La Cartuja, The Carthusian Monastery, Granada
We are going to spend the next couple of days in the Alhambra. However, since we arrived at Granada at 2 a.m. last night–I know, bad planning!!–we took today easy, drove around, shopped, and visited the Cartuja, a baroque church and monastery in absolutely terrible taste, meant to be Catholicism’s answer to the Alhambra!!
The first thing which struck me was that it was absolutely too much. It was the church that had too much.
My daughter, Irene, 11, who has been taken to innumerable Gothic Cathedrals in several European countries almost wanted to stay in our Moorish rented house rather than trek out. However, she sat spell-bound by the magnificence, and did not want to move.
“I am so glad I didn’t stay back to read,” she said, “This is the best church I have ever seen!!”
What?!!
Truly, people form their own innate aesthetic and there is nothing someone else can do to foist their loves and hatreds onto them.
* * *
And God was so merciful to us. We flew out of Gatwick on EasyJet yesterday; today, they announced that they are cancelling all flights between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. because of an ice storm. Dear Lord, let our good luck–or your merciful providence–hold for our return flight.
* * *
I have been thinking about God’s protection recently. Probably the best illustration I know of this is from a book by Hannah Whittall Smith called “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.”
Now, I read this in my late teens, which was a while ago, so if I remember it wrongly, forgive me.
Hannah has a vision of the Christian wrapped in a haze of golden light. Nothing could harm her unless the light parted to allow it.
So nothing can happen to us, unless God permits it.
And nothing can happen to us which God cannot work out for good.
Sometimes, even as he closes a door, he opens a window. Sometimes, though, there is a lag.
The Lord is my Shepherd. With him as my shepherd, I am safe. With him as my shepherd I can relax. Sometimes, though “the arrow that flies by night” flies around me, I am not only unharmed by it, but, praise God, I am even unaware that it has been flying near me.
Thank you, God for your protection. Deliver me from evil–evil I might do, and evil others might wish on me or for me. Amen.
Archives for 2010
The Third Way
The Third Way
I love God. I love following him, even when I get it wrong (often!!). It is absolutely the most exciting adventure of my life.
I particularly love it when he makes fun of my limited intelligence, and blows my mind open.
He does this often when I limit my alternatives to two. And wrestle, “Lord, should I do this? Or that? This? Or that?” Sometimes neither alternative feels quite right. Both leave me feeling a bit heavy-hearted. I can see scriptural justification for both, and see both good and evil in the outcomes of both courses of action.
I fell face down before God right now to seek his wisdom on a particular course of action. (I set the time for 30 minutes, because I am busy, we are soon leaving for a week in Granada. But if he had not spoken in 30 minutes, I would have lingered for 90 minutes, and continued wrestling, perhaps while organizing my house, for an hour or two more until he had spoken. If his answer was, “Wait some more until I do tell you,” that would have been fine too.)
But I have a big task to complete before I leave to Granada, a doable task, but a big one, and God mercifully spoke just before my timer went off.
God told me what to do with what I was agonizing about. A third alternative, I had not considered. But one which does fill my heart with joy and energy.
So life is never just either/or. There can be an And. When God expands our mind.
And bless and strengthen me indeed, God, and help me to continue hearing from you, and to write only what I hear the Spirit saying to the Church. Nothing more. And nothing less!
The Lord will Fight for you. You need Only to Stand Still Ex 14:14
The Lord will Fight for you. You need Only to Stand Still Ex 14:14
Moses says this to the Israelites when they were pursued by the armies of Pharaoh, hemmed in between the armies and the sea. (Which, of course, ultimately parted.)
Cool!
Does it apply at all times? When we are the righteous ones who are persecuted? Or also, when we have sinned and messed up?
Do we fight for our children only when they are in the right? I have often heard people talk despairingly of bad parents who will defend their children, whether they are in the right or wrong. But, I’m guessing, almost everyone has been that sort of bad parent.
I like this Psalm describing God delivering those who have seriously messed things up.
The Mind-Expanding Prayer I am Praying Today
I kneel before the Father,
I pray
that out of his glorious riches
he may strengthen me
with power
through his Spirit
in my inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in my heart
through faith.
And I pray that I,
being rooted and established
in love,
may have power,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep
is the love of Christ,
and to know this love that surpasses knowledge
—that I may be filled to the measure
of all the fullness of God.
There will be the Essence of Dogness in Heaven–C.S. Lewis
Jake, my collie, in a buttercup meadow. |
I would have immensely enjoyed hearing the feisty C.S. Lewis preach or lecture.
He was a slave to the dog of Mrs. Moore (the mother of the soldier-friend who died in the First World War, whom he moved in with to “look after” as per his pact with her son.) His brother, Warnie, sardonically comments on the great things Jack might have achieved if he were not always trotting off to get meat from the butchers for the dog, or to walk him.
When a grieving dog-owner asked him if we would be re-united with our pets in heaven, Lewis did not let his lack of acquaintance with that undiscovered country prevent his having opinions about it. “No,” he said, “not our dogs.” However, he said, there would be “the essence of dogness” in heaven.
I hope he’s right about the Platonic essence of dogness in heaven. Surely he is.
But though there is nothing in Scripture about the resurrection of the dogs, I would love to believe that my dogs past and present will be there in heaven—Rover, Brutus, Juno, Trooper and Jake. They would make my joy complete.
I love my wonderful dog, Jake, whom I got from a rescue, as I have got every dog I have ever owned as an adult. He fell fast in love with me on the day we brought him home 7 years ago, and has been my constant shadow, sleeping at the foot of our bed, following me everywhere, even to the bathroom, constantly repositioning himself to keep a vigilant eye on me. Though what an active collie and a sedentary writer could have in common is one of the mysteries of the universe!!
Wasting Suffering
The Sadness of Wasting Suffering
Our pastorate (home group) is studying Romans, well more appropriately looking at the mountain peaks of Romans. I felt a bit sulky about this as I love doing things thoroughly, especially things like studying Romans. I guess I will just have to recruit a few friends to do it with me.
I hate abridged books, and so I dislike this high points of Romans approach. However, our last meeting this week was amazing because we lingered on a few sentences in an otherwise rich and rhapsodic chapter–a crescendo which we would otherwise not have devoted enough time to.
And here is the crescendo.
Romans 8:35: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”j]”>[j]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,k]”>[k]neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I found that really moving–that the very worst life can throw at us–trouble or hardship or persecution or danger or death or demons, the past or the future–nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can separate us from the dance we dance with him, while he breathes his spirit into us.
Will Donaldson, Director of Christian Leadership at Wycliffe who belongs to our pastorate, spoke about suffering being within the providential purposes of God.
* * *
And suddenly, I thought about an injustice I had experienced nearly three years ago which I had allowed to turn into bitterness within me. I had had trouble forgiving. This unforgiveness and bitterness blocked the flow of creativity within me until, with a herculean effort which took a while, I released the people involved and forgave them.
And now I am back. The injustice was an injustice, and I shake my head wryly when I remember it. But am no longer angry. Without understanding what went on, I am able to cancel the debt, so to say, and to move on.
But alas, over the 2+ years I took to get to this point, I guess I wasted suffering. I stewed, fumed, asked God to vindicate me against my adversaries, wanted God to see justice done (of course, I still do, but I am willing to wait for his timing), got bitter. What a waste!
If I had accepted it as what God providentially allowed to happen to me, and tried to see his purposes and sovereign overruling in it, what sweetness of character it could have brought forth!
Suffering is part of God’s providential purposes. It has a purpose–developing character and perseverance, and hope. And hope does not disappoint us, as Paul says in this splendid image, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything James 1
Wec also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3
* * *
Giveaway of 1 Million Free Books–World Book Night
Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin
Alan Bennett – A Life Like Other People’s
John le Carré – The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Lee Child – Killing Floor
Carol Ann Duffy – The World’s Wife
Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Seamus Heaney – Selected Poems
Marian Keyes – Rachel’s Holiday
Mohsin Hamid – The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Ben Macintyre – Agent Zigzag
Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera
Yann Martel – Life of Pi
Alexander Masters – Stuart: A Life Backwards
Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance
David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas
Toni Morrison – Beloved
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun
David Nicholls – One Day
Philip Pullman – Northern Lights
CJ Sansom – Dissolution
Nigel Slater – Toast
Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith
World Book Night to give away 1m free books
Interesting Margaret Atwood Interview
Margaret Atwood interview: ‘Go three days without water and you don’t have any human rights. Why? Because you’re dead’
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