean woman slinking through the crowd, until my outstretched fingers grazed the hem of a garment. I am everyone who dared to turn aside from the pursuit of power and pleasure to pledge allegiance to a king they could not see. The world no longer had a place for me, but I know there is a place prepared for me in a world that is unshakeable.

A scarecrow has few friends, except among its own kind. We stand in the biting rain whilst a proud world feasts before a blazing fire. And sometimes the cold rain mingles with my tears, for a scarecrow has a human heart, and that heart has drunk deep of pain. You may kill me, beat me, cast me aside, yet you cannot destroy me, for my name has been written in the stars. My king is faithful, and my life belongs to Him.

I am the scarecrow, a figure of mockery and scorn. My citizenship is in a place where I have never been. On earth I am a misfit, but there is another city where I shall not be left abandoned in the fields, but serve in the King’s own courts and wear His livery of love. My story will be retold there as a thing of wonder, because my story will be part of His story, and on that day no other stories will be told.

With Trembling

2010-09-04T16:39:00.000+10:00

I pause and fiddle with the knot in the rope. More than anything else, this piece of sturdy rope, strong enough to haul the weight of a man, brings home to me the awful solemnity of what lies ahead. The other priests who had assisted me step back, respectfully lowering their eyes to give me a moment’s privacy, and I realise that they have seen this reaction before, and probably expect it. It is a fearful thing to step into the presence of the Living God, and this rope is a reminder that I might not survive the experience. I remember the story of Uzzah, struck down for reaching out a well-intentioned hand to steady the Ark, and I shudder slightly, acknowledging the danger as real. Who am I that, of all the men of Israel, I should be called to come face to face with holiness? I know the answer: I am of the tribe of Levi, and can trace my direct descent, father to son, from Aaron himself. I am the high priest of Israel, ever since my father died, unexpectedly, a few months ago. Today, like every faithful high priest in our history, I must make my way past the curtain, into the holy of holies, and sprinkle the blood of sacrifice on the Ark itself, on the mercy seat. And if God should kill me, they will haul my body out by the rope.

And I ask myself: why?? Oh I know the easy answer, because God instituted it this way, that once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high Priest should enter the most holy place and sprinkle the blood of a slain bull before the Lord. It is the blood of sacrifice, that pays the death-price for our sin; it is also the renewal of the covenant between Israel and her God. I know that death is the punishment for sin, that all our sacrifices are giving an animal to take our place and pay the death-price for our human wrongdoing, but if every lamb and bull and goat n the whole great world were put to death, would our sin truly be covered and washed away in that unspeakable ocean of blood?

I have put on the special clothes, lovingly altered to fit me since I am a taller man than my father was, and in a few minutes more I will preside over the sacrifices (that part I am used to, it is my job), and the lots to choose the scapegoat, then I will take the basin with the blood of the slain bull, and pass through the curtain. I once asked my father what it was like to pass into that place and stand where no one otherwise would ever dare to stand. He was silent, as if he couldn’t find words, and trying to prompt him, I asked, “were you afraid?”

He looked at me then, as if from an infinitely far distance, and said, “No .. Yes .. no .. it’s not about whether you’re afraid. It’s not about you at all ..” I waited, wondering what he meant, and after a pause he continued, “You are Israel. You are all humanity, needing God and so far away from Him. And you are still yourself – broken and sinful, too small to carry the weight that has been placed on you ..” He shook his head, as if to clear it from a tangled torrent of thought. “I never told anyone this. Perhaps I shouldn’t speak it even now. But one day you will be high priest, perhaps you need to know. Perhaps one day you will understand this better than I do. Once, as a young priest I had a dream. I dreamt that I stood in the most holy place, and it seemed to me a most terrible thing that I should be there. For am I not also a sinner? But as I stood there, in dread and hesitation, with the bowl of blood so heavy in my hands that I nearly dropped it, I saw that another was standing there, and it was like His being was somehow joined with mine. His eyes were not cast down with shame, they were bright and clear with compassion and incredible joy. He took the basin from my sagging hands, and I noticed that His hands were wounded. And as He moved to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, it was as if the blood flowed from Him, and as it did all the furnishings dissolved away into light, and the great curtain behind me tore apart, forcefully, as if it was no longer strong enough to dam back the mighty tide of glory that was pouring in. And somewhere a great voice cried, “It is Finished!”, and then a chorus of voices from the ends of the earth took up the cry. .. Every time I enter the most holy place, I remember that dream, and I know that somehow, though we are the ones who kill the sacrifices and drive forth the scapegoat, somehow it is God Himself who makes atonement.”

I remember my Father’s words. It is time to begin. This day I will step past the curtain with trembling, for I am a man, and yet I will go with a strange joy, for somehow it is an invitation to walk forward into the heart of God.

Down to Egypt

2010-08-28T15:50:00.000+10:00

Would I have said yes if I had known the price tag upfront? Possibly not. Knowledge of the future is a dangerous thing; perhaps that’s why the prophets so often speak in riddles. But, one step at a time, I have reached this place, and one step at a time we will continue.

My first reaction was total confusion. We all know how once our people were slaves in Egypt, how God Himself delivered us by His mighty hand and outstretched right arm, using Moses the Deliverer to lead us through the long travail of the wilderness to the land promised to Abraham. Then -- this is the story every child of Abraham’s line has been taught – because we did not keep the commands of our God, because we indulged ourselves with all the gods of the nations roundabout, we were sent forth into exile, to Babylon. And we came back. But things are not as they were before. The Romans choose our kings, and this king is a tormented soul who loves the favour of Rome far more than the burning glory of God.
And it is because of this king that we must do the unthinkable, and take this child, this child unlike any other child, the one who is to bring our people true freedom, out of the Land of the Promise and descend to Egypt, the land of bondage. Everything seems to be going backwards.

Sometimes I feel trapped in a nightmare where I will never see my home again. The world has changed, the rules have changed, utterly and irrevocably. But most of all, I have changed. I am no longer a girl, a child looking at the grown up world with wide-eyed eagerness, I am a woman, a wife and a mother in Israel. And I can never be that heedless, shiningly unaware girl again, however much there may be moments when I long to be free again, at home in the safe familiarity of my parents’ love and the ways and customs of Nazareth. There are moments when the strangeness, or the fear, hit me afresh, and for a split second I long to wake up again and find it was all a dream.

But not really. Because alongside the fear and the loss and the longing to go back and speak to my mother again, something else inside me is beginning to move with the wild dance of faith. The road is drear and long, the sun beats harshly on my eyes, but somewhere inside me those eyes are uplifted to the stars, and a breeze tanged by alien flowers is blowing through my hair. Since the day the angel came I have been learning to walk in two different worlds at once. Sometimes the double vision makes me dizzy, but often I find myself learning to breathe in a courage that is not my own.

And there is love. This little child, this miracle, is worth more than all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He looks up at me with those quiet eyes, and I know that I am blessed beyond all other women to be His mother. I would do this a thousand times over if this is what He needs, and still wonder, with tears of amazement in my eyes, why I was ever chosen. I reach out for Joseph’s hand, and in the midst of all this we smile at each other. Though this road may lead to Egypt, it is still the road of God.

The Exiles

2010-08-21T16:23:00.001+10:00

Never again will I dwell in the land that was promised to Abraham. My children, or perhaps my children’s children will return, for the prophets have declared that mercy is greater than judgement, but for me, and for my own, my family, my friends, the companions of my life, it is the end. We trudge forth as slaves under the hard cruel eyes of Babylon, and know that, wherever they take us, we will live out the rest of our days as strangers in a strange land. The songs of Zion will no longer be a joy and anticipation, but a memory of terrible yearning, that cuts through the soul until our tears are salt as blood.

It is hard to leave the hills of my childhood, and harder still to leave the graves of my parents, never to return; but harder, far harder still, to see Jerusalem destroyed. She was the jewel of Judah, the city of our God, and as long as she stood we knew that we were the people of His particular care, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. We were the ones who came up Mount Zion with shouts of joy, singing the Psalms of David to join in the great festivals. And there, in our beloved city, stood the temple, Solomon’s glorious temple, the house of God on earth. It was said that when the temple was built, God Himself sent down His glory to live there, making this truly the Holiest place on earth. But the Glory has long since departed, for our people could not stay true to their God, even when He dwelt among them, and now the temple itself lies in ruins, and the terrible gods of Babylon exult.

We dare not put our torment into words, lest the speaking of it destroy us, but I glance at my companions of the dusty road and read the same hollow grief in their eyes as I know must be burning in my own. Has our God deserted us? Oh, we have the words of the prophets, words of punishment and restoration, words I am sure we will study deeply in the long dry years that lie ahead – but they are only words on scrolls. They fall away into silence before the things our eyes have seen, the city of our God, plundered, violated and left desolate! But beyond the screaming of my soul, I know there is a deeper truth: it was not God who deserted us, but we who deserted Him. What other people have treated their gods of wood and stone the way that we, in our infinite folly, have treated the Maker of Heaven and Earth?

It is strange that it is only now, in the time of our great loss, that we understand how precious it was and how much it meant. We weep, when our weary eyes can find the tears, because we were careless children who had been given the most wonderful thing on earth, and we didn’t even care. We put it down in the dust while some fleeting fancy caught our eye, we turned our backs on it, taking it for granted. Only now that it is gone do we mourn, not just the loss, but the stupidity of our losing.

It is strange, but somehow, in this act of leaving the Promised Land behind, we realise for the first time that we do not actually want to be like the other nations. Now that we are cast forth among them, we know that we want to be different. We will teach our children, and our children’s children, to value the very thing we threw away. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how can I forget you? It would be a better thing for me if my right hand should lose its skill, than that I should forget the city of my God! We shall not forget where we belong, and one day our children’s children will return, will rebuild the temple, and the gates of the city will sing with praise.

And yet, it will not be like the days of Israel’s glory. We shall have our temple again, but the glory of God will not dwell in her midst. And if God should ever return to Jerusalem, what then? Will we receive Him with joy this time, or will we still prefer to go our own way?

Thirst

2010-08-14T17:03:00.001+10:00

It had happened once before, of course. Then it had been my own fault – it had meant so much to me to be noticed, to have attention paid to me, that it had gone to my head and I had acted like a fool. It is humiliating to be a slave, and I was tired of being invisible, tired of waiting on that foolish old woman who still had this crazy dream that one day she would have a child. Anyone could see that she was long past any such hope. The truth was I was jealous – jealous of her wealth and position , everyone in our little world treated her like a princess --- and jealous of her beauty, which even in old age, still had the power to catch you by surprise. I was young and strong and less than half her age, but even my fresh prettiness could not really compete with her, and in a few short years, living and working as a slave, I would be just another withered, shrivelled, invisible woman, eking out my repetitious life on the edge of the desert.

But most of all I was jealous of the love between the Master and the Mistress. All those years, and all her failure to do the one thing that is every wife’s first duty, to give him a son, and still, even now, he would look at her with a kind of wonder in his eyes. No one had ever looked at me like that. My parents had willingly sold me into slavery, and since then I had been loved by no one. So when she sent me to the Master’s bed I completely misunderstood. I started daydreaming that I could replace her in his heart.

What a fool! What a green, love-sick fool of a girl I was! I behaved like a fool, my mistress responded with anger, and I ran away. At least I ran away along the right road, and came to a spring. There I sat in despair; a pregnant woman alone in the desert has neither hope nor future. And there it was that the angel came to me, the Holy messenger of Glory. He confirmed I was bearing a son, and told me to return and bear my child, who had a God-given destiny of his own. I was overwhelmed; the God of my Master had taken notice of me, a mere slave girl! The thirst of my heart for recognition was satisfied, and I knew He was the God who saw me, took notice of me and bid me live!
* * * * * *
This time it is my son’s fault. I suppose I should have taught him better, but what is a woman to do with a boy like that? And I think it may be my jealous heart that he inherited; he could not bear to see his father’s favour turned from him towards that puny infant. It was too much for him, and perhaps that is my fault too. I have not taught my son to have a generous spirit. But I also think that the mistress must share some blame; now she has produced the long awaited son she does not want any reminders around that her husband has another son, or that another woman once shared his bed.

So we were sent away with some food and a skin of water, to wander forth into the desert. What did they suppose would happen to us? I knew what I expected when the water ran out and the hot desert sun beat down on us. This was just a way for us to die, out of sight and out of mind. But again there was an angel. How many women have encountered angels twice in their life, and yet lived? This time I did not thirst for comfort for the torn vanity of my heart; I thirsted simply for water, and that my son might live. And again Abraham’s God heard the cry of my heart and answered. He revealed a well of water, there where no water should have been, and our thirst was slaked. And he has promised to be with my son, and make a nation from him, and my heart is satisfied and my trust restored. Now I have only one thirst left – a thirst for God Himself, that I might know the mighty one who is so compassionate that He would wipe away the tears of the lowliest of slaves.

Crossing Bridges

2010-08-07T16:50:00.000+10:00

He challenged us so often – challenged our comfort, challenged our faith, challenged us to become something we’d never dreamed of. But most of all, I think, He challenged our notion of holiness. All my life I had been told that holiness meant separating yourself – from evil, from temptation, from things that might be someone else’s temptation. To be holy meant to resist every warm human desire as something dangerous – to be human was to fall under the curse of God. To be truly holy meant to spend your life walking away.

Apparently not. To Him, holiness always looked like walking towards. He was unafraid of sin. That in itself was a marvel, we had been taught all our lives to be terrified of sin. The only people who did not fear sin were those who were so wicked that they delighted in it. He did neither. It was as if sin had no power over Him . And the laws of the Pharisees? He despised them.

He would speak to women. Of course ordinary men speak to women, we have to, don’t we? But only in the right situations. Holy men, religious leaders, rabbis are generally people who will never so much as look at a woman except the members of their own families, and woe to any woman who is foolish enough to speak to them. I‘ll never forget that day, passing through Samaria, when He sat down to rest and sent us off to get food. When we came back He was chatting away to a Samaritan woman, and she was utterly enthralled. A woman. A Samaritan. We were not sure which surprised us most. If we hadn’t known by then that He always knew exactly what He was doing, we would have been seriously questioning His judgement. As it was, we were just thankful that there were no Pharisees around to see that particular incident.

But He wasn’t going to stay behind the Pharisees careful fences – not for anything. He’d speak to people He should have stayed away from if he’d wanted to make the “right” impression with the “right” people – even a Roman centurion! He even healed people on the Sabbath, and seemed quite convinced that showing compassion was more important than keeping a rigid interpretation of the Law. Often He made us feel uncomfortable. Not only was He constantly crossing bridges into realms that were uncharted, and probably unsafe – He was taking us with Him. What were we to think when He sent demons into a herd of pigs and the pigs promptly went and drowned themselves. We were rather embarrassed when the owner of the pigs appeared. It was rather an awkward moment for everyone except Jesus. He had us taking a little grain to eat when we walked through a cornfield, and wandering around in pairs to preach the Kingdom of God. What could be more ludicrous than turning guys like us into preachers and miracle workers? He touched the dead, He touched lepers – things that should have made Him unclean – but somehow it didn’t work like that. Instead they became whole, they became alive, he touched them and they became clean. It was all back to front.

I remember the night He let an immoral woman anoint Him. Any other religious leader would have felt befouled just by being in the same room; but He never drew away from her. Instead He told her that her sins were forgiven! It was as if -- I can’t think of a better way to say it – He saw people struggling on the wrong side, and, rather than leave them there, He crossed the bridge to where they were and carried them back across with Him. No bridge ever seemed to bother Him if there was someone on the other side who needed Him.

And there was one last bridge He crossed, and this still leaves me trembling with wonder. The greatest gulf that exists in this world is the gulf between life and death, but He crossed it, on that day I can still barely dare to remember, and then gleefully crossed back again, as if the conquest of death had become a small thing. He came back to tell us – no, to show us – that death is now merely a bridge from life to Life. And He will be there, waiting for us on the other side.

The Gods of our Fathers

2010-07-31T19:08:00.000+10:00

Sometimes it is hard to be married to a man with a big idea, especially when the name of his big idea is God. It has a way of disturbing the comfort of the whole household. Life had its moments while we still lived in Ur, because Abram didn’t worship in the temples or do some of the other things that all our friends and acquaintances did, but generally, because we were wealthy family of high rank, and because Abram was unfailing pleasant, polite and generous, it was regarded as an endearing eccentricity, and left at that.

It was different living in the same house. I had grown up believing in the deities of Ur, as any well-bred girl should, especially devoted to the moon god Nanna, whose principal temple was right in our city. I had been taught all my life that we humans existed in order to delight the gods – they needed our worship and sacrifices in order to be happy, and, conversely, they would be angry with anyone who failed to give them honour. Imagine how I felt on my wedding night when my glorious young husband told me that he wasn’t sure he believed in that! Had I married a blasphemer? Would we lie under the curse of the gods because of Abram’s unbelief?

The trouble was, I liked Abram’s God. We had always had a vague idea in our family that there was another God, vague and nameless, far beyond and above the civic deities, a sense that there was something more to the universe than what we had generally been told. But it was not a belief that had ever disrupted our lives in any way. How could it? An unknown God, with no temples or images or name or stated character – He was a rumour from a far country of the spirit, not part of our daily lives. But as the years passed, and Abram shared with me his vision of the one true God, I had to admit I found him far more attractive than the gods of our fathers. But one fear haunted me and held me back from complete surrender to his faith: I was barren. How could that not be the curse of the gods upon my husband’s unbelief? If this God of Abram’s was really all-powerful, wouldn’t he reward his one faithful servant with a son – with many sons?

Then one day, when life had settled down into comfortable patterns, and I had long-since put away my broken dreams of motherhood, Abram announced that his god had told him to leave Ur, to take all his household out into the desert, and follow the guidance of this unknown god to a land we did not know. Of course I cried, of course I screamed, of course I asked him, not once but many times, if he had gone completely mad – and all the while he just kept quietly insisting that we must all be obedient to God.

Of course, in the end I went with him. Truth be told, by that stage, I was rather looking forward to it. I knew I would not be in need or discomfort, and who would have expected to be starting on such a great adventure at our age? Besides, I loved this man, and through the years of our marriage the substance of ourselves had been woven together so deeply .. I needed to understand this God of his, and it seemed it would be easier far away from Ur, away from the temples and the processions and the whole social fabric that sang to me about the gods of our fathers. The desert roads are clear and bright, perhaps in those uncrowded lands it would be easier to only have one god?

And so we set out on a journey that was the beginning of something I had never imagined. The years flow together in my memory, the moments of shame and glory, the ordinary days and the strangeness and the wonder breaking through. And round about me the clear, almost unwavering faith of my husband. Oh yes, there were times when it wavered, he is a man still, even though he has walked with God, the times when ... But no, none of that matters now. All those mistakes are hidden under the mercy of the one I have learned to call my God as well. But only now, in these last weeks have the last of my fears and doubts disappeared. For only now, in my extreme old age, the god of my husband Abram has given me a son. And now I know, fully and completely, that the gods of our fathers have no power, they were, all along, just the tragic, broken myths of men.

By The Hand

2010-07-24T15:31:00.004+10:00

I am going to be crucified tomorrow. There will be no miracles this time, it is finished and I am going home, and all His promises will be fulfilled to me. I think I will ask to be crucified upside down – an unusual request, I know, but soldiers like novelty so I think they will grant my request. Who am I to have the privilege of dying as He died?

Tonight I will keep vigil with my memories, and all my memories that matter are of Him. Once there was pain in those memories – the pain of longing and the pain of shame – but now there is only peace, all my shame is washed away and I am cradled in His love. This time tomorrow, on the other side of death, I will be with him inseparably.

Now the memories jostle together, and I am content. Once it would have mattered to me to get them back into sequence, to try and arrange them with meaning and order, but why should that matter now? Soon there will be no more darkness or confusion, only love, and love will make all meanings plain. So I journey through them, smelling again the freshly caught fish, feeling the prickle of the sun on my back, and hearing the slap of the little waves. That was the day He came to us, and asked us to leave our nets and follow Him. “I will make you fishers of men,” He said. I had no idea what He meant, I only know that when He said them, it suddenly seemed the most important thing in the world. I knew that I would rather be about His business (whatever it was) than my own. I followed Him and those were my first steps towards Him.

The problem was, of course, that, while I wanted to walk with Him, I wanted to choose my own steps and my own pace. One minute I would be walking on the water (without stopping to think how impossible that is), the next minute I would be looking at the waves, and down I’d go. It is very hard for a man to keep pace with God, but His love kept stretching my legs. Sometimes I understood, like the day when so many departed from Him after He spoke about being the Bread of Life, and He turned to us and asked if we would leave too. “Where would we go?” I replied, always the one to jump in first when wiser men would stop and think, “You are the one who has the words of eternal life!” Other times I missed it completely, like the day I tried to dissuade Him from the cross. How little I understood!

I got so much wrong. Not just once (once would have been more understandable), but three times I denied Him to the onlookers at His trial. If He was walking towards a cross, I certainly didn’t want to go there! I ran away instead, and even now I wince at the memory. I saw the empty tomb, and I still didn’t understand what was happening. I was so slow to believe. And even after He had defeated death, I still imagined I knew more about fishing than He did.

All my life has been a walking lesson. I had always been so eager to choose my own path. Even that morning on the shore, so bright with His tender forgiveness that my eyes still mist when I try to see it, He told me that the day would come when I would stretch out my hands and be led where I do not want to go. And inwardly I recoiled, as if it were a smudge of dark cloud on the furthest horizon.

And now, when that time has come, it is like nothing I imagined. They have chained me and taken me to prison, tomorrow they will lead me to a cross, and the burly soldiers will march around me, for fear I should run away. How far do they think an old man could run? But none of it matters. They can lead me where they like. It is another hand I am holding fast to, and He is leading me in His own steps. And I am so glad – for the soldiers and the pain and the weariness of life will all fade from me in just a little while more, but He will still be holding me, and He will hold me fast for all eternity and never let me go.

Really?

2010-07-22T08:58:00.001+10:00

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

The Despised

2010-07-17T15:51:00.001+10:00

My relationship with my brothers was always a bit awkward. I was so much younger, that they looked down on me anyway, but there were other differences too. It went back to the time when I was still a boy, the day when the old man came to our house and asked to see us all. Not that I was home when he got there, but since it was the talk of the family for weeks after, I heard every detail many times repeated.

He said that he came to make a sacrifice, that was odd in itself, but strange and mysterious are the ways of prophets, as strange as the ways of God Himself. He called my father to come and bring his sons to the sacrifice. Then followed a strange scene, even know I remember the unease of my brothers as they retold it. One by one they had to come before the prophet, one by one they were told that they were not the one the Lord had chosen. (Chosen for what? That was the unspoken question). That was when they sent for me, and that is the point where my own memory takes over. I walked in as summoned, fresh from the fields with no idea what was happening (but who did, apart from Samuel?), and was called to stand before this stranger. He looked at me, and I knew it was not my face he was seeing, but the hidden-most parts of my soul. And then, without a word of explanation, he took his horn of oil, anointed me, and when the sacrifice was complete, departed. My brothers had no idea what to make of it, so they joked about me to hide their discomfort.

Time passed. I was still the youngest brother, but there was an edge to their gibes that had not been there before. They had obviously decided that I was getting above myself and must be put back in my inferior position.

Then the Philistines attacked. My three oldest brothers went off to join the army, and I was kept busy going back and forth, filling in everything else that had to be done. Eventually I was sent up to the battle lines, to take food to my brothers. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Who did that that monstrous Philistine think he was, standing there insulting our people and our God? How dare he blaspheme the Holy One? And why was no one challenging him? Didn’t they know that they need not fear when their cause was God’s honour?

That was my mindset when my brothers found me; imagine my shock when they judged me with anger and scorn. They treated me like a naughty boy who had run away from his chores, they told me that I was conceited and had a wicked heart. In that moment I realised just how deeply they despised me: the younger brother who was different. And there was never a moment when it mattered less to me – my heart was on fire for a righteous cause.

The rest of that story is history: the sequence of events that led to the defeat of Goliath. It was victory pure and clean, I was fighting for God’s glory, not my own, and I didn’t care what anyone else thought, because I knew I was walking in obedience to the only one who mattered.

How different it is now: how bitterly, horribly different. Now, when I am their king, and they serve me gladly, now their words come back and hold up a mirror to my soul. Because now it is the truth, and I despise myself more than they ever despised me then. What was I thinking? How could I do such a thing ? Yet such indignation with myself is a falsehood in a sense. My sin, my dreadful sin against Bathsheba, against Uriah, above all against my God who forbade adultery and murder, is not some silly mistake I drifted into, it comes from the very core of who I am, conceited, self-indulgent, more concerned with gratifying the good pleasure of David than with surrendering to the good pleasure of God. What I did is the revelation of who I am, and how shall I live with that horror? Can even the sacrifices cleanse me? How can God still receive me? Can God Himself, altogether perfect, make peace with the despicable?

I can bring Him no more than my broken heart. Everything else I do is just an expression of what is inside. And yet I know that God receives me. How can that be? Unless .. unless .. somewhere beyond my understanding there is a place where a perfect sacrifice is made, a place where God Himself can meet with sinners, can even – is such a thing possible? – be the sacrifice Himself, despised and rejected, the scapegoat in the wilderness, that all His broken children might be the despised no longer, but, somehow, the ransomed of His love?

My Father's Son

2010-07-10T19:19:00.001+10:00

He came back yesterday. He had been gone so long that I had stopped thinking about him every hour – like a foot heals slowly from a sharp stone which was stuck in your shoe for too many painful miles. Of course, if he had been such a stone I would have cast him away at the first wincing moment of pain – but he is my father’s son, and I had never thought I could be rid of him. But he did leave, of his own accord, and the manner of his leaving was so insulting to our father and our family, that it was a while before I recovered enough from the shock and the shame to happily think, “Good riddance!”

He had asked for his share of the inheritance – while our father was still alive! That was tantamount to wishing our father dead, or at the very least saying that all he wanted was the riches, and not the relationship. What amazed me even more (since such brazen effrontery, such carelessness, was, after all, only to be expected) was my father’s reaction. My father would have been well within his rights to give an affronted refusal (who ever heard of asking such a thing?) or even to punish him (which would have been quite fitting, and long overdue) – at the very least he should have thrown him out and disinherited him. But no, the hopeless scapegrace makes his ridiculous demand, and our father gives him exactly what he asks for!! I never could understand it. And no sooner has he got his share than he converts it all to cash, and leaves...

I was glad that he went far away. Imagine if we’d had to put up with his disgraceful behaviour on our doorstep! It hasn’t surprised me to learn, now, that he spent all that he had, living a life of total self-indulgence, with no thought of being prudent, or working to make money for the future. He says he spent it on his friends, but that is ridiculous! Why would anyone do that when money is a man’s best friend in this world? And what value were these friends anyway, They were no use when he ran out of money – a very poor investment. He even lowered himself, in the end, to being a swineherd – consorting with unclean beasts!

And now he has come back, my father’s son. And what did my father do? Turn him away, demand repayment, or organise him to work off his debts as a bond slave? Not a bit of it! This fool, this wastrel, this idiot unfit to bear our family name, appears on the road bedraggled and dirty, and there is my father, most honourable of men, forgetting his dignity and position and running down the road to embrace him. I winced when I saw it. Everything is turned upside down. The fatted calf, we one we had been preparing for some special occasion, was killed in celebration, and next thing I know, the fool has been dressed in fine robes and given the family ring to wear. I wondered if running down the road in the heat had addled my father’s brain.

I couldn’t join the party, it was too much. And when my father himself came out to plead with me to join, it was too much. Out it poured, all the rage I was feeling, all my contempt for the idler and his filthy life. In the end I heard myself saying, “But you never did this for me, even after all I’ve done for you!” Even to my own ears that sounded lame and pathetic. But true. He hadn’t. My father looked at me, and before his sorrow I lowered my eyes in shame. “Everything I have is already yours,’ he said, and I knew that it was true. The only reason I had never seen his crazy, impossible love for myself, was because I had never asked for it. All these bitter, tight-wound years I had tried to earn my father’s approval, and all those years his heart had been bursting with love for me, not because I worked so hard, but because I was, I am, his son. What a waste – not of my work itself, I had worked well for him, but my closed, lonely, sullen heart!

Now I was crying too, and as I wept in my father’s embrace, our tears mingled together. “Come inside,’ he said, “and celebrate with us, for your brother, who was lost, has been found, my son is not dead, but alive!” I went in, stiffly and awkwardly, but I went.

My father’s son came home yesterday. This time I am going to learn to call him my brother, so that I, too, might truly be my father’s son.

The Rose

2010-07-03T16:04:00.001+10:00

It was a rose -- a dark red rose, and she had stolen it from someone else’s garden. She had no right to this perfect, beautiful thing; it was not hers to take. But there was no point in returning it. You can’t stick a plucked flower back on the bush again, it has been permanently severed from its source of life. And to go and walk up to a stranger’s door and confess she had taken their rose, when their bushes were covered in flowers, and one wouldn’t even be missed, seemed an absurdity.

There was no point fretting about it, there was enough real guilt in her life without getting upset about picking a flower. She would put it in a vase and enjoy its fragrant beauty for a few days – until it withered and died like all beautiful things wither and die – like everything she touched would wither and die. No, that was being absurd, the flower would wither and die just the same if she had left it on the rosebush. Loveliness never lasted, whether she had anything to do with it or not.

And every lovely thing in her life was broken. The man whom she had thought would cherish her forever had moved on, and blamed her depression for destroying their relationship. The depression had been triggered by the loss of the child she had been carrying. The miscarriage had been caused by being in a car accident. And the car accident was one hundred percent her own fault. If only she had looked one more time ..

Was there no beauty, no love that one could count on in life? Even this fast-withering rose, with its perfume that sang to her heart, had thorns it would not hesitate to use if she grew careless in the way she handled it. She knew the platitudes, she could recite them to herself: though the rose died, the rosebush would go on – and there would be other men, other children ..

It wasn’t enough. She didn’t want another child, she wanted that child, the one who had grown inside her for 4 months, before departing in a horror of pain and blood. She didn’t want another husband, she wanted the one she had pledged her heart to, even though he had proved unworthy of her trust and was now, already, deeply involved with someone else. And, she thought, including in her anger the God she had once taken so seriously as a child, resurrection, at this moment, seemed much less appealing than never having to die in the first place. Why did life always have to be about making do and putting a brave face on second best? Why couldn’t it ever be the best?

And yet, she herself was part of that brokenness. She wasn’t the only one hurt in that accident; the little girl in the other car would be months in hospital. What grief must her mother be going through? And that family had only recently lost another child. “Who am I to demand the best for myself when I am the cause of the worst happening to others?” she whispered. And it was worse. She knew why she had failed to pay attention at the intersection; she knew exactly what had been occupying her mind at the time, though there was no way that she was going to admit it to the police, or anybody else. She had been daydreaming a particularly sordid, nasty little revenge on someone who, in retrospect, had hardly injured her at all—and certainly not with intentional malice.

She turned the rose around and around in her fingers, considering. The thing that had so infuriated her back then? In hindsight it was as petty, as humiliatingly stupid, as if the owner of that rosebush had been plotting terrible vengeance on her for taking a flower whose loss wasn’t even visible. It didn’t make her stealing (yes, call it stealing) right, it didn’t make that careless unkindness that had so upset her right either; but her reaction had been out of all proportion. Be honest; her fury was goaded by hurt pride, not genuine injury or violation. And out of that moment of evil in her own heart (yes, call it evil, what she was imagining would have been a hideous crime in real life – and she was enjoying it!) came all the things that were hurting her now. She herself was an integral part of everything she raged against.

It was hard, and it didn’t make the immediate grief or loss any less – they were real things, costing real pain. But maybe in the very fact that God had lavished so much beauty on something as short-lived as a rose, was a promise in itself. Maybe, just maybe, on the far side of this darkness there could be room to learn to hope again? And maybe forgiveness was not just a pious fiction to enable people to put up with second best – maybe it was an absolute necessity which the whole world, and herself most of all, desperately needed before hope could have a chance? The fragrance of the rose was sweet and strong, but she barely noticed, for her tears were falling fast.

Imago Dei

2010-06-27T18:06:00.000+10:00

Once upright, undistorted, mirror-clear
Where the first birdsong primal silence broke
Limning sweet limbs with love-lent loveliness;
Sky, and all glory bent to one small place
Till one enactment broke all time and space ..

Here now we crawl: broken, overwhelmed
Scrabbling amongst the dust
Scant, grimy, bent ..
Lost in the night, ourselves put out the lights
And drown in tears and call our tears a lie
And wake and ache and break, become the snake
Ourselves the hissing ugliness we fear ..

See the Restorer. Like a star come down
Into the orbit of this broken rock
Life, being bent on death, light down to dark
Folding into himself our flagging flesh
Being the message and the messenger
Being himself the song we could not sing
Being the glory couched invisible:
Drinker of sorrow down into the grave
Being the Mirror, Window, truth and Light
One arrow shot by God into the dark
To swallow up all darkness with His light,
To polish us till we once more reflect.

So we are come. Until His coming, come,
Let your light shine: His beauty born in you
As into holy wholeness you are wrought
Till you bear fruit as love has planted there,
Until He sees His face, full fair, in you.

The Coin

2010-06-19T15:11:00.001+10:00

Sometimes I longed to go back home, to tell my parents I was wrong and ask their forgiveness. But I knew there was no turning back, I had not only disgraced them, I had broken the law of my people and turned my back on God. For such as I there could be no forgiveness. I was moderately rich – enormously rich by the standards of my home village – but in their eyes it was unholy, ill-gotten wealth. I had married a beautiful woman, a foreigner, who laughed to scorn the few remnants of Judaism I still clung to, and then ran off with a Greek merchant who was ten times richer than I. I had laughed through my pain, scorning myself for a fool who should have known better, and remembering the old story of Samson and Delilah. I wasn’t the first man to be fooled by a pretty face, it simply joined me to a vast company of fools through the ages who had been so easily seduced.

I had friends, Greeks and Romans who did business here, and a few liberal Jews from Herod’s party as well, we traded, we partied, we gossiped at the baths, but though their company passed the empty hours, they were none of them men I trusted. If it served their interest to do so, they would stick a knife in my back without a moment’s hesitation – and not just metaphorically. I was sick at heart and weary of life, and had not yet reached my twenty-eighth birthday. At night I would dream of that little Galilean village that smelled of fish, and my weary parents who had loved me so much, and I would wake up in tears. At daybreak I would go back to my business and trade twice as ruthlessly as before, because I was angry with the world. But most of all I was angry with myself.

This was my frame of mind when I had to go to Galilee on business. I always carefully avoided the area where my family lived, but there were plenty of other places where I could go down to the waterfront and recapture some of the feelings of my boyhood. And that was where I was heading when I saw the crowd. I had left my fine horse at the inn, so, seized with curiosity, I made my way down and mingled with the crowd.

They were focused on a young man, not much older than myself, who was speaking. I did not understand what he was saying, something about a shepherd and his sheep, I had obviously arrived in the middle of the story, but his voice was compelling, so I stopped to listen. “suppose a woman had ten coins, and she loses one ..” As I listened to the story, I was suddenly reliving a day in my childhood. My mother had had such coins, I doubt if it were as many as ten, we were very poor, but she treasured those coins, if our father were taken ill, or there were no fish in the nets, they would be all that stood between us and starvation. And one day, just like in the Teacher’s story, she lost one. How we hunted for that one pathetic coin! (I thought guiltily of my saddlebags full of money). In the end we found it, outside, covered in mud and stinking filth. I would have thrown it away in disgust, but my mother would do no such thing. “Do you think it is worth any less because it is dirty?” she scolded me, and proceeded to clean it up. She was so glad to get her coin back, even in that state.

But what was the Teacher saying? “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents ..” I thought of myself as a man of many coins, but now I saw that I, myself, was that one coin, misplaced, and now caked with the filth of the world. But that didn’t mean I was unwanted. I could still be cleaned up.

I didn’t stay to hear any more. I knew what I had to do. First I must make my way to that little village and ask my parents to forgive me. Then, whatever their response was, I must return to Jerusalem and take my sin offering to the temple. God still wanted me! And as I turned to go, the teacher turned his head and looked straight at me. He smiled, and in that smile I felt the love of God welcoming me home ..

A cup of cold water

2010-06-12T21:52:00.000+10:00

I have so much to learn before I am ready to become the king God has called and anointed me to be. I have learned to trust my shepherd-God, and I have learned to lead men, not just sheep, and I have learned that if I am to be treated as worthy of kingship when my turn comes, even now I must honour the worth of the kingship of the present ruler, even though he is Saul, my bitterest enemy. But tonight I learned a new lesson, and my heart is overwhelmed.

It all began with nostalgia. I was tired of being cooped up in a cave in the wilderness, and let’s be honest here, I was bored. Sometimes even being scared is better than that, when I am in danger I know that God is with me, protecting me. He has promised me the kingship, he will hold me safe in the hollow of his hand until every last part of his promise is fulfilled. But where is he in the midst of unrelenting tedium? And the wilderness is so tedious. Nothing to do but keep hidden from Saul, talk to my men, and gaze out at the cruel sunlight by day, the bitter stars at night. I am so tired of it—the best years of my youth skulking in the desert. Then I remember the story of Joseph, and I acknowledge that the ways of God are strange, but the promises of God will never fail.

But today had been a bad day, not for any special reason, but just because I had run out of reasons for it to be good day. Even the water tasted flat and dusty – well, truth be told, it always does taste flat and dusty here, but usually I am too glad to slake my thirst to worry about such niceties. After all, I am a soldier as well as a shepherd and a singer (and who knows what else I may well become before the end of this perplexing journey? But it was a bad day, and nothing would make me happy, and at last even the taste of water irritated me past bearing. When a man is angry with the flavour of water, you know that his heart is truly sick with frustration.
I thought back to my childhood, only a short while ago in years, but the distance is immeasurable. I remembered the freedom of the fields around Bethlehem, the slant of the light on the hills, the very smell of the place. I remembered the sweet, cold water, and, longing to recapture that freedom and joy, I said aloud, “ Oh that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” And then, like a foolish child, I thought no more about it.

I was so self-absorbed I did not even notice them leave. Only later did I learn of their exploits, how the three of them – just three! – fought their way through the Philistine lines, reached the well, and brought me back a cup of cold water. It was madness, utter glorious madness, and when they returned, with the marks of battle on them, carrying that ridiculous water skin, I realised what they had done. I was so ashamed. They had risked their lives and laboured hard, just to satisfy my childish whim. What had I done? What had I become? Dear heaven, is that who they thought I was?

I could not drink it. They had laid their whole live on the line, and it seemed to me that it was no longer water, but their blood. I know there are kings in other lands who feed off their people, but may I never be such a one! My God is not like that, and I will not be either.And in that moment I saw what I had never before understood. The Law says that when we bring our sacrifice to the temple, we offer it to God and then feast on part of it ourselves. God does not feed on us, he feeds us. He himself in some sense is our living bread, he himself takes the foul and tainted water of our lives and turns it into the wine of the bridegroom. Our bread. Our wine. Our life. For if God takes a little from us, it is only in order that he may give to us all the more. And we must feed on him, or else we die.

I looked at the water skin. That water was a holy thing, it had been bought for me at a price I could neither deserve or repay. It is not for such as I to drink of holy things. Reverently, prayerfully, I poured it on the ground. Never, never must I ask for the heart’s blood of my people. Even in the dark, my men knew that I was weeping.

In Magdala

2010-06-05T15:49:00.000+10:00

It lay there forgotten, and she never even missed it. She had never even known it had a name. For her, it didn’t. But she knew that she felt better – the pain was further away, far enough away now, in fact, that it could easily be got rid of altogether, at least for a while! Over time, with some experimentation, she got better at doing that.

Life was much more fun now. Maybe she didn’t feel joy quite as sharply, but she certainly didn’t feel all the hurt, and she didn’t have everything she wanted to do being constantly interrupted by those voices in her memory screaming “Shouldn’t!” all the time. She could sleep in without guilt. She could stay up late, go to parties, have too much to drink – all without more than a moment of guilt – which she could explain to herself as “Old habits die hard”. An easier life was a better life – right?

And then there were men. One could get so much from them if one simply didn’t care – about anything. Working on her own image to keep her market value intact was probably the thing she put the most effort into. It was an investment with rich rewards – as long as you didn’t care.

It was not-caring which was the key to everything else, and not-caring was a lot easier without that other bit that had caused her so much trouble in the past. Of course, that left an empty space, but a girl learns ways to fill the empty spaces. And she was smart enough to provide for the future, too. Getting ahead was important: making money, having a glamorous lifestyle, being a good-time girl who got noticed. Things got a little wilder as the years passed, but she stayed in control.

She was somewhere between thirty and forty when she realised she had lost control. She wasn’t sure exactly how old she was – she had lied about her age so many times that she no longer remembered the truth. Something was wrong, something was horribly wrong, but she had no idea what to do. All the things she had invited in to fill the empty spaces had not only filled them, but were taking over the rest of her as well. She was a puppet, just a soulless puppet, and something else was pulling the strings. Even though she had given up caring, some corner of her mind was screaming in terror.

She could never afterwards quite recall the sequence of events. It was as if her mind was no longer quite her own. Nothing was clear until the strange day when she found herself face to face with Him. It was as if the whole universe was holding its breath when He looked into her eyes, and straight through them and down into the deep places where she was too frightened to look for herself. And she knew that He was offering her a choice, and there was only one possibleanswer, even if she didn’t really understand what it meant There was no way she could speak, but she said “YES!”with her eyes, even while those other voices were roaring NO in her head. It was enough. He spoke again, and it was like her innermost self was being wrenched wide open .. something was leaving that didn’t want to leave .. and she wanted it to go, even if it had come to feel like part of herself .. she had no idea where she was, or who she was ..

The sun was shining, but the grass still carried the perfume of yesterday’s rain. A light breeze caressed her face. The world was utterly still, and utterly beautiful. She could feel the breath move in her lungs, and the solidity of the earth beneath her feet. All was well .. only one thing was missing, one small, but somehow very important thing.

His fingers lifted her chin and He was looking into her, but now it didn’t hurt at all. “Mary,” he said, making her name sound like a smile. He breathed on her, and she felt His word, and His breath meet somewhere deep inside her, recreating. She was whole, she was well, all things had been restored, and she knew with utter joy that the new life which she had been given belonged to Him forever.

Here let me have my Heaven

2010-05-30T17:11:00.001+10:00

Here let me have my Heaven, where the lame,
The halt, the blind, the naked and ashamed
Are gathered at the low gate’s blood soaked frame.

Here let me be as one with those who know
They have no right to claim, no right to go
And yet they come because You told them so.

Not where the neat, clean-handed pious dwell
(Those who have practised carefulness so well)
Here, with the broken, is Immanuel.

Here, beyond law and doctrine’s argued place
Here, where the huddled outcasts find their space,
Here let me drink from undiluted grace.

Here let me learn to love with hands of pain,
Here, beyond fear, acknowledging my stain
Until all things are made complete again.

Starlight

2010-05-29T16:44:00.000+10:00

It is cool and peaceful out here on the hill, under the stars. The summer night folds round me like a cloak and I feel at rest. The love of God wraps around me also, and I wonder what it means.

For hundreds of years, every Jewish girl has dreamt of being the one who would bear the special promised child. But that was a dream, just like every poor village girl, the whole world over dreams of marriage to a rich man of high rank so that she never has to draw water of sweep floors again. We dream our dreams, we say, ‘what if?’, then we settle down and marry our good, sensible husbands, and live the life we always expected to live.

But what do you do when the dreams walk into the living day? What do you do when, one day, in the midst of household chores, a being of sheer glory appears in front of you and tells you that, out of all the girls who have ever lived, all the weary, dreamy eyed, careless maidens who have ever wistfully glanced up at the stars, you, for no possible logical reason, are to be the one who is the bearer of the Promise? Well, I know now. The very first thing you do, once the angel leaves and normal feeling returns to your body, is stand there and say, like every other person who’s ever met an angel, I suppose, is “Why me?” Only later, when you start to realise all the practical implications, do you start to ask, “How am I going to do this?”

Now I wonder both questions all the time. The first three months sped by quickly. My mother sent me off to Elizabeth’s and I stayed for the birth of her John – another miracle baby, though not the same kind of a miracle. At least he is a normal human baby, and they know who his father is. I was so busy there that there was no time for dreaming. And it gave Joseph and my parents time to understand as well. I don’t think my parents knew what to believe till Joseph told them about his dream. Joseph is not the sort of person who has holy dreams; he is the kind sensible village husband that every right-minded girl hopes she’ll end up with in real life.

And now I’m back, and I’m here, and at the end of the day I gaze up at the stars. I remember how Father Abraham was told to look up at the stars. Was he forever wondering, “Why me?” I remember how Father Jacob lay under the stars, with only a stone for a pillow, and saw so many angels. One was almost too much for me, Jacob must have been a very strong person, maybe that’s why he had to wrestle with God Himself before he learned weakness? I am not Abraham, I am not Jacob. I am just a girl whose mother has to remind her to finish sweeping while I stand rooted with amazement that this child could ever come to be.

And I remember the prophet Daniel said something about the wise shining like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever .. I am not a shining star. I am a little household candle, scared some days that a small wind will blow me out altogether. Yet God has placed a light inside me, a brilliant, all-consuming light, not just a star, like the prophets and the fathers of our people, like King David the writer of true songs, or Moses, who met the brightness of God in the desert. We needed those stars while we walked in darkness, and by them we steer our way through the wilderness of living. But when the sun rises? There will be a day, I know it in the very blood of my own body, when this child will be the one who dawns upon the earth, the sun of righteousness that Malachi spoke of, who will rise with healing in His wings. And then we will be healed. But now I wait, under the stars, and count down the months till he shall come.

Through the Window

2010-05-22T14:26:00.001+10:00

I am old now, but my body carries the years lightly, because I have always been careful. I was only a little girl when my father died, and my mother went crazy with grief. “Keep your heart safe,” she screamed at me one day, “or someone will take it and smash it into little pieces.” I was frightened of her pain, so I took her advice. I needed to keep safe, so I made a resolution then and there that I would not let myself get too involved with anything. If my heart needed solace, I would find it in dreams. Dreams are safe, I can control dreams. As for the rest of life? I shall watch it from a safe distance – through the window.

And so I have lived. I have sufficient to manage comfortably, I have my interests, I have my work, I have my comforts. Books and poetry and music have their place, too, though I have always thought some of the most popular ones were very overrated. So much ill-judged emotion and unnecessary tragedy! So silly! I am quiet, I am dignified, and I keep my own counsel. I have pleasant social exchanges with the tradesmen and the neighbours. I am not inhuman. I go to church when convenient, I give a little to charity, I behave like a responsible citizen. But I have never seen any reason to get embroiled with the messiness of life, tragedy and comedy and ill-disciplined emotions are for fools. I stand back and merely watch – through the window.

Sometimes I have been tempted to break my own rules. Once a little boy was knocked down right outside my house, and his mother knelt beside him in the gutter, soaked with blood and mud, and screamed. I nearly went outside to her it looked so dreadful, and she sounded so pitiful. But what could I have done? And besides, it was raining. So I shut the window and watched through it.

Another time, a long war ended in victory, and the people were dancing in the streets. There was spontaneous singing, and people catching the hands of total strangers and twirling around. Their joy looked so intoxicating I was tempted to join them. But – intoxicating? That was precisely the problem. There were bottles being passed around, and people growing flushed. Who knew where it would end? Besides, I never learned to dance. So, even though the music made my feet itch and twitch, I stayed inside and watched through the window.

Further back, long ago when I was young and my mirror said I was pretty, there was a young man who started to come calling. At first it was all very flattering, and I was quite enjoying his attentions, until I realised he was serious. At that moment something froze inside me. I remembered my mother, and her pain, and I knew that love hurts. Far easier to stay safe. So I told him no, and a grey melancholy settled inside me as I watched through the window as he walked away.

I have been safe. I have been careful. I have kept my hands clean and my heart intact. And I never knew that my soul was dying of starvation – until last night. Can a dream change a person? It must have been a dream, because I was asleep, but it still seems so real it could have happened in this room.

In my dream (for what else can I call it?) a king was riding into town, and the people in the street were shouting and dancing, just like they did at the end of the war. I think it was the end of some kind of war. I was, of course, watching through the window, safe and distant as always. But then he stopped, right outside my window, and in a loud voice he called my name and ordered me to come forth. And, to my own amazement, I wanted to come. Who could refuse that voice? But I couldn’t. I tried to lift the sash, but it held fast, and I hurt myself trying. All the time he sat there, on his horse, looking straight at me, waiting .. So I decided to smash the glass, and get out that way. But the glass had grown thick and hard with the weight of years, and though I threw everything I had at it, nothing would break it. In the end I pounded my bruised fists against it and cried. The King himself was waiting for me and I could not come. In the end, feeble and defeated, not caring how silly I sounded, I cried out to him to help me.

And he did. He threw his whole body at the glass, and it shattered, though, as he did so, he was impaled upon a jagged piece of glass. There was so much blood, all over me, but I never even noticed. All that mattered was the king. But then, in a long moment, strong arms grasped me and lifted me through the window. In his arms I was safe in the unsafe world.

I thought it was a dream. But when I rose this morning the window was flung wide, and the perfume of strange flowers is blowing through the window.

The Letter

2010-05-15T21:55:00.001+10:00

Our scene: imagine a woman in her 50s or 60s, living alone, who discovers she has an incurable (but not too painful) disease. She is about the strange business of dying. She writes this letter to a friend she hasn't seen for a while ..

I am not who I was. This wasting flesh
Has carried me across the cusp of time
Into a chartless land, my world grows still
And I no longer fear the chariots.

Once I was young, and thought that being wise
Meant the great need for knowing everything,
As if to understand was to control.
Now there is wisdom in the sitting still.

Yes, it is Autumn here, the colours fade,
The sky is so intense, the world winds down,
And, like the slow, soft shedding of the leaves,
Each day, in sunlit sadness, I let go.

I thought there would be terror in this place:
A scrabbling and a scrambling of the flesh
And faith the trumpet call upon the walls ..
And every muscle poised to fight the fight.

But this is weariness that seeks for rest
And faith is simply turning in His arms,
The arms that have been always holding me
This is a journey back towards my love.

For goodbye is a melancholy word
But not the worst, far worse were to remain
And play the fool to time’s unravelling
And be afraid to leave an empty stage.

I am not who I was, for now I know
That the not knowing truly is enough
And love is bigger than I ever guessed,
And while my autumn shrinks, I am at rest.

The Waterfall

2010-05-08T19:55:00.000+10:00

It was a dreadful time to come and draw water. The sun beat down on her, the jar she carried was heavy, even when it was empty. She couldn’t keep doing this, it was all too hard. But they would not let her join them in the cool freshness of the morning and evening. They were afraid of her, she had done what they would not do, or rather what they would never admit that they were capable of doing, and there was something about her they were scared might be contagious. Five husbands – and what a sorry collection they had been! And now no one would have her, the whole town had decided she was bad luck. As for the guy she lived with, he didn’t care, she was convenient, and he knew she would put up with poor treatment because she needed a home and a little food so very much. She had done what she must to survive, and no one accepted her – apparently it would have been more virtuous to just roll over and die.

And she was so thirsty. Oh yes, her body was thirsty, the heat was drawing moisture from her like a wilting plant, and she longed for the cool, sweet water of Jacob’s well. But that would soon be satisfied. The other thirst raged inside her with no hope of satisfaction – a burning pain of longing that she tried to ignore, because she had to stay strong just to get through each day. That was just the way life was – the pain of failure and mistakes, of rejection, of being both despised and despicable. It was so hard .. perhaps a person could die of such thirst?
She was shocked when she approached the well to see a strange man, and a Jew at that, sitting there, and even more shocked when he spoke to her, asking for a drink. Didn’t he know the rules? But he didn’t seem at all fazed by her astonished questions, and instead started talking about Living Water. Her heart lurched in hope, but her mind doubted. Was he crazy? Or touched by the sun?

She pointed out the obvious, he, who was asking for a drink, had no means of giving water! Who did he think he was! But he went on with his wild and glorious promises: ‘never be thirsty again”, “springing up to eternal life”. She was almost in tears – she must be fiercely practical – there was no water that could solve her problem – why was this madman tormenting her with hope?

And then, like the priest who knew just how to hold the sacrificial animal to make it completely helpless, he touched her most vulnerable point. “Go and get your husband!”

Choking back the shame, not daring to look him in the face, she stared at the ground and muttered, “I have no husband.”

His voice was incredibly gentle, yet he named to her face what was only whispered behind her back, that she had had FIVE husbands (most of those who knew her would have trouble keeping count), and now lived with a man who wouldn’t even offer her the respectability of marriage. It hurt so much, yet, just hearing him speak the words was like the first trickle of water in a dry and barren land. She could hear the faint tremor of tears in his voice, but she dared not look at his face. He was not crazy, no crazy man could have known the whole sorry story of her life .. so who was he, and why was he, a prophet of God standing here, in this town, speaking to its worst citizen?

Her mind was doing somersaults, trying to make sense of this. She needed time to take in the enormity of this. She cast her mind wildly for a safe topic, one that would keep him talking while giving her heart time to catch up. All she could think of was the old, tricky question that was such a cause of contention between his people and hers. A prophet should know the answer, where should they worship?
The moment the words left her lips she knew how ridiculous they were, and blushed deeper. He was laughing at her – no, with her, inviting her to share the joke of human silliness. Yet he answered her question seriously, “You worship what you do not know ... salvation is of the Jews ..”

Could it be? Was this .. the Messiah? There was no judgement here, or rather, in some way she could not fully understand, judgement had already been passed and she now stood on the far side, where it didn’t matter any more. There could be joy here, and even love .. She stood by the well, her water jar forgotten, while mercy and peace flowed over her soaking the parched and barren places in her soul. God Himself had sent this man to her, God himself cared about her whom everybody despised. She did not know that she stood there open-mouthed at that moment while the Living Water he had spoken of poured over her in a mighty waterfall, washing away her shame.

Jabbok

2010-05-01T22:23:00.000+10:00

I thought I knew almost everything. By most measures I am a remarkably successful man. Look at my flocks, my herds, my family. Twenty years ago I ran away with nothing but my father’s blessing, my mother’s love, a stone for my pillow, and a vision of God that turned my heart inside out and gave me the courage to go on. Now, after a long time in the land my people came from, I am going back. I have kept my faith, I have used my wits, I have a wife I love with my whole being, and another who is a bearer of fine sons. Most would say I lack nothing. And yet ..

The closer I come to home, the clearer the memories grow. He was my brother, my twin, the one who shared the womb with me. We grew beneath my mother’s heart together, but even then there was no peace between our unformed selves. Already we were two nations at war, jostling for supremacy. And I could never let him win.
Oh, I wanted the birthright, don’t get me wrong, that strange hunger for the love of this God that I can neither see nor touch, has coiled and roiled in me for as long as I could remember. But now, and I can finally be honest now, how much of it was built from that secret place of the spirit, the faith-place, and how much was a determination to show Esau that it didn’t matter if he was our father’s favourite, I was going to be the favourite of the only One I knew who was greater than our father? I am ashamed to admit now how much of it, all the time, was about trying to best my brother. It wasn’t fair that he should have it all just because he had the muscles to push his way out the womb a moment before me!

All those years with Laban I had put it aside. But now, coming back, I began to remember, and finally face the fact that perhaps I had wronged my brother. And maybe he was angry. Maybe he had been angry all these years. And then I heard the news. Esau was coming with four hundred men! This was one time I couldn’t scheme my way out of trouble. I did what I could, dividing everyone and everything into two groups, in the hope that some might escape, and sent them on their way, and then I waited. Alone with my fear and my God I waited. And a man came, for I must call him a man, and, how strange it seems, we looked at each other wordlessly, and began to wrestle. Strength for strength we were: my faith and His reality, his holiness and my determination to break through, to find a way to bend God to my will and make my life comfortable again. But as the night wore on I saw my sin against Esau grow blacker and blacker, and the quality of my wrestling changed. It did not matter if my whole world fell apart, if every scheme I had ever schemed should coil undone, if I was nothing and naked, vulnerable to my brother’s rightful wrath. Only one thing mattered: that I should not die unblessed. I had stolen my brother’s blessing, but now I must have my own, for apart from the blessing of God everything else is finally vanity and dust. And in the end disabled, I cried out my need and he gave me back my life. I have met the unknowable God, and yet I live.

Today he shall come. My brother, in whose eyes I must appear as traitor and thief. And I shall meet him without terror, for I have seen my shame and I was conquered by mercy; my body limps and my heart is singing, for I have met the one who holds my life in his hands, and I have tasted his holy forgiveness. It is enough.

Eagle's Wings

2010-04-24T18:25:00.001+10:00

What I remember most clearly was the fear. I was only a little girl at the time, but I could feel the fear among the people, and my mother clutching my arm too tight and ordering me, over and over, to keep hold of my little brother. Of course, that was not a logical response to the mighty army of Egypt, but when did fear make people logical?

They were such strange days that even a child could feel their strangeness. For months the adults had been talking in serious, anxious tones about “plagues”; I remember the frogs (which we children thought were rather funny), and the giant hailstorm, and the locusts, and all the rest, but it was all a bit unreal since those plagues weren’t happening to us, just to our Egyptian neighbours. Only when I grew up, and heard the story repeated, did I begin to understand the sequence of events, and how our parents’ whole world was being turned upside down.

For me reality broke in when we reached the sea. We were camped there when the Egyptians came, and the fear that ran through our camp was something you could taste and feel. I remember someone screaming at Moses, “Have you brought us here to die?” and someone else laughing, in a tone that chilled my bones, “weren’t there enough graves in Egypt?” I was too young to understand, but I was frightened by the clamour and the yelling. I buried my head in my mother’s skirt. Then Moses spoke, and the clamour grew still. There was a darkness between us and the Egyptians, so that we could no longer see each other. Then, from nowhere, there came a wind, perfumed with a wild freshness that I have never smelled before or since, and the waters divided. It was a night so different from every other night, and all I felt was fear.

There was hubbub and confusion as we started moving forwards together, and then, by that strange light that shone from behind us, I saw the mighty wall of water. Several times the height of a man’s head, it reared up to our left, and if we hadn’t known that the Egyptians were right behind us, and that the punishment of runaway slaves was a fearful thing, I doubt if many would have crossed. That terrible wall of water loomed over us as we trod across the damp uneven ground that had been the seabed such a short time before, and we clutched each other tight and tried not to look. I could feel the tremble in my mother’s hands, and I know she was not the only one. It was a dreadful road we trod, and many, I suspect, had very little idea of what was happening. Then we reached the other side, and just as the last of our people clambered up to dry ground, the first of the Egyptians tried to cross the sea. Forward they came, and I can dimly remember the people asking why we did not hurry away (as if we could outrun the chariots of Egypt), but Moses shook his head and commanded them to wait. There seemed to be much confusion among them, certainly they were moving very slowly! Then, I think Moses moved his hand again, or something like that, and all that weight of water came crashing down. The army of Egypt was swept away!

I remember that night now, it all comes back to me, but for many years I hardly thought of it. I had understood so little at the time, and so many more things happened afterwards, that I think I simply locked my childhood memories away. Somehow, at least in my family, it became one of those things we never talked about.

Tonight Moses spoke, before all the gathered people, and at last I remembered and understood. He spoke of God as being like an eagle, an eagle who stirs up her nest so the young birds are forced to leave it and discover their wings, but then hovers beneath them and bears them up, so that they will not cannot fall. I remember the fear, and the horror, the people around me crushed by so much change; but I also remember the wonder and the joy. This is salvation, this is what it looks like when the Holy One Himself breaks into our little, broken lives. We are let loose into terror, the old order falls away beneath our feet, but then we are borne up by eagle’s wings, and carried where we never dreamed to go. We are saved into glory, and glory is a fearful thing, but nothing less can be our destiny. He will lift us, He will carry us, until we learn to grow wings ourselves, and then we will soar with Him, into love.

The Wilderness

2010-04-17T16:19:00.001+10:00

She had never thought the wilderness could be like this: soft, scented, crowded with female flesh, high pitched voices and petty jealousies. But only when she named it as the wilderness, did it start to make any sense ..

The wilderness had always been important to her people. It was where Adonai took his people to deal with softness and doubt and make them strong. It was the place where He took them so that they could know Him. In the Beginning, Father Adam had been sent forth into the wilderness when he had disregarded the word of the Holy One. There he could begin to learn what holiness means. Father Abraham had walked through the wilderness to come to the promise, Jacob had met Adonai himself in the wilderness, or so her uncle’s stories said, and as for Moses .. She always found herself shaking her head when she thought of Moses. Such a strong man, but it was the wrong kind of strength. Forty years he had to spend in the wilderness to get his faith remade, and then he was sent back into the wilderness to lead the people through the forty years they needed there until the slavery was burned from them by the desert sun, and they were blown clean from the darkness of Egypt. “We are a stubborn bunch, my people,” she thought. King David had spent his time in the wilderness too, learning how to be a king, and there was Elijah, and great Joshua ..

She sighed. It was easy to see why they went to the wilderness. Adonai had called them to be great leaders, and in the wilderness they met Him and let go of what they had been before. But she was a woman. And she was not walking the road of greatness, but of bitterness and shame. She had thought she would marry one of the young tradesmen whose fathers were friends of her uncle, and be an honoured Jewish wife, the help of her husband and the strength of his bones. That was the life she understood, the life that her upbringing had been preparing her for. Not this uncleanness, this shame, this separation from her own people. When she had said yes to her uncle (as she must, anyway, since he was her guardian) she had thought only of honour and excitement. She was young, and for a while she had begun to guess, from the quick look in men’s eyes, that maybe she was beautiful. It had felt so good to be recognised.

But here she was, just another pretty girl among so many. They did things to her body that amazed her, and taught her things that made her blush. Her days were filled with pointless idleness and petty gossip. If she had to spend the rest of her life in this harem, surely she would go mad. This place, with its soft cushions and perfumed places, was the desert of the heart, and she could not understand why she was there. Her uncle had said that it was the will of the Holy One that she should be taken here, he had also said she must keep it secret that she was one of the exiled people. He was a wise man, but did he understand this strange world of women? Day by day he came to enquire how she was, and to encourage her that this was all part of Adonai’s plan.

She did not understand, and yet, she assented. Why the Holy one would put her in such an unholy place was mystery, but if this was her wilderness, then here she would grow strong. She would find a way to know the one who the prophets said was so near, and who cared for His people. She could not imagine what use she would ever be behind the harem walls, but if this was her wilderness, then here she would learn faith. She would not be a little girl any more. But how could Adonai ever use her in such a place as this?

The Feast

2010-04-10T18:39:00.000+10:00

She had always been on the outside, in the cold, bleak miserable darkness. She had always wished she could be an inside person, sitting at a laden table, with warmth and light, surrounded by good friends who really loved her, and who were glad to receive her love. Inside people always looked happy. They sat there is abundance, and all their needs were provided, but, best of all, they belonged! She wanted so badly to belong like they did, but she was an outside person, and outside people didn’t belong.

The truth was, outside people didn’t even belong to each other. They made room for each other when they needed to, because life was easier that way, no one had the energy to be always fighting. But they didn’t love each other, they used each other, and counted themselves lucky to be used. It was better than being ignored, at least if someone was using you they gave you back a momentary sense of your own existence, and if you were smart you find a way to use them back at the same time. It wasn’t what she wanted.

As long as she could remember, she had wanted to be an inside person. Out there, alone in the dark, she would sidle up and peek through their windows. She would gaze longingly at their little clubs and households, the comfortable chairs, the smiles softened by the warm firelight, the way they would look at each other, touch each other .... There was always food and drink, indoor people never seemed to go hungry, but most of all, they belonged!

But there was one place she returned to again and again: the King’s palace! It was large, it was richly furnished, crowded with people, and the tables were barely visible under all the food. But mostly it was because of the King himself. He was so beautiful! If only she could belong to Him! To be in the same room as Him for the rest of her life would be Heaven! There were letters over the door of the palace which seemed to spell out a message saying anyone was welcome, but once or twice, when she had had tried to walk in, the guards outside had turned her away. She wasn’t good enough. She was dirty and ragged and alone, there was rain in her hair and tears in her eyes. She understood why they turned her away, she would soil the beautiful palace just by stepping inside it.

She tried to forget about it, but she couldn’t. Other outside people didn’t seem to care, but she cared desperately. She couldn’t stay away.. Night after night she pressed up close against the windows, growing weary and weak with longing. One day she was so desperate that, scarcely noticing what she was doing, not even thinking about her own unworthiness, she walked straight past the guards and into the banquet chamber. Unbelievably, she had made it inside. She stood against the wall, out of the way, and watched and wondered.

After a while she grew tired of standing. It was precious and wonderful to be inside, but it wasn’t enough. She still didn’t belong. A cruel voice whispered in her heart that she had only got in by accident, and if the King saw her he would surely have her thrown out. So she cowered in the shadows, afraid of drawing attention to herself. Sometimes she would venture close to one of the tables on the outermost edge, but the moment she approached the people there would huddle together and spread out their elbows, making it very clear that there was no room for her there.
She was crying again, slow, silent tears that managed to make her face look even dirtier. Distressed that, even in here, she was no closer to her heart’s desire, she found herself calling out, in a cracked and broken whisper, “My Lord and My King!”

No one could have heard her. No one could have possibly heard her amongst the noise of the feasting. Those nearby showed no reaction at all. Yet, unbelievably, the King had heard. Impossibly, He rose from His place and was walking towards her. For a moment she thought that she would be condemned to something even worse than being thrown out. But there was no mistaking the smile on his face, the love n His eyes. He looked at her as if she was the only person in the room. He was by her side, his arms were around her. “Come, “ He said, and that one word was enough. He drew her with Him, to the centre of the room, to His own table, to the chair right next to His. She sat down in wonder. With His own robe He wiped her clean -- her hands, her face, her feet – and His robe was as white as before. Then He reached out, and with His own hands, the hands with the strange scars, He served her bread and wine ..

Vale Michael Spencer

2010-04-09T11:56:00.001+10:00

In the not-yet we wait, on the nearer shore,
In this place on broken flesh and flaccid dreams,
Missing you already, who have barely gone,
Knowing this river is the great abyss
We cannot cross alone.

It is not enough
Right now, to know that our God waits us there,
We need Him here, right now, right here, to hold us,
To tell us loss is not the final word.
The last foe prowls
Cruel on the crumbling edges, and his icy breath
Crumples us tight with fear we barely name,
For us, for you, for all we dare to love.
It is hard to be a human in this place,
Or speak of grace within the monster’s grip ..
And yet we know he is an empty thing.

Oh Easter God!
Meet with us here in the place of desolation,
Tell us again the price is fully paid
Show us again how momentary is death,
How short the path of darkness we must tread
Until we reach that sun which goes not down.
Hold us in promise
Through mystery and fear, until we reach,
That certain place where life abundant springs,
And Death, the great impostor, is no more;
And all Creation, caught in one embrace,
Dances with joy before our Father’s face.

The Darkest Day

2010-04-03T07:27:00.001+11:00

It was so hard to keep breathing, as if every part of her apparatus – throat, lungs, all the in between bits whose names escaped her at the moment – had been rasped raw by emotion, and struggled to keep working. She had to get out of the house. If she stayed here any longer, something inside her would explode. Snatching her coat and wriggling haphazardly into it, she almost ran out the door (or at least as close to running as her breathless, uncoordinated state would allow.) The raw Spring air, heavy with the smell of greenness and wet earth, seemed a cruel counterpoint to her need.

She was aimless at first, but when she saw the village church looming in front of her, habit turned her feet in that direction. This was the place which had hallowed and legitimated all the important moments of her life: her wedding, her son’s baptism, the funerals of her parents, the strange, cold funeral of the man who had once been her husband, the man who had grown so strange and bitter and remote that she had watched his burial with an unacknowledged feeling of relief. But not this one! This was the death that must not happen – the loss that violated nature, love and reason.

Here, inside the church, alone in the failing light of ending day, she was free to express her grief. Even now, it was so hard to put it into words. But words were all she had: the telegram with its stark message, the one that other mothers all over Britain were receiving, “Missing, presumed dead.” And there, just below the superscription to herself, the name of her son, her only child. “Jimmy,” she whispered in a cracked voice, and the name released a few scalding tears, like the first spatter of drops that come while the storm is still waiting to burst.”Jimmy ... my Jimmy ..” No one had ever told her that grief could feel so much like fear, that she had to clench her fingers tightly to the edge of the pew and hold on to the world, so that it wouldn’t begin slipping sideways and tipping over, slowly and inexorably, into the huge, bottomless crater that now existed in the centre of her soul. If jimmy was gone, what was left? All those hours she had spent nurturing his body into life, coaxing him to eat, nursing him through childhood illness, keeping him clean and tidy (what was that strange relationship between little boys and dirt?), teaching him right from wrong, agonising over him in the secret places of her soul .. what was the point if all that carefully cherished life could be obliterated by an impersonal bullet? What was the point of her whole life if the one she had kept struggling for was now just another statistic on the War Office files?

She realised that she was angry, very angry. With some nameless German boy with a gun who was probably even more frightened than her son? What was the point? Who was really responsible for this travesty and futility? Who created the whole sorry, sickening mess? To her own astonishment, who had always been so reverent and correct, she found herself shaking her fist at the whole kit and caboodle at the front of the church all the pious panoply of faith; and owned that she was shaking her fist at God. Her inarticulate fury found words: “How can you do this? Do you have any idea how it feels to lose your only son, to see the treasure and darling of your life disappear into the darkness of death?”

Her words hung in the silence, reverberating in their accusation. She raised her tear-brimmed eyes, almost expecting a thunderbolt from heaven There was none. Instead her eyes fastened on the crucifix at the front of the church. Vividly she remembered when the vicar before last had introduced it. There had been outrage from the more “low church’ segment of the congregation, she remembered signing a petition of sorts that had circulated, protesting the imposition of such a “papist” symbol. The petition had been ignored, the crucifix stayed, and after a while no one had paid much attention any more. It was just another part of the furniture.

But now she noticed: the twisted body of the young man, every muscle taut with struggle. No quick bullet had released him, this was hellish agony. And his father? Whatever was happening there, in that immeasurable transaction between life and death, sin, justice and forgiveness, the Father cared. Her father cared. In the death of the son, a door was opened so that all could become his children. But that took nothing away from the pain and sacrifice of that moment. He did know how it felt, he knew exactly. Somewhere there was hope in that. Her heart was broken and her hope was spent, but those nail-pierced hands still held a different kind of hope – strange and difficult, written in a language her soul could barely speak, but no less real for that. She did not know how she would go on, but somehow she knew that she would. She was not yet ready to hear an answer to her cry, but she was ready to believe that one day an answer would be given. And when it was, it would be altogether right. She began to cry softly. Her loss might be just a statistic in the official reports, but there was One who had counted every precious hair on Jimmy’s head. And he grieved with her.

Palm Sunday

2010-03-28T07:53:00.003+11:00

It was the year following my bar mitzvah when my father decided we should go up to Jerusalem for the Passover, leaving our business in my mother’s capable hands for a couple of weeks. He wanted to go a few days beforehand, in order to spend some time with his aunt, the widow of a merchant, who was getting elderly. He had not seen her for some years, and felt it was his duty to visit her while she still lived. And now I was a man, he wanted me to see and know Jerusalem, the city of our God, and to eat the Passover there.

So we set off. It was two days journey, three days really, since we stayed in the house of one of my father’s friends for the Sabbath, and I was amazed by the steepness of the final climb. I had not realised the city was set up so high – I hadn't been there since I was a little boy. Many others were entering the city, it seemed we weren’t the only ones coming up for Passover early. But the people seemed to be moving very slowly, and I was beginning to feel impatient. We could hear shouting up ahead, and began to look at each other anxiously. Was it a riot? Even at thirteen I knew how dangerous that was, how volatile a place the Holy city was when all these extra people crowded into its narrow streets, and how swiftly and brutally the Romans would act if they thought things were getting out of control. It was something we wanted to keep well away from: if the Roman soldiers swept through with drawn swords they wouldn’t be stopping to ask first if you were just an innocent bystander. Maybe it was because of the temple, and the continual stream of sacrifices, so that the whole place smelled of blood and incense, but already in my mind I associated Jerusalem with death.

But as we drew closer the shouts didn’t sound dangerous and threatening, it was more like the sound of a great party taking place. Intrigued, we pressed forward through the hesitant, milling crowd, and, as we drew closer, the words became clearer:

“Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.”

Those were Messiah words, and I pushed forward between the people, straining to see who or what was there. My father had hung back, later I was to realise that he had seen would-be “Messiahs” before, and still read danger in the situation. But for me the excitement was wonderful – could it really be that the awaited one had arrived, right now, in front of me, to take for himself a greater kingdom than David and Solomon?

And then .. I saw Him. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps a king with a glittering entourage, perhaps an angel. What I saw was a man. A man in a simple peasant robe, seated on a young donkey. There was nothing remarkable about His face, feature by feature He could have been anyone, it was, if you can imagine such a thing, everybody’s face. But it was the expression on His face that haunted me. The crowd might have been delirious with excitement, but He wasn’t. I expected Him to be smiling, maybe waving, drumming up more response from them. Isn’t that what people in such positions usually do? But He wasn’t like that. It obviously wasn’t something He needed or desired them to do. It just was. He didn’t look exactly sad, just very solemn, perhaps like a priest who is totally absorbed in performing the sacrificial ritual.

And then, I remembered. I knew where I had seen that look before. Once before, when I was just a little boy, we had been in Jerusalem for Passover, and, just as the Law says, we had been taking our lamb, our unblemished Passover lamb, to be killed. At first the creature had been skittish, playing around, resisting the tug of the rope. But suddenly, when we were nearly there, it quieted. It was odd, almost as if it suddenly knew its fate and surrendered. When we brought it to the priest, it did not struggle, but stood there, with that calm, withdrawn look in its eyes. I did not know what it meant, it was to be another ten years before the Christians came to my town and I understood, and wept; but I stood there that day, amidst the noisy crowd, and I wondered.

No fear in love?

2010-03-20T20:21:00.001+11:00

“There is no fear in love,” she repeated to herself, “perfect love casts out fear.” She had always found these words of the apostle comforting, but now they frightened her. They frightened her because she was afraid, and if she was afraid, did that mean her love was lacking?

She turned the thought around in her mind. Martyrdom had always been a possibility, the authorities didn’t like Christians very much, and every so often things would get nasty. Local officials, or sometimes even the emperor himself, would suddenly decide that Christians must be exterminated, or at least cowed into submission, and experiment with new refinements of cruelty to achieve their political ends and satisfy the blood-lust of the crowd at one and the same time. But not here, not now, and not to her. It was easy, in the fervour of worshipping her crucified and risen Lord, to say, “Yes, I would gladly die for Him!” It was much harder here, in this dank, dark, foetid underground cell to feel the same enthusiasm.

And, did it have to be wild beasts? She could have faced sword or arrow; even fire, though she shuddered at the thought of the pain, did not invoke the same wild terror. But she had always been scared of creatures – even mice evoked in her that shuddering horror of being devoured.

But did this fear, this soul-shaking, gut-devouring fear, mean that she didn’t really love Him? She looked around in the almost-darkness at the others in her prison. Some were praying quietly, some even seemed to be asleep. And she was supposed to be like them, so full of faith that nothing done to the body could ever worry her very much? She wondered if anyone else was going through this same torment of terror as she was, but how could she ask without disturbing them. If anyone had a morsel of strength, a morsel of comfort to hold onto at this hour, the last thing she would want to do would be to take it away from them. If only there was a way she could know it too! In the silence of her soul she cried out, “Lord, help me, for I cannot help myself!”

All was quiet, all was still. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the panic pressing in, and her imagination was gripped by a strange picture. There was a hillside garden, with twisted, ancient trees, and the grass moving faintly in the breeze. A full moon was overhead, and in its cold bright light she could see a man kneeling, utterly alone, and the distress on his upturned face was terrible to see. A little away, almost out of sight, other men were sleeping. Didn’t they care? And then, between one breath and the next, she realised what she was seeing. She could almost hear the words: “Let this cup pass from me.” Deep inside her a silent sob shuddered, followed by wonder.

How could this be? If ever anyone had loved perfectly ... and yet, there was no doubting the anguish on His face, the agony of His words .. Oh, she knew all the theology they had told her, how it was humanity’s sin and death and pain He was entering into, but still, it was Him, and He was afraid.

Another picture rose up before her. There was no mistaking this one: the hill, shaped like a skull, the three crosses on its summit. And there was no mistaking the words that He said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Here, in terrible pain, gripped by the very teeth of Hell, He was in absolute peace. Why?

And then she understood. He knew the Love that held Him, the love that flowed from the Father through the Son to all mankind. He was going home to Love. And so was she. A short pain, a little space, and there would be nothing except Love, perfect love, the Love that casts out fear. On that Love she could rest every thought, every fear. It was God’s love for her, not her love for Him, that was going to bring her home. For it was the very same apostle who had written, “We love Him because He first loved us.”