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...

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...

"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." 2 Cor 4: 8-11

The last few days have been quite hard. A series of items of bad news from different directions. I guess that is the experience of many in troubled times. I'm still not sure that I know how to deal with any of it. In the midst of all the bad news though I read the passage above. Paul sounds so confident. He states the case as fact. We are not crushed, not abandoned, not destroyed and not in despair. Perhaps he's right. But I would be lying if I said I was not discouraged.

A couple of times this week I have muttered under my breath "It would be nice to have some good news for a change, Lord." And I know that sounds almost like sacrilege, because what is the Gospel if not good news? But that is not entirely how I meant it.

This weekend I visited my mother again. Yesterday she seemed very low. She almost didn't engage. As I have said before (in my posting the Long Defeat) it is heart-rending to see her slowly slipping away. Today by contrast she seemed happier. We sang a bit. We walked. I quoted old films and made her giggle. She even managed a sentence of four words at one point. It was nice to see her smiling. I guess this is good news. But somehow it doesn't quite feel like it.

Living in the light of tomorrow

"For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory." Romans 8: 29-30 (New Living Translation)

In my last entry - A Different Reality - I concluded that despite being in right-standing with God, all too often I choose not to live like it. I know that God is love and yet I act as if he can't love me. I know that God forgives, but I don't forgive myself. Because I don't understand his plan I assume that there is none and I make my own.

Unfortunately, the realisation that I live this way is the easy bit. Changing the way that I view the world is much harder and at this point I am not really sure I even know how to. In the end it makes my prayer for vision all the more fervent. Lord God, reveal your Kingdom to me and my part within it.

A different reality

"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." - Morpheus. The Matrix

2009 got off to a slow start. The good intentions of Christmas and New Year pushed gently to one side by the cares and concerns of daily living. Discouragement and uncertainty abound. I see it in the news. I hear it in the stories of people I meet. I feel it within me. Omissions, recurring failures, doubts and fears that drive me away from God.

Last week heavy snowfall broke my plans and left me with a free weekend. On Sunday I decided to exploit my freedom and visit a different church. There I was brought face to face with Gideon interpreted in the light of Paul's letter to the Romans. The underlying message was simple. God sees our world very differently to the way that we see it. In God's eyes frightened, subdued Gideon is a mighty warrior. In God's eyes our discouragment and uncertainty still work together for good.

My minor failures are no obstactle to God. Any distance from him is of my own making. In the The Message I see now - striped right through the letter to the Romans - a subtle truth. God sets me in right-standing with himself. I knew this before of course. In theory. But whilst this reality is all-pervasive somehow, all too often, I choose not to live in it.

But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:21-24 (The Message)

A thrill of hope! The weary world rejoices

"But amidst all these rejoicings Aslan himself quietly slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn't there they said nothing about it. For Mr Beaver had warned them, 'He'll be coming and going,' he had said. 'One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like to be tied down - and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild you know. Not like a tame lion'" - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (C.S.Lewis)

On Christmas Eve I find myself thinking about God's timing. History pivots on this night. The old testament leans forward towards it. The new testament is possible only because of it. The message renders Romans 5:6 as "Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready."

As an evangelical it is too easy to race on forwards to Easter. To view this night solely in the context of the future. But perhaps tonight we, like Mary, should treasure the moment in our hearts. For God acts when he chooses to act. His coming, his transformation, his salvation are on his terms, not ours and our understanding of his actions is so very limited.

In the words of the carol

"Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by his cradle we stand.
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here come the wise men from orient land.
The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friend.

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Behold your King, Behold your King."

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.