Contentment

"I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength" Philippians 4: 12-13 (NIV)

A few weeks back I was privileged to hear Lord Carey speak on this passage. On the Christian calling to be content. It is not a promise that we will perpetually be blessed so that there is nothing that could make us discontent, but rather that we will be provided the strength to remain content in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.

As I reflected on this I realised with surprise that was becoming my experience. I have visited my mother many times since the onset of her Alzheimer's. Whilst I still struggle often with what has happened to her I look forward to these visits. More than that. I enjoy these visits. Spending time with her is tinged with sadness, yes, at all she has lost. But it is still a joy.

In thinking this I wonder how many other joys I miss out on because I am not able to persevere through pain to that place of contentment.

Beyond healing

"But Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.'

'Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.'" Isa 49: 15-17 (NIV)

My mother's Alzheimer's continues to progress. Each time I see her she seems to shrink a little. There are simple things that she used to do that she no longer does. Sometimes it takes a few minutes work to get a spark of recognition. Yet, somehow albeit down at a visceral level, she still seems to know who I am. She would never say my name. If anyone asks her who I am she replies "I don't know". Yet her eyes light up when I talk to her. She giggles with me as I gently tell her stories from her past. She happily puts her hand in mine and walks with me - or kisses me on the nose as I lean forward to her.

Over the last few weeks I have been quite low - my thoughts and faith spiralling slowly round this single question. Do I believe in a God who can heal and yet chooses not to? Because if he cannot heal then he is not God.

This morning's sermon was some comfort. Isaiah 49 - an ideal passage for Mothering Sunday - seems tinged with bitter irony when faced with the reality of Alzheimer's. And yet it brings me back to the cross. My name, my mother's name, carved on the saviour's wounded hands. It makes me look back at the prayers that have been answered. Yet it is small comfort for the ones that have not...

Christmas presence

One of the many television advertisements which bombard our conscience to conform at this time of the year has the slogan "Christmas Solved". It plays on the feeling that Christmas represents a problem. It is as if somehow going to a particular website to order all our presents in one go can take a weight off our minds and free us to get on with our lives.

Yet this year I feel some sympathy with that. This year Christmas does feel more of a burden than a blessing. Not because of a list of imaginary tasks I have to accomplish, however, but rather in coming to terms with reality. My Christmas day will be spent in a care home with my Mother. In many ways it is as far away from an ideal Christmas as I can imagine it to be.

In my childhood the future possibility of Christmas with relatives in care never occurred to me. Whilst I may not wish for a return to a childhood Christmas, I do wish that she were better. That she understood more of what was going on around her. That I knew that she was happy (or at least contented - I'd settle for that).

Yet in another sense, however, it is closer to ideal. Christmas will be simpler. Many of the unnecessary distractions will no longer be there. Instead it will be about family. About love and care. About presence rather than presents.

This morning I was faced with the reality of Christmas for millions round the world. Refugees in Congo. Political prisoners in Zimbabwe. Peace on earth seems a distant dream in uncertain times. But in struggling myself to locate the joy at the heart of the Christmas story I find myself closer to their experience, and closer to the original story. Christ comes into an imperfect world not to cure it, but to care. To live and suffer alongside a broken creation. To offer a glimpse of a hope that is to come.

The people walking in darkness

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth." East Coker (TS Eliot)

Advent, I was reminded this morning, is a time of waiting, of anticipation. A time for reflection. It leads up to Christmas, which is a time of joy, of fulfilment and surprise. The outcome of the waiting transcends expectation. God's gift, whilst long anticipated, is nevertheless unexpected. God's solution to the worlds problem begins not as grandiose intervention into human history, but in the cries of a child in stable in a backwater town.

I'm not very good at waiting. I get distracted and wander off on to other things. But a distracted waiting is not really waiting. All too often it degenerates into attempts to find my own solution. To construct my own gift. To frame my desires, my hopes, my agenda. Yet as Eliot implies true waiting has no agenda. It's not that it is without hope - but rather that hope arises out of the prospect of the surprise rather than in the definition of what it will be. My hope is in the character of God, not the expectation of what he will do. Or at least it should be.

The focus of encouragement

"This is what the LORD says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43: 16-19 (NIV)

Isaiah 43 refuses to go away. I keep running into it everywhere I go. Each time I encounter it, I spot something new. This weekend I was brought face to face with verse 18. "Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past". Contrast this with Isaiah 46 vs 9. "Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me."

So which is it? Forget the former things or remember them? Despite the contradiction Isaiah 43 and 46 share a similar structure. They start with an assurance of God's commitment to his people. They move on to an injunction on how to approach the past. But Isaiah 43 arises out of a context of God's judgement and a commitment to look after his people moving forward, whereas 46 arises out of a context of God's historical care for his people and the way that he has looked after them in the past.

The message then, is clear. Don't focus on your past failures or your own plan for the future. Focus on God and what he has promised. Focus on God and what he has done.

Surprises not dissapointments

"So, friends, take a firm stand, feet on the ground and head high. Keep a tight grip on what you were taught, whether in personal conversation or by our letter. May Jesus himself and God our Father, who reached out in love and surprised you with gifts of unending help and confidence, put a fresh heart in you, invigorate your work, enliven your speech." 2 Thess 2: 15-17 (The Message)

Another encouraging prayer from Paul. Looking back on the past few months I can see many disappointments. Things which did not work out the way that I wanted or planned. But the gifts of confidence or hope are there also. In going through the disappointments it is surprising how much God is present. He has not always answered. He does not appear to have intervened often. But he has been there. Encouraging. Comforting. Restoring hope when hope has faded.

Moving forward I am praying for that fresh heart and enlivened speech. I guess it may be a dangerous prayer, because the process of gaining a fresh heart is not without pain, but it is nevertheless an exciting prospect.

The joyful anticpation of things unseen

"But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.

We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you" Ps 33: 18-22

It seems everywhere I look at the moment I see waiting, from the words I read in the bible to the friend who has just had a hospital operation postponed for the second time. And then last week I read these words in Daily Bread.

Biblical hope is stronger than wishing and wanting. It is an expectation grounded upon our Father’s word. Corrie ten Boom knew she could wait in hope in a Nazi concentration camp. Joni Eareckson Tada learned to trust in his holy name even when she wasn’t healed. We too have good reason to hope, even when life seems hopeless, because God’s love for us is unfailing and he is faithful in all he does.

It is almost as if hope and waiting are two sides of the same coin and one does not make sense without the other. Yet while waiting continues unabated, hope ebbs and flows.

The stature of waiting

"My soul is waiting for the lord
and in his name I trust,
more than a watchman for the morning,
more than a watchman for the dawn.
More than this my soul is waiting,
waiting for the lord" Adrian Snell - Out of the deep (Ps 130)

Reflecting on what I wrote the other day about being in the middle state between "To be and not to be" I recalled to mind some words of Henri Nouwen. He has quite a lot to say about waiting:

Waiting is active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. The bus is late? You cannot do anything about it, so you have to sit and wait.

But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who wait are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That's the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment in the conviction that something is happening where you are...

It brought to mind the title of a book I've seen on my mother's bookshelf. The Stature of Waiting (W H Vanstone). This morning as I was reading some more from Nouwen I find him quoting that very book. Perhaps I need to borrow that one as well!

As I reflected further the following came to mind: "I know not that for which I trust, but I know him in whom I trust". It sounds like a mangled quotation - but if it is I cannot find who said it. It does, however, sum up where I find myself.

Confidence and vision

"May God our Father himself and our Master Jesus clear the road to you! And may the Master pour on the love so it fills your lives and splashes over on everyone around you, just as it does from us to you. May you be infused with strength and purity, filled with confidence in the presence of God our Father when our Master Jesus arrives with all his followers." 1 Thess 3: 11-13 (The Message)

I love the little prayers that Paul peppers into his letters. Particularly the way that they come alive in Eugene Peterson's Message translation. I look at that prayer and say, yes, I want that. A clear road would be nice. A vision for the future and a path to follow toward it. Love that is so overwhelming it showers out to others. A robust hope in God, and a real knowledge of his presence.

It seems like an appropriate note on which to start a New Year, after a wonderful break from which I did not wish to return and a touch of the post-holiday blues.

Hope

"We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love." 1 Cor 13: 12-13 (The Message)

At some stage soon I really ought to return to Matthew's gospel, and the search for the kingdom - but not right now. The last few weeks have been interesting. Madly busy moving house and a number of other things going on which have sapped my energy and taken my focus off God. This morning I had a bit of a rant at him, but through the day my attention has been directed to two scriptures. The first was the passage quoted above. The second is the refrain from Psalm 42 & 43. "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

I'd been thinking a bit about hope in the last few days, after a friend gently chastised me for saying that I held out little hope. I'm not entirely sure how any of this relates. I'm tempted to conclude that maybe what hope I had was misplaced; but I feel that is perhaps too pat. But I'm grateful for the injunction to hope unswervingly and love extravagantly. It has lifted my eyes, and turned my thoughts to praise even if the fog still preses in...

The long defeat

"Together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat." Galadriel (The Lord of the Rings)

Tolkien's Elves are strange creatures. Jolly yet serious, mischievous yet wise, joyful yet without hope. Over long ages they have witnessed the decline of all they hold dear, and yet still they sing. Treebeard the Ent says this of them. "They always wished to talk to everything , the old Elves did. But then the Great Darkness came, and they passed away over the Sea, or fled into far valleys, and hid themselves and made songs about days that would never come again."

Sometimes life seems like a long defeat. Fighting a battle where no victory is possible but which is still worth fighting. Like the fight to keep the quality of life for a slowly declining patient. I spent this weekend looking after my mother again. It's hard to see her looking so lost. She descends into panic so easily. No matter how much time you invest, she always reverts to it. And yet still I strive for hard-won smiles, even if they are all too soon replaced.

In contrast last week I was encouraged once again upon Romans 8 in the Message:

That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

That sounds more like a "Long Victory" to me. Somehow - I don't know how - I hope Paul is right. That the expectation is valid and all will come good. Maybe it's in those times when things don't seem to work together for good that we need to believe it most.