Archives for April 2014

Dear Diary: What I’ve Thought, Read, Done, and Been Grateful for This Week

By Anita Mathias

Merry

Grateful for

Monday

1 Merry, my labradoodle’s wagging tail and sweet nature.

Jake and Merry

2 Jake, my 11 year old Border Collie, tolerating Merry.

3 Blog stats picking up steadily.

4 Seeing a heron on my walk.

5 Three mile walk/run from Sandford on Thames to Iffley Lock and back, barely tired

7 Green and Black Butterscotch chocolate

8 My sponsor at Overeater’s Anonymous, who is, sadly, but naturally, anonymous.

10 The process of trying to surrender my eating and fitness to Christ

11 Christ–how he brings clarity and light to everything.

12 Coconut Curry Lentil Soup made by Roy for lunch, and asparagus soup with coconut milk made by Zoe for dinner

13 Kettle crisps with salt and pepper

14 This: Donald Miller writes

Being known by strangers isn’t going to make anybody fulfilled. In fact, it can make life much more confusing and complicated. But finding a role in life that helps others is actually healing.

Having somebody come up to me and say they loved my book is nice, don’t get me wrong, but having somebody come up and say they sold their house, quit their job or adopted a child because of Creating Your Life Plan is fulfilling to me on a much deeper level.

I wish I would have known that when I was younger.

Here’s a thought: What if our desire to be known and validated and even famous isn’t a misappropriated desire to actually be people of significant impact, which doesn’t require fame at all?

15 Sold 20 copies today of Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much in the US.

Tuesday

Thought–I was influenced by WHM’s Sonship as a young Christian. World Harvest Mission changes its name to Serge. Why would someone lose 30 years of name-recognition, for an obscure, trendy title that means nothing to most people, and sounds like a clothing store, with no hints of its Christian origins?

Thankful for

1 Image of God as a river of love, flowing through me to others

2 The opulence of our new dinner service, Royal Doulton Old Country Roses

3 Shelly Miller hosting my piece.

4 Asking Jesus for light on my perennial diet dilemma. What to eat to be strong and healthy and shed some weight? I hear him say that he was an omnivore–eating fish, lamb, wheat, corn. He feasted. So I shall be an omnivore, but mainly eat fruit and vegetables, beans and pulses. And not use food to satisfy emotional needs–just as Jesus did not : “My food is to do the will of God, and to accomplish his purposes.”

Also there is no record of Jesus exercising for the sake of exercise. He got his exercise in the course of ministry. Perhaps I should walk with friends rather than have coffee with them. Yes! And exercise (also) in the course of domestic ministry–gardening, housework…

Jack Deere: The answer to all our struggles is a Person (not a philosophy or a theory or research or method)

4 I am exhausted, but clinging to God as a sea-anemone to a rock in a tidal pool.

5 I am exhausted, but waiting like the eagle on the edge of its nest, for the winds of the spirit to fresh energy into me.

6 What would a woman who is deeply loved by God eat for breakfast? Or lunch, or dinner?

7 My friend, Michael Wenham ponders the thorny issue of Christian gay marriage, and even quotes me!

8 A Simple Habit that Could Change Your Life: I owe my theology & my ministry to this simple habit: Looking at the Book : John Piper

9 Facebook’s first incarnation was a nasty site called “Hot or Not?” Well, it’s nice there’s a divine trio & a few humans who like us either way.

Wednesday April 30

1 Woke early with (illegal) construction next door + puppy yelping. Too tired to pray so trying what my daughter Zoe calls, “sloaking.” Soaking prayer–resting in the awareness of God’s love for you, surrendering everything to him, and placing it in his hands–and if you fall asleep, you fall asleep. It is sloaking. Woke refreshed from 2 hours of sloaking. Not sure if I did fall asleep or not, but I am refreshed.

2 In which Eric Metaxas, in a dream, experiences Jesus as a gold fish

This golden fish was ixthys—Jesus Christ Son of God Our Savior. God had something more for me: this was his Son, a living Person, Jesus Christ. And I realized in the dream that he was real and had come from the other side and now I was holding him there in the bright sunlight and at long last my search was over. And I was flooded with joy.

When I went to work the next day, I said that I had accepted Jesus. And when I spoke those words I was flooded with the same joy I had had inside the dream. And I’ve had that joy with me for the past 25 years.

3 Very stimulating coffee with Timothy Willard whose book Home Behind the Sun: Connect with God in the Brilliance of the Everyday is blowing up on Amazon, top 20 Christian books of all time, and top 1000 of all books sold on Amazon!

4 Going to Spain this weekend for a retreat led by Amy Boucher Pye on living as the Beloved. An idea close to my heart!

5 I am writing this “What I am thankful for” post because I have had an episode of low spirits. Not quite depression, just low spirits. And I have learned that depression is a friend. It forces you to burrow ever deeper into Christ for answers. It might force you to revise your life. The low energy forces you to drop accidentals, and concentrate on essentials. I usually come out of a spell of over-work induced burn-out with my faith stronger as I cling more tenaciously to Jesus, and get to know him better.

On Trusting our Work to God: Moving Upwards by Standing Still

By Anita Mathias

Reginald Arthur, 1893, Joseph before Pharaoh

Joseph is seventeen when he sees his sheaf stand up and his brothers’ sheaves bow down. When he sees the sun, moon and eleven stars bow to him.

* * *

Interestingly, God shows him his destiny, the end of his days, but not what he needs to do to get there.

And that is because there is nothing Joseph needs to do to get there. God will do it all. Joseph merely needs to cooperate as God forms the character necessary to bear “the weight of glory.”

* * *

Our lives are full of ironies: There are always two stories going on: what we think is happening, and what God knows is happening, what He is doing.

What Joseph thought was happening was pits and the pits—betrayal, slavery, false accusation, prison, being forgotten by those he helped.

What God knew was happening: Joseph was developing administrative experience, integrity, trustworthiness, gifts of dream interpretation, people skills. He was being prepared for greatness in the very years he thought were wasted.

* * *

Slavery to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, leads to Joseph being put in charge of his household, thus developing the extraordinary administrative gifts he probably didn’t even know he possessed.

Unjust accusation and confinement to a dungeon leads to him running the prison, and meeting those in Pharaoh’s circles, learning how Egyptians speak, dress, behave and think.

And what was paramount, he develops character—loyalty, diligence, organization, sexual purity. He sheds self-pity and any pridefulness over his spiritual gifts. He learns the great lesson of trusting God.

And through an improbable series of events—in line with his seminal gift–God moves him upwards.

* * *

There is so much stress in our world on hustling and networking. Perhaps too much?

Ah, the time we would save if we did our work, our eyes on God, without incessant networking with one another, hoping for a hand up, and a leg up, discovery, and a big break. Cannot God give us all these things as we do the work? I do believe he can and he will, when the time is right.

None of the spiritual giants in the Bible networked and hustled to get the word out about themselves. Can you imagine Jeremiah or Isaiah or Ezekiel making nice so people would put in a good word for them with Ahab or the current wicked king?

And what good would that have done them? Their work, their power, their career, their specialness came from this strange, insistent thing that kept happening to them. They heard God speak. And they wrote with pens of fire: “Thus saith the Lord.”

Transcribing what they heard God say made their words special, and God ensured that their words endured. They kept their eyes on God. God promoted them.

Is it possible today in the twenty-first century to do the work and leave the rest to God? To let God organize our careers?

* * *

All those dreadful things that happened to Joseph were, in fact, God organizing his life. God organized that Joseph was bought by Potiphar and learnt to run a country house. God organized that Joseph was falsely accused and learnt to run a prison. God organized that Joseph met Pharaoh’s cupbearer in prison, and validated Joseph by giving him the correct interpretation of the cupbearer’s dream, thus arranging for him to meet Pharaoh.

I know many people worried about their blogging or writing careers, worried about getting the word out about themselves.

But what if we just did our work, listened to Jesus, and wrote what we heard–could we not trust him to get our words out to whom they might bless? A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

This is something I am increasingly trying to do.

I have come to the place where I have no energy to network, nor the temperament to flatter, to pretend to like what I do not like, to maintain relationships for what good the other person might do me or my career. And how could God possibly bless such relationships?

I know this is the way the world works, I know this is the way business is done, but might there not be a more excellent way, of loving relationship, not networking; of trust, not hustle? A way of being in which we cannot do better than to leave our careers to him? I do believe it.

I am grateful to Shelly Miller for hosting the first version of this on “Redemption’s Beauty.”

When, After a Long Drought, Words Come like a Sudden Flood: Lessons from Blake, Milton, Rilke, and Julia Ward Howe

By Anita Mathias

William Blake, Milton

I love The Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe. The rhythm, the evocative lyrics, the allusions, the beautiful language create a loveliness greater than the sum of its parts.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

(Chorus)

On the night of November 18, 1861, Julia Ward Howe awoke with the words of the song in her mind and in near darkness wrote the verses to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Howe wrote, “I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’ So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”

* * *

Wow! To whom are these mysterious gifts of creativity handed out?

Generally to those who have long trained themselves waiting for the angel. “If the angel comes, it will be because you have wooed him by your grim resolve to be always a beginner,” Rainer Maria Rilke muses.

Rilke suffered for most of his life from torturing writers’ block. Beauty, images, art, ideas, filled his mind. But he was blocked; he was unable to express them in poetry.

Rilke said that as he was walking, depressed, by the cliffs near Duino Castle, he heard a voice call out to him, “Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?” which became his famous Duino Elegy, (Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?).

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?

And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.

His writers’ block was broken, and the Duino Elegies flowed forth in a torrent.

* * *

Milton claimed that he was visited nightly by an angel or muse who dictated sections of Paradise Lost to him. In the morning, his daughters found the blind poet, already up, neatly dressed, and waiting to be “milked” of the verses he dictated to them.

At the age of 14, Milton had decided to become one of the great poets in English. His goal: “To write something which the world would not willingly let die.” He spent his youth in arduous preparation, so much so that by the time he began writing Paradise Lost at the age of 50, he was blind (the result of the years from his early teens spent reading late into the night by candlelight); had an brain incomparably stocked with poetry and learning, but had written nothing substantial.

But the angel came, and he did indeed write something that the world would not willingly let die. My father had memorised the opening of Paradise Lost, and I remember the opening sentence with a thrill of pleasure. It’s so beautiful, so majestic, that reading it now, after some years, I almost cry with pleasure,

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us and regain the blissful seat,

Sing, Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed

In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth

Rose out of Chaos; or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence

Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,

Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss

And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support,

That to the highth of this great argument

I may assert Eternal Providence

And justify the ways of God to men.

Paradise Lost comes as if dictated by an angel, but it comes to the blind poet who had spent his life preparing to write it. The Duino Elegies were “overheard” by the poet who also spent a life of sacrifice in preparation.

Poetic inspiration comes suddenly, as if the unconscious has suddenly ripened, to those who have laboured long and hard to receive it.

In contrast is William Blake, an untaught visionary poet who was more in touch with Heaven than with our world. At the age of four, the young artist “saw God” when God “put his head to the window”, At the age of eight or ten in Peckham, Blake claimed to have seen “a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.”

He wrote prolifically during a brief interlude in Felpham. Blake writes “Felpham is a sweet place for Study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, & their forms more distinctly seen.” (This is also true of the little village outside Oxford, where I live).

It was while he lived in Felpham, Sussex, that Blake wrote the perfect Jerusalem.

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green & pleasant Land

(

Yes, Praise the Lord Anyway. (Even for Loss and Fleas!)

By Anita Mathias

Betsie, Corrie and Nollie Ten Boom : The Righteous Among the Nations

Praise the Lord anyway, because he is creative. He can create diamonds out of mud, coal, rock and the bones of dead creatures. Brute facts are just inert materials in his hands, and from this unpromising argon, krypton, xenon, he can bring forth goodness and beauty.

* * *

I first encountered the idea of praising the Lord for everything as a teenager in India, in Merlin Carothers’ Prison to Praise.

And for a while, I praised God for things that worked beautifully, and things that, apparently, did not. I had the sunniness and optimism of youth. I want to start living like that again, with thanksgiving in my heart, praising God for everything.

* * *

I have been reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Its insights and style (distinctive, quirky, poetic and aphoristic, so much so that it sometimes reads like a pastiche of one-liners) may well make it one of the spiritual classics of our century.

Her central insight was “Eucharisteo precedes the miracles.” We give thanks in all things before we see the miracle.

* * *

I trained myself to praise God for everything as a young Charismatic woman.

When I was 19, I was returning by train from Madras, now Chennai, to Jamshedpur, where my parents then lived, a two day journey. On the morning of my journey, I went shopping in Madras’s tantalising second hand book stores, and spent most of my money, and didn’t have enough to buy another suitcase, and so impulsively bought a bucket to put the books in. (Please don’t laugh. I had tried to become a novice with Mother Teresa, and she refused to let her nuns buy suitcases, which she considered unnecessary and wasteful. They travelled with buckets, which she said were more useful. So that’s the inspiration!)

So I scramble into the station, just as the train is leaving, and with my enormous clutter of luggage, get into the nearest carriage when happens to be third class. The very poorest people, noisy, crowded, and the cleanliness, well… And I planned to read Vanity Fair over the two day journey, (the book, not the magazine!)

When the ticket collector comes around, I explain, tremulously, that I almost missed the train, so didn’t even get to buy a ticket (an offence!) and please could I buy a second class one instead. He sells me one, and I move, bucket, suitcases and all. Settle into a bunk with Vanity Fair. Get hungry. Reach for my wallet. I’d dropped it somewhere between the third class compartment and the second.

Now, this wasn’t a through ticket. So I have to get off at Asansol, with my melee of possessions, and not a paise to even make a phonecall.

Cold, clammy, stomach-clenching fear. What am I to do?

Well, I have been training myself to praise the Lord, anyway.

I sit up in my bunk, and say, “Lord, if I leave my stuff here, and try and find that compartment, this may vanish too. And there’s no way I am going to get that wallet back. I don’t know what to do. Don’t know how I am getting home. But I guess we’ll figure something out. And anyway, I will praise you.”

And I praise him in blind faith. Really do! And fall asleep peacefully!!

I am awakened by a rough shaking at my shoulder.

The ticket collector hands me my wallet!

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say, effusively, overwhelmed.

What are the odds of recovering a leather wallet left in a third class compartment in India? Apparently very good!

“You should be careful with your things,” he says gruffly and walks away. I look inside. All the cash was there. And I had had a good night’s sleep.

And learned a lesson. Praise the Lord, anyway!

* * *

Did the praise, the acceptance, set in motion an avalanche of divine intervention which got me back my wallet and the rupees to get a ticket home? I believe so. Would I have got it if I had not prayed? Perhaps not.

Does it even make sense to praise God when things are going badly? I truly believe so.

* * *

Here is the most famous example of someone practising praise. Corrie Ten Boom in “The Hiding Place,” describes praising God in Ravensbruck.

“‘Fleas!’ I cried. ‘Betsie, the place is swarming with them!’

“‘Here! And here another one!’ I wailed. ‘Betsie, how can we live in such a place!’

“‘Show us. Show us how.’ It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying. More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.

“‘Corrie!’ she said excitedly. ‘He’s given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!’

‘It was in First Thessalonians,’ I said

“‘Oh yes:’…”Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.'”

“‘That’s it, Corrie! That’s His answer. “Give thanks in all circumstances!” That’s what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!’ I stared at her; then around me at the dark, foul-aired room.

“‘Such as?’ I said.

“‘Such as being assigned here together.’

“I bit my lip. ‘Oh yes, Lord Jesus!’

“‘Such as what you’re holding in your hands.’ I looked down at the Bible.

“‘Yes! Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank You for all these women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages.’

“‘Yes,’ said Betsie, ‘Thank You for the very crowding here. Since we’re packed so close, that many more will hear!’ She looked at me expectantly. ‘Corrie!’ she prodded.

“‘Oh, all right. Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed suffocating crowds.’

“‘Thank You,’ Betsie went on serenely, ‘for the fleas and for–‘

“The fleas! This was too much. ‘Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.’

“‘Give thanks in all circumstances,’ she quoted. It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.

“And so we stood between tiers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.”

a small light bulb cast a wan yellow circle on the wall, and here an ever larger group of women gathered.

“They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28.

“At first Betsie and I called these meetings with great timidity. But as night after night went by and no guard ever came near us, we grew bolder. So many now wanted to join us that we held a second service after evening roll call. There on the Lagerstrasse we were under rigid surveillance, guards in their warm wool capes marching constantly up and down. It was the same in the center room of the barracks: half a dozen guards or camp police always present. Yet in the large dormitory room there was almost no supervision at all. We did not understand it.

“One evening, Betsie was waiting for me . Her eyes were twinkling.

“‘You’re looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself,’ I told her.

“‘You know, we’ve never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,’ she said. ‘Well–I’ve found out.’

“That afternoon, she said, there’d been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they’d asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

“But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?”

“Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: ‘Because of the fleas! That’s what she said, “That place is crawling with fleas!'”

“My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.”

* * *

Betsie praised God for the fleas.

But praise did not keep Betsie alive for a Biblical life span. Betsie died in Ravensbruck, at 59 (exhausted by working 11 hour days as a slave labourer for Siemens, “unloading large metal plates from a boxcar and wheeled them in a heavy handcart to a receiving gate”) perhaps 32 years earlier than she might have. (Corrie died in 1983, aged 91).

However, death comes to all. Perhaps Betsie, who even in this life had “crossed over,” so that, as Corrie says, “More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie,” would not have resented her death three decades too soon had she seen the fruit that came from her death like a grain of wheat. How the inspiration of her story lives, and shall live for hundreds of years, perhaps

Not just the story of fleas which even today encourages us to praise and thank God in blind faith at all times, but even more this truly remarkable story which flowed from her death. Corrie Ten Boom writes in The Hiding Place,

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck.

He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? “Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.”

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.”

As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

Narendra Modi, Possible Indian Prime Minister? A Disaster for India’s Religious Minorities

By Anita Mathias

Narendra Modi’s supporters, Image: The Guardian.

He wakes at 5 a.m. and does yoga for ninety minutes. He is vegetarian. He lives a simple, almost ascetic life. He has vowed celibacy to concentrate his energies on making India great.

In a country in which corruption is endemic in every area of life, Narendra Modi is “clean,” incorruptible.

He is a technocrat, running a well-organised, disciplined government, getting things done.

He has been Chief Minister of Gujarat for 12 years. Without significant natural resources or population hubs like Mumbai or technology hubs like Bangalore, the state has achieved 10% growth annually, India’s highest. Its citizens have a higher per capita income than other Indians. Ahmedabad, its capital, is a boom town, high-rises everywhere, companies moving in, three million private cars for six million people, efficient public transportation, dedicated bus lanes…

(Outside Ahmedabad, however, is the insalubrious Juhapura ghetto where the city’s garbage is dumped and periodically burnt, and the 400, 000 Muslims who fled there after the 2002 religious massacre live in poverty, in dark, overcrowded surroundings, without sewage or municipal water (for which they are, nevertheless billed).

* * *

A tough, ruthless, feared leader, Modi has the potential to be the strongest leader in the developing world. To make India a superpower to rival and outstrip China. To restore national pride. To develop India’s considerable human resources. Who knows, to woo back educated Indians from the diaspora perhaps.

Modi will, I suspect, be a boon to India’s economy.

Were I living in India, I would find myself hard-pressed not to vote for him.

But I would resist.

I would not vote for him.

I would vote for Rahul Gandhi, son, grandson, and great-grandson of Indian Prime Ministers, patrician, well-educated (Harvard and Cambridge), and, personally “clean” and incorruptible, I believe.

I would vote for Rahul Gandhi and for Congress, though I believe the more experienced Narendra Modi would be better for the economy.

Because as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi stood by and did nothing while 2000 Muslims were massacred under his watch in 2002, riots his henchmen are widely suspected of fomenting.

Because the sense of pride and belonging to appeals to is Hindu pride, and Hindu identity, not Indian pride and Indian identity.

Because he appeals to the worst, militant elements of the ancient, peaceful, gracious religion of Hinduism.

Because of the destruction of property, burnings, beatings, murder, rape of nuns, and atrocities committed against Catholics and Christians by the some of the violent and militant organizations which form part of the Sangh Parivar, to which his party, the BJP, and his original formative home, the RSS, belong.

Because just as Modi, a polarizing, divisive leader for a vast, increasingly powerful, secular democracy like India, wishes his supporters to vote for what would be best for Hindus, I, a Christian, who belongs to a family and town (Mangalore) converted to Catholicism in the mid-sixteenth century would vote for what is best for Indian Christians and Catholics. (So I must confess my motivation is as communal as the motivations Modi appeals to.)

Though forecasts of the winners in India’s elections have a history of being wrong, I fear Modi, the predicted winner, will indeed win.

* * *

And what should Christians do? Watch the signs of the times very carefully and get out as soon as they can, if they can. Jews under Hitler could not believe that Kristallnacht would occur until it did. Could not believe in the horrors of Auschwitz until too late.

Emigration, however, is difficult and costly: financially, emotionally, psychologically, practically. But there is something simple and practical that we can do.

Pray. Pray for protection from Narendra Modi and the violent religious nationalism he appeals to.

Pray for Narendra Modi. Prayer is the strong weapon of the weak.

Like Gandhi, Narendra Modi is from Gujarat. Like Gandhi, he is vegetarian, ascetic, experiments with celibacy.

Unlike Gandhi, he has had limited or contact with true Christians. Unlike Gandhi, he is quite uninfluenced by the ideals of Christ.

Introduce Narenda Modi to Christ, and His ideals and what a leader he might be.

Prayer. A weak hope. Prayer, the strongest hope we have.

Pray for India, with a population four times the size of America’s and twice the size of the E.U.’s. A giant rising from torpor. A nation which will be a world leader in my lifetime, whether we like the direction it’s going to take. Or not.

Let us pray that the direction it takes would be one that would make Mahatma Gandhi smile. And even more, make my personal hero, Jesus Christ, smile.

How to Evade a Trap. A Short Guide to Wisdom

By Anita Mathias

Jesus was a truly extraordinary human being. I keep learning from him as I read through the Gospel of Matthew.

Sometimes I am put on the spot, and asked a question, with hostile intent, by people who do not wish me well, and who, I sense, will use my words against me–people who are wolves in Tolkein’s terms, or “a brood of vipers” in Jesus’s colourful phrase in Matthew 12.

I often get stressed and answer truthfully, hoping innocence will be protection against evil. And it sometimes is–but sometimes evil proves stronger. In the short run, at least. Good Friday teaches us that.

* * *

In the Gospels, repeatedly, people try to trap Jesus with his words. Try to make him incriminate himself by what he says. Try to make him say things they can use against him. Interestingly, they never succeeded. He never said a single thing they could use against him in a court of law. The charges which finally led to his execution were fabricated!

He deals with each trap they lay for him differently, but most often, he sidesteps them with the agility of a ballet-dancer.

He is asked “Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.” (Matt 12:38)

Me, I might have got stressed, and tried to heal someone to disarm them, or provided a miracle in my conceit! Or panicked, and denied my ability to do a miracle. The former response—which would have been a presumptuous showing off– would have been ignored by my enemies. The latter would have been quoted against me.

Jesus, however, refuses to show off, and provide them the sign they desire.

A valid response to hostile questioning: Refuse to answer any questions you do not wish to answer. Refuse to do things your enemies ask you to do which you yourself do not wish to. Slow down enough to know what you really want to do.

Jesus says, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12 39-40).

He answers to their request for a sign so cryptically that they do not dare to question him further for fear of having their own ignorance exposed. And that was the end of that.

* * *

I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as wise as a serpent, and as innocent as a dove, Jesus says. (Matt. 10:16).

What protection might a lamb, surrounded by a pack of wolves, have?

Its own innocence and goodness. The wisdom Christ exhorts it to have. And the eyes of the shepherd that are upon it.

And what should one do if one finds oneself surrounded by wolves, whose words are disingenuous, and cannot be trusted; who lay traps for your feet; who question you with hostile intent, and will use your words against you?

Be wise as a serpent. If possible, avoid them. Avoid getting into conversation with them. Be careful when it’s unavoidable. A mentor once told me that 90 percent of wisdom is saying as little as possible. Do so. Avoid exacerbating their envy by showing off!

When asked a point-blank question, remember that one can refuse to answer.

Or can give an opaque parallel answer like Jesus does. When asked to do a miracle, talk about Jonah and the belly of a whale, and people will be so befuddled by this that they will not press you further.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth’s superb surprise; (Emily Dickinson)

Listen to your intuition. When surrounded by those you have reason to believe are hostile, slow down. Be quick to listen, slow to speak. Turn on your supernatural radar. Get real quiet and listen to another voice too, the lover of your soul.

Answer slowly and deliberately and with wisdom. Words will be given you, Jesus promises. “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, ¹²for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.” (Luke 12 11-12). “For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict,” (Luke 21:15).

Slow down enough to hear his words.

When the Lack of Joy Constitutes an Emergency: Martin Luther on Prayer

By Anita Mathias

Martin Luther’s barber, Peter, asked him how to pray.

Luther “ without doubt, at the time, one of the busiest and most hard-pressed men in the Electorate of Saxony, if not in the whole of Europe,” goes home immediately, and replies to this humble, unimportant parishioner.

Such, such are men and women whom God blesses!

And I love what Luther wrote. When he loses his joy, he treats it very seriously indeed. He treats it like an emergency!!

“First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer), I take my little psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.

It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business of the morning and the last at night. Guard yourself carefully against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, “Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.” Such thoughts get you away from prayer into other affairs which so hold your attention and involve you that nothing comes of prayer for that day.

It may well be that you may have some tasks which are as good or better than prayer, especially in an emergency. There is a saying ascribed to St. Jerome that everything a believer does is prayer and a proverb, “He who works faithfully prays twice.”

Yet we must be careful not to break the habit of true prayer and imagine other works to be necessary which, after all, are nothing of the kind. Thus at the end we become lax and lazy, cool and listless toward prayer.

The devil who besets us is not lazy or careless, and our flesh is too ready and eager to sin and is disinclined to the spirit of prayer.”

* * *

As I grow older, I am finding it more of a necessity for my soul to be happy, joyful and peaceful in Christ. I don’t like to go through my day feeling unhappy. I would rather stop, drop, repent, forgive, whatever is necessary for my soul to be happy is Jesus.

Abiding in Christ is becoming a necessity for me to be able to write, to enjoy the company of my family and friends, to enjoy my day, to be happy!

And over the years, I have been training myself to stop when I find myself stressed, or unhappy or empty, and reorient myself to Christ; repent, if necessary; pray, and read Scripture, so that I can go through my day with a soul full of the Holy Spirit and of joy instead of being restless, stressed—or just plain empty!!

A Spiritual Late Bloomer, I Learn from Failure in my Messy Beautiful Life

By Anita Mathias

When my daughter Zoe was born, twenty-one years ago, frazzled between nursing, and impractical plans of still writing, I made a mental prayer list to pray through as I pushed her stroller round our neighbourhood.

And blush: All those items are still on my prayer list.

1 Losing Weight. I still have 12 pounds more to lose of the 20 pounds I gained when pregnant with Zoe. Another pregnancy, with Irene, didn’t help, though that weight I have lost!

2 Running an orderly house. Well, we are now doing so, though, alas, there’s still clutter. I am doing the hopeful 365 Less Things project—a concrete way of getting rid of things by shedding one thing a day–and am hopeful that I will eventually have nothing in my house that is not both beautiful and useful.

3 I wanted to wake up at 5 a.m. because I have romantic associations with 5 a.m., and am still trying! I now go to bed around 9.35 p.m. so waking earlier will gradually becoming easier

4 I wanted to write a big beautiful book—and I still do!! And though I now write pretty much every day, having so organised my life that I feel sad and uncomfortable on the days that I don’t write : that book, ah!—I work on it in fits and starts.

Ouch! Same goals, 21 years later.

* * *

That’s what life is like for an ordinary Christian.

Oswald Chambers (of My Utmost for His Highest), aged 27; Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Bill Wilson, Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, absolutely surrendered themselves to God, once and for all.

Jack Miller made fun of Samuel Johnson’s continual efforts to wake early, saying that that was because Dr. Johnson had not learnt to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.

And Priscilla Shirer writes that a failed diet is “a direct sign that we have not submitted ourselves completely to the Lord.”

Yup, that’s me. Just learning how to lean on the Holy Spirit. I have surrendered myself to Jesus, but then indiscipline gets the better of me, or grumpiness, or laziness, or… most of the deadly seven!

* * *

However, there are many ways of being a Christian, many concentric circles of discipleship. There is John, the beloved disciple who leans on Jesus during the Last Supper, hearing all the secrets of the universe.

There are Peter, James and John whom Jesus took with him at the Mount of Transfiguration, when they saw his glory, and at Gethsemane, when he wanted moral support. Then there were the twelve apostles, the seventy-two, the hundred and twenty, the five hundred and, of course, the 5000 men, in addition to women and children, who listened spellbound to the Sermon on the Mount.

It is possible to walk through the Sinai desert in ten days, I’ve read. It took the Israelites forty years, as they wandered in circles, grumbling, dispirited, losing their bearings. They are ordinary believers. They are our grandfathers and grandmothers in the faith.

* * *

Wandering in circles: That’s true of things people struggle with for forty years.

One could get one’s house decluttered and organised in six months Marie Kondo says; 9 months according to Joshua Becker. Many struggle with this for decades, all their lives.

Most people could lose their surplus weight in a year through healthy eating and exercise. I could do so myself! Yet, many battle with this for decades, or for all their lives.

One could write a book in a couple of years, at 250 words a day. But many…the blushing, flushing woman you see is me!

Mark Batterson writes in his brilliant book, The Circle-Maker, that the biggest factor in spiritual and occupational success is waking early. We all know it’s better to be awake from 6-8 a.m. than from 10 to 12 p.m. Yet, many struggle with staying up too late, and sleeping in too late all their lives. And I am still grasping at 5 a.m.

* * *

There! I now feel thoroughly downcast over issues I have battled with for two decades when perhaps I could have had them sorted in a year.

What beauty could there be in this mess? What gold among the shards?

1) It’s given me patience, compassion and understanding of my own and other people’s struggles.

Two steps forward, 1.9 backwards is progress. Slow, but definite.

It’s made me realistic about how hard it can be to follow Jesus. And he was realistic about it. Think about his metaphor. Carry your cross and follow him. Walk the narrow path into life.

We are not all fire like Beth Moore or Billy Graham who go for Christ, 100 %, though I’d like to be!

Some of us have feeble arms and weak knees. But we are still in the fight.

2) I have learned the limits of my will, my resolve. Trying to do life on my own and failing has taught me that I need Jesus. It has taught me that it is hard for me to accomplish my goals without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Becoming a Christian for me was, initially, and for many years, an intellectual decision. I was—and am!!—convinced that Jesus was God, and the Bible inspired, and reorganised my life accordingly. Sweeping changes: tithing, prayer, Bible study, church attendance, trying to obey what Jesus taught, implementing the wisdom of Proverbs in my life, that sort of thing.

The true magic of being a Christian is now rose-tinting everything, like sunrise. I am moving from grammar to poetry, from chords to the symphony. The magic: That I can ask Jesus to change my heart. To make me love vegetables. To love to walk and run. To love to sleep early and wake early. To love order. To love the discipline it takes to write.

3) We value virtue through experiencing the opposite. The beauty of domestic order through knowing chaos. The endorphin glow after a run through knowing the misery of physical sluggishness. The joy of writing through knowing the misery of not creating.

4) My failures have given me an increased awareness of the love of God. I have had successes. I opened a letter saying I had been admitted to Oxford University to read English. Opened a letter saying that I had won $20, 000 from the National Endowment for the Arts for my writing!

But I am most conscious of the love of God when I lean into it in failure and low spirits and realise that he loves me anyway. Who knows, perhaps he loves me more fiercely because of my failures and weaknesses, as we fiercely love our toddlers, puppies and old dogs!

5) I note that I have partially failed in all those goals I had as a woozy young mum, pushing my stroller around the neighbourhood, and wryly smile.

Because failure has lost its sting for me. Honestly! My failures make me wryly smile.

Because they are not final.

They are a way of learning. Who I am. What works for me. What does not work. How to pick myself up and go on after “failure.”

I have rarely stumbled on something which has worked for me at the first attempt. It takes trial and error.

And failure has taught me to answer a question of the catechism: Where is God?

God is not over there somewhere, experienced by the perfect and prayerful and good, but right here, in middle of failures; food instead of prayer; newspapers instead of writing; coat dropped on the living room floor; hello, snooze button.

God is not only encountered in prayer and Bible study. He appears, like the beneficent beings of fairy tale, when I most need him. In the trenches of struggle.

* * *

Yes, taking a lick at a dragon, desultory sword thrust by sword thrust, instead of cutting off his head as I might have done were I St. George or a better girl has taught me many things.

Humility for I am not as A type as I imagine. Mercy with others who struggle. The importance of persisting and continuing looking for solutions.

I see the road out of the messy beautiful desert, and I walk down its zigzag paving stones, less conceited than had I achieved my goals quickly; with more to teach, perhaps; with more inspiration to offer such as I who wander in circles until they find the straight path, but finally leave the desert, radiant, leaning on their beloved.

Carry on, Warrior.

Archives for April 2014

I wish I would have known that when I was younger.

anita.mathias