“I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

It's clearly been a month since I posted on this blog because yesterday morning we were back in St Andrew's Church, Cullompton. Once again we were down visiting Jane's parents. We have developed a routine which means we drive down to Sidmouth on Saturday morning, spend the afternoon with the in-laws after I have ascended their Everest of a path and stay the night at the very convenient and comfortable Park and Lodge at Westcott.

Somehow we usually manage to arrive in Cullompton when they have "all-age" worship. This time it was a beautiful day. It had brought the tortoisehell butterflies out of hibernation in the church, around the windows and under the barrel roof. When Jane had manoeuvred me down the ramp, we were both given a pebble.... It became clear why soon. Jo, the children's worker, explained that members of the school's Kidzone Club of whom there were a lot present would be involved. And they were! She was telling the story of the two houses built on rock and on sand. When the rain came down, the water pistols came out and we got wet! And the house on sand went CRASH! The pebbles of course were symbols of the rock, and we'd written our names on them. They were also linked to Jesus renaming Simon as Peter the rock.

When it came to the prayers we were told to look under the pews where there were small containers of bubbles. "Now quietly think of someone about whom you're concerned or a worrying situation you're in. Then as a symbol of releasing those worries to God, blow those bubbles into the air." What a good action prayer! Since I can't blow bubbles anymore, I held the stone in my hand as I committed friends to the One who is the Rock. Somehow, for me at least, it was a more engaging form of prayer than the usual intercessions led from the front.

There is much more that I could comment on. They obviously have a talented writer of original worship songs - including action ones for children. I always like churches writing their own songs and singing new songs to the Lord, as the psalmist urged. And of course they sung one of my current favourites, My hope is built on nothing less (Cornerstone). I have been reflecting on why an old grouch like me should actually be so touched and helped by a service packed with all ages, but particularly children. I mean it all makes for a fair amount of chaos and "toing and froing", not exactly the passive reverence of much worship. Yet perhaps that is the point. It is very much worship. It is clearly surrounded by prayer. It's carefully prepared (160 pots of bubbles for a starter!). And it all focuses on God - and I suspect the presence of the children is a means of grace. "Unless you become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven": I have a feeling that in such services we are privileged to follow the kids into that Kingdom and receive from the King.

Thank you again, Cullompton!

How do I look?

I love this prayer by Bo Stern. To appreciate it fully, it's worth reading the context. So here's the post she wrote yesterday.
"A Prayer for Seeing

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 06:20 AM PDT

A couple of weeks ago, I was grabbing some groceries at Safeway when I noticed a man in a wheelchair who was in very bad shape.  His pale face shook from tremors and from working to keep his head steady.  At first I thought maybe it was ALS, but his healthy weight made me think otherwise.  Steve had just gotten his wheelchair, and I noticed that this man’s chair was red instead of blue and I wondered what brand he had chosen and why and just as I looked up, I caught the eye of the woman behind him.  I don’t know if she was his wife or not, but it was clear from her angry expression that I had been looking too long.  She rolled her eyes at me in disdain, clearly sick of feeling gawked at by countless passersby and protective of the man she loved.

My stomach sank.  I wanted to talk to her — to apologize and explain that I wasn’t staring out of curiosity or even sympathy, but empathy.  I’ve been in her shoes.  In fact, her shoes are my regular footwear.  I know how it feels to want to scream that the man you love is so much more than his condition or his wheel chair.  And I hate that I made her feel like an oddity instead of what she was:  a fellow-soldier, living on the battlefield of sickness and disability and trying to function in a world that doesn’t always understand.

Later, I thought about how easy it is to look at someone and imagine we know their motives.  I have done it a million times.  I’ve settled for a surface-level understanding which is often more dangerous than no understanding at all.  I need to remember that behind every face is a backstory, a history, a struggle.  And those stories make some more beautiful and some more broken (and maybe, for some, a little of each.)  And so I wrote this prayer and I’m committing to pray it often so I can learn to see people more clearly:

Father of all who are breaking beneath the weight of war,

Straighten and strengthen my vision

to see past skin and shell,

 beneath bravado and bluster,

and into the long-buried story.

Focus my heartsight on what eyes can’t see

 to love without reason,

hope without limits,

and truly believe

that everything possible with You

is dwelling in me.

Christ,

the Hope of Glory,

let me see."

I rather enjoyed this cartoon recently! I'd rewrite the second line to say, "How God sees you means everything". 

As Psalm 139.14 puts it, "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

    my soul knows it very well." 

Even being disabled and maimed doesn't stop the flow of God's love to us.

Does prayer work?

Last Sunday evening I preached about Philippians 1.19ff. I enjoyed it because people joined in.
Here's a version of it:

"Do you believe prayer achieves anything?  Really?

Do you believe the Holy Spirit makes any difference?  Really?

Paul in detention in Rome in AD62 (prob).  As far as we know never released, but executed within next 5 years.

Writes to the first church he planted in Europe - northern Greece - an imperial colony and tax-haven.

It’s a pretty healthy church, but with problems both outside and inside.

Back to the questions.

• Do you believe prayer achieves anything?  Really?

• Do you believe the Holy Spirit makes any difference?  Really?

Possible answers:

1. ‘Yes, and this is why I do.’

2. ‘Yes and no - in theory, but never for me.’

3. ‘No. I’ve seen no evidence to convince me.’

Answers from the congregation

“Yes. Because I’ve experienced several answers - not always what I’ve wanted! - when people have prayed for me.”

“As I’ve got older, I’ve come to know Jesus as my friend as well as my Saviour, and I’ve found him answering my prayers as I’ve come to understand his will.”

“I think we often find that God has answered our prayers - as we look back. Like for example our moving to Grove.”

I have a prayer partner on the other side of the world. It is extraordinary how often and how specifically her prayer requests are answered. 

Do you remember 3 weeks ago when Pope Francis called for people of faith worldwide to fast and pray (7 July) for peace in Syria, and what happened by the Monday?  From the imminent danger of US missiles to promise of Assad handing over chemical weapons… Unbelievable breakthrough towards peace!  A friend on Facebook reminded me of wartime national days of prayer, and the miraculous answers that followed (When the nation prayed).

Conclusion: God definitely does answer prayer now.

        

What does St Paul believe?

Verse 19 “I know that through your prayers and the help (God’s provision NIV) of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance”. 

He knows.  He knows their prayers will be answered.  He knows that the Holy Spirit will be at work on his behalf.  In fact, it appears that his “deliverance” would turn out “to depart and be with Christ”, which was far better (verse 23).

How does he know?

• Through relationship

• Through experience

Relationship

“I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Timothy 1.12).

He has met with Jesus - dramatically! - and lives his whole life with daily reference to him.  “So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2.20).

“So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 9.17).

Experience

Paul not only prays for the young Christians constantly; he also keeps asking for their prayers for him.

And for him prayer is a two-way conversation, not always comfortable!

“And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me” (Acts 20.22,23).

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12.8,9).

“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (James 5.16-18).                                        [NB Remember that “righteous” here doesn’t mean that we are good, but it means we’ve been made right with God because of Jesus.  We are righteous because we’re in a relationship with Jesus; we’re trusting him.]

So let’s be encouraged.  And be challenged to pray.  “Prayer... has great power as its working.”

Congregation asked what to pray for. 

Father, you know these needs of our church, which your Holy Spirit has put on people’s hearts. Put them on ours too, so that we all pray fervently and effectively according to your will, through Jesus Christ and to his glory. Amen."

Morning Prayer

Here's a lovely morning prayer from Alice Tremaine's Prayers for Health blog.

Gracious God,

Thank you for being with me today.
Open my eyes to see you at work in me and around me as I go about my day.

Help me to enjoy the simple pleasures today,
To be present in each moment and to each person,                                                                                                             To be grateful for the unfolding of another day of life.

Help me to remember what really matters whenever I feel overwhelmed or frustrated.
Help me to be of service to others today.

When I feel judgmental, help me to find compassion.
When I feel shame, help me to find freedom.
When I feel guilt, help me to find forgiveness.
When I feel afraid, help me to feel covered by your love.

Thank you for this day.
Thank you for this moment.
Amen.

Grown-up faith

I am reading a new novel by my friend, Karen Jones, called Sister Acts. It's the second in her "Babe's Bible" trilogy. It might not be to everyone's taste! It's about gritty contemporary issues and aimed for a younger readership than me. But I'm enjoying it. Among other things it does show that Bible is still highly relevant.

This passage really struck me, where a bishop is seeking counsel from his spiritual director, a nun.
"'Teach me how to take these thoughts captive, Sister,' he pleaded.
"'You must take each one to the cross in prayer. You must see yourself come to the cross, bringing each weakness, each longing, each unmet need. See yourself rise up and take your place on the cross with him. Let the nails be driven into your flesh with him. Die with him there, and then be laid in a tomb with him. Then, and only by his leading, rise with him and live by his Spirit the new life he gives you,' her face shone as she spoke."

Taking one's thoughts captive sounds easy. Oh yes, I can control my mind! The reality is much harsher. It's a matter of grim will, assisted by the Holy Spirit.

Spring in Sussex

Over the weekend we visited our family in Ashburnham near Hastings, a lovely estate which is the home of a large Christian Prayer and Conference centre. The weather was clear and sunny, mostly, if a bit chilly. Spring had definitely sprung in East Sussex. I've written previously about visiting there last autumn - Ashburnham. This time we heard a nightingale singing in the bushes near the family's garden on two evenings - the first time I'm sure I've heard one. There is something special about listening to its varied song in the twilight.

On the Sunday morning we attended the small local church in the centre of the grounds next to the once grand house. The people were very welcoming, but I especially liked the invitation to communion which the visiting minister used. It was something like this:


"This is the table, not of the church,

but of the Lord. 
It is made ready

for those who love him,

and those who want to love him more.

So come, you who have much faith

and you who have little,

You who have been here often 
and you who have not been for a long time,

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed,

Come …

Not because it is I who invite you. 
It is our Lord.

It is his will that those who want him

should meet him here."

I believe these words come from the Iona Community. I like the way it's phrased as an invitation from Christ and is addressed to people who are aware of their imperfections. It's not the well, it's the ill who need a doctor. The good news is that in Christ we have the perfect doctor.

PS I've just come across this quotation on the blog called Goodness and Beauty:
“If I were a nightingale I would do the work of a nightingale; if I were a swan, the work of a swan. But I am a rational creature, so I must praise God.” – Epictetus. Right on!!

The Enduring Melody

Yesterday I received a letter which began:

"Dear Michael

As you have said on 'Room With A View' that you are going to be buying books, may I take the liberty of telling you about 2 more?

If I had to choose something to take with me to a Desert Island, after the Bible, I would choose The Enduring Melody. It is full of wisdom, courage, humour, culture, huge spiritual stature, a truly grace filled book. I’d also like a PC to look up all the wonderful references."

The other book Ann recommended was Learning to Dance. I ought really to have both books as they were written by Michael Mayne, who was Dean of Westminster Abbey when I was appointed to be vicar at Stanford in the Vale. I was interviewed for the job in the Jerusalem Chamber in the Abbey, as the Dean and Chapter had their turn as patrons, and in those days patrons really did the appointing. I don't think it was the Dean who interviewed me, but two of the Canons.

Michael Mayne had two bouts of debilitating ME, but The Enduring Melody was written at the time when he had terminal cancer of the jaw.

Here are three extracts from the attachments that Ann sent to whet my appetite.

"From that icy moment of diagnosis, when you know that everything has changed, I recognised two things. First that this would prove an unwanted but important test of the integrity of what I most deeply believed, both as a human being and as a priest: a kind of inquest on all those words spilled out of pulpits or in counselling others or at hospital bedsides. A few months earlier I had attempted to tease out what I had come to think of as ‘the enduring melody' of my life. This was the time to see how well it would stand up to the fiercest scrutiny.
"Secondly I felt the need in whatever lay ahead not to waste the experience, but to write about it as honestly and as I could day by day, both as a form of therapy and (hopefully) to bring something creative and redemptive out of an inevitably dark time."

"No-one has ever claimed that praying is easy. I may try to carve a few moments out of the day, or I may join others in worship, but very often my attention level is low and at once the distractions come: all kinds of trivia are washing round at the surface level of my mind and one thought leads to another, and I come to with a guilty jolt. It doesn’t improve with age. I take comfort from the fact that in our prayer life what matters is that a bit of me knows that there is deep within, deeper than all the occasional doubts and constant distractions, a Cantus Firmus, an awareness of and longing for the love of God as I have glimpsed it in those rare life affirming moments ( and will again). I guess that’s how it will continue to be, and that’s alright, for my desire is to recall the melody, knowing at the deepest level, that I am His, loved beyond my imagining and held by His grace."

 He reflects on the figure of Christ, standing out luminous against the prevailing night,

"That solitary figure stands at the heart of my own cantus firmus. If the atheists are proved right and I am proved wrong, if my deepest beliefs are what many dismiss as mere fairy tales; if there is nothing at the end but Prospero's 'such stuff / as dreams are made on, and our little life / is rounded with a sleep'; then I shall still not wish to have based this one precious life on other facts and allowed them to define and motivate all I have done. For, despite all the darkness, they have not only brought much persisting joy, but I can think of nothing that would have so satisfied my deepest and most haunting human desires, convictions and hopes."

And finally this comment from a piece written a few days after his death, which appealed to me for obvious reasons! His wife was Michael’s angel in human form. “What transforms such a time”, he writes, “is having someone beside you with whom you can share the journey, but it’s easy to downplay the cost to them. Theirs is a more difficult role, demanding patience and courage."

Thank you so much, Ann. You have succeeded in provoking me to read them!

Love unknown

"Faith is not a thing of the mind; it is not an intellectual certainty or a felt conviction of the heart. It is a sustained decision to take God with utter seriousness as the God of my life. It is to live out each hour in a practical, concrete affirmation that God is Father and he is 'in heaven'. It is a decision to shift the centre of our lives from ourselves to him, to forego self-interest and make his interests, his will, our sole concern. This is what it means to hallow his name as Father in heaven." Sister Ruth Burrows, O.C.D.

I am indebted to "Leafyschroder" who comments on this blog for introducing me to Ruth Burrows, a Carmelite nun, who wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent book last year. In particular she recommended Before the Living God. I found this in an on-line review: "Her other books demonstrate the way God used even her worst experiences in the convent for her (and other's) spiritual benefit. It seems one purpose of the book might have been to encourage the reader to realize that God will take the most traumatic, or unfair circumstances if we turn to Him and transform it into one of our greatest blessings that brings spiritual peace and personal intimacy with God." 

Leafyschroder then sent me this beautiful extract from a review of Ruth Burrows' latest book, Love Unknown:

"She has been trying to pray as a nun for 65 years. And what has she to show for it? Darkness, by her own account, and the feeling that God does not exist. As a young woman, when she prayed, nothing 'happened', and she soon realised it would always be like this. 'It is impossible to understand my life unless it is seen all the time against the background of black depression,' she wrote 36 years ago, in one of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century, Before the Living God.


"Her depression did not stem from any 'Dark Night of the Soul'. It came not from her vocation as a nun, but happened to be something that she brought to it with her, as part of her disposition. Those who have met her find her a sharp, intelligent, amusing interlocutor, but things are no easier for her in her spiritual life today. The difference is that now she is 'happy to be poor'. This attitude of poverty is the underlying, human theme of Love Unknown. The two themes go together: the objective reality of a loving God, and on the other side a radical human poverty on the part of the Christian loved by him.

"In this lies the answer to the person who finds that he or she is 'not getting anywhere' with prayer. Ruth Burrows challenges any such judgement based on subjective experience. Since it is God who prays in us, what would we expect to see and feel? Only by focusing on what is revealed by the risen Christ can we be sure that our God is real and not just a projection. We can only know the true, living God through his incarnate image."


Forgive me if you've already read my conversation with Leafyschroder, but I thought that last quotation really merited being a main blog entry. I'm ordering some of Ruth Burrows' books.

Sunrise

A friend of mine, just back from another round of cancer treatment, quoted this today: "Life is a constant sunrise, which death cannot interrupt, any more than the night can swallow up the sun." George MacDonald in Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood. Isn't that good?

By the way, today is the feast day of St Thérèse of Lisieux, from whose journal Story of a Soul I took the title of Jozanne Moss's and my book, "I Choose Everything". I've been reading the entry about her on Catholic Online. She died at the age of 24 in 1897, having been a Carmelite nun for less than ten years. She lost her mother when she was a child. When her father was committed to a mental institution, "Horrified, Therese learned of the humiliation of the father she adored and admired and of the gossip and pity of their so-called friends. As a cloistered nun she couldn't even visit her father. This began a horrible time of suffering when she experienced such dryness in prayer that she stated, 'Jesus isn't doing much to keep the conversation going.' She was so grief-stricken that she often fell asleep in prayer. She consoled herself by saying that mothers loved children when they lie asleep in their arms so that God must love her when she slept during prayer."

"I'm a failure"

I can do no better than copy this post from the iBenedictines' blog  today.

The Prayer of Incompetence and Failure

by Digitalnun on July 1, 2012
From time to time someone will ask how to pray ‘better’. When we tease out what is troubling the questioner, it usually turns out that he or she expects something to ‘happen’ in prayer; and when it doesn’t, feels a failure. Of course, something always does ‘happen’ in prayer, but not always what we were expecting or hoping for. Remember Naaman and his indignation at being told to wash seven times in the Jordan when he was expecting Elisha to come out and perform some quasi-magical ceremony for him? We can be like that in prayer. We want things to go according to our notions, but God has his own ideas and they are rarely the same as ours.

One of the first lessons any of us has to learn is to pray as we can. We need to keep in mind that God is in charge and rather keener on this prayer business than we are. Our enthusiasm tends to come by fits and starts. Not so God’s. He has been planning this moment of closeness with us from all eternity. That can be an encouraging thought when prayer seems dry and pointless, when all we experience is incompetence and failure. The secret is to keep at it, to go on trustingly with our prayer times. One of the lovely phrases George Herbert used to describe prayer was ‘the heart in pilgrimage’. Anyone who has undertaken a real pilgrimage, walked the Camino de Santiago, for example, will know that temptations to give up crowd in when one is tired and footsore, but one just goes on. So it is with prayer. Incompetence, failure, what do they matter when God has promised us his very self?
Note
There are some simple guidelines for prayer on our main website, here.

Jane tells me the guidelines on the website are very helpful.

I find it consoling that nuns, who I imagine are in the premier league of pray-ers, understand the sense of being a failure at praying. My father, I think it was, had a saying: "Pray, pray - and peg away."

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. 

The communion of heaven

I've already mentioned The King's Blog which continues to encourage me. One of pieces under Words for the Journey comes from the letters of American writer, Flannery O'Connor, who suffered from lupus and died aged 38. The excerpt concluded with a prayer to St Raphael. I confess there was a time when praying to anyone but God would have made me bristle, being a sound Protestant. However I now think I was wrong, partly because I reckon I was fixated with the word "pray", which really just means "ask". I seem to remember some Shakespearian plays (such as The Taming of the Shrew using the expression "I pray you"). And I don't have any problem with asking other people, "the saints" to pray for me or being asked to pray for others. Now it seems illogical to believe in the reality of life after death, saints on earth and saints in heaven, and to exclude the latter from my conversations. (It might, of course, give rise to some misgivings as to my rationality on the part of some!)

However, for my many friends who might find the prayer problematic, I recommend simply addressing it to Jesus, who "always lives to make intercession" for us (Hebrews 7).

PRAYER TO ST RAPHAEL

O Raphael, lead us towards those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us! Raphael, Angel of Happy Meetings, lead us by the hand towards those we are looking for! May all our movements, all their movements, be guided by your Light and transfigured by your Joy.

Angel Guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze. Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of earth, we feel the need of calling to you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so that we may not be as strangers in the Province of Joy, all ignorant of the concerns of our country.

Remember the weak, you who are strong–you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene, and bright with the resplendent glory of God. Amen.

Praying through pain

A couple of weeks ago I was asked what prayers I'd suggest for someone enduring terminal illness. The prayers which I suggested were the final prayers from Compline, the ancient night-time service. For many of us, much of the experience is dark and like night, waiting for the dawning of the new day. In my old church we used to say Compline, with reading the Gospel accounts of Christ's passion, in Holy Week. The church would mainly be in darkness, with just enough light for the few of us to listen and pray together. The readings would always end with Jesus dying. We would wait for the dawn to come.

These are the prayers:

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night, so that we, who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may repose upon thy eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Look down, O Lord, from thy heavenly throne, illuminate the darkness of this night with thy celestial brightness, and from the children of light banish the deeds of darkness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, who at this evening hour didst rest in the sepulchre, and didst thereby sanctify the grave to be a bed of hope to thy people: make us so to abound in sorrow for our sins, which were the cause of thy passion, that when our bodies lie in the dust, our souls may live with thee: who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God world without end. Amen.

Visit, we beseech thee, O Lord, this place, and drive far from it all the snares of the enemy; let thy holy angels dwell herein to preserve us in peace; and may thy blessing be upon us evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Then comes a response which is from Psalm 4.8, which, when we were children, we used to hear every night when my mother tucked us in bed. 

We will lay us down in peace and take our rest;
For it is thou, Lord, only, that makest us dwell in safety.

This is a good week (as good as any can be!) to be ill, I think, because we're especially aware of how Jesus shared our human nature in all its weakness, and even in excruciating pain. He knows absolutely how dark the night can be - even more than us, because it was blacker for him. And his promise is, "I will never leave or abandon you." The best thing about the week, of course, is that its end turns into Easter Sunday. Pow! Morning comes. "Christ is risen. Hallelujah." "Hallelujah. He is risen indeed!"

Jane and I, last weekend, went down to see her parents in South Devon. On the way, we stopped to put flowers on my parents' and aunts' grave in Wiltshire. I'd forgotten the inscription at the foot of the stone: "Awaiting a joyful resurrection". The grave has become "a bed of hope to thy people" - because of Jesus. Thank you, God.

Shrove Tuesday

I liked today's Facebook status from the nuns who live near here at East Hendred. They are looking forward to Lent (which starts tomorrow) so positively. Their mention of confession reminded me that the word Shrove is the past tense of the old word "shrive", which means to seek forgiveness through confession. "Today, Shrove Tuesday, we pray for all who will be keeping Carnival, all who will be making their pre-Lenten confession, and all who have not yet thought about Lent. Lent is such a time a grace - we don't want to waste a minute of it!" 


I don't know the origin of Carnival - or Mardi Gras - as today is also celebrated. Maybe it's the celebration of the assurance of forgivenness, or maybe it's the final blow-out before six weeks of fasting - which, by the way, I discovered last week, has proven physical as well as spiritual benefits (Fasting protects your brain). Maybe it's an unrestrained version of our very reserved Pancake Day, using up the goodies in the larder before Lent.

A friend of mine is taking up "exercise" for Lent. Her friends are intrigued by which dimension she's going to exercise in. I suspect she means simply physical, but its point will be to focus more on God. Which is what the nuns mean by Lent being a time of grace - a time when we can make extra time to be more aware of His presence in our daily lives, whether by giving something up or by doing something different. And the great thing is that as we do that for 40-odd days, it becomes part of our lives that sticks. You may not succeed 100% in your good intentions, if you're human! And that's why today is such a good preparation for Lent, as it reassures us that we are normal when we fail, but God is extraordinary in his faithfulness:
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1.8-10).


Here's praying we all find Lent a time of grace.

Knocked down, but not knocked out

Went back to Three Minute Retreat today. It was about the young Samuel responding to God in the night in the temple. "The Lord called to Samuel three times before Samuel recognised the Lord as the caller. We can be like that too. We know that God is present to us in our daily lives and in the people we encounter, but sometimes we don't recognise the sacred in the heat of the moment. Sometimes we need to be nudged into recognising God in what we perceive as interruptions in our schedules. Sometimes we need to be knocked over!" The prayer is, "Teach me, Lord, to hear you, and to answer, 'Here I am, Lord.'"

Fishing boat returning to Exmouth © Mike Temple

I suppose being knocked over is a good way to describe what it feels like to be told you have a terminal illness - knocked down but not knocked out, as J B Phillips' translation of  2 Corinthians 4 puts it: "This priceless treasure we hold, so to speak, in a common earthenware jar—to show that the splendid power of it belongs to God and not to us. We are handicapped on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled, but never in despair. We are persecuted, but we never have to stand it alone: we may be knocked down but we are never knocked out! Every day we experience something of the death of the Lord Jesus, so that we may also know the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours."

I'm still thinking about my co-author, Jozanne Moss, of course - who died on Tuesday at her home in South Africa. The tributes that have been coming in on Facebook all bear witness to the truth that in the fragile earthenware jar which was her body there was a priceless treasure, which others could see even though she couldn't. Her response to being knocked over was exactly, "Here I am, Lord."


There are many remarkable passages she wrote in I Choose Everything. This is one of the most remarkable: "Through my illness God has stripped away everything that I could possibly turn to for security, those things that we don't realize we put our trust in. So often we think we are trusting the Lord, when actually our faith lies in our abilities, talents and circumstances. I cannot be anything or do anything anymore. That may seem quite tragic to some people, but it has been such a privilege for me. It is so easy to get caught up in the things of the world, but I have nothing else to trust in. I have only God. He has shown me how to surrender completely – how to let go and let Him. I feel free! I am in His hands; He is the driver and I'm just along for the ride. I don't pray to my 'boss' any more; I pray to my Father, my Comforter, my Rock and my Refuge."

Well, she's completely in His hands now, and what she knew in her spirit then she now knows as a total reality. "Here I am, Lord." Free at last!