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this thick white
blanket obscuring
everything
hiding the way ahead
becomes
a mirror
to my soul as
I whisper prayers
into the stillness
and wonder
if they
make it
to their destination
and
here in
my heart
all is quiet,
all is still,
is there
a mystery
unfolding
yet unseen?
It is just over a month since I was signed off from work with stress related depression, this is an ongoing health issue for me and one that I will probably always have to deal with. Like other long term conditions such as diabetes depression is not something that simply goes away, it can be maintained with treatment, and needs monitoring to ensure a deep relapse does not happen. I have been back at work for two weeks now following a phased return to full time working that has allowed me to ease myself back in.
Having time off has allowed me to look back and to be honest the signs of an oncoming bout of depression were all there; extreme tiredness, an inability to enjoy life,for example I took no joy in our vegetable garden this year, last year I really enjoyed planting, tending, growing and harvesting, this year it has all seemed like too much hard work.There have been a number of contributing factors to this "relapse" into needing time out, and they accumulated so slowly that it was hard to spot what was happening until the straw that broke the camels back hit the pile and everything fell apart.
I am now back at work, the increased medication is being monitored by my G.P. and I am taking one day at a time. It is difficult to explain to people who have never suffered from depression quite what it is like, doing something to cheer me up may well make me smile, but that does not mean that I am better. Also I find myself saying to folk over and over again; "it is not your fault", because I have been open about what has been wrong with me many people assume that they have somehow been a burden. In 99.9% of the cases this is simply not true!
For myself I have to acknowledge that I do have good days and bad days, the last couple of days have been bad days and it has been a struggle to heave myself out of bed to get on with life. So I am learning to be gentle with myself. On Thursday I took a couple of hours out to walk and take photos, on Friday I did what had to be done and then simply enjoyed Jo and Dave's company and listened to stories of their honeymoon (not too many!) Today is my day off, so I have been fiddling around with bits of housework and will go out for a walk with Tim later.
I will continue to have good days and bad days, but am glad to say that the bad days are growing further apart, I am heeding peoples advice to be gentle with myself and am making use of the ministerial counselling service. I will also continue to be open about the fact that I suffer from depression, it is far too often a hidden illness and carries a stigma with it that it does not deserve. To many people suffer in silence and feel ashamed of their illness, but while it is so often invisible it is very real and can be extremely debilitating.
Through all of this I maintain a firm faith, I know that God has not and will not let me go, and I know that in him and with him I can continue to become the person he has called me to be because his grace is sufficient for me. Accepting God's grace is for me a key part in healing, to recognise God's grace as sufficient means accepting that there are many things I cannot do, that I need to lean upon him and sometimes upon others to accomplish what needs to be done. Accepting God's grace means being open about my weaknesses and flaws and learning to love myself anyway. Accepting God's grace means not beating myself up over things that may be left undone. I return again to the verses that strengthen me and give me hope, placing my hand into the hand of the one who invites the worn out and the weary to come to him:
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30)
I want to learn to live freely and lightly, and I cannot do it on my own!
It is Christ the King Sunday this Sunday, and I am struck by my reaction to it especially as we are moving towards Advent. It is so easy to enter the season of Advent focusing on calenders and candles and ultimately the babe in the manger who we celebrate as God with us, and yet in doing this exclusively we forget that Advent also calls us to look towards the Second Coming of Christ, an event we have no date for, but one we are warned in Scripture to be prepared for.
The Second coming calls us to lift our eyes from the comforting manger scene (even unsentimentalised it is in many ways safe) and to focus upon Christ the King who WILL come again in power. Now I have a suspicion that this makes us uncomfortable, because truth be known we are not prepared to meet this Jesus. Just think on this description from Revelation 1:
12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lamp-stands, 13 and among the lamp stands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
An awesome sight to be sure, far from the babe in the manger, or the crucified vulnerable Christ, this Jesus demands our attention in a new way, and yet he is the same as the next verse reveals for he speaks those familiar words "Do not be afraid!"
Do not be afraid- I am the Alpha and the Omega- the first and the last! In this Christ all things hold together. In him there is power and great glory, and now none of that power of glory is shielded from our eyes. It is no longer contained in human form, and yet he speaks those familiar words to us, "Do not be afraid"...
And we need not be afraid, for this is the one whose voice spoke not only worlds into being, but knit us carefully together in our mothers wombs, this is the one whose thoughts towards us out number the grains of sand on the shore, this is the one who gave everything for us:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
(Philipians 2)
But the resurrection changed all of this, and now we can dare to chose to see him and to receive him as he is, the one we caught glimpses of through the Scriptures, calming the storm, feeding the 5,000, raising the dead, and bringing sight to the blind. Christ is King, and it is in this transfigured, glorious powerful and awesome Christ that we can place our hope. And he comes to us with words of peace, lifting us to our feet and speaking with compassion, " DO NOT BE AFRAID!"
Reading the Word in Time on the Methodist Church web-site this morning has got me thinking. The disciples were concerned with who will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus brings a small child amongst them and points to her humility. Today's writer Ric Stott brings another perspective:
Now, either children were very different in first century Palestine or Jesus doesn't know much about children. They are so often consumed with who is the fastest, or prettiest, or who's got the biggest slice of cake or the best toy. "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" sounds like a pretty childish question.
I pondered that for a while and I have to concede that he is right, children today (certainly in the west) are often consumed by these unnecessary questions, what they look like and what they have are seen as all important- and they become marks of status. Why are children like this? Well quite simply because children are doing what children do, they are emulating the adults in their lives!
Although we don't like to admit it we live in a culture that is consumed by image; just think back if you can to Susan Boyle's first appearance on X-Factor. Can you remember the judges faces and the audience reaction before she opened her moth to sing? Of course she has gone on to become a successful recording artist, and has undergone the "required" make-over, and the fact that, that makes us all more comfortable with her is an indication of the shallowness of our culture and an indication of our willingness to paper over the cracks of our brokenness with surface remedies!
These surface remedies become stumbling blocks to reality- we are no longer in touch with the true value of our humanity- we fail to declare that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, we forget that we are loved for who we are and we contunually try to make ourselves something other, and loose touch with our true value in the process. We are so surrounded by the stumbling blocks of our culture that we fail to notice that we are falling!
Church is not immune to these stumbling blocks, and the more middle class we become the further we find ourselves from Jesus teaching. If children were different in first century Palestine then what were the stumbling blocks Jesus was referring to? Could they have been the demands of religion, the rules and regulations of life that prevented people from living in freedom? Here I think we find a double problem in the church of today- for while we are very often slaves to our culture we also rebel against it, we create our own rules and sets of criticism and end up not knowing which way to turn. We become victims of our own double standards.
All of this is a long way from Jesus call to live freely and lightly:
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30)
How then do we escape the stumbling blocks and recover our lives? Ric Stott suggests:
"Perhaps there is another childlike quality that Jesus is alluding to – that ability to live fully in the present, experiencing life deeply without concern with what happened yesterday or worrying about what will happen tomorrow. A child can run joyfully with total abandon across a beach, delighting in the splashing of the waves and falling exhausted, giggling into the sand in a way that most adults are far to uptight and concerned about self-image to emulate."
Living freely is not as easy as it sounds for to live free we need to break free from the demands of our culture and religious notions, we need to discover the God colours and flavours in our lives so that we can respond to Jesus challenge:
"Let me tell you why you're here; You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.
"Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven. (Matthew 5: 13-16)
Maybe in this we will begin to be those who:
"Prepare for God's arrival! Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God. Fill in the valleys, level off the hills,smooth out the ruts, clear out the rocks.Then God's bright glory will shine and everyone will see it. Yes. Just as God has said." (Isaiah 40: 3-5)
I have been pondering one verse today, here are three translations: (Ephesians 1: 22)
The church is Christ's body. It is filled by Christ. (NIV)
The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence. (The Message)
And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself. (NLT)
I am wondering how they speak to us and challenge us- I'd welcome any thoughts...
More food for thought from Pam here.
Body of Christ by Sylvia Ramsey
I have chosen to preach on Matthew 12:9-21 on Sunday concentrating on the prophecy of Isaiah, and I want to think on what it is to be a messy church in a messy world. As often my thoughts begin in poetry- though I rarely use it in preaching:
bruised not broken,
dimly lit
a smouldering wick,
we share your
glory,
dented and battered,
limping, crawling,
holding out
the light we have,
we share your
glory,
and you receive us,
lift us
heal us,
over and over,
you help
and fill us
and we go on,
bruised not broken,
dimly lit
a smouldering wick,
we share your
glory...
OK hands up, I admit it I am a worrier! Even though I know that worry chokes faith and distorts vision I still worry, I worry about the future, I worry about the present, I worry about the past, and all of this can be exhausting. I guess that is why today's lectionary reading really challenges me. The disciples have been with Jesus as he fed 5,000 with a five loaves and two fish, they have watched a similar miracle in the feeding of the 4,000 and at each event there were baskets of food left over, food to spare!
As Simon Sutcliffe says over at the Methodist Church's Word for Today:
This suggests that there was an abundance, and that within the activity of Christ there is an extravagance, a generosity that has no comparison. But the disciples are still worried about lunch.
Thinking on this even for a short while it seems easy to understand Jesus response to there men, worrying about having brought no bread:
"You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?"
So it occurs to me that worry does not only choke faith, it blinds it, and I have to admit that I have been in the position of the blind more than once, and I find myself like Bartimaeus sitting at the roadside calling out for Jesus to have mercy upon me. In fact if I am really honest I find myself there today and I need Jesus to help me to see the possibilities there are in him. I need him to help me to lift my eyes to a wider larger vision than my own limited one.
Perhaps it is something in my character that I identify more readily with the psalmist who cries out over and over "Lord why have you abandoned me?" or "Lord have you forgotten me?", but even then I am reminded that the psalms often come around to a renewed declaration of faith and trust even when things seem dark or impossible. I am challenged by the command in 1 Peter 5 to cast my cares upon God, or as the Message renders it:
Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you. (1 Peter 5:7)
Living carefree does not of course come naturally to a worrier, it requires a huge leap of faith, so today I find myself in sympathy with the disciples worrying about bread. But I am also called to remember the many, many times that God has answered prayer, the many times when provision has come form unlikely places, the times when the way has become smooth before us even when the path has seemed impossibly steep.
So this morning, I am choosing to break free of those worry weeds that choke faith, to gather them up and to place them at the foot of the cross in sure hope of the resurrection to come, for he is able to do immeasurably more than I could ever ask or imagine.
they came,
and with compassion
you healed them,
with a touch,
through a prayer,
hundreds were
set free,
made whole...
+
they came
travelling
long distances,
carrying burdens,
helping the lame,
their hope renewed,
sure in your
power and your love...
+
they came,
and you touched them,
fed them, loved them,
and now we your body,
called to display
that power, that love,
do we live it,
or restrain it?
+
they came,
they still come,
dare we
place ourselves
into
your hands?
+
Nothing could turn me away that day, I was desperate, my daughter, my precious daughter needed relief and release. I was ready to fight for her if I had to, and as it turned out I did have to! No mother can stand by and watch as their child is tormented, so when news of him reached me I had to seek him out, and I was not about to be turned away.
“I was not sent for you,” he declared when I first approached him; not for me, how dare he, there were blessings enough in him for everyone. So I stood my ground, willing to take a lesser place, believing that he could, that he would do what I asked. He saw us as Gentile dogs, an insult for sure, but I was ready to beg for crumbs, and when I did his face changed, and he looked upon me differently; “ Woman, great is your faith, “ he spoke softly now, “let it be done for you as you wish.”
It needed no more, no touch, no fancy prayer, no magic potion, she was healed, freed, released instantly, and in that moment I received my precious child back. We left rejoicing, the blessings contained in him will be withheld from no-one from now on!
First of all, I am sure that regular readers of this blog (crazy people), and anyone who follows it via Facebook will know that it was my daughters wedding at the weekend. We had a wonderful day, but first I needed rescuing. I headed into Leeds on Friday with a car loaded up with flowers, pumpkin soup, bread, cheese and salads etc, the former for decorating, the later for feeding those who had come to help.
The problem is that I rarely drive into Leeds, if I need to visit I tend to catch a train, because Leeds with its complex one way system is a nightmare to navigate. I turned off the motorway that forms part of the Inner Ring Road, and the road I wanted was closed. Against Christopher's advice (I'll listen in the future) I turned the wrong way...
A few more wrong turns and we were completely lost, and we were running late! "Help"- it was a simple prayer uttered in desperation; I stopped the car, got out and asked a passer by for directions, he was a visitor, then a voice over my shoulder; "can I help?" I told him the problem. "Don't worry" said the cyclist, "it is quite complicated, but follow me". He took off at speed (almost 30mph) and guided me round a complex system of roads right to the church. I wound the window down to thank him, and to invite him to join us for lunch, he smiled and said simply "if you are going to St George's you must be good. " Then he winked and took off so quickly that I'd swear he vanished.
Was my helper an angel? I wonder, we had a similar experience this summer, and I remain open-minded. I've heard accounts like this before, and would not rule them out so easily!
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