Archives for February 2013

Paul Tillich on Grace

“Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the empty valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Sometimes, at that moment, a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now, perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept that fact that you are accepted.” If that happens to us, we experience grace.”

(Paul Tillich, Shaking the Foundations)

The Best Two Word Definition of Love

By Anita Mathias

There was a prophetically poignant moment in the otherwise fairytale romance of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

Interviewer: Are you in love?

Diana, instantly, “Of course.”

Charles, qualifying, “Whatever in love means.”

Probably every marriage goes through “Do you love each other?” “Of course.” “Whatever love means…” seasons.

And then it helps to remember the best definition of love I know: Love Does. It is not just a feeling, an abstract noun, but a verb.

So, this Valentine’s Day week, I have been considering what Love Does, and how to make tiny changes in my relationship with Roy.

Well, a walking date together each week, and I will help clear the dishes after meals. Normally, he has been doing that while I deal with the email, tweets, Facebook messages and blog comments which have invariably accumulated during the meal. Yeah, social media is time-consuming!! And so is love!

“One Way to Find God” : A Guest Post by Penelope Swithinbank

By Anita Mathias

I am honoured to host this guest post from Penelope Swithinbank. I will be joining her on her pilgrimage along the Via Francigena in Tuscany in September. Might you come too?

ONE WAY TO FIND GOD BY PENELOPE SWITHINBANK

Complete wholeness – of stillness and silence.

As in the absence of interruption or invasion by iphones or imaginations. We stand, gazing at the beauty spread before us, hardly daring to breathe.

This is what we came for, this is what we saved for and trained for. This is the vacation with a difference for which we had dreamed and yearned.

A Pilgrimage.

A long walk with a difference because it is a long walk with God. Intentionally wanting to find Him.

And find Him we did – in the glories of creation, in one another, in our uplifted hearts.

And we found the gift of TIME.

Time to be, time to be with God.

Isn’t that what so many of us crave? Time out, we call it.

Time to do something different, BE something different, in some place different.

Pilgrimage has been part of the Christian tradition for centuries. It’s not always been a part of mine, until some 10 years ago, when I was asked to lead one. I discovered that the daily walking, the lack of distraction, the determination to keep going, opens up opportunities for the still small Voice in ways I could not have found elsewhere. I’ve led many since then, and each one has had its ups and downs, literally and metaphorically. Each one has been special. Sometimes the sun has shone, sometimes it has almost snowed.

On one occasion, we plodded along, one foot then another, one foot and then another. It was hailing, cold wet hard hailing. “All hail King Jesus …” someone began to sing. There were giggles and groans. One foot in front of the next foot. Onwards and upwards. We had walked a mere 17 miles the previous day. 83 more to go to reach our destination. One foot then another. The hail turned to sleety rain and tried to invade the scarf wound around my neck. It was June, it was England, it was Pilgrimage at its worst. And maybe at its best too, for we spurred one another on, sang to God in spite of the cold, and appreciated even more the day when the sun finally emerged.

A mere 100 miles, each of the weeks of Pilgrimage in England, walking the ancient pilgrim paths and sheep-herding byways, from Chipping Campden to Bath Abbey. Some 60 miles in Tuscany, along the Via Francigena, from San Gimignano to Montalcino. (Those names, they roll romantically round the tongue, inviting and enticing!)

Sometimes in silence, sometimes in prayer; sometimes singing, often laughing; taking time out from daily lived busy-ness, purposely spending time waiting to hear God speak into the rhythm of walking.

Nothing else to do – suitcases moved by unseen angels, meals awaiting us at the next destination along the way. An evening time of devotions – a short thought; some worship; prayers. Maybe Compline. Sharing our journeys, helping each other along.

Pilgrimage is a time of challenge – physically and spiritually.

It is a leaving behind – of daily routine, of family and friends, of expectations.

It is a purpose filled week of deliberately stepping aside and stepping out, in faith, to find God in ways never previously experienced.

It can be a difficult time. No good to pretend it’s easy, however much one has tried to get fit, practice, walk the extra mile.

It’s not the usual walking.

And yet, into this challenge, this sacrifice of normality and time and effort, God speaks. Whether it’s the chill of an English summer or the heat of an Italian one, there is something unusual, something special, something incredible, about this intentionality. So often we don’t know God, don’t hear His voice, because we don’t take the time to stop – really stop, or step out of our comfort zone and wait.

Wait for Him to speak into our hearts.

The Pilgrims are always amazing people. On each Pilgrimage I’ve led there have been people in pain – pain from living, pain from past wounding, pain in this journey. But they keep walking.

1-p8

And each time, God has stepped into people’s lives – sometimes right then and there, sometimes later when reflecting. But God always speaks – if we take time and trust Him to do so.

“It truly was a life changing experience for me; and I met with God in a way I’d never done before.”

2-p9 The Via Frangicena is another ancient Pilgrim route – from Canterbury to Rome. I Pelligrini (the pilgrims) walked it as an act of devotion to God, as an act of contrition. They carried little other than the walking stick, the hat, the cloak and the backpack.

Sometimes they ‘walked’ on their knees. They had no idea when they set out as to whether they would ever return, after such a long and dangerous journey. But their contrition and devotion drove them out and on, dependent totally on God, their fellow pilgrims and the people they met along the way.

When we first walked a part of it (Tuscany in July) the sun beat down mercilessly, our skins scorched and our tongues stuck with thirst. Yet we gave up relatively little compared to I Pelligrini of old.

And what of us? You and me?

How far would you be prepared to walk in order to empty your life of its everyday busy-ness, its tests and trials, its screaming loud insistence?

What do we need to sacrifice in order to hear that still small Voice?

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jer. 6:16

How much do you yearn for the rest, the silence, the stillness, in which to hear God?

What might you do in order to take time to hear that still small voice?

The Revd Penelope Swithinbank is an international speaker and leader for Christian conferences, Pilgrimages, Retreats, Quiet Days and women’s events. She loves hiking, reading and travelling. Author of ‘Women By Design,’ she is a Spiritual Director, blogger, wife, mother and grandmother, and is currently renovating an old Cotswold farmhouse to be a place of spiritual sanctuary for those who need time away, especially those in Christian leadership.

Website/Blog/next ITALY Pilgrimage details: www.ministriesbydesign.org

Moses and the Uses of Failure and Brokenness

By Anita Mathias

Moses and the Burning Bush, Pluchart, wikipedia

Moses was remarkable. Brought up at court as Pharaoh’s grandson, he had the confidence, courage, boldness and the physical strength to kill an Egyptian he saw oppressing his countrymen (Ex 2:11), sort out two Hebrews fighting with each other, (Ex 2:13) and chase away the shepherds bullying Midian’s daughters.

But his privileged upbringing in Pharaoh’s court and his own giftedness brought him a desert exile of 40 years.

He has failed. He became a nobody. His self-confidence vanished.

However, the desert was the right place at the right time. To see the bush which burned and was not consumed. To ask the right question when given a stupendous commission.

“Who am I?” (Exodus 3:11)

God replies, “I will be with you.” And that is enough.

God’s answer essentially is: “Who you are does not matter. What matters is that you learn to listen, learn to lean, learn to rely on my strength.”

* * *

God commands Moses to command Pharaoh to let the entire work force of Egypt go into the desert to worship God.

“I will be with you,” is the only guarantee of safe-conduct Moses gets when commissioned to confront the Pharaoh from whom he had fled–with this preposterous demand.

Moses pleads, “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

But God tells him, “Do not rely on yourself. Rely on me.” “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? ¹²Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” (Ex 4 11-12).

* * *

In his great poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson bitterly asks

Ah! must —

Designer Infinite —

Ah! must thou char the wood ‘ere thou canst limn with it ?

Brokenness reveals beauty. A principle encoded in creation. The green inedible rind of watermelon–who would suspect it conceals red sweet lusciousness? Or guess at the chewy flesh and honeyed water inside a coconut? Or the succulent sweetness inside a leechi or a custard apple?

The fruits themselves, were they sentient, might not suspect it.

They must be broken, smashed, cracked open to reveal their true selves, their sweetness and usefulness.

So too, after a long experience of being baffled, bewildered, broken, discover in ourselves a sweetness we had not suspected. And, as we learn to lean, we discover in ourselves gifts, abilities and strengths which surprise us.

And God recasts the talent which he has broken into something more beautiful than before. Think of a mosaic; think of a stained glass window.

* * *

Moses had all the traits of a natural leader. He was self-confident, quick-thinking, decisive, dominant. He naturally took charge. But he needed to be broken to learn to rely on God, so that he could lead his people into bigger adventures that he would ever have dreamed of.

Once we have surrendered our lives to God, even unpromising “plodders” like William Carey can do staggering things. An old man, hiding out as a shepherd for forty years, can unleash plagues against a great empire and almost single-handedly persuade them to emancipate their slaves.

Relying on oneself, on the other hand, leads to fear, anxiety and second-guessing which saps our strength far more than work. However, figuring out God’s unique mandate for us and obeying it, while relying on him, sets us free because we know he has our back.

* * *

For myself, writing was my forte. It took a long period of failure, exhaustion and incomplete projects for me to learn to lean on God, to try to catch his whispers, his words, his ideas, his feelings, and the music of his voice. “I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

And writing is becoming so much easier, reaches more people and takes a fraction of the time.

* * *

Listen, Christian, if life is grinding you down, driving you into the desert, be of good cheer.

The fire which burns and is not consumed cannot be seen amid “the bright lights, big city.”

It cannot be seen if you are rushing around the King’s court or slaying Egyptians.

Do not resist the period of obscurity and silence in which you learn to see the burning bush, and hear the one who assures you, “I am with you.”

For once you have learnt to lean, and learnt to hear, your words won’t be just words, but will have a power beyond themselves. For the Lord may help you speak and teach you what to say.

Thinking About Darwin, and What he Lost as He Moved from Theism to Agnosticism

By Anita Mathias

The Tree of Life in Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species

I loved Mr Darwin’s Tree, a one act play by Murray Watts, a sort of “memoir” of Darwin–much of it quoted from Darwin’s own letters, journals and books–verbally lovely, rich and bursting with energy, poetic and full of pathos.

Darwin introduced a Copernican revolution into the all-or-nothing theological thinking of the age, which still prevails today in America’s Bible Belt, and among some evangelicals: Scripture is either all true, every word of it, or not true at all. If species gradually evolved, then the account of a six day creation was not true. Ergo, Scripture was not true. This crumbling of ancient foundations caused much anguish to Christian Victorians—and throbs through the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Tennyson, for instance.

But for me, the fact that God made the world in six aeons, that the finches and giant tortoises of the Galapagos evolved in response to environmental pressures rather than being created “as is” does not detract from the moral beauty and sublimity of the message of Jesus. One cannot sit and read or listen to the Gospels for hour after hour, and not feel convinced that Jesus is more than human, has wisdom beyond ours.

* * *

Darwin’s theory of evolution in a nutshell is: There is competition for limited resources. Better adapted individuals (the “fit enough”) within each species have heritable traits—which can be passed on to their offspring—which make them better adapted to survive and reproduce, passing on their genes to the next generations. Species whose individuals are best adapted to their environment survive; others become extinct.

Over aeons, the adaption of species amounts to a new species being created. In Darwin’s words, “being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.”

* * *

Darwin’s wife, Emma Wedgwood Darwin was a faithful evangelical Christian, and it was partly in deference to her that he delayed publishing the Origin of Species. With his Cambridge theology degree, he foresaw how going public with his ideas would cause great upset. “It is like confessing a murder,” he wrote.

And cause upset it did. Edmund Gosse’s heartbreakingly beautiful memoir, Father and Son, describes how his father, the naturalist Philip Gosse was thrilled when Darwin published The Origin of Species. His intellect and careful studies told him that it was true. Then he realized that it conflicted with Scripture which was true, so it could not be true. Gosse published Omphalos, a fanciful attempt to reconcile geological discoveries with Genesis (postulating that God instantly formed the fossil record at the moment of creation) which made him the laughing stock of the scientific community.

* * *

Darwin’s wife, Emma, loved Christ, and talked to him as a friend, writing to Charles, “Will you do me a favour? It is to read our Saviour’s farewell discourse to his disciples which begins at the end of the 13th Chap of John. It is so full of love to them & devotion & every beautiful feeling.”

But this did not convert Charles. Sadly, “the ways he evaluated evidence led him to exclude God and religion because he could only accept what could be proved in a laboratory and scientifically demonstrated.”

In 1876 Darwin described his agnosticism: “Formerly I was led… to the firm conviction of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.”

He lost faith in a beneficent creator. “I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

(Well, wasps control pests. Nearly every pest insect on Earth is preyed upon by a wasp species, either for food or as a host for its parasitic larvae.

However, whenever I try to teach myself about the natural world—the size of the universe, the expanding universe, the big bang theory, the theory of relativity, the mysteries of the tides—my mind boggles. I realize I am but a child at the shore of the wide world, and why should I hope to understand it all? I believe God is good because Jesus says he was, and what Jesus says, I believe.

* * *

Losing faith in God—losing faith in a good universe, governed by a good omnipotent Creator, brings other losses with it. In his Autobiography, Darwin plaintively spells these out.

In one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays.

I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher æsthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.

If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

* * *

Despite the challenge by the evangelicals of his day, such as at the 1860 Oxford Evolution Debate, Darwin’s ideas gradually gained acceptability, and he received a hero’s burial in Westminster Abbey.

Catch “Mr. Darwin’s Tree” if you can. It’s wonderful.

The Spirit of the Lord Hovering over the World

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Life is not a race. And reading the Bible is not a race. It is more important that we are transformed by it than that we read it in a year. Or blog through it in a year.

So while this year, I have, again, kept up with “listening to the Bible in a year” on my iPod as I walk, I have failed in my hope of systemically blogging through the Bible in 2013. I am returning to it, blogging slowly but surely: a tortoise who will, definitely, plod to the finish line—though it will take more than a year

Genesis

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

A simple majestic statement I totally believe.

Did he do so in six days or six aeons? Well, poets and geologists and astronomers each have their language, their own way of telling truth. The scientists tell us the facts as they know them; writers use metaphors.

I believe both the geologists, the astronomers and the author of Genesis. I believe that the heavens and the earth were created step by step over time (by God). And that he found great delight in doing so.

Gen 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The yearning we have for order and beauty, the yearning we have to make comes from God in whose image we are formed.

The earth all formless and empty, with darkness over the surface of the deep—it sounds like a writer’s mind, doesn’t it, just before beginning to write?

Gen 1:2 And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And so everything will be well, everything will always be well because we are under the protection of the Spirit who hovers over us

Spirit of God, hover over me.

Flow through me, irradiate me,

Fill me with your words and ideas.

Make me wholly yours.

All is Grace. All is Gift. All is Good, despite our Sehnsucht, indefinable longings!

By Anita Mathias

Caption: The Bay Where St Paul was Shipwrecked, Malta

So it’s the last day of this half-term, and I am tired. And my girls who’ve worked hard, and Roy, who’s woken early to drive them to school, are even more tired.

We are looking forward to the nine days of the half-term holiday—to sleeping in, no stress, family movies… And especially a five day trip to glorious Ffald-y-Brenin in Wales.

* * *

Funny thing is, we had all that—sleeping in, staying up late, family movies, luscious meals, creaking family dinner tables, and bits of travel– last summer (when we squeezed in an epic drive to Copenhagen in our motorhome) and for 24 days over the Christmas holidays (home and Malta).

And towards the end of each holiday, let me be honest, I was actually looking forward for school. For a routine. For those rascally teenage girls to get to bed at a half-decent hour, rather than the early hours of the morning and not sleep in till noon. For the house to be tidy and not have bowls, mugs, plates, juice-boxes, and chocolate wrappers, scattered around couches and armchairs and bedrooms. Or coats, scarves and socks kicked off anywhere. For predictable silent undisturbed hours to sink into reading and writing.

* * *

After weeks of them being home 24/7, I look forward to school. After weeks of school, I want them home.

You know why? It’s because both are good. It’s all good.

Life is good because it’s a gift from God.

* * *

I am going away next week, and am longing to do so. Sometimes, I have had very exciting, dream holidays, full of doing and seeing and learning—Istanbul, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and after a week or so there, I am surprised by a yearning to be home, to spend a day in my pyjamas, reading or playing around with words.

What? I had so yearned to see these magical places. On my first trip to Paris, I heard an American say on the phone in a rich resonant voice, “I am travel weary. I am homesick.” Travel-weary and homesick in Paris? I thought. Yeah, it’s all too possible.

It’s all good, it’s all gift, it’s all grace. That’s why at home, we can think of glorious art, architecture, history, gardens, mountains, forests, and the ocean and yearn to be there. And that’s why, in the middle of Rome or Athens or Madrid, I have had a sudden longing to go nowhere, do nothing, just sit with green tea, God, a book and a laptop.

* * *

“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” St. Augustine wrote.

This perpetual restlessness in our hearts is meant to lead us to the one who stills all restlessness.

The Germans (of course!) have a word for this restlessness, this indefinable longing: Sehnsucht.

C.S. Lewis describes sehnsucht as the “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what.” That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan“, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. (C. S. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress).

* * *

The restlessness in your heart is essentially a God-yearning. Don’t confuse it with what you think you desire— finishing and publishing a beautiful book, having a successful blog, travel, stimulating friendships, the holiday cottage on the sea, let’s say.

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them,” C. S. Lewis says in “The Weight of Glory.”“These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

* * *

So listen to your restlessness. Listen to your longings. You are longing for more than Alaska, or Antarctica or the Amazon (places I would rather like to see before I die). You are longing for more than to write a beautiful book (something else I would like to do before I die).

You are really yearning for the infinite sea of God. For the ocean of God to pour into your spirit, and for your spirit to pour into the ocean of God now and in eternity. You are yearning to abide and dwell in Him, and be filled with his spirit, which Jesus says is possible in this life. The things of this world for which you think you yearn are just signposts to the things which will truly satisfy your soul.

This world, this life, which lies, “before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new,” is a gift, a love-gift from God. Its loveliness is designed to delight, but not entirely satisfy our hearts. Only the Giver can do that.

Zapping Negativity and Worry Through Prayer and Faith

By Anita Mathias

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson in her book Positivity ( Norman Vincent Peale with data) says that “experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative ones leads people to a tipping point beyond which they naturally become more resilient to adversity and effortlessly achieve what they once could only imagine.”

And how do we do experience three positive emotions to one negative one?

Well, here’s one way for a Christian: We interject prayer into our lives, until it becomes as instinctive as breathing. Okay, let’s start small: As instinctive as worrying!

Some examples…

It’s University application season, and parents and children are getting nervous. None of us wants to drop the ball. My daughter Irene is applying to one of the most competitive courses in one of the most competitive Universities in Britain.

We can do this two ways…though worry and anxiety and striving, or in peace and quiet and trust and prayer from which the wisdom and strategies we need will blossom. I know which path we are going to take. So each worry, I plan to turn into prayer, so that, whatever the outcome, with God’s help this is going to be the most prayer-soaked University application ever.

* * *

I now try to add a 50 percent margin to everything I do. If I think it will take 30 minutes to get to small group, or to German class, I leave 45 minutes early, and use the extra time to practice German on Duolingo or catch up with email, and replies to Facebook comments or tweets. And this injects serenity into my day.

And what when things go wrong, as things are apt to do, and I am rushing somewhere and sense time is against me? I relax. I do my Duolingo. I listen to my book on tape. I breathe. I close my eyes and pray (Roy drives!) about the next things in my day. I do not look at the time. Half the time, we are not late after all, and when we are… well, at least I don’t know how late. Being stressed about the outcome won’t change it, but using the time to retreat into the cave of God, there’s holiness and peace and wisdom and strength in that.

* * *

I’ve blogged for over five years now, and every now and then I hit a wall.

And the wall—a temporary plateau in subject matter, style and audience–is an important thing for a blogger to hit. Otherwise, we can go on autopilot, saying the same things we’ve said before, boring ourselves and the world!!

When I used to hit a wall, I would feel I should blog up, write more mandarin posts, carefully written, long, on subjects likely to speak to or engage many people. Yeah, sounds to me like a recipe for writers’ block, insecurity, frustration, weariness and stress. For it’s best to blog your weekday self, not your Sunday best!

But now that I am tired, when I hit a wall, I blog down. Share little things which interest me, a bit like Facebook. Share my fears, failures and worries. Find my subject matter in honesty about what it’s really like to follow Christ. Find newness in honesty, the best place to find newness!

And then I pray—for ideas, for time, for energy, for readers, for deeper surrender, for the ability to abide in Christ ever more deeply, to burrow deeper into his heart, and record what I overhear as Isaiah did. Prayer thus converts the butterfly flutter of fear when stats plunge into faith and assurance, which is a sine qua none for writing well and quickly.

* * *

I have lost 24 pounds since changing my diet, but as anyone who tries to change their body knows, scales have a mind of their own. And when they tilt upwards, I have learnt that there is only one thing to do to keep focused—return to thanksgiving for all I have lost. Renew a commitment to health, to 10,000 steps a day, and more fruits and vegetables!

Ask Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” to show me the best way to get strong.

And my heart and emotions are stabilized and, indeed, hopeful.

* * *

Prayer calms me, opens my mind up to possibilities, reassures me of an infinite power beyond myself. I work in a more assured and relaxed way.

These are the benefits of prayer, if there were no God.

But, of course, there is a God and so prayer has a power whose limits we can only guess.

Many things happen in our lives, and in other people’s lives because we have prayed.

So much so, that as Mark Batterson says, the transcript of our prayers can become the transcript of our lives.