A Life Laid Down

I listened recently to a Country & Western song telling the sad tale of the singer's lover being stolen by her best friend.  As I did so, I recollected some of the many things that life has taught me about love.  It seems to me that the theme of many love songs carries an error over one very basic point – the difference between attraction and love.

We can always make ourselves attractive by being clean and well-dressed, by our good manners and elegant behaviour, and many other ways at our disposal.  With luck, this will cause sufficient interest to prompt the response we desire. 

Whether or not that response is love, however, depends upon the other party.  Whatever our attraction, it cannot command love: this has to be given by the lover.  And if it be a gift, it cannot be thrown away, removed, stolen from or even killed by the one who is loved.  It has to be withdrawn by the lover.

What the ‘desirer’ may or may not be able to control is the degree of attraction that he or she displays.  Poverty, for example, may mean that a smart new suit or flashy designer dress isn’t a possibility; injury or illness might mean that appearances or abilities decline.  But how often local newspapers print pictures of couples celebrating their golden or diamond wedding anniversaries, where one of them is quoted saying of the other, “She/He’s just the same now as when I met him/her.”  Clearly, in a literal sense, this can’t be true.  What’s really being expressed is the love that holds them together.  This comment refers to an intangible quality, some inner personality which, even if it too has adapted through the years, is still appreciated, and found to be attractive.

Perhaps the supreme example of love being the gift of the lover is that of our Lord Jesus.  His life wasn’t taken from him, but given by him.  It was an expression of his love for us (John 10:17-18).  John’s Gospel has much to say about love, and perhaps the most poignant verse is 15:13, one that is particularly appropriate as we begin to mark the centenary of the First World War and which, in one form or another, has found its way onto many a war memorial.

The Eyes have it

Like many ground-floor flat-dwellers, I have net curtains at my windows for privacy.   However, the lady who has just moved in nearby has none, and I find I make a conscious effort when passing her window to look the other way lest I inadvertently invade her privacy.  This caused me to ponder the other day about meeting people in the street.

What happens when you meet a stranger as you walk along?  Do you offer a smile?  Do you even catch their eye?  More often than not, both sets of eyes stare steadfastly forward, or focus on the ground or the shop window . . . anything to avoid meeting the other's gaze.  Although many people these days are lonely, seeking fellowship or companionship, at the same time there is a real fear that any sign of friendship might be misconstrued as recognition; relationships can so easily get out of hand. 

It is said that the eye is the window of the soul; perhaps people don't want those particular windows open for others to look in.  While there are many legal, social, cultural or religious reasons why people adopt this distance between one another, I’d like to focus today on just one possibility: guilt.  If we aren’t sure that our friend is being totally honest with us about something, we might challenge him (or her), “Look me in the eye and say that!”

One of the most common causes of guilt in the modern world is sex, and one of the less pleasant aspects of this is pornography.  It’s said to be the biggest single use of the internet; it’s so easy, personal and confidential, isn’t it?  Just a few clicks and one exciting picture leads to another.  Jesus said that to look lustfully at a woman is to commit adultery with her (Matt. 5:28).  The same lustful passions are aroused by viewing pornography as by looking at a live woman, and are just as invasive of the limits of what rightfully belongs between husband and wife.  Whatever the cause, we may be aware of our guilt, and the way it can prevent us being truly open either with our friends or people generally.  But what can we do about it?  Visual temptation is part of daily life.

Jesus also said, “If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into fiery hell.” (Matt. 18:9).  While some argue that this was exaggeration for effect, St Paul took a more practical approach, when he told the Corinthians to “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.” (1 Cor. 6:18).

So the best advice is to avoid looking at whatever we might recognise as an opening for sin, whether in real life or a picture.  If we happen to glimpse something of this nature, look away; don’t give it a second glance: certainly don’t stare goggle-eyed at it, inviting the seed of sin to grow in our hearts.

If we can master our own eyes, we might find it possible to look someone else in the eye . . . and who knows what good could result?

Change and Decay

It seems that concern has increased in recent years about care for the environment, the erosion of the ozone layer, global warming, the search for alternatives to fossil fuel, and so on.  We have a Green Party MP; there will soon be legislation to charge for plastic carrier bags; our local councils are competing for the best recycling ratios for domestic waste – the list is endless. Gradually we have come to see that these matters are important, and we feel part of a worldwide anxiety, a fear that our God-given earth may be wearing out.

But let me throw an element of attrition into the debate – some grit into the oyster, if you will.  Consider for a moment the ageing process as it relates to human life.  A seventy-five- or eighty-year-old cannot fulfil the same physical ambitions of a youth just out of high school; it would be unreasonable for him to expect to do so.  By that time of life, many people are considering the implications of downsizing, and perhaps even moving to sheltered accommodation.  Compared to the comfortable 3- or 4-bedroomed house, the family home of his middle age, a small flat will naturally accommodate fewer personal possessions.  Something will have to go: usually quite a lot gets pruned!  However reluctantly, we regard this as an inevitable progression of lifestyles.

Lets return to the thorny question of global decay.   What has prompted the concern that is being expressed today?  Some, certainly, is founded in a worthy desire to preserve threatened species, and specific constructions or ways of life that face extinction or obliteration.  But isn’t the primary cause simply fear of such a phenomenal degree of change?  The effects that might be brought about by even a small rise in global sea levels represent change of such a magnitude that is virtually incomprehensible.  How can mankind survive in the face of it? 

Almost a century ago, in the midst of war, the outlook of many embroiled in the fighting must have seemed very bleak.  Yet, enormous though the casualties were, far more survived than were killed. 

Faced with the statistics presented to us in the media, we fear the sheer uncertainty of life itself under such different circumstances.  But, doesn’t our pensioner feel something of the same foreboding about that small flat?  And yet, for the majority at least, a reasonable quality of life continues after the removal has taken place; their basic needs are met, albeit in a different way from before.  Cannot we trust God to provide for our absolute necessities, whatever the nature of our surroundings?  

In 1847 Henry Francis Lyte wrote a hymn that is possibly one of the best-known; a hymn that is still sung annually at the FA Cup Final.  Perhaps he expressed a deeper truth than we normally realise when, in his final illness, he penned the words, “Change and decay in all around I see: O thou who changest not, abide with me.”

Holidays too!

The recession has possibly hit holidays more than other aspects of life.  Destinations have to be curtailed, with Thailand becoming the Algarve, anywhere abroad giving way to a week on the Cornish Riviera, or perhaps you have to be content with a weekend in Skegness.  Wherever you go, one thing that is common to all holidays is luggage.

What’s a holiday for, anyway?  For some it’s a chance for adventure, attempting a hitherto unattained achievement; maybe it simply provides a change, and a rest from the routines that fill the remainder of the year.  Only the saddest suitcase fetish would see a holiday as an opportunity to take his rucksack for a ride . . . but even for him, a holiday will require luggage.

For many people a holiday will provide release from a tight timeframe.  There will be more time, so that things can be ‘done properly’, which reminds me . . . are you one of those people who get a few miles down the road and worry about what has been left out of their packing?  One thing I always try to remember is a good book, and then I can indulge myself, using some of that extra time to do some serious reading.

I recently acquired a copy of a new book, ‘Forgetful Heart’ by Lucy Mills.  I found that at the end of each chapter comes a selection of ideas or questions for meditation, and the invitation to employ a notebook or journal to record these, enabling the reader to link such thoughts to one another.  It’s a feature that is common to many publications, and I wondered how often such ideas or suggestions are ignored, for example when we come across them in our Bible notes.  It’s easy to think that they are there ‘for other people’, or ‘for people who have time for that sort of thing’.  I confess that, in defiance of James’s exhortation “be doers of the word and not hearers [or readers] only” (James 1:22), this is often my reaction.  However, I repeat, a holiday offers more time . . . so we can do things properly!

Is that thing that you’ve forgotten not something missing from the suitcase, but an arrangement for a friend to water your pot-plants?  If so, you could come home to find them flagging and drooping, or worse: dead!  I hope you remember to take your Bible and those regular Bible-reading notes with you on holiday.  Our faith is in need of constant nourishment, just like those pot-plants that we water regularly when we’re at home; but unless we make provision for this spiritual nourishment to continue when we’re away, our faith can meet the same fate as the plants.

Finally, while we’re thinking of both plants and the rich soil of our hearts, just look at the parable of the soil (often called the parable of the sower), where the final verse carries a real gem.  “... He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”  (Matt. 13:23b).  If our faith is going to produce a crop, it’s no use letting it flag and wither . . . holiday or not!

When it All Gets Too Much

George was telling me about gardening with his grandson.  At seven years old, Toby had brought his own small wheelbarrow, and had been charged with carrying some of the rubbish round to the compost heap.  “It was a bit of a nightmare,” said George, “He would take the corners too tight, and half of the stuff got shot all over the roses.  To tell you the truth, I was glad when his mother collected him and I could get the place cleared up again.”

The enthusiasm of youth wasn’t quite the answer to George’s needs, it seems.  But let’s just focus for a few minutes on the lost cargo: instead of reaching the compost heap, it didn’t make it round the bend, and landed on the rose-bed.  Isn’t life a bit like that for us sometimes?  Do you feel, like me, that the world has made a tight turn and is off in a different direction, shooting you off at the corner, unable to keep up.  Maybe the task of learning about the latest gadget is more than we can cope with, or perhaps we simply hanker for what seems to have been a slower and perhaps more straightforward lifestyle - as little as twenty or thirty years ago.

I think the psalmist sometimes felt that the world had gone off on its own path, leaving the Lord’s ways behind.  “Why do you stand far off?” he asks the Lord (Ps 10:1), “Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”  After a tirade against the wickedness he sees all around him, he listens to the Lord, and realises that He does see what is going on, hears the prayers of His faithful ones, and will act so that they are no longer troubled by the world.

A number of characters in the Bible felt they weren’t up to what God asked them to do in the world.  Look at Moses (Exodus 4:1,13), Isaiah (Isa.6:5) and Daniel (Dan.10:16-17) as examples, and see how God dealt with their uncertainties.  It wouldn’t be surprising if, after Jesus’ death, the disciples were fearful that they wouldn’t be able to cope with life without Him.  But he had told them that he would send a Counsellor (Jn.14:16-26), and it is that same Holy Spirit that lives within each one of us today.  

So the next time life lurches, and you feel that you’ve been ‘thrown off the barrow’, remember the promises of Jesus, and his often-quoted words at the end of St Matthew’s gospel, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mt 28:20).

The Threat of the By-pass

A lane near the town where I grew up is called ‘Dark Lane’.  For a while about twenty years ago, I used to drive up it on my way to work each morning; in the bright summer sunshine it was far from dark!  However, the field-edge on the sunny side still contains the stumps of tall oak and horse-chestnut trees that were removed in the ‘seventies.  While I can just remember those trees, the hedgerow on the opposite side of the road that completed the ‘darkness’ was even then long gone.

When I moved to Hertfordshire, and began driving around at weekends to explore my new surroundings, people would suggest places I should see, and might speak of ‘going down the by-pass’ to get to them.  I didn’t understand what they meant; to me it was all one main road; the fact that one particular stretch took the traffic around a village instead of through it was lost in the history of years before my arrival, but to those who had lived here all their lives that part of the road was still – and would forever be – ‘the by-pass’.

Roads change; life changes.  There are benefits: cultivation might be easier, villages safer, journeys quicker; but there are disadvantages, too: the passing trade for the village shop is decimated; driving from A to B is further, and the journey less interesting; road names are no longer meaningful and a way of life that for centuries lived out its own co-ordinated and successful existence vanishes.

God gave the Israelites Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21).  However, by Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had expanded these into over 600 rules of life, which together made life a minefield, and in many ways missed the point of the original ten.  People were striving to keep these rules, in the hope that they could please God by doing so. 

Jesus brought a new (and better) way.  Zacchaeus was a tax superintendent who’d made his fortune by overcharging people.  But when he heard of this new way, his whole life changed (Luke 19:1-10).   There were others, too, who were persuaded to follow Jesus’ teaching.  Paul wrote to some of them in Ephesus, encouraging them to lay aside their old lives and take up the new (Eph. 4:22-24).  Sadly, there were people who, having undergone that transformation, were inclined to backtrack and follow another ‘new idea’ that was, in effect, the very slavery to the Law that they had so recently rejected (Galatians 5:1-10).  Paul’s letter to them is in a much different vein!

In a world of constant change, we must see new ideas for what they are.  We need to recognise ways that are ‘new’, even if we never knew the ones they have replaced.  We should evaluate new patterns of behaviour before following them, and also be prepared to reject them, if they try to overturn tried and tested habits that were clearly God’s way of living.  Paul wrote about this to the Corinthians (I Cor. 3:11-15).   Bandwagons abound, and it’s all too easy to hop onto one that is going the wrong way!

One in the Crowd

The pattern of my 'quiet time' each morning is to read the scriptures aloud, even though I'm alone, just as I would if I were at the lectern in church.  I read the notes that I follow day by day - presently I'm using Scripture Union's 'Daily Bread' - and then move into prayer, prompted by the Word I've just read, by one or more of a sequence of topics from mission organisations, and by what is going on in the world, in my friends' lives and in my own.

Now, when I read in church, I try to vary my voice according to what I'm reading, adding pauses where I feel they are appropriate, so as to make the listening experience of others as effective as possible in conveying God's word into their hearts.  I'm no actor, but sometimes I find myself injecting emotion into the record of spoken words, as if I were saying them in the event, as it were.  I remember being so involved on one occasion that I completely forgot the liturgical doxology that I was supposed to say at the end of the reading, and simply returned to my seat with my eyes full of tears.

This week I've been reading from Matthew, chapter 26, in the run-up to Holy Week and Easter.  As I've said, I read the same at home as I do in church.  So this morning, as Jesus finally broke his silence before Caiaphas (v. 64), I spoke His words in a matter-of-fact tone, gradually increasing in intensity.  But when it came to the high priest's response and the ensuing assault and ridicule (vv. 65-68), these were delivered with a contempt and venom that quite scared me.

How is it, I wondered, that the emotion for these insults, that condemnation, comes forth so readily?  I concluded, in prayer, that it's simply human nature coming to the surface.  It's able to do so in the safe and controlled environment of my lounge, in a way that normally would be suppressed by our culture and surroundings.  Surely it is this that is the basis of what we term 'crowd mentality'.

I found myself thinking about my own behaviour in a crowd.  Suppose, for example, I had been in the streets of Aleppo, or Kiev, amongst a crowd of people of like mind to myself.  Would I have dared to speak out against those who sought violence?  Would I have said, "Come on, now, there's a better way of dealing with these demands."?  Or would I have joined in the shouting and the fighting, hitting out and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails along with everyone else?  I think I know the answer and, along with the emotions expressed in that reading this morning, . . . it scares me!

Father God, this week we commemorate Jesus' act of sacrifice that paid the price for the sins of each one of us.  Help me to bring my hatred and violence to the foot of the cross, and leave them there along with the rest of my sins. Give me strength, I pray, to stand up for the oppressed, and the hungry in our world, without resorting to force to express my feelings and get my point across.  Amen.