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Loving God,
As the long days grow shorter,
The dark nights draw in, and
the lights burn brightly
Over this town, so
Shine your light of love,
Shine with passion
colour, and energy,
May those who look
Upon the lights be blessed
To see shining through
Each bulb and installation
A pale reflection of your glory,
May they be drawn then to the true light,
The Light of the world
In whom no darkness dwells.
Yesterday I attended a communion service in a neighbouring Circuit, the whole service ministered to me but probably most particularly the sermon, as we were reminded of the God who likes to be asked. The text was Luke 11: 5-13, and the encouragement given was to not only be persistent but actually "cheeky" in prayer. I rather liked that because it blew the cobwebs away from an image of God that it is so easy for me to fall into believing, and I suspect that I am not alone! That image is of a God who although not distant does like us to get things right, to be living in the right way and wanting the right things! We were reminded that there are things that we don't pray for because we fear that they might not be acceptable or "right". To be cheeky in prayer then is to have such an open relationship with God that we dare to risk the cheek in the knowledge that we will be given good gifts and that if what we are asking for is ultimately harmful then somehow through the openness of that relationship we will know and will be guided to something much better.
All of that got me thinking about what I would really like to ask God for, so I decided to do some soul searching and I have come to the conclusion that more than anything I want wisdom. Now I am not being pious or self righteousness, I am simply acknowledging my need and pondering the number of times in life when I could and should have come to God in prayer rather than simply ploughing ahead in my own wisdom and strength.
I began to ponder why I didn't ask, and I found the answer to be quite revealing about my own relationship with God; I don't ask because I don't have the "cheek" to, because I don't see myself as acceptable to him, and I feel that somehow I should get it right on my own! How odd, because this is not the God I preach, the God I preach calls me precious and honoured in his sight and delights to receive me into his presence, the God I preach invites me in through the veil, into the secret place of prayer where I can open my heart in intimate union with him. So who is calling me unworthy? The answer is simple, I am! So maybe I need wisdom to re-establish a right relationship with the God that I preach, the God who welcomes me with open arms, the God who enjoys my company, the God who knows and loves me completely!
I return to the reading that the sermon was based on and hear Jesus words afresh:
"Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?”
I have been pondering the tendency for all publicly shared Christian testimony to be positive and up beat, it is almost as if our lives and stories as well as our bodies have a Sunday "acceptable" best, the image we feel we ought to project to the world to show that our faith is strong and that God is able! As I listen to these stories I am struck quite often by their brittleness, not that I am saying that good news stories are not valid and have no place, but that we seem to think that these are the only stories we should be telling, stories of praise and victory are our Sunday best stories of faith, and yet we have many more stories to tell some of which will reveal depths and riches of comfort and God-given strength that we dare not reveal because through them we will show ourselves battered and bruised, chipped and flawed and that is not how we want to appear.
I am not judging here, I am speaking from real experience, I have spent years telling my Sunday best testimonies without plumbing the depths beneath, trying to cover up the chips and cracks in my character with a veneer of Sunday best acceptability. I can see now that in doing so I have not only denied my truest expression of faith but also denied the God who delights in filling us, these cracked and battered vessels with his glorious presence, somehow by "putting on a show" I deny his work within, I am in effect saying that I have to show by my strong capable outward experience that he is able, and by doing so all I project is a false if well meant image.
The truth is I am a battered and chipped vessel, I have faults and flaws and I need the God who fills me with his love, power and compassion for living, I need to accept his treasure with this frail clay pot of my ordinary life, and if I am going to be true to my story I need to allow the glory of God to shine through, his resurrection power gloriously at work in my life bringing comfort, healing and transformation. I love this quote from Dallas Willard:
Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The twisted, mis-shapen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat and the old -
For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.
Seriously...
Blessed are the ‘seriously’ crushed ones.
The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs.
The broke and the broken.
The drug heads and the divorced.
The HIV-positive and the herpes-ridden.
The brain-damaged and the incurably ill.
The barren and the pregnant too many times or at the wrong time.
The over-employed, the under-employed, the unemployed and the unemployable.
The swindled, the shoved-aside and the replaced.
The parents with children living on the street.
The children with parents dying in the rest home.
The lonely, the incompetent and the stupid.
The emotionally starved and the emotionally dead.
Does earth have a sorrow that heaven cannot heal?
For to all such as these the present blessedness of the kingdom is offered.
(from Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy)
"Does earth have a sorrow that heaven cannot heal?", no of course it doesn't, and the God who revealed himself to us in human form knows what it is to struggle and strive and suffer, and in that struggle the depths of his love are revealed to be released in power as the grave was overcome. From the grave he comes with wounds in his hands, feet and side offering us the chance to join him in his resurrected life. Surely to place our hands into the hand of the one who bears such wounds is to accept our need and wounded-ness. It is as wounded healers that we are filled, released, comforted, healed and empowered, and all of this is an ongoing process as he walks with us through the depths and the valleys as well as the peaks of our everyday lives.
I wonder then if our most power testimony is actually "and yet I know that God is with me, and there I find comfort and strength to take the next step", I have to say that this is my testimony at the moment, and as I share it with those around me I find an increasing willingness for them to also share their brokenness and concerns with me and there is a raw reality to this sharing that is deeper, much deeper that our Sunday best stories of faith. I think I am going to leave this post there for now, I'd be interested in your thoughts.
You know it is going to be one of those days when you spend a good 5 minutes hanging dirty washing out on the line, I have to admit I kept thinking this isn't right, but it did take a while for me to twig that I hadn't actually washed it! Safe to say it is now back in the machine, and thankfully I can laugh at myself rather than bursting into floods of tears, but the truth is it could have gone either way! Despite that madness in some ways today is a triumph, well I am choosing to look at it like that, because I finally managed to make an important phone call, one I have been procrastinating over for days...
Indecisiveness, procrastination and forgetfulness are reminders for that I am struggling with depression, reminders to be gentle with myself and not to beat myself up, reminders that it OK not to get everything done yesterday, and more than anything a reminder to trust myself to the one who calls me into his rest. For years my favourite Bible verses have been Matthew 11: 28-30, I particularly like Eugene Peterson's rendition from The Message:
“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.”
Today as I ponder this those words " Come to me, get away with me and you'll recover your life" resonate strongly, and while the urge to curl up on the sofa and watch junk TV is strong, I know that I am better giving myself into the arms of the one who will carry me through this time, the one who will walk the shadowed valley with me and promises never to leave me. Even better than that if I do choose to curl up and watch junk he will sit with me and hold my hand until I am ready to do something more for he knows me through and through and knows my weariness and my burdens.
This morning ( or is it afternoon now?) he has reminded me that when I need it he will carry me:
Like a shepherd, he will care for his flock,
gathering the lambs in his arms,
Hugging them as he carries them,
leading the nursing ewes to good pasture.
(Isaiah 40:11)
And while I tend to think of myself as mature, today I can only summon the energy to come to him today as a lamb who needs carrying, and that is OK! It is OK for today is not a day for scaling mountains, striking out in search of fresh visions or running ahead with a new initiative, today ( and tomorrow I suspect) are days for gentleness, healing and restoration, my soul is downcast, yet I long for streams of fresh and invigorating waters, my heart is battered and bruised, yet it yearns to beat to those unforced rhythms of grace, and it will for there is hope, but not today, today I need to enter into the rest that he offers, to give myself to it and to allow it to work in me...
Too often in the Christian life we expect ourselves and others to be on top and upbeat, seeing any other response as a lack of faith, but that is not true, life has many cycles, and some of us just don't have upbeat personalities, another blogger talking about her dealings with depression and medication says this:
They are like an emotional anaesthetic that dull the pain and allow you to function at a basic level; you can make it out of bed, you can brush your teeth, you can go to work – you can pretend to be ‘normal’.
For this is one of the most prevalent misconceptions about depression; that the person is somehow just being self-indulgent and all they need to do is “pull themselves together” and get up and go. These people live a privileged existence to believe it is as easy as that, for pulling yourself together after you’ve spent a lifetime pulling yourself apart is easier said than done. If you don’t believe this, drop a cup on the floor and see how easy it is to smash, then collect all the pieces and see how long it takes to put them back together. One incident, one trigger is enough to send a depressive into a negative cycle, but in my personal experience there has never been a single incident that suddenly made me think “you know what, I feel good about myself now”. It is probably that my brain is wired to have a predilection for negativity; for instance I often have – apropos of nothing – recollection of random memories from throughout my lifetime in which I’ve said or done something embarrassing that causes deep feelings of shame. I never suddenly remember that funny thing I said that made everyone laugh, or the intelligent thing that made everyone think – I remember the awful thing I said that makes mecringe. The idea that it’s just a matter of being a bit more stoical and soldiering on merely indicates the lack of understanding. Depression not only robs you of any zest for life, it can also literally rob you of the energy you need to survive on an everyday basis. Getting out of bed, washing, eating can all become insurmountable tasks that you just aren’t capable of. I once went eight days without eating and I didn’t even notice, because depression is all-consuming and subjugates everything else in your life, it is not a foolish thing you can just put to one side and forget about; it is everything, it is relentless, it is forever.
The raw honesty of her words is challenging, there is a possibility that rest may include medication, and that is not wrong, but neither do I find it to be the whole answer, I am more than a bunch of random chemicals that need re-ordering, and for me both the physical and spiritual aspects of life are important factors here. So rest for me might include swimming as well as listening to music, and allowing myself to take things one step at a time ( I met two groups of people yesterday and was exhausted), and it will probably mean giving in curling up and watching some junk TV, but I am up, and dressed, and have made a phone call, the washing is now washing, and that makes this a good day!
through the labyrinthine corridors
of my mind I press on,
pushing past the shadows,
tuning out the voices,
that tell me I can't,
that I've been that way
before and failed,
"best turn back"
they whisper,
"better not to fall again",
but this time,
this time, I will not be deterred,
I am seeking the deeper path,
searching for the voice within
calling deep to deep
and deeper still,
echoing with my hearts
fullest yearnings ,
crying
"Abba, Father"
where I know as I am known,
freed to become
who I truly am...
My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. (1 John 3: 18-20 The Message)
These verse popped up on Tablet's my Bible App today, and they could not have been better timed, they offer a challenge to live within the love of God and not to count ourselves outside of it. As I pondered them today I realise that I have a tendency to develop the defense mechanism of living outside of the love of God. I don't deny that God loves me because I know that that would be a lie, but I effectively shut myself away from that love because it would be overwhelming, so overwhelming that it would sweep me off my feet and carry me out to the depths where I could do nothing but surrender to it, and while I know it is what I need, and it is certainly what I preach, there are times when it feels safer to stand upon the rock of my own construction even if that means listening to the voices of self-criticism.
To move beyond self-criticism means dropping my defenses, admitting that I have messed up and accepting that God loves me anyway, that God knows the true me and longs to be able to help me to reach my full potential. Richard Rhor's daily meditation also spoke into this today:
"Jesus did say very clearly that we had to “lose our self to find our self” in several different settings. For much of Christian history this was interpreted as the body self that had to die, and for some miraculous reason this was supposed to make the spiritual self arise! It did not work, and it allowed us to avoid the real problem. What really has to die is our false self created by our own mind, ego, and culture. It is a pretense, a bogus identity, a passing fad, a psychological construct that gets in the way of who we are and always were—in God. This is our objective and metaphysically True Self.
There is a true me, a God created, God dreamed, God envisioned me trying to be heard and longing for release, bits of that me are evident at different times, but the false me, the ego centered self demands attention and delights in putting me down and denies the chance for my inner voice to be heard. I think this struggle to become real is highlighted well by Paul in Ch 7 of Romans where he speaks of his struggle to become his true self. If we are honest we all struggle with this in some way or another, and while I would not like to say that the depressives among us struggle more than others, I wonder if somehow we have a heightened sensitivity to the voices of self-criticism, and also to the desire for release.
If we can recognise this we might begin to see it as a gift, to hear the groaning of our inner being in tune with the whole of creation that longs for things to be put right, recognising that gift can be deeply challenging though, and like many others I have tried at times to mask that inner groaning with many unhelpful things like alcohol and excessive spending, things that dulled the pain for a while but never lasted, things that destroyed more than they helped. Sadly for some that destruction becomes the thing that overwhelms, and many of us have been on the edge of it. Yet even there on the edge the love of God is present, the love that hears the groaning of our deepest self and longs to set us free. None of us are beyond the reach of that love.
So how do I silence the voice of my inner critic? The truth is that I cannot do it, I can only give myself to the one who can, to allow myself to be hidden with Christ in God, to accept his words of acceptance and to lift my feet from the rock of doubt and fear and allow myself to be carried and overwhelmed by love itself, and that might mean plunging to the depths for a while where the treasures of darkness are found, where his light is the only light, and where with a true openness of heart I can allow the healing work of love to minister to my soul.
The problem is the moment the words " I am depressed" pass our lips others often become uncomfortable with our honesty, and so there is a tendency to hide it, to struggle on bearing the burden of a sense of deep failure and shame, and the voices of self criticism win. Today I choose to say with confidence, I am depressed, I am struggling, but I choose to hear and identify with the call ofmy inner voice's longings, and all will be well...
To love others we need to love ourselves, and we can only do this when we embrace what and who love is...
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