Come there with me for a while; walk that strand with me if you can, and think on the unexpected ways the Spirit may have of reaching into your own life and of stirring the awareness that already exists within you.
Deep pocketed hands, and chin tucked beneath an upturned collar while keeping only a half-view ahead beyond the edge of a sheltering hood. Cold, grey and lifeless hours. Squalls of rain lashing by every few minutes, blending with salt lifted from the foaming seas. The sort of day that leads to the question, ‘Am I really enjoying this or do I only think I am ?’
I had the whole world to myself and walked on, in a sense, scarcely knowing that even I was there, when I suddenly became aware of somebody else. There, perhaps quarter of a mile away, was a figure walking towards me. Feelings of annoyance at once began to build within me. Why did he have to be here now? Why couldn't he at least be taking a different line along the sand instead of heading straight towards me?
I was not naturally inclined to give this stranger the benefit of the doubt, and as the distance between us decreased, I was filled with apprehension; he might be the wrong sort of person altogether for the place, and for my mood; worst of all he might be a 'talker'.
In my eyes he was the intruder, and if only he had stayed away... Another hour, another day; maybe we both would have had total solitude.
I knew that he must also have seen me, and that felt like a further intrusion. I did not want anyone else even knowing of my presence, and here there was nowhere to hide, and no way of remaining unseen as in a busy street or even in a crowded church. Shutting out my awareness of his existence progressed from difficult to impossible until, having approached to within a few yards of each other, our eyes met.
My usual reaction would have been to look away and not glance back. I had not expected to be looking at him at all by that stage, having already set my eyes firmly on the sand a few feet ahead of me, but for some reason I had looked up, and finding his eyes already on me, surprised myself by continuing to look at his face. As we closed to only a few feet I looked hard into his eyes, and though he gazed back, his look did not seem to question my presence in any way; he seemed to barely register that I was there. No words were spoken, and we both walked on, passing within touching distance, and leaving each other to the safety of the solitudes we had exchanged.
Almost at once I became aware that my feelings towards him had changed. The apprehension and annoyance had been replaced by curiosity and a rather disconcerting mixture of admiration and envy. I would rather have been the only person there, but, for what was probably the first time, I had become fully aware of the possibility that there may be other people who thought and felt as I did. I had just passed somebody who, like myself, was clearly brought to life by the feel and sound of the wind and waves, and by being alone with time to simply be himself. I had seen it in his eyes. But there was more. The envy was there because it had been obvious that he had something else which I had not. A peace and contentment seemed to glow on his face, and his eyes betrayed a love and an understanding of which I knew I was incapable.
Somehow he seemed vaguely familiar too, but only once he had gone - a common enough feeling - perhaps I had seen him somewhere before. I turned and watched him for a while, receding into the grey middle-distance beyond which was nothing in the failing light.
I tried to continue my walk for a while but stopping had made me realise just how cold I was. I gave in, and finally admitted to myself that I was no longer enjoying this. The longing to be there had gone; the inner calling had been answered and I had done whatever it was I had come there to do.
I glanced over my shoulder with a "Come on Jesus!", and turning round, re-trod what I took to be my own footsteps for a few yards before hurrying back towards warmth and the rest of the world.
The memory of that meeting slipped away as such things do. It had been important at the time, but was of no consequence beyond that day. That is, until a quiet summer evening maybe two years later, when I had already walked to the far end of that same strand.
Daylight has long given way to dusk, and while stopping to think of family and friends, even the dusk has gently slipped away. With eyes accustomed to the increasing darkness, and with no trace of light pollution here, light still lingers on, not so much in the west as in a thin wash everywhere. There is not a breath of wind, and I think I would normally have missed it, but this night the whole world seemed so utterly, utterly peaceful. The ocean is calm, with its sleepy swell breaking in whispered sighs upon the sand. A slow, rhythmical come-and-go of sound.
I strolled slowly along the water-line in the opposite direction from that previously described. The sand, sea, horizon, sky - all ran into each other. Where each was could still be near-seen, yet I could not make out where one joined the other. The only clear line was inland, where the mountains stood as jet against the merely coal-black sky.
As I walked I thought of other times I had been there, and then remembered that day when I had thought I was alone but found a stranger approaching me from this end of the beach.
I paused for a moment, and turned to look behind me. What on earth was I doing? I told myself to walk on, and I did.
I had not been looking for my friend and companion Jesus; I had already lost him, and had not yet discovered where or why he had gone. His absence had left me with a feeling of emptiness through which coursed a constant awareness that He had been with me. Why did He go? I asked that question constantly. Why had He been there with me? I was numbed in a way that made me unable to even formulate that question, let alone ask it of myself.
Just for a moment I had thought ... No. My imagination again.
I continued to walk, gradually becoming less happy with the quiet and the feelings of isolation, until suddenly, I felt that presence again. This time it was inescapable. I knew he was there once more: the stranger I had passed. I stopped and turned to face him, peering into the darkness. Nothing. Nobody.
Although I could not see, I knew he was not there. But he was there somewhere, very close; everything in me conspired to make me know it. And then, with heart pounding in my chest, and skin creeping with an unknown fear, I realised it was not behind me but coming towards me. I froze in an overwhelming sense of inevitability as the presence reached me. A shadow seemed to pass me by: an echo from the past; I longed to be away from there and as I quickly started off again, this unknown brother of fear clung to me.
A dread of seeing anything at all welded my eyelids shut until it began to subside.
Some days afterwards it was made clear for me, though I still failed to understand the full meaning of what had occurred.
On that cold winter's day, I had met myself as I was to be, having been turned around in some way, and altogether more at peace. Then, two years later, on a summer's night, having unknowingly become that apparent stranger, I had sensed the passing of the man who had previously walked that shore.
Today that beach is a quietly happy place to visit. It is now harder to find oneself alone there and it seems altogether very ordinary.
I have a large print of a photograph taken there hanging in my home; it shows my four children as silhouettes walking along the sand at sunset, journeying into life and all that it may hold for them. It is just another visual image, - but for me, it reminds of so much more.
May God grant you your sense of place, and the ability to hear Him when He calls.
.
Saturday 23 August 2008
Friday 22 August 2008
In passing (1)
Thoughts of sandy beaches have taken me back to the time when I was being emptied and refilled, perhaps (hindsight again) in preparation for eventually being filled to the brim.
An important part of my own journey was played out on a beach, and if the greater part of what I write here is drawn from words uttered within myself, then I should overcome the reluctance I sometimes feel to, as it were, utter those words aloud. Having recalled those now rather distant days, perhaps it is right that I should share more of my own journey with you.
My life was transformed by an ongoing experience of the presence of Jesus, and later, by His apparent absence which led me into a previously unimagined and impossible level of faith without any dependence on feelings of being in His company. This absence of further experiences has continued for many years, but I have the irreplaceable memory of His companionship to lift my spirit whenever life tires or troubles me. I no longer have any real sense of His being right here beside me: no feeling, no sensation, no actual experience to infuse or overwhelm me, nor to delay or distract me, but the undying echo of my previous experience has anchored a deep awareness of His presence within me. I know that in my efforts to follow Him He is always walking with me.
My experience had three parts, two of which are clearly remembered as living factual events. I have never been as certain about how the third occurred.
Walking with Jesus was real. Losing him was real. Meeting a particular stranger was real to me, but I later doubted its reality: I feared that I may have imagined it, until I understood what had happened.
For some time I had been increasingly drawn to one particular place in Ireland, and at some point in the narrowing down of my awareness to that one spot, I had gained a friend. Jesus had become an almost tangible presence. It happened so quietly that I do not recall any stages in the process. There had been a time when I had not been aware of his presence, and then, when I was, I could not remember when it had begun: it seemed so normal a part of my life.
He walked with me wherever I went, but it was when I sought the peace that I could find only when alone in the west of Ireland that I really felt his presence; and the place where he came closest was on that same beach.
I would talk aloud to him at times; not saying much, but rather as one would to someone who shared the love of solitude and who was close enough in friendship to be allowed to share one's secret experiences of peace. I had never shared such things with anybody: they were not for sharing; they were mine. But Jesus was there, and his presence enhanced the solitude and the peace rather than detracting from it. He brought it into a new dimension.
He was always in the same position, slightly behind me and to my left. I would glance over my shoulder when speaking to him, and at times would find it impossible not to smile, or even laugh aloud through the pleasure of his company. He was so real at times that I would stop and turn with the expectation of seeing him beside me. I never did see him, and, (and this surprised me when I first realised it), I never heard him utter a single word. I also have the clear but contradictory memory that, although I never saw him, whenever I looked at him he was always looking straight into my eyes; he never took his eyes off me.
My quietest and most peaceful moments were when alone with him on that beach.
My saddest day was when I found that I had lost him.
Just as I am unable to remember when Jesus first arrived at my shoulder, so am I unable to fix the time when I first missed him. I sense that it was probably during a particular period of emptiness and confusion, as that helps me to make sense of why I sank deep, when everything else in my world was wonderful. All I know is that suddenly the feeling of being accompanied was gone; he was no longer there.
The sense of loss was immense, and the sorrow continued for a long time. Until that glorious day when I realised that I had not lost him at all; - he had moved in! That day too is lost in terms of ‘when’, but the day lives on as the experience of light and joy. Jesus the man - the real living friend - had gone from beside me, but now, with the Holy Spirit, he dwelt within me. That was where he had wanted to be. That was why he had been walking so close for so long. He had been waiting for me to let him in.
I had enjoyed his company without ever giving a thought to why he was there, and had failed to see that both his presence and his apparent disappearance were part of what was happening to me. I had felt the two experiences as part of my love for the place, and it was only as yet more time went by that I learned I had to put two previously unconnected realities together (unconnected in my own mind that is): the longed for experiences of Ireland, and the changes going on in my life at home.
My trinity of experience in that place was completed by a further meeting that occurred when Jesus still walked with me.
It is a place I love and which draws me into thoughts and dreams. It is a place (as all places are) in which to pray, and, for me, one of the places where I was first confronted with sorrow and injustice tied up in the memory of places: anguish and despair that leaches from the land itself long after events have receded into history. An unlikely sounding lesson it may be, but one that drew to the surface my need to find a means of expression for emotions that would not let me rest, as though finding a voice for those who could no longer speak, and through that voice enabling some of their restless sorrows to be stilled.
A place to be alone, and when the shore was deserted I felt almost like an intruder, so lonely did the place feel; - as on that day ...
An important part of my own journey was played out on a beach, and if the greater part of what I write here is drawn from words uttered within myself, then I should overcome the reluctance I sometimes feel to, as it were, utter those words aloud. Having recalled those now rather distant days, perhaps it is right that I should share more of my own journey with you.
My life was transformed by an ongoing experience of the presence of Jesus, and later, by His apparent absence which led me into a previously unimagined and impossible level of faith without any dependence on feelings of being in His company. This absence of further experiences has continued for many years, but I have the irreplaceable memory of His companionship to lift my spirit whenever life tires or troubles me. I no longer have any real sense of His being right here beside me: no feeling, no sensation, no actual experience to infuse or overwhelm me, nor to delay or distract me, but the undying echo of my previous experience has anchored a deep awareness of His presence within me. I know that in my efforts to follow Him He is always walking with me.
My experience had three parts, two of which are clearly remembered as living factual events. I have never been as certain about how the third occurred.
Walking with Jesus was real. Losing him was real. Meeting a particular stranger was real to me, but I later doubted its reality: I feared that I may have imagined it, until I understood what had happened.
For some time I had been increasingly drawn to one particular place in Ireland, and at some point in the narrowing down of my awareness to that one spot, I had gained a friend. Jesus had become an almost tangible presence. It happened so quietly that I do not recall any stages in the process. There had been a time when I had not been aware of his presence, and then, when I was, I could not remember when it had begun: it seemed so normal a part of my life.
He walked with me wherever I went, but it was when I sought the peace that I could find only when alone in the west of Ireland that I really felt his presence; and the place where he came closest was on that same beach.
I would talk aloud to him at times; not saying much, but rather as one would to someone who shared the love of solitude and who was close enough in friendship to be allowed to share one's secret experiences of peace. I had never shared such things with anybody: they were not for sharing; they were mine. But Jesus was there, and his presence enhanced the solitude and the peace rather than detracting from it. He brought it into a new dimension.
He was always in the same position, slightly behind me and to my left. I would glance over my shoulder when speaking to him, and at times would find it impossible not to smile, or even laugh aloud through the pleasure of his company. He was so real at times that I would stop and turn with the expectation of seeing him beside me. I never did see him, and, (and this surprised me when I first realised it), I never heard him utter a single word. I also have the clear but contradictory memory that, although I never saw him, whenever I looked at him he was always looking straight into my eyes; he never took his eyes off me.
My quietest and most peaceful moments were when alone with him on that beach.
My saddest day was when I found that I had lost him.
Just as I am unable to remember when Jesus first arrived at my shoulder, so am I unable to fix the time when I first missed him. I sense that it was probably during a particular period of emptiness and confusion, as that helps me to make sense of why I sank deep, when everything else in my world was wonderful. All I know is that suddenly the feeling of being accompanied was gone; he was no longer there.
The sense of loss was immense, and the sorrow continued for a long time. Until that glorious day when I realised that I had not lost him at all; - he had moved in! That day too is lost in terms of ‘when’, but the day lives on as the experience of light and joy. Jesus the man - the real living friend - had gone from beside me, but now, with the Holy Spirit, he dwelt within me. That was where he had wanted to be. That was why he had been walking so close for so long. He had been waiting for me to let him in.
I had enjoyed his company without ever giving a thought to why he was there, and had failed to see that both his presence and his apparent disappearance were part of what was happening to me. I had felt the two experiences as part of my love for the place, and it was only as yet more time went by that I learned I had to put two previously unconnected realities together (unconnected in my own mind that is): the longed for experiences of Ireland, and the changes going on in my life at home.
My trinity of experience in that place was completed by a further meeting that occurred when Jesus still walked with me.
It is a place I love and which draws me into thoughts and dreams. It is a place (as all places are) in which to pray, and, for me, one of the places where I was first confronted with sorrow and injustice tied up in the memory of places: anguish and despair that leaches from the land itself long after events have receded into history. An unlikely sounding lesson it may be, but one that drew to the surface my need to find a means of expression for emotions that would not let me rest, as though finding a voice for those who could no longer speak, and through that voice enabling some of their restless sorrows to be stilled.
A place to be alone, and when the shore was deserted I felt almost like an intruder, so lonely did the place feel; - as on that day ...
.
Monday 18 August 2008
Accompanied
Perhaps the best known expression of being carried by Christ is in the well known words of ‘Footprints in the Sand’.
A dreamer walks along a beach with Jesus while life scenes flash before them. For most of the time there are two sets of footprints in the sand, but during the scenes of difficult times there is only one set of prints; the dreamer takes these to be her or his own, and asks the Lord why He had not remained when the need had been greatest.
It is frequently only in looking back that we find the understanding of simple truth in so much of life’s experience. Every stage of our walk towards and with Christ is made in His company - ‘... I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’ (Matthew 28:20) - though we easily fail to maintain our belief in His presence when the going gets tough. When we do not sense His presence, and fail to recognize any other evidence to suggest that He is with us, we feel ourselves to be orphaned and alone; a feeling that is itself a teacher, but from which we can learn nothing unless it persists. Not being aware of the Lord’s presence can so easily leave us with no conscious thought of His existence: in our hearts and minds He no longer exists until something jolts a form of recognition and recollection into our consciousness once more.
As with the dreamer’s vision of a single set of footprints, hindsight alone does not always convey the whole truth. It may clarify the memory of the experience itself and reveal evidence we had failed to see at the time; it may provide an understanding or interpretation of which we were previously incapable, but without the acknowledged and accepted presence of He who is our Saviour - not only of man and womankind as a whole, but of each of us as individuals - we are unable to see that which would otherwise be revealed to us in the constant light of truth as conveyed by the Holy Spirit. We remain unaware of His carrying of us until we first appreciate that in our worst of times we had not been alone. He was then, is now, and ever shall be, with us every step of the way.
Our journeying began before we started to search for Him; it preceded our first yearnings for Him and stirred in our earliest wondering about Him. Our first step towards Him was taken with our very first thought of Him.
It is in the experience of His presence that we recognize, with hindsight, that we have been found; the shepherd would ‘call together his friends and neighbours saying to them, “Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep that was lost.” (Luke 15:6); that we have been named; ‘The Lord then came and stood by, calling as He had done before, "Samuel! Samuel!" Samuel answered, "Speak, Lord; for your servant is listening." (1 Samuel 3:10); and that we have been raised to a new and meaningful life with Him.
We move closer to Christ through the stages of this process, but once He has lifted us our sense of direction is altered; it is no longer attuned solely to bringing us closer to Him, but more closely to His will for our lives. He carries us in the direction He has planned for us, pointing to the needs, the conflicts, the injustices or the abuses for which we are part of both His immediate and ultimate solutions. From now on our following is the close relationship He wishes every one of us to have with Him. If we remain faithful to Him we are inseparable and we are perfectly placed to follow His guidance and to be empowered for sending wherever and for whatever purpose He wills.
The dreamer, and in reality the person who first penned the words of ‘Footprints’, must have reached this point in their walk with our Lord to be able to convey the deep emotional and spiritual impact of their realization of His presence. The popularity and spread of the story is down to one simple fact: the message it conveys is truth. It gives access to a fundamental truth for which everyone is searching, and which we all yearn to experience for ourselves.
.
A dreamer walks along a beach with Jesus while life scenes flash before them. For most of the time there are two sets of footprints in the sand, but during the scenes of difficult times there is only one set of prints; the dreamer takes these to be her or his own, and asks the Lord why He had not remained when the need had been greatest.
It is frequently only in looking back that we find the understanding of simple truth in so much of life’s experience. Every stage of our walk towards and with Christ is made in His company - ‘... I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’ (Matthew 28:20) - though we easily fail to maintain our belief in His presence when the going gets tough. When we do not sense His presence, and fail to recognize any other evidence to suggest that He is with us, we feel ourselves to be orphaned and alone; a feeling that is itself a teacher, but from which we can learn nothing unless it persists. Not being aware of the Lord’s presence can so easily leave us with no conscious thought of His existence: in our hearts and minds He no longer exists until something jolts a form of recognition and recollection into our consciousness once more.
As with the dreamer’s vision of a single set of footprints, hindsight alone does not always convey the whole truth. It may clarify the memory of the experience itself and reveal evidence we had failed to see at the time; it may provide an understanding or interpretation of which we were previously incapable, but without the acknowledged and accepted presence of He who is our Saviour - not only of man and womankind as a whole, but of each of us as individuals - we are unable to see that which would otherwise be revealed to us in the constant light of truth as conveyed by the Holy Spirit. We remain unaware of His carrying of us until we first appreciate that in our worst of times we had not been alone. He was then, is now, and ever shall be, with us every step of the way.
Our journeying began before we started to search for Him; it preceded our first yearnings for Him and stirred in our earliest wondering about Him. Our first step towards Him was taken with our very first thought of Him.
It is in the experience of His presence that we recognize, with hindsight, that we have been found; the shepherd would ‘call together his friends and neighbours saying to them, “Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep that was lost.” (Luke 15:6); that we have been named; ‘The Lord then came and stood by, calling as He had done before, "Samuel! Samuel!" Samuel answered, "Speak, Lord; for your servant is listening." (1 Samuel 3:10); and that we have been raised to a new and meaningful life with Him.
We move closer to Christ through the stages of this process, but once He has lifted us our sense of direction is altered; it is no longer attuned solely to bringing us closer to Him, but more closely to His will for our lives. He carries us in the direction He has planned for us, pointing to the needs, the conflicts, the injustices or the abuses for which we are part of both His immediate and ultimate solutions. From now on our following is the close relationship He wishes every one of us to have with Him. If we remain faithful to Him we are inseparable and we are perfectly placed to follow His guidance and to be empowered for sending wherever and for whatever purpose He wills.
The dreamer, and in reality the person who first penned the words of ‘Footprints’, must have reached this point in their walk with our Lord to be able to convey the deep emotional and spiritual impact of their realization of His presence. The popularity and spread of the story is down to one simple fact: the message it conveys is truth. It gives access to a fundamental truth for which everyone is searching, and which we all yearn to experience for ourselves.
.
Saturday 9 August 2008
Life-blood
In every generation the future life of Christ’s Church depends on the faith of young people.
For those no longer regarded as being in that age group, and who are baptised Christians, it is logical to insist that if that statement is accepted as true, it is for the most part dependent on those among them who are themselves already members of the Church, and of these it relies heavily on the ones whose faith has been confirmed in their own experience and, where formal confirmation exists, have also received the Sacrament of Confirmation. These two forms of confirmation meet in the heart and spirit like hands clasped in prayer, with the resulting warmth nurturing the seed sown in baptism and germinated in an awakened spiritual consciousness; this rousing itself being the fruit of baptism.
In such conditions the sprouting seed cannot fail to grow, and depending on the ground we prepare for it, has the potential to mature, to blossom and to bear fruit. The Church is continually thriving or dying in the faith, the belief and doubt, and the consciousness of her members, particularly those who are no longer children but remain in the loosely named group we call ‘young people’: the youth of today and preceding generations: the teenagers who, in large numbers, are slipping away from a visible presence in our churches and church communities. Their absence is paralleled by their being one of the least mentioned and least visible age groups in scripture. (The other being the elderly, in whom the living and dying of the Church is also apparent; they are always present in numbers but they leave when they die. Who are the faithful old people in fifty or sixty years time if not the absent youth of today?)
But to restrict our thinking only to those young people who are already members of a church community, or who are at least known as the children of existing church members, is to fail utterly in our attempts to see the Church as Christ Himself would have us see it. The Church is not those who meet in the places we think of as ‘church’; it is not the buildings, and it is not one group of believers as opposed to another. It is not those who sit in church pews every Sunday and nor is it those who attend more lively forms of service and worship than is provided by traditional liturgy. (Many young people are to be found at some of these). It is all of these and more.
The Church encompasses all believers and reaches out to the far corners of society. Wherever there is someone who senses the existence and the presence of God, whether or not they realize or acknowledge that presence as what it is, there is the Church. It may be the very edge of its range and of its inclusiveness but the limit of its existence is not within that range but always just beyond it.
A whispered or anguished cry to an unknown God from somewhere in the wilderness at once extends the outer fringes of Christ’s Church to encompass the pain, the fear, the grief, the remorse, the need – whatever it may be – to include that one longing soul.
We do not recognize these outer areas as being part of the Church, and that is not so much because the limits we have subconsciously set for its definition are flawed, as because we think of evangelism, spreading the gospel, preaching the good news of what Jesus has done for man and womankind, as being something dedicated to areas beyond the fringes of the Church. This is the root of the traditional churches’ felt need to take all they have to those distant areas (distant in terms of understanding while being in our very midst) when they should be listening to the ever present guidance of the Holy Spirit and taking the core of their belief without the accustomed historical trappings and liturgical rigidity – the basic truth of the gospel – to those who are lost in their searching for its undeniable simplicity, truth and peace.
Where it has been allowed to flourish, it is in the simple and realistic innocence of youth that the Church finds hope for its future; it is in materialism and a bland experience of life that most of our young people build an indifference that is the ebbing away of the Church’s life-blood. This has, for a long time, been cause of much concern, bewilderment and hand-wringing, none of which will ever achieve anything without a mature understanding of what the Church really is, why Jesus founded it, and why being a part of it should be a truly meaningful experience.
Without being able to stand effectively in the midst of the world’s indifference, the Church cannot hope to manifest and express the love, the peace and the power at its disposal to counter the easy drift from disinterest to defilement.
Awareness itself can be perverted by the same gradual conditioning process that can smother our conscience, leading us through hesitation to lingering, and onwards through repetition to acceptance and an eventual unquestioned wallowing in our own wrongdoing. A simple thought, an inappropriate pause, a dwelling upon, familiarization, habitual use, misuse, abuse; the path is most clearly defined by hindsight, but however well mapped out for others by those looking back, the truth conveyed seems superficial and inviting further investigation and understanding. Nothing, it seems, can prevent us searching for truth - good and bad - through our own experience: in our turn, we each find ourselves reaching for the apple on that one tree.
Do I dream of walking in Eden? Or, does Eden live on in me?
This should tell all mature Christians something of immense importance regarding the individual nature of God’s grace, God’s calling and God’s touch. It should also tell all of us, mature or not, Christian or not, something important about our powers of understanding and awareness, about maturity, and about our journeying. Each one of us is held in the grip of something, good or bad. Addictions hold us: they become part of us, altering our way of seeing the world and the ways other people see us. An unhappy childhood holds us because we are unable to let go of it: it will not release us. Grief can clasp us tightly within itself, and so too can guilt. Equally, we can be held safe and secure by good memories, kind people, strong people, by unity, community, solitude, silence, ... The lists are endless, but faith, a confirmed faith in all its maturity, takes us beyond these things. St Paul’s having “learned the secret of being content in whatever state of life I am”, is the fruit of his being in the grip of something, being ‘addicted’ to something, belonging to something.
He belonged completely to Christ.
What do I belong to? What do you belong to?
Have we placed ourselves into God’s hands?
Have we asked the Holy Spirit to fill us and enable us to become the persons we are meant to be?
Do we belong to Christ?
He has called us – we have been named by Him. He has reached out to us – we have been touched by Him.
He has drawn us to Himself –we have been grasped by Him. He has claimed us – we have been held fast by Him.
He has enfolded us – we have been embraced by Him. He has raised us – we have been lifted by Him.
Having lifted us, He has taken our whole being to Himself. He has not taken only those parts we think may be good enough for Him to work on, or maybe even perfect, He has shouldered our weakness and our mistakes, our every fear and our disbelief.
We are now among The Carried.
He is with us every step of the way.
.
For those no longer regarded as being in that age group, and who are baptised Christians, it is logical to insist that if that statement is accepted as true, it is for the most part dependent on those among them who are themselves already members of the Church, and of these it relies heavily on the ones whose faith has been confirmed in their own experience and, where formal confirmation exists, have also received the Sacrament of Confirmation. These two forms of confirmation meet in the heart and spirit like hands clasped in prayer, with the resulting warmth nurturing the seed sown in baptism and germinated in an awakened spiritual consciousness; this rousing itself being the fruit of baptism.
In such conditions the sprouting seed cannot fail to grow, and depending on the ground we prepare for it, has the potential to mature, to blossom and to bear fruit. The Church is continually thriving or dying in the faith, the belief and doubt, and the consciousness of her members, particularly those who are no longer children but remain in the loosely named group we call ‘young people’: the youth of today and preceding generations: the teenagers who, in large numbers, are slipping away from a visible presence in our churches and church communities. Their absence is paralleled by their being one of the least mentioned and least visible age groups in scripture. (The other being the elderly, in whom the living and dying of the Church is also apparent; they are always present in numbers but they leave when they die. Who are the faithful old people in fifty or sixty years time if not the absent youth of today?)
But to restrict our thinking only to those young people who are already members of a church community, or who are at least known as the children of existing church members, is to fail utterly in our attempts to see the Church as Christ Himself would have us see it. The Church is not those who meet in the places we think of as ‘church’; it is not the buildings, and it is not one group of believers as opposed to another. It is not those who sit in church pews every Sunday and nor is it those who attend more lively forms of service and worship than is provided by traditional liturgy. (Many young people are to be found at some of these). It is all of these and more.
The Church encompasses all believers and reaches out to the far corners of society. Wherever there is someone who senses the existence and the presence of God, whether or not they realize or acknowledge that presence as what it is, there is the Church. It may be the very edge of its range and of its inclusiveness but the limit of its existence is not within that range but always just beyond it.
A whispered or anguished cry to an unknown God from somewhere in the wilderness at once extends the outer fringes of Christ’s Church to encompass the pain, the fear, the grief, the remorse, the need – whatever it may be – to include that one longing soul.
We do not recognize these outer areas as being part of the Church, and that is not so much because the limits we have subconsciously set for its definition are flawed, as because we think of evangelism, spreading the gospel, preaching the good news of what Jesus has done for man and womankind, as being something dedicated to areas beyond the fringes of the Church. This is the root of the traditional churches’ felt need to take all they have to those distant areas (distant in terms of understanding while being in our very midst) when they should be listening to the ever present guidance of the Holy Spirit and taking the core of their belief without the accustomed historical trappings and liturgical rigidity – the basic truth of the gospel – to those who are lost in their searching for its undeniable simplicity, truth and peace.
Where it has been allowed to flourish, it is in the simple and realistic innocence of youth that the Church finds hope for its future; it is in materialism and a bland experience of life that most of our young people build an indifference that is the ebbing away of the Church’s life-blood. This has, for a long time, been cause of much concern, bewilderment and hand-wringing, none of which will ever achieve anything without a mature understanding of what the Church really is, why Jesus founded it, and why being a part of it should be a truly meaningful experience.
Without being able to stand effectively in the midst of the world’s indifference, the Church cannot hope to manifest and express the love, the peace and the power at its disposal to counter the easy drift from disinterest to defilement.
Awareness itself can be perverted by the same gradual conditioning process that can smother our conscience, leading us through hesitation to lingering, and onwards through repetition to acceptance and an eventual unquestioned wallowing in our own wrongdoing. A simple thought, an inappropriate pause, a dwelling upon, familiarization, habitual use, misuse, abuse; the path is most clearly defined by hindsight, but however well mapped out for others by those looking back, the truth conveyed seems superficial and inviting further investigation and understanding. Nothing, it seems, can prevent us searching for truth - good and bad - through our own experience: in our turn, we each find ourselves reaching for the apple on that one tree.
Do I dream of walking in Eden? Or, does Eden live on in me?
This should tell all mature Christians something of immense importance regarding the individual nature of God’s grace, God’s calling and God’s touch. It should also tell all of us, mature or not, Christian or not, something important about our powers of understanding and awareness, about maturity, and about our journeying. Each one of us is held in the grip of something, good or bad. Addictions hold us: they become part of us, altering our way of seeing the world and the ways other people see us. An unhappy childhood holds us because we are unable to let go of it: it will not release us. Grief can clasp us tightly within itself, and so too can guilt. Equally, we can be held safe and secure by good memories, kind people, strong people, by unity, community, solitude, silence, ... The lists are endless, but faith, a confirmed faith in all its maturity, takes us beyond these things. St Paul’s having “learned the secret of being content in whatever state of life I am”, is the fruit of his being in the grip of something, being ‘addicted’ to something, belonging to something.
He belonged completely to Christ.
What do I belong to? What do you belong to?
Have we placed ourselves into God’s hands?
Have we asked the Holy Spirit to fill us and enable us to become the persons we are meant to be?
Do we belong to Christ?
He has called us – we have been named by Him. He has reached out to us – we have been touched by Him.
He has drawn us to Himself –we have been grasped by Him. He has claimed us – we have been held fast by Him.
He has enfolded us – we have been embraced by Him. He has raised us – we have been lifted by Him.
Having lifted us, He has taken our whole being to Himself. He has not taken only those parts we think may be good enough for Him to work on, or maybe even perfect, He has shouldered our weakness and our mistakes, our every fear and our disbelief.
We are now among The Carried.
He is with us every step of the way.
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