Year: 2019

“Truths to Live By” (Part 5) – “Don’t Try to Understand” by Sue Jones

Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things;
      no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
  You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
     Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
             things too wonderful for me to know.”

Eleven years ago I was in a spiritual wilderness.

My faith had been shaken to its core by several painful events. My oldest child had died suddenly at the age of 17. My long marriage didn’t withstand our grief; my husband left two years later for someone else. Then, a bone infection contracted during a routine operation left me gravely ill.

I hadn’t stopped believing in God, but I no longer trusted in his goodness.

As I slowly recovered, I felt called to read my bible with new eyes, and to study theology, hoping that I would be able to understand why God allows awful things to happen.

Reading the book of Job initially made me as angry as Job himself. God takes everything away from Job, including his family – apparently for the sake of winning a wager. When Job is shown to remain faithful to God despite all these trials, he is rewarded with a new wife and new children.

I found this impossible to understand. How could precious, unique individuals, each made in the image of God, be “replaced”? How did that make everything better?

I was wrestling with this question when I reached the passage quoted. A distraught Job has been railing against God, who replies by asking why he expects to understand his purposes: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand”. (Job 38:4). God then indicates the beauty and unfathomable nature of his work in creation, and Job finally realises that these are things “too wonderful for [him] to know”.

When I came across those words I realised that I could not possibly hope to understand what God’s plan was for my daughter’s short life; I have to trust God that there is one, and that it is too wonderful for me to know.

Learning to trust God has given me my faith – and my life – back.

A Prayer

Heavenly Father, 

I cannot begin to comprehend your majesty, nor the depth of your love for me and the whole of your creation. 

I pray that you would fill me with your peace, as I humbly put my trust in you. 

In Jesus’ name.

Amen

Tomorrow – Savi Hensman, “Don’t Give Up”, Isaiah 42: 4

 

 

 

“Truths to Live By” (Part 4) – “Don’t Panic!” by the Revd Nigel Evans

“Don’t panic!” A familiar phrase, and the way The Message begins this verse from Isaiah 41.

Panic, fear and anxiety was felt many times in the years before I ‘came out’. As a son, a husband,  a father, and as a vicar in the evangelical tradition for 18 years I was in constant denial about my sexuality. Deep down however, I knew the truth, and feared what would happen if anybody found out that I was gay.

During those nights filled with anxiety, troubled sleep and night terrors this verse brought me comfort and strength. I knew in my head the truth of these words – God was with me in my fear. God alone gave me the strength to get through each day – something I prayed each morning. The verse reads: “I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you.”

These words kept me going for over 30 years. Until I chose to come out, and everything crumbled around me. It was then that I knew not just in my head but in my heart the real truth of these words. For so long I believed, that living out my true sexual identity would put me beyond the boundaries of God’s love. How wrong could I have been!

As I relinquished control, and allowed God to take the reins of every part of me, I became aware of the deep strength of his love, of the tight grip he has always had on my arm to stop me from crumpling and despite the fear that was undoubtedly present he has filled me with hope and joy.

There has been pain of loss. But fear and panic has subsided, replaced by joy as I live the life God always intended for me. His promise – to do the same for you.

A Prayer

God of strength, you are always with us. You will never leave us or abandon us and you hold us when we feel weak.

Enable us to be strong and courageous this day. Help us to not be frightened, and not be dismayed, as we live out our lives as your precious people.

Amen

Tomorrow – Sue Jones, “Don’t Try to Understand”, Job 42: 2 – 3

“Truths to Live By” – “The Battle is God’s” by Lucy Gorman

Does anyone else have those Bible verses that just pop up every now and again?

This is one of mine, I can’t even say I know the story surrounding it that well, but this is a verse my Mum gave to me when I was younger and every now and again when the going gets tough it miraculously springs to mind.

Working towards LGBT+ inclusion within the Church can also feel like a bit of a battle at times. I hesitate to use the word ‘battle’, because that’s not how Jesus calls us to respond to each other, but at the same time, you and I know, it’s hard work!

We all have our own personal battles. In the interest of honesty and openness, mine at the moment are my recent diagnosis with Crohn’s Disease and realising my sexuality isn’t quite as definite as I thought it was!

Take a minute, what’s yours? What’s going on in your life that feels like a bit of an uphill struggle?

Whatever we face in life, whether personal, or what feels like an ongoing battle within the Church, this verse, to me is reassurance. Reassurance that however vast the issue before us is, or seems, God is in charge, and the battle is not yours but His. Verse 17 goes on “Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged. Go out and face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.”

We do not face our battles on our own, we do not have to feel the entire weight they bear, they are God’s and with his unfailing love, and promise we can get up, go out and face them day after day because the Lord is always with us.

A Prayer

Lord, Help us to remember, that you are with us through the good and the bad. When life seems too hard, too much of a battle, remind us that we are not alone and that when we draw you close, by our side we can conquer anything.

Amen

Tomorrow – the Revd Nigel Evans, “Don’t Panic!”,  Isaiah 41: 10

 

 

“Truths to Live By” (Part 2) – “Don’t Conceal the Truth” by the Very Revd Dr Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans

During most of my childhood my father had a secret alternative family. He had a longstanding affair with a woman in the next village by whom he had had a daughter. This was known, or at least suspected, by my mother, and eventually by my sisters and me, but it was never confronted or spoken of. It hung in the air for years, generating pain, anger, suspicion, and endless little lies designed to cover up the great big Lie that no one could face.

I used to think I had the stupidest family in the world, but now I know we were far from exceptional. It made me determined that I was never going to live the kind of lie that messed up our family. When I became a Christian in my teens John 8.32 was my natural motto. I started writing ‘the truth will set you free’ on the flyleaf of all my books.

I didn’t realise at the time that in joining the Church I had swapped one dysfunctional family for another – only in the Church, the lying was mainly about being gay.

Still later I discovered the irony that the same text is the motto of the Anglican Communion!

The habit of lying about gayness is ingrained in the Church and is age-old. In this dysfunctional family honest gay couples who want to declare their faithfulness in marriage are forbidden to do so by bishops of whom several are or have been secretly gay or bisexual themselves.

Truthful gay clergy and ordinands are excluded and unlicensed; the untruthful are accepted and promoted. Those in control try to convince themselves that the lying is necessary to hold the show together. The Big Lie spawns endless little lies and cover-ups and corrupts everybody.

But the truth is, only the truth sets you free and saves you.

We have seen it happen in our society, and it is starting to happen in the Church, however hard the leaders and their lawyers try to stop it. The edifice of lies is crumbling, and great will be the fall of it.

So here’s another favourite text and Voice of Hope: ‘Stand up, hold your heads high, for the day of your liberation is near’ (Luke 21.28).

A Prayer

Lord Jesus, you are the way, the truth and the life.

Give us courage to be true to you and true to ourselves, and set us all free to live and love in the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Amen.

Tomorrow – Lucy Gorman, “The Battle is God’s”, 2 Chronicles 20: 15

 

“Truths to Live By” (Part 1) – “Do Not Fear, You Are Mine” by Erika Baker

In the Protestant Church in Germany, into which I was baptised as a baby, every baptism candidate is given a special bible verse, a baptism verse, to guide them on their Christian journey. Mine is:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine”.

I am, first and foremost, redeemed by Christ, called by name, belonging to God. The denomination I was baptised into is incidental; the denomination I worship in now is incidental. Denominations and churches are human constructs, different human attempts at representing God’s Kingdom on earth. They themselves are not “the Kingdom”.

That gives me an extraordinary sense of freedom and independence.

My validation, my identity, the purpose of my life, the core of my being – they come from God, not from any Church, not from any people. I am loved, desired, safe. I’ve known that all my life and nothing has ever been able to shake that knowledge.

That’s not to say that I haven’t often grappled with who this God is and what this world is about. Nor does it mean that I’m completely detached from the world and that Church and people are unable to hurt me.

Far from it!

But because my identity is not bound up in my Church, I am more able to work towards change where I believe change to be necessary, with passion but with a sense of detachment.

Yes, I can be hurt, very much so. But no person, no Church, can destroy my faith or my knowledge of who I am before God.

Redeemed. Called. His.

A Prayer

Gracious God, we thank you that you have called us all by our names, each one of us as we are, and that you tell us not to be afraid. 

We thank you that we can know that we are yours.

We hope and pray that this knowledge may strengthen those who suffer at the hands of those who see themselves as the guardians of our faith, and who so often become barriers to it. We pray that those of us who are rejected for who they are may not lose their faith, but that they may recognise that their prosecutors have no power over them.

We are all safe in your love.

Amen

Tomorrow – the Very Revd Dr Jeffrey John, “Don’t Conceal the Truth”, John 8: 32

 

“Hope in a Desert Place” (Part 5) – “God Never Lets Us Go” by Steven Hilton

I may well be the only ordinand in the Church of England who took a 14-year sabbatical between their first and second years of training. I’m rather pleased actually – I needed it!

If I cast my mind back to Westcott House, a fond memory (I hope it is an accurate memory…) is of witnessing the newly recast House bell being baptised. Inscribed on it in now slightly-faded red is this verse – in Greek – from S. Paul’s first letter to the Church in Thessalonica.

In 2010, when I had come to the conclusion that I rather enjoyed life outside the cloister and wouldn’t be going back, my friends and I discussed what tattoo might mark this very personal decision. And like many personal decisions, it was a heady cocktail of one part bitterness, one part joy and one part hope (in what, I wasn’t clear).

I knew immediately, as if inspired from on high, what tattoo I needed, what tattoo I craved. Across my shoulders, written in Greek (about the only New Testament Greek I can recite well…), is this verse from 1 Thessalonians.

Now given its location, I don’t see the tattoo very often. Sometimes in the mirror, or on holiday when we are in and out of the sea, or having a drink with friends as the sun sets.

Perhaps someone we don’t know will ask, ‘what does that say?’ And I have to try and navigate a simple way into a complex story which, back then, was about not quite being able to let go or – as I now know– God refusing to let me go.

Dear Reader, don’t believe everything you read. The ‘wilderness’ – time away, time apart, time escaped – is never wasted. It can even be enjoyable, holy and wholesome.

Find your wilderness, today. Let God search you out. And let God find you.

Listen for the call of the Faithful One, just around the next corner.

A Prayer

Lord God, we praise you because you don’t wait until we are ready to be called but call us anyway. Make us loyal to the calling you have placed on our hearts, this day and always. In the name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Tomorrow – the Revd Sarah Jones, “Holy Ground”, Exodus 3: 1 – 6

“Hope in a Desert Place” (Part 4) – “Springs in the Desert” by Clare Bryden

The psalms express all human emotions and feelings, from the highs of celebration and praise, to the lows of grief, complaints, and curses. The psalms pull no punches, and continue to be patterns for our approach to God in prayer today. The reality is we go through tough times, often struggle to cope, and need to vent.

Much of my spiritual journey has been in the wilderness. The Exodus was a metaphor for me for many years. In the mid-1990s, I spent two years testing a vocation to the religious life. During that time I took the risk of falling into love, expressed in my imaginative prayer as taking the hand of Jesus and leaping into the abyss with him. I can confirm that the abyss is an agonising place.

The psalms of the community’s daily office were a major source of strength. I could have chosen any number of verses that sustained me. I chose Psalm 84 as it tells a story: the reality of dryness, the locus of the heart, the journey, the hope of water bringing life. My heart and its yearnings were key, the heart not as we think of it today as the seat of emotion, but as the centre of my whole being including its fathomless depths.

I spent a lo-ong time in the dryness and pain of the abyss, before a wise spiritual guide suggested that I enter my imagination again: to walk along its depths and see it over time become a place of springs, then a river, and at last open out again into a broad place. God makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside still waters, restores my soul. (Psalm 23).

That doesn’t mean to say that my journey has ended or I have stopped wrestling with God. I continue to identify with Jacob striving the whole night with God at the ford of Jabbok. Like Jacob I refuse to let God go until God blesses me.

A Prayer

O wilderness God, I do not ask to avoid the journey and the struggle. Only help me to trust that you are always beside me holding my hand fast in yours, even when all seems dark and dry, and that you will lead me to a place of refreshment, and blessing at the end.

Amen.

Tomorrow – Steven Hilton, “God Never Lets Us Go”, 1 Thes 5: 24

“Hope in a Desert Place” (Part 2) – “Longings” by the Very Revd David Monteith, Dean of Leicester

Psalm 42 has been a vital companion whether as the song ‘As the deer’ by Martin Nystrom or at Cathedral Evensong with Herbert Howell’s anthem ‘As the hart’.  The worship song taps into our emotional need for connection. The sultry harmonies of choral writing place us resolutely in the territory of yearning – for the fullness of God.

Psalms have origins but mostly these remain hidden. However, this seems to voice the experience of a downcast person, remembering their time in Jerusalem caught up in a religious festival. This memory reconnects them with others and with hope.  Yet the writer is conscious of the gap between this memory and their now isolated life and downcast spirit.  The chaos and thundering of a full river symbolises the overwhelming disquiet of the heart.

I’ve visited a site in upper Israel which possibly could have been this place. Under the shadow of Mount Hermon sources of the Jordan bubble up augmented by melting mountain snow.  I sat in the sunshine imagining the writer whilst watching salmon jump the water cataracts.

It was astonishingly beautiful. Why was this not enough?

This place has stayed with me. The experience of being in such a place full of glory yet to feel isolated and separated from the community of faith in festive mode is familiar.

It echoes the experience of many LGBT+ Christians who may be thankful and aware of God’s ‘steadfast love’ (v8). Yet we find ourselves praying ‘why are you cast down, O my soul’ (v11). There is a yearning for fullness of life whilst an array of issues and attitudes separate us from ‘the multitude keeping festival’ (v4).

With the writer we are invited to see the beauty we know, to recognise our alienation, and to speak of our longings for the fullness of God’s life.

Then through grace disquiet shifts to hope.

A Prayer

Gracious God, the hope of our longings, come close to us as we honestly voice our pain, and restore us to fullness of life amidst your people, for Christ’s sake.

Amen

Tomorrow – Elaine Sommers, “Flying High”, Isaiah 40: 31