When things are all right

It occurs to me that I tend to use this blog for down-beat moments. But what about those times when things are going all right? Is there something to say then? At the moment things are quite sunny here, both literally and metaphorically - and I'm grateful. I've written elsewhere about my cousin, Grace Sheppard, wife of the cricketing bishop, who even when she was suffering the same cancer as had killed her husband, maintained her attitude of gratitude to the end. She wrote a beautiful book about caring for her husband, David, called Living with Dying. It seems to me that if Grace could be full of thankfulness in such a hard situation, then when "the sun's shining down on me" there's no excuse for not saying, "Blessed be your Name!"

Ironically, I've just discovered from the lovely iBenedictine nuns that today Catholics remember Our Lady of Sorrows. That's of course Mary, the mother of Jesus, and recalls the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce her soul - looking forward to the agony of seeing her Son tortured to death before her eyes. I cannot conceive of the depth of suffering that was for her. I am fairly sure that she'd have said what a friend once said to me: "I wish it had been me, not him." There's no comfort for that moment, just the company of "the beloved disciple". I can't imagine there was blessing in her mind at that point, just bewilderment. Maybe she thought back to her poem of praise when her Son was conceived and she said about the Almighty, "Holy is his name" - meaning that his nature is incomprehensibly different.

There were naturally huge questions for Mary throughout the lifetime of her Son, from being asked to be an unmarried mother to becoming a widowed single mother, from seeing her Son quitting home as an itinerant teacher to his ending up on a cross and then leaving her at the ascension. And yet the song which is her trademark was "My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour". Though we will certainly have major questions in life, may we have a prevailing attitude of gratitude because there have been moments when the shutters have been open and we have seen the goodness of God.

Psalms of complaint

We've just had Pete and Jane round, and, as always, had a lovely evening. They became good friends from soon after we moved here to Grove. We enjoy eating together. Jane (of Pete and J) makes rather good cakes; so Jane (of Michael and J) makes the first course. Pete and I do our bit by showing appreciation. We usually end up reading the Bible together, discussing and praying for our shared concerns.

Today we were talking about psalms of complaint (or disorientation, as Walter Brueggemann called  them), like 74, 79 and 137, and thinking how little real honest pain we express together in our worship services. We're always so polite and afraid of offending God's sensibilities - as if he doesn't already know exactly what we're feeling! I mentioned the song by Graham Kendrick which we'd had in church last Sunday, "For the joys and for the sorrows" sung here in Coventry Cathedral on Pentecost 2007. Here are the words:

For the joys and for the sorrows
The best and worst of times
For this moment, for tomorrow
For all that lies behind
Fears that crowd around me
For the failure of my plans
For the dreams of all I hope to be
The truth of what I am

For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus, I have Jesus
(Repeat)

For the tears that flow in secret
In the broken times
For the moments of elation
Or the troubled mind
For all the disappointments
Or the sting of old regrets
All my prayers and longings
That seem unanswered yet

For the weakness of my body
The burdens of each day
For the nights of doubt and worry
When sleep has fled away
Needing reassurance
And the will to start again
A steely-eyed endurance
The strength to fight and win

Graham Kendrick
Copyright © 1994 Make Way Music,
www.grahamkendrick.co.uk 

I have to confess this is a song which brings tears to my eyes when it's sung in church, where in fact so many are experiencing some or all of the song. But the refrain, "For this I have Jesus", is true in a profound way, because he also experienced the whole gamut of the song and more, and he knows and feels with us.