Blessings

I owe a lot to my friends Miles and Sarah, who now live in posh London. They used to live in Stanford in the Vale where I was vicar. Sarah has a lovely voice and used to lead worship for us. Every now and then she makes a comment on Facebook about a singer whom she's discovered. When I've found them on YouTube, she invariably proves a great talent spotter. One was Alison Krauss. Yesterday she posted, "Just discovered the amazingly beautiful voice and lyrics of Laura Story - loving Blessings." So I followed it up, and of course she's right! Blessings on YouTube

On her website, I found this account by Laura Story, which I reckoned was very helpful and rather good theology.

"The album that I did three to four years ago happened right after my husband went through surgery for a brain tumor. So a lot of the ideas that I was writing about then were just very fresh, about how do we worship in the midst of trials. So fast forwarding a few years later, a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have gotten better with his health, and a lot of things have not. We pray for God to bless us, but what does it look like when I spend four or so years praying for healing for my husband that never comes? I feel like we’ve kind of gotten to a place of having to make a choice. Are we going to judge God based on our circumstances that we don’t understand, or are we going to choose to judge our circumstances based on what we know to be true about God? Not that I choose the right thing every day, but I’m learning that every morning when I wake up to choose to trust God.

"And that’s what 'Blessings' is about. It’s just considering that maybe the blessing is actually found in the absence of the thing that I’m praying for. No one wants a brain tumor, and no one wants a severed marriage and these things that we pray that God will reconcile. But even though this situation is definitely nothing that we ever would have asked for or prayed for, there has been a depth of intimacy with the Lord that I’m not sure I would have known apart from such a hard road that we’ve walked. And in the end, if I’ve learned to cling to that old rugged cross all the more, I truly can say that I’m a blessed person."

http://laurastorymusic.com/2011/09/story-behind-the-song-“blessings”/

Isn't that a paradoxical insight: "maybe the blessing is actually found in the absence of the thing that I’m praying for"? I wonder what Laura means by learning "to cling to that old rugged cross". (It was a favourite funeral hymn among Stanford villagers, which always fascinated me...!) I suspect it's to do with learning to trust the love of the crucified God in the teeth of everything. 

Through the... narrow door

In Closer to God (that's the Bible reading notes than Jane and I use) yesterday there was particular good note, I thought, on Luke 13.18-30, with the heading "You have to choose". If you, like me, are too lazy to look up passages when they're mentioned, here it is!
'Jesus said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches."
'And again he said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened."
'He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And he said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.' Then you will begin to say,'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!' In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."'
Richard England commented:
"You know that awkward moment in a blossoming relationship where the girl (it's usually the girl) thinks to herself, 'Why won't he just ask me out?' Perhaps you've seen it among your friends or it's happened to you. What it indicates is that in a romantic relationship, it's not enough to hang out and say nice things to each other; you have to make a choice for a relationship to go forward.


"Perhaps one of the most deeply held errors about God is that, in the end, he will let everyone in. Today's reading shows us how mistaken that is. While God's kingdom will grow until it reaches every part of the planet, we still have to choose to enter it. Even those who could say to Jesus, 'Hey, we hung out with you, eating and drinking' - if they don't choose to follow him - will in the end hear him say, 'I don't know you.' We want to believe that being a good person is enough, but we're like the boy who hangs around the girl without realising that you have to make a deliberate choice. God desires a relationship, and a genuine relationship  cannot be coerced. It has to be chosen.


"This is a painful truth for many of us, but we cannot let ourselves be drawn into the mire of well-intentioned platitudes that claim 'it'll all work out'. Jesus transcends that. Love must be chosen."

That, he concludes, must make us pray for those we love who haven't chosen that Love. I think I'd add that that choice may be very tentative at first like fingers linking rather than hands firmly interlocked. The extraordinary thing about God is that he does not reject even the most hesitant approach, the tiniest seed of faith.

I quoted in full one of my favourite poems in I Choose Everything, which is George Herbert's Love, which begins: 
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
        From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
        If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";

         Love said, "You shall be he."...