Archives for September 2013

In which Jesus Promises Rest to the Meek

I like Jesus’ great invitation at the end of Matthew 11:“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I like that fact that Jesus suggests we learn meekness by observing and studying him. So, obviously, meekness is not a natural character trait like being sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic or choleric, but a learned behaviour.

I have various mantras, what Gretchen Rubin calls “splendid truths.” (One of these, adopted from her, calms me down: “There is only love.”) I need to add one more: “I will learn how to be meek and humble of heart from Jesus.” Since, obviously, it does not come naturally!!

* * *

Why would one want to be humble of heart? Because pride is silly, narrow and self-centred. We are not focused on anything important, anything worth having, but merely on self, on how others perceive us, and treat us.

Why would one want to be meek? Because being gentle is the best way to be, rather than being proud and aggressive.

And besides, the meek inherit the earth: The value of meekness, even in regard to worldly property and success in life, is often exhibited in the Scriptures. It is also seen in common life that a meek, patient, mild man is the most prospered. An impatient and quarrelsome man raises up enemies; often loses property in lawsuits; spends his time in disputes and broils rather than in sober, honest industry; and is harassed, vexed, and unsuccessful in all that he does. (Barnes Notes on the Bible.)

* * *

So how does one learn to be meek? Practice. Practice meek practices.

So that is what I am training myself to do.

Let others have the last word. If someone puts you down, let them.

Overlook lots of things. Blow things away with the breath of kindness. When spoken to harshly, you don’t need to retort in kind. Return a gentle answer or none at all when someone gets irrational through tiredness. This is particularly useful in family life: the blind eye and the deaf ear so that one can get on with one’s work.

Ignore negativity directed at you on social media as much as possible. Block repeat offenders.

Practice, practice, practice, one step after another, until all this becomes second nature!

* * *

Learn from Jesus how to be gentle and humble, and the prize is the rest we seek, as we work–as we sleep–as we relax–as we live.

Our souls are as rested when we work, or hang out at home, as they are after a week of beach and mountain walks, because we are choosing meekness which obviates conflict, and we are choosing humility, daily defining all our grand ambitions, and then placing them in his hands to grant–or not.

Prayers are Prophecies: The Transcript of your Prayers becomes your Life’s Script

By Anita Mathias

I am reading Mark Batterson’s The Circle Maker, a brilliant book on prayer and am already praying more, and praying better: one test of a good book on prayer.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

Bold prayers honour God and God honours bold prayers. God is offended by anything less than your biggest dreams or boldest prayers. If your prayers aren’t impossible to you, they are insulting to God. Why? Because they don’t require divine intervention. But ask God to part the Red Sea or make the sun stand still or float an iron axehead, and God is moved to omnipotent action.

There is nothing God loves more than keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles and fulfilling dreams. That is who he is. That is what he does. The bigger the prayer circle we draw around our dreams, the better, because God gets more glory.

The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect—and they intersect when we draw a circle around the impossible situations in our lives and ask God to intervene.

I promise you this: God is ready and waiting. So while I have no idea what circumstances you find yourself in, I’m confident that you are only one prayer away from a dream fulfilled, a promise kept, or a miracle performed.

It is absolutely imperative that you come to terms with this simple, yet life-changing truth: God is for you. If you don’t believe it, then you’ll pray small timid prayers; if you do believe it, then you’ll pray big audacious prayers.

And one way or another, your small timid prayer, or your big audacious prayers will change the trajectory of your life and turn you into two totally different people.

Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future. Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

How Persephone Marlowe can Keep You Straight

By Anita Mathias

Image credit

When we moved to Oxford, and my daughter, Irene, was five, she sat next to a little girl in school called Persephone Marlowe.

And in church, to our surprise, there was Persephone Marlowe. And the whole Marlowe family who were lovely and became good friends of ours.

And when Irene was 10, I began to blog.

* * *

Now, blogging is an enormous vehicle of growth if you decide to be honest (since, anyway, one day all that is hidden shall be revealed).

And I was. I explored my discomfort with the church I currently attended (which wasn’t the wisest thing, and led me to having to leave it:-).

I explored my discomfort with contentious issues on the edges of faith. With those too ready to consign others to hell, with rigid positions on homosexuality, women’s roles, theology, or rigid inerrancy.

I threw the jigsaw of my faith on the floor, in mid-life, and reconstructed what I, Anita Mathias, really, really, believed rather than what I, Anita Mathias, had been taught.

And having questioned everything, I came back to a settled Mere Christian faith, and it was good. I felt at home in it.

* * *

And then I noticed that little Persephone Marlowe, now a beautiful teenager, was following my blog.

And, oddly, that settled the direction my blog was going to grow.

Persephone Marlowe was going to have plenty of her own faith shifts in time. We all do. But was I going to be the one to precipitate them? I, who know the anguish of questioning the very fabric of the faith so precious to me. It’s like jumping off a cliff trusting that the air will catch you.

I had asked my own daughters not to read my blog when I was working things out, so as not to scandalize then. The Holy Spirit would work on their faith in his own time. They continued to believe the conservative evangelical position taught in church, and I let them, while I was questioning–because I was questioning, and I hadn’t arrived, and some journeys can only be made alone, and one of those journeys is the journey of faith. In fact, my elder daughter Zoe’s faith is more conservative than mine, and when I don’t agree with everything Irene is taught at youth group, I am silent.

So could I, should I, be responsible for precipitating the faith-shifts of the teenagers who follow me, friends of Zoe, friends of Irene? Or should I celebrate the broad common ground of mere Christianity, rather than explore the exhausting, thin, low oxygen Machu Picchu air of dissent.

I decide. I probably didn’t believe everything my faith tradition taught in the way others believed it. But my common ground with other charismatic evangelicals was massive, and there was much to celebrate and rejoice.

There were a myriad celebratory posts I could write with good conscience, ideas which strengthened, encouraged, inspired and comforted me, and so might, if I were lucky, strengthen, encourage, inspire and comfort others.

I would major on the majors. Where I disagreed, I would largely be silent, unless I thought bad theology was actually harmful, in which case it would be my duty to speak.

* * *

When I tried to get my sister Shalini to join me in mischief, my mother used to say, If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Now I sure Jesus meant it rhetorically, but I decided since I loved Christ, and loved so much about the body of the Christ, I would rather write celebratory, positive, faith-filled posts than risk scandalizing, or denting the faith of Persephone Middleton and the other sweet friends of my daughters who follow my blog.

Will my blog be saccharine sweet? Nope. My no bull-shXt rule still applies. Fortunately, as Adrian Plass says, “God is nice and he likes me,” and so the central fact of the love of God for us provides us a multitude of subjects for blog posts that are sweet, and nourishing and also true. Thank heavens!

In which Annie Relocates the Wirral to Birmingham, and I am Chastened

By Anita Mathias

One gets spoiled in Oxford, gets used to fast-moving, intelligent conversation; to hearing of new books and new ideas, and having your own thinking challenged.

And sometimes, after living here for years, you can think of Oxford as the world. Think of the body of Christ in Oxford as identical to the body of Christ anywhere in the world.

* * *

I went on a retreat in the Cotswolds a few months ago, wanting quiet; time to refill my emotional and spiritual tanks, and to rest in the presence of God.

What I got was a continual rousting for worship and meals and talks, and unkindest cut: childish activities organised by elderly volunteer ladies: “Draw what the Lord is saying to you, and share it with the group.”

I grimace. She gushes, “You never know what the Lord might use to speak to you.” Yeah, but why not try the ancient ways of prayer and scripture?

And, of course, we don’t know each other, and no one wants to give the wrong answer, so it’s a bit of a platitudinous Follow the Leader. A bit sentimental, flat, childlike.

* * *

Garrison Keillor describes his fictional Lake Wobegon as “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Well, Oxford can be like that.

And here I am, looking around, thinking, “Definitely not Lake Wobegon. Or Oxford. Is X a bit slow?”

Meals are in common, relentless small talk, joshing and joking about unfunny things. My smile grows so fixed that my cheek muscles hurt, and I probably look pretty slow myself.

At the coffee station, the lady I suspected of being a bit “slow” joins me, and she is bewildered. You pay for hot chocolate; tea is free; coffee is free, but apparently they hide the filters, so you have to wait for the staff to make it. Some milk is free, if you can find it; some is private, and labelled.

I spell all this pettiness for her, all the while wanting to get back to my own room.

* * *

“Where are you from, Anita?”

“Oxford,” I say tersely, my personal shorthand for, “NO, I am not going to tell you my life-story.”

“And where you from, Annie?” I ask in turn, politely.

“From the Wirral,” she says. “I bet you don’t know where that it.”

“Of course, I do,” I say with some asperity. “It’s in Birmingham.”

She pauses. “Yes,” she says, slowly. “It is in Birmingham.”

“I have lived in the UK for 14 years” I inform her. “I recognised your accent,” I say proudly, fibbing. Recognised an accent would have been more accurate.

“Yeeess,” she says.

* * *

My mind plays with the conversation on the way back to my room. The Wirral; the Wirral. But wasn’t it somewhere up north? Near Liverpool? I google it on my phone.

Yes, indeed it was.

But why ever had she agreed it was in Birmingham? She lived there after all. She must have known.

* * *

And I realise, with a hot rush of shame.

Annie, an elderly woman I had judged to be slow, had assented to the Wirral being in Birmingham, so as not to embarrass me!!

* * *

Wow, what completely unnecessary sensitivity and delicacy!

Oh, intelligence counts for nothing at all. It is the culture of the spirit which matters. I remembered Christina Rossetti. “All is small save love, for love is all in all.”

I have spent much of my life among clever people, moving to faculty housing at a university campus where my father taught at 14, then my own years at college and graduate school; then marrying an academic straight out of graduate school, and another 21 years in the orbit of universities.

I went through a phase when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, of being thoroughly wowed by very, very clever people. And I still thoroughly enjoy them.

And what I have learned is that intelligence counts for nothing, really, when it comes to living well. It does not make you happier; it does not ensure your children are well brought-up; it doesn’t safeguard marriages. And, gallingly, unless you are focused on wealth-building, it doesn’t even make you rich!!

What matters is wisdom. What matters is kindness. And many years ago, I decided that if I had the choice, I would hang out with wise, kind people rather than clever people. I decided that kindness of the heart trumps sharpness of the brain, anyway, any day.

I feel ashamed of the smallness of my judgements, at the smallness of my heart, for my silly assessing of people as to whether they are as above average as those in Lake Wobegon or Oxford. People are not to be superficially or superciliously judged. They are to be enjoyed—and loved, if one’s little heart could stretch that far.

Intelligence counts for nothing substantive, no more than beauty does. What matters is the kindness of the heart, the culture of the heart.

And when it came to that, Annie, who kindly agreed the Wirral was in Birmingham so as not to embarrass the know-it-all foreign lady who had so confidently placed it there–well, Annie far out-classed Anita, who had judged her as slow, but had, herself, a whole lot of catching up to do.

A Table in Presence of my Foes

By Anita Mathias

I am reading the story of Jacob in Genesis.

Jacob was in a most unpromising position to make a fortune.

“Name your wages,” Laban said, and Jacob did, modest ones: the streaked and speckled sheep and goats, and dark sheep (Gen 31-32). (Sheep were normally pure white, and goats pitch black).

Laban agreed, but then removed all the streaked or spotted or specked goats, and all the dark lambs, and put them in the care of his sons, a three days’ journey from Jacob.

Who must have realized, of course, but uses his own selective breeding to create his own strong speckled flocks which he too keeps separate, so growing exceedingly prosperous.

Laban changes his wages ten times (Gen 31:7) but still God ensures that the strong lambs and kids born had the colouring of those promised to Jacob. He leaves with hundreds of goats, rams, camels, cows, bulls, donkey and servants

* * *

Protection from one’s enemies is one of the surprising aspects of God’s covenant and blessing of Abraham (Gen 14:20).

I guess Israel, as an embattled nation in hostile enemy territory, needed this psychological and actual protection.

Enemies are a fact of life. We make some by our own bad behaviour, alas. But some just appear like mould or fungi, through no fault of our own.

Some people are jealous of your face, some are jealous of your place, some are jealous of your lace, and some are jealous of your grace, R. T. Kendall writes.

If, however, we were unable to do the work God gave us to do, because of enemies or opposition or hostility, faith would be toothless. We would be living in a world in which men were sovereign, not God.

Even when we do suffer at the hands of our enemies, they are God’s tool to move us upwards and onwards. They provide “the kick from behind and pull from in front” which is, often, how God indicates his will. And by blocking us, they, ironically, often increase our focus on the work God has called us to do.

* * *

Are you facing hostility or opposition or difficult circumstances?

Some God will allow to strengthen your character. Some of these will ensure that you turn your eyes upwards and see what He can do despite your circumstances.

How would you ever know that God is greater than all the circumstances ringed against you, unless you experienced difficulties and his deliverance?

So there is always a way of escape I believe; a way of following God and stepping into the destiny he has called you to, even when pursuing it seems to be difficult or impossible.

Because the forces ranged against us, of circumstances, enemies or difficulties are only part of the picture.

* * *

The King of Aram sent horses and chariots and a strong force.

An army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked.

“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this army with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked. (2 Kings 6).

Though you have laboured all night and caught nothing, the seas are, in fact, alive with fish. Ask the Lord where to cast your net.

Though things appear bleak and impossible, you serve the God of clever ideas, of miracles whose heart is “to set your hands free from the basket, remove the burden from your shoulders” (Psalm 81:6.)

Cast your eyes upwards. Help—good ideas, wisdom, providential circumstance, even, perhaps, a small miracle– is very likely at hand.

In which Difficult People are Angels Unawares

By Anita Mathias

I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson at a difficult time of my life, with a great deal of pleasure, awe, delight, gratitude (and envy at the perfection of her writing style).

However, I did not remember this beautiful passage which Canadian writer Carolyn Weber points out.

This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, “What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?”

If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, “This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me,” you are free to act otherwise than as circumstance would seem to dictate.

You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it. (Gilead, HarperCollins 2004, p. 124)

Indeed!

Good News for Those who’ve Blown It

By Anita Mathias

Image: Caravaggio

You can live with Christ in the closest possible

Intimacy; have a Spirit-given breakthrough

Understand that he is the Son

Of the Living God, know

He speaks the words of eternal life.

You can see him on the mountain, transfigured.

And then… babble,

Something about building booths,

Because you don’t know what to say

But you must say something.

And so bossily,

Despite having seen him transfigured,

You decide to take charge, and take him aside and rebuke him

When he tells you that suffering was always part of the plan,

And you get called Satan,

Not long after you have been called blessed.

And then…what you can do,

Is declare you will never ever fall away from Jesus,

Even if everyone else does,

And then you do just that….deny him

Three times.

And then, when Jesus gives you another chance,

You blow that too,

And instead of contemplating your fate

Which Christ has just revealed to you.

What you do is competitively obsess over John’s fate!

* * *

You can love Christ for many years,

And be 83 pounds overweight,

You eat in a sloppy, unthinking way; eliminate exercise

Deal with your feeling through food.

You can lose your temper with some regularity; take offence,

Write people off. Of course you can!

* * *

Your vessel of clay may be different,

Alcoholism perhaps; drugs; an abortion; divorce,

A sexual history so chequered you’d rather not think about it,

Or perhaps you been good for so long,

That you feel very bad and angry inside.

* * *

It’s not the vessel of clay that counts,

It is the treasure within.

Your simple love for Christ,

Your desire to follow him,

Though you, so often, forget him.

For one day, your vessel, my vessel, Peter’s vessel

Shall all be cast away on the scrap-heap of discarded things,

And what matters shall shine forth: the treasure within:

The heart he always loved; the heart that loved him back,

Though it got side-tracked–so very often.

My Big, Fat, Frivolous Prayer Which Made Dreams Come True

By Anita Mathias

: Towers surrounding Piazza Cisterna, San Gimignano, Tuscany.; “Dreaming is a form of praying, and praying is a form of dreaming,” Mark Batterson

I was wandering around Tuscany last week, loving the tiny walled cities, the watch-towers (torre), bell-towers (campanile), the warm, funny people, and the excellent, gargantuan feasts, six and seven course meals. The elegant hotels and the massive repasts, the table littered with fine wines, were organized by the tour group, ATG. I would normally have contented myself with two courses, and good-enough accommodation, but I enjoyed it, as a one-off treat!

Oh, I suffer from wanderlust, a craving which got into my bones from reading, and watching movies, and looking at art, and I have travelled as much as I could afford throughout my adult life.

* * *

Piazza Duomo, San Gimignano, Tuscany.

I founded a small company in July 2007, an immensely stressful experience at first, as I had no business background.

A few months later, a Swedish friend described Stockholm, and the elegant canals that ran through it with Baltic palaces and mansions on either side. I longed to see it, but could not see how we could ever afford it, with all the money from the business going to pay private school fees and the mortgage, or being ploughed back into the business.

But as our friend spoke, the thought struck me like an electric shock, “Anita, pray. Pray that your business will provide enough for you to see Stockholm.” And suddenly that impossible dream seemed entirely possible.

And my eyes filled with tears, because I immediately knew that, of course, if I prayed, it was possible. It definitely was possible.

* * *

And over the next couple of years, we had lots of orders for the unusual stuff we sold from Europe. And each time I stuffed envelopes to Copenhagen or Stockholm or Oslo, or Malta or Corfu or Granada or Ravenna or Bologna or Donegal or Brittany or Strasbourg or Corfu or Istanbul or Geneva or Slovenia or Finland, I’d pray, “Lord, ‘my’ stuff is going to these places. One day, may I sell enough of them that I myself can visit these places.”

But our product list was then small, and the costs of the business were high–economies of scale and experience not having kicked in–that I could not see how it could ever be possible.

But I kept praying.

And we worked hard, too hard perhaps, because having taken on the challenge of building a business, it became our main, obsessive interest which absorbed all our energy and passion.

* * *


Il Campo (the main square), with town hall and bell tower, Siena.

In 2009, two years after starting the business, we explored the whole of Norway, which we had long wanted to; and in 2011, we explored Sweden, and, yes, Stockholm, and canoed down the river, with the Baltic palaces on each side; and in 2012, Denmark. I love Scandinavia.

Last week, as we walked the streets of Montalcino, Tuscany, I told Roy about the prayer I had prayed in 2007 as Goran had told us about Sweden, and about how it has been lavishly answered. Since 2009, we’ve taken the girls to all those magical places I mentioned earlier.

* * *

Why did God answer that totally frivolous prayer?

Well, why not?

I think that is how the Lord of Universe sometimes views our prayers. Much as we should view our child’s request for an ice-cream on a hot day when we have money in our pocket.

Why not?

And perhaps he will use my love of travel in the story of my life. I have three big prayers about how I want him to do so!

* * *

Perhaps my prayer was answered because God is a father, and delights in giving us what we ask for.

Think of a child climbing into her father’s lap, saying, “Papa, may I have a doll house for Christmas?”

And if there is room in their house for the dollhouse; and if the father can buy it while meeting his other obligations; and if the child can be counted on not to scatter the doll’s house furniture throughout the real house; and not to swallow bits and pieces; and if it will be a pleasure, not one more stressful bit of clutter, sure he will give it to her.

And so, when I figuratively climbed into his lap, in 2007, and said, “Father, I want to see Scandinavia. Father, open up Europe and the Europeans to me. Father, please ensure that this business I am establishing will provide our family enough money to travel widely in Europe,” he could have said, “Oh, Anita, your business really is writing. Wait. Your writing will enable your travel. And that will give you more joy.”

And in retrospect that is what I should have prayed for.

But I asked for my little business to prosper so my kids could go to the best school for them, which was expensive and private, and so he said, “Yes, child, okay,” and it happened to me as I prayed for.

* * *

He is our Father, and he encourages us to pray outrageous prayers, and because he is a kind, even indulgent father, he often grants them.

Not always, of course, but climbing into his lap, and whispering our heart’s desires into his ears, is one of the things which will change the course of our lives more than anything else! I am convinced of it.

What you pray for consistently has a tremendous, seismic, thoroughly under-estimated effect on the course of your life.