Trimming our Relationship

Have you noticed how even the most familiar people seen out of their usual context can seem total strangers?  I once met my hairdresser in the supermarket and just couldn't place where I'd seen her before.  I now patronise a different establishment and, when the lock-down is finally relaxed, I shall return there.  But one thing is common to all hairdressers, I believe.  The conversation is usually limited to 'Do you have a busy day lined up?' or something very similar.

One reason for my change was the fact that my previous hairdresser was leaving to have a baby; realising that that might be the last time I saw her, I wanted to express my appreciation for her services.  The conversation went something like this.  Me: 'You're so quick!'  HD: 'It's just practice; I've been doing this for nine years.'  Me: 'You know exactly what to grasp, where to cut.'  HD: 'Well, I know your hair ... I've cut it lots of times.'

Recalling this brief conversation now, I suspect that these four expressions: speed, practice, ability and familiarity, reflect our Creator's relationship with us.  I also remember a friend who spoke of her hairdresser as, 'the kind of best friend whom you can trust implicitly to tell you if you look rubbish'.  While not my experience, that seems to endorse this comparison.

Take practice for a start. God has had an eternity of practice dealing with other people just like us.  From creation, through Old Testament and New Testament times, through hundreds of generations, among millions of individuals down the centuries isn't it highly likely that there have been several like each one of us?  Even if our composite individuality has never been precisely replicated, God has seen - and heard the prayers of - many thousands of people who have experienced each separate circumstance we find ourselves in, every challenge we've faced, every difficulty met, every hill climbed.

As the psalmist reminds us, God is familiar with us.  He has "knit me together in my mother's womb ... my frame was not hidden from (Him) when I was made in the secret place ... (His) eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in (His) book before one of them came to be." (Psalm 139:13-16).  There is no aspect of us, no behavioural trait with origins lying deep in our growing-up, of which He is unaware and therefore no part of us that He can't deal with.  In the light of my opening analogy, Matthew 10:30 is even more amazing: "... even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

I admired the way my hairdresser knew where to aim her scissors to achieve the desired effect; the multi-faceted nature of God's love simply embraces us to provide just what is needed in every part of our bodies and our lives.  Paul writes, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that ... (nothing) ... in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39).  How fantastic to think that we are inseparable from the God who loves us.

And when the need is great, God is not slow to act.  After the temple in Jerusalem had been repaired and the service of God was restored, "Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people, because it was done so quickly." (2 Chron. 29:36).

About 250 years later, following the return from exile in Babylon, Nehemiah asked the Persian ruler for permission to return to Jerusalem in order to rebuild the walls of the city.  Nehemiah reports his conversation, "The king said to me, 'What is it you want?'  Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king ..." (Neh.2:4).  Nehemiah thought nothing of praying in the split second before he opened his mouth to reply to the king's invitation, and many other instances of spontaneous prayer are recorded throughout this short book.

Living as we do in the midst of God's great love, we need to realise that nothing is too difficult, too embarrassing or too mundane for us to bring to Him in prayer.  If it's a matter of urgency, the answer can come surprisingly quickly.  Think for a moment of someone you love.  If they were in need or in danger, wouldn't you drop everything and run to their aid?  It's ironic that the speed of answered prayer should amaze us.

Sweet-smelling Lock-down?

As the bard put it, four-and-a-quarter centuries ago, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet." (Romeo & Juliet 2, ii).  I've heard many different terms used to describe these present circumstances: lock-down, quarantine, confinement ... even captivity.  And I suppose there are similarities between the lock-down and imprisonment.  It's a time of restriction, after all; we're restricted as to what we can do, where we can go, who we can see.  We're even allowed out for exercise, although the limits are more generous than simply saying 'hello' to the sun and walking endless circuits of a small courtyard.

So far as I was concerned, one of the earliest differences between lock-down and imprisonment was the need to find my own food.  It was a challenge that commanded an unfair slice of my attention during the first couple of weeks, until an arrangement had been made for a friend to do a weekly shop for me.  It was the first of many examples of carrying out as much as possible of normal life, but in a different way.  Instead of a leisurely stroll, or a tightly-programmed family car-ride to church on a Sunday morning, we can now lounge in our pyjamas in front of the computer screen and perhaps exercise some last-minute choice whose service to 'join in' with today.  If we're late, we can catch up with the whole thing on replay whenever it suits.

Many of us will have had the privilege (?!) of being able to work from home.  This will have taken on many guises, of course.  For some people it could simply mean spending five days a week doing something that had already been the norm on some days anyway.  Others would have found it a new and perhaps challenging experience, with the need to become instantly proficient with hitherto unseen software.  While money, in the sense of financial transaction, has played its usual all-embracing part in our lives, the means of using it will have changed, to the almost complete exclusion of cash as a means of payment.  I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I still have the same physical coins in my purse, and notes in my wallet, that were there on March 23rd.

In these many ways, and more, we are growing used to a new way of living.  And when, one by one, the restrictions are lifted, a further adjustment will have to be made as we return to the former ways.  More likely, we'll find that life in the future will not be precisely as it was pre-Covid but will have taken on yet another 'new normal' form that will, it its own turn, need getting used to.

I've been wondering how the Israelites felt at the beginning and end of those forty years of wandering in the desert.  Exodus records how, at the beginning, there were many voices of protest that, in essence, 'we never suffered like this in Egypt'.  But, when Joshua finally led the people over the Jordan, the new freedoms brought their own problems.  What had become a familiar way of living in the desert had to give way to another new life pattern in the Promised Land.  It was all very strange for them, with other tribes to conquer, rival religions to extinguish ... or in many cases embrace, to the anger of God!  

Whatever coming out of lock-down might mean for us as individuals, it will all be very strange after so long a time of restriction.  As the conditions that imprison us are removed, one thing is important.  We can depend on the continuing presence of the Lord as we return to the wider world.  He has promised to be with us, as the psalmist reminds us, "When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 118:5-6).