Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

God Breathes Stars–and Honour on His Beloved

“God breathed, and all the stars were born.” “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” NIV Psalm 33:6.

“And he breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:22.

The Lord breathes on us.

At his breath, we are cloaked in gold dust,

stars and the jewels of this earth

which he creates from mud, coal, rock,

and the bones of dead creatures.

From these nothings,

he creates diamonds, sapphires,

rubies which he breathes over us.

He sees us as beautiful, resplendent,

Because we are his children.

* * *

But we forget

that “we do not have because we do not ask .”

that the Lord can breathe

inspiration on us,

the ideas, the words, the books we long to write.

That God blessed the schemer Jacob

because he ask him to.

That God enlarged the territory of the insignificant Jabez

because he asked him to.

And that is the great secret of getting things done:

Asking God for the power of the Holy Spirit,

And “doing what he tells us.”

We forget that the Lord can breathe

Our hearts’ desires on us.

We think that achieving stuff is all up to us.

But the more we crave the good things of this earth,

The more we need to burrow into the heart of Jesus,

To find them in him, through him and with him.

* * *

We instead toil and strive and scheme and intrigue

To get to the top

Of our particular ant-heap

Forgetting that

He can breathe on us everything we crave for,

Just like that.

And we worry and strategize

and look around in envy,

while he, forgotten, stands waiting

to scatter his goodness

on whomever will ask,

sadly watching us scheme and scramble

For he knows there’ll never be a shortage

Of wealth or honour,

For he creates these with this breath.

Light the Flare of Prayer

By Anita Mathias

If you’re stranded in the snowy Alps

Light a flare.

Often, a helicopter

Closes in, dropping

A flask of hot chocolate

Toblerone, brandy.

With luck, a St. Bernard might be on his way.

* * *

In the steamy forests

Cut off by a tsunami

Light a flare

Wait for the air drop,

Water, rich in electrolytes,

Yoghurt drinks, protein bars.

* * *

And

In the English countryside

On a lovely April day,

Unaccountably low-spirited,

Running out of Go,

Light the flare of prayer.

And the same power

Which raised Jesus from the dead

Comes.

The living water of the Holy Spirit

Slowly fills you.

You become aware of Jesus,

Your brother walking beside you,

And the Father smiling down on you.

You ask,

Believe,

And receive the Spirit.

He will brighten your depression,

Help when you don’t want to get out of bed.

Help you get on with exercise,

Stay off the sugar,

Bite back that mean retort.

Light the flare of prayer,

Oh bankrupt one,

Bankrupt of kindness,

Bankrupt of energy.

Your soul needs surgery

But you are no surgeon.

Light the flare of prayer.

And He, ultimate plastic surgeon

Will pare the tiger-claws of acridity,

Implant sweetness.

All livings things grow and change.

Light the flare of prayer

To grow into your inheritance

To become One who lives in Jesus,

And in whom Jesus lives.

He Makes the Failures of Friday Beautiful in His Time

By Anita Mathias

Ravaged by grief,

she saw you standing right there,

but did not recognize you.

She was living in Friday,

That traumatic Friday.

But it’s Sunday now,

And there you stand,

In front of Mary.

It’s a new day,

The only day that really counts.

Today.

* * *

Lord Jesus,

I give you the Fridays of my past.

My Fridays of trauma and grief

The Fridays I was betrayed,

The Fridays I failed.

It’s Sunday now,

And there you stand in front of me,

Oh Lovely One!

And you make all things new.

* * *

Cleopas walks downcast,

His hopes have crumbled.

He has seen betrayal, and he has learned

Religious leaders can be evil.

He walks, sad, foolish

And slow of heart,

Thinking of crumbled hopes

And his beloved

Humiliated teacher

Who walks beside him,

Always walks beside him.

* * *

Forgive me, Lord,

For the times I walked in darkness,

Shrouded in self-pity,

Unable to get over past betrayal,

Past evil, past disappointment;

My vision darkened as I considered

Other people’s evil

Instead of clearing the logs from my eyes.

Living in Friday.

Not noticing you

Walking beside me,

Always walking beside me,

Even in my valley of suffering

Offering this heart,

Still puckered with yesterday’s vinegar,

Fresh bread.

It is Sunday, today,

And you feed me

With the breaking of the bread,

And beauty and creativity,

And you say, “Be not afraid of broken things.

Even the Christ had to suffer.

Be not afraid.”

“When you walk through the waters, I’ll be with you

And the floods shall not overwhelm you,

When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned,

And the flame shall not consume you.”

* * *

Thomas says:

“Oh, the failure was dreadful,

Humiliating.

How could it be the Lord?

I saw hasty nails pierce

Those exquisite hands.

The impatient spear

driven into his side.

He failed

despite his prayer,

our prayer,

all the love, the preparation,

the hopes,

He failed.

They killed him.

But if prayer worked,

as he said it would,

If faith could move mountains,

as he said it would,

if his Father loved him,

As he said he did,

If he was God,

As he said he was

Would there have been that disgrace,

The mocking crown of thorns,

The mocking scarlet robe,

The stripping, the crucifixion?

* * *

“Thomas,” they say.

“He’s alive now.”

Faith!

I have no faith left.

I am bereft of faith.

Unless I see the nail marks in his hands

and put my finger where the nails were,

and put my hand into his side,

I will not believe, I say.

* * *

And then, I see him,

And words fail me

And I kneel,

And all I can say is

My Lord and My God.

* * *

Oh stupid Thomas!

Forgive me, Lord for my stupidity.

For believing you come

Only in day, and not in night,

Only in summer and not in winter

Only in success and not in failure.

Only in glory, never in shame.

My Lord and My God

Forgive me for needing

to see your radiant, risen body

To realize that there was beauty too

In the three hours on the cross

When you were the voluntary scapegoat

For a selfish world.

I believe.

Help my unbelief.

Help me to accept from your hands

Whatever you give me

With praise, and thanksgiving.

The lacerated hands,

The mauled side,

They too are part of the beautiful body of Christ

Things you make beautiful in your time.

May I never forget this,

lovely Lord Jesus.

Grieve No More For All That’s Broken

By Anita Mathias

Wheat must be crushed to become bread

And bread broken to be eaten.

The chrysalis crumble for the butterfly,

The egg splinter for the chicken.

And sheets of coloured glass

Must be shattered

To become stained glass

Through which the love of God–

In rainbowed light–

Shines.

* * *

And I consider…

Did growth spring green

From my own brokenness?

It always does!

My rejected manuscript

Got me to hone my craft,

Again, more diligently.

The Zigzag Ways of God’s Blessing

By Anita Mathias

Joseph had a rarefied spiritual gift: God spoke to him through his dreams, and he could interpret the dreams of others.

In the night, which belongs to the Lord, he sees his sheaf stand upright while his brother’s sheaves bow to it. He sees the sun and moon and eleven stars bow to him.

He understands that he is destined for eminence.

* * *

And what should the career path of one destined for eminence look like?

Joseph is thrown into a cistern, sold into slavery. He faces humiliation and obscurity.

Was his dream delusory? Had God abandoned him?

Nope.

* * *

“God was with Joseph,” (Gen 39:2) we are told, “and he prospered.” “The Lord was with him and gave him success in everything he did.”

The blessing on Joseph spreads outwards. “The Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field.”

And so the career of Joseph progressed from strength to strength?

Nope.

* * *

He had proved his resilience. He had proved his integrity.

He now had to be moved upwards from a comfortable small position to a position of even greater influence.

* * *

Dick Woodward, pastor of the church I attended in Williamsburg Virginia, said that the way God moves you on is a kick from behind and a pull from in front. ( And I think it’s best to stay put where you are, whether at church or work or city or neighbourhood until you feel the kick and pull.)

Potiphar’s wife provided the kick with her false accusations.

And ironically, Joseph was kicked upstairs into the social circle of those who personally waited on Pharaoh.

If anyone had the right to indulge in self-pity, it was Joseph in the dungeon, cast there for his righteous choice.

But dungeon was his means of elevation, the pull upwards.

While Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did. (Gen 39: 21-23).

He interprets dreams in prison, but with slight cockiness. Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams. (Gen. 40:8)

He asks the cupbearer to remember him, but with self-pity. For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon.

He has yet to become the steady luminous man whose eyes are on the Lord, who sees everything in life as coming to him mediated through the Lord’s hands, because the Lord permitted it; who knows that the Lord could make him fruitful in the land of his suffering (Gen. 41:52), and turn what his enemies meant for evil into good (Gen. 50:20).

+++

Another two years alone in the company of the Lord in the dungeons, and he will approach the interpretation of dreams with humility.
Pharaoh: ” I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.”
“I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”(Gen. 41)
His eyes now fixed on God, Joseph is able not only to use his administrative gifts wisely, but also able, remarkably, to forgive his brothers–thus helping to save many lives.

+++

I would have expected the life of someone chose, blessed and anointed by God to be marked by happiness, success, prosperity and protection.

And Joseph’s life was ultimately marked by all of these things.

But not all the time.

+++

His life teaches us:

Nothing can stop you doing the work which God has called you to do.

God may have a beautiful plan for your life, but other people may throw you into a well and sell you into slavery.

You will rise.

You may do your job brilliantly and be slandered and thrown into prison.

You will rise.

You may comfort and help people with your words, but in their season of power they may forget you until it’s convenient for them.

But still you will rise.

+++

When will you rise?

In God’s time.

When you let go of bitterness, perhaps. When you forgive. When you realize that all things come from God, your gifts, your health, your wealth, your freedom, your intellect, your very life.

Then you will indeed have grown into your destiny. You will have become worthy of it.

You will have become one who can “save many lives,” (Gen 50:20).

I am grateful to Elizabeth Marshall who first hosted this reflection.

“Prosperity Theology” as a Hook for the Gospel: Hanging out with Christians in Cambodia

By Anita Mathias

Rick Warren, of the wildly successful Saddleback Church, was influenced by Donald McGavran, maverick church planter, who suggested church planters use the kind of music people already listened to. The familiar music provides a hook for the Gospel.

Some of the fastest-growing churches today use music as a hook; I think of the music coming out of Jesus Culture (Bethel Church, Redding, California) or Hillsong. Hillsong’s Ocean, Where Feet May Fail, cracked the top 100 songs. And what about the sublime Revelation Song? Oh How he loves me, sounds like a pop song: So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss/ And my heart turns violently inside of my chest.

Jesus’s metaphor for evangelism was fishing. You catch a fish with a worm, because that’s what it likes. Can’t bait your hook with roses. Won’t work.

You bait your hook with worms “short, fat juicy ones,” but the point is not the worms. The point is the fisherman the worm draws you to. And He is worth it.

* * *

I kept coming across what sounded to me like Prosperity Theology in Cambodia. Ke Pich, the assistant pastor, said he became a Christian after listening to Joyce Meyers on TV for 2-3 months. Another pastor, with the only concrete house in his village of palm leaves and bamboo huts (a bit like the cottage Yeats dreamed of “of clay and wattle” made in the Lake Isle of Innisfree) told a story of a woman who had no money, and gave money to the church and then her micro-business began to make a bit of money, and then the church gave her a job and now she has enough money.

Crass? Well, it’s not just a “majority world” story. Post-modern emergent (and best-selling) writer Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz talks about making $1000 a month, and his bank balance hovering around 0, and not tithing a red cent, and then he began to tithe, and magazine assignments and speaking gigs came, in, and he could save an additional 10%, and he never again lacked for money.

* * *

This is Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. When we lack food, shelter, and safety, it is hard to think of anything metaphysical.

So you see the appeal of prosperity theology. And it works, it really works, all its promise of answered prayer, of giving and receiving, taken straight from the words of Jesus. And it leads us to Someone grander than money.

* * *

Celestial economies figured large in my family’s history. My grandfather, Piedade Felician Mathias, a Catholic surgeon who won an O.B.E., worked God, and God, with mercy and amusement, allowed Himself to be worked. When his private practice dropped, he’d say to my grandmother, aggrieved, accusatory, “Josephine are you giving? Give. You are not giving; that is why I am not getting.” She did; people got sick; he bought land, houses…

As a widow, on the first Monday of the month, Granny had her chair carried out to her palm grove, where a line of poor people waited for her. She gave each a five rupee note,

My Uncle Morris Mathias, head of United Breweries International and unofficial adviser and emissary of Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, indulgently sent her, each month, a few hundred rupees—solely to give away. “Give, Ma, give,” he laughed, remembering his father’s powerful, paradoxical economy. “The more you give, the more we get.”

* * *

And I can attest that “Give and you shall receive,” is a true narrative, because when we began to tithe months into our marriage, financial windfalls happened and happened, and we’ve never lacked money while we tithed. Our only financially tight period was the first 2.5 years of starting a business, when—suddenly cold-footed—alas, we did not tithe.

* * *

There is nothing wrong with desiring a comfortable home, or a beautiful garden, or a good education for the kids. In fact, as C. S. Lewis writes in “The Weight of Glory, ” “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward … promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

* * *

A predominant desire I noticed in the several villages I had the privilege of visiting was blessing. “Pray for me, that God will bless me,” I was asked more than once. And people would lavishly offer me blessing!

And what’s wrong with that? Being blessed by God should be our predominant desire. What could be lovelier?

Sampat took my hand, held it, stroked my arm, and asked me to bless her house. I have never blessed a house before!! but moved, did so, and blessed her chickens and eggs for good measure.

Why shouldn’t prosperity appeal to people who live in a one room house, on bamboo stilts, with palm-leaved walls?

Prosperity theology as a hook for the gospel! They hear Joyce Meyers (whom I have never read, or listened to, so am not endorsing—or not) say that faith and giving and prayer will lead to an improved financial situation. Well, under normal circumstances, it will.

Wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural course of things, must beget riches!, John Wesley, Dublin, 1789

Faith brings hope. Faith helps you realize you can pursue a purpose and let your eyes grow bright with it.

* * *

I have inherited my grandparent’s reflex of giving away what I feel the lack of. Money when I need money. Time and energy in volunteering (leading Bible studies was my main form of volunteerism) when I lacked both. Happiness when I am sad. “Let my depression bloom,” is my little private saying. (When I feel depressed, I go through my personal email and reply to all the messages from friends and family which I have lacked energy to reply to.)

To sneer at all prosperity theology in our sophistication is to sneer at Jesus who says, “Give and you shall receive, full measure, pressed down, flowing over. For the measure you give is the measure you receive. ”

What one should be rightly suspicious of, and run when you hear it, is the perversions of prosperity theology.

“Give to my TV ministry, my radio ministry, my speaking ministry, my healing ministry and God will bless you.”

If you hear that, run–resisting the relentless push to donate money to greedy ministries and ministers who want your money for their own career ambitions (unless of course, you have benefitted from their ministries, in which case, perhaps you should give some).

(Will God bless those who contribute to the ministries of careerists who may, or may not, be charlatans? Yeah, he probably will, because he commands “Give,” and did not specify to whom. It’s our heart and our generosity he is concerned with, for all money is his.)

If, however, you are asked to give to the poor (as I am cajoling you to give to Tearfund at the base of this post) please consider it, because the poor are heavy on God’s heart, as our youngest, weakest, most unhappy child is heavy on ours.

We might give to receive, and God sometimes plays our game, and smiles, and shrugs, and says, “Anything to increase their faith,” as we do anything, comics, animated computer games, handheld video games, to get our little children to read.

The point of being a Christian is not prosperity. What faith in Jesus has to offer the people of Cambodia and me is greater than prosperity—it is peace, shalom, well-being, trust in the Father, joy, love for others, Jesus himself. All this is prosperity in the global sense.

* * *

People’s natural hunger to improve their circumstances can serve as a hook for the Gospel. Tearfund is encouraging people to pool resources, to reframe, to look at what they have, not what they do not have, and to learn new skills of animal husbandry and planting.

Tearfund worker Kagne, and Sampath are having a little confab about growing rice & raising chickens

Sambath grows watermelons and rice on a neighbour’s unused land which she rents. She has a veritable bevy of adorable chickens. The lovely Tearfund worker, Kagne, printed out a guide from the interent on how to keep chickens and she used it, and now look!!

Please could you help Tearfund help people help themselves by giving them a hand up?

* * *

I have just written my first book of fiction, Francesco—Artist of Florence: The Man who Gave Too Much. It is a children’s story, a lavishly illustrated tale of a Florentine Renaissance artist. Here are some comments from friends who read it,

Simon Cutmore— it is a gem of a book and a beautiful parable and I think could be read by you and old alike.

Jules Middleton— I love the story! I wanted to read more! I love the history of Art connections.

Joanna Mitchell— I thought it was lovely – sweet and true and good — – and a bit like one of Francesco’s jewels.

I would like to email it to you as a gift if you give £3 to Tearfund here by direct debit.

Alternatively, text HOPE TODAY to 70444 to give £3 a month to See For Yourself, Tearfund. It will be added to your mobile phone bill. Tearfund receives 100% of the money. This subscription service will cost £3.00 per month until you send STOP to 70080.

Just leave me a comment saying you have done so, and send me your email address at anitaATanitamathias.com and I will email you an e-copy of my newest baby 🙂

On The Falsity of Scarcity Thinking and the Fact of Abundance Everywhere

By Anita Mathias

In which I help dig a field for a community project

When I am stressed, I go into scarcity mode. I just want to survive. I just want people to help me survive. I withdraw into my hard tortoise shell and want to stay there till the storm has passed, occasionally sticking out my head to say, “Help.”

This is, of course, the antithesis of the way Jesus wants his Christians to live. He wants us to live with faith, because we truly do have have access to an immense power source, the Vine, the Holy Spirit. He wants me to live with faith because His eye is on the sparrow, the lily and me. He wants me to live with faith because all things are his, and I am his, and I can find all needful things in him.

I am having a very interesting, relaxed, happy time in Cambodia. However, it is a bit challenging physically—the heat, the residual jet lag, slight culture shock, the late nights blogging, up to midnight sometimes, and the early morning starts. 6.30 a.m. breakfast anyone?

I occasionally go into survival mode when tiredness creeps up on me. Oh Jesus, just get me through today. Oh Jesus, I just don’t have the energy to get out of the van and meet another lovely Cambodian. Please help me. Oh Jesus, I am barely awake; wake me up.

And then I remember: I don’t live in a world of scarcity, of just getting through challenge, but in a world of abundance. Of the Holy Spirit, who comes on request, and will give me all good things—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. And I close my eyes, and pray, “Come Holy Spirit,” and slowly, mysteriously, magically, I am refilled—just enough–from God’s infinite wells of energy and joy and kindness and bounce.

Oh, we have an abundant God, and we live in an abundant universe, and never let me forget it and settle for merely surviving.

* * *

Cambodia has a per capita income of 78 USD a month, and is one of the world’s poorest countries, according to World Bank data.

And yet what strikes me is the abundance everywhere. Trees full of green mangoes. Jackfruits, bananas, gooseberries, green coconuts, and rambutan growing everywhere, even in the dry season. The giant lakes Tonle Sap and Tonle Batie full of fish and crabs. The soil so fertile that fallen papaya seeds root. Abundant young people everywhere, full of energy and optimism (and giggles). The sweet smiley spirit of the people.

* * *

Just before leaving for Cambodia, Roy and I signed up to run a half-marathon on September 28^th 2014 to raise money for our favourite Christian charity working in the Third World. Now, I have been trying to lose weight for 17 months, and have only shed 18 pounds. Loads more to go! Literally. The extra weight I am carrying gives my legs the strength of someone in their seventies or eighties, according to Roy’s running book. Believe me, I believe it!

So I sign up, then ask my friend, David, “Tell me, am I crazy?” And David said, “You would be crazy if you didn’t do something. If you just accepted being overweight. You must now change the way you think of yourself. You must think of yourself as a girl who runs half-marathons. The day I quit smoking, I began thinking of myself as a non-smoker.” I am trying, believe me, I am trying.

* * *

The Umoja Project Tearfund’s development model begins by asking people what their dreams and resources are. The villagers frequently say they have no resources. But in meeting numerous church members and facilitators over the last few days, we discovered a different picture slowly emerges.

They realise what they do have. They change their self-definition. Yiv Toch who knew how to raise chickens taught the others. Other group members had unused land. They pooled small amounts together to buy seeds for a community vegetable garden, and poultry to share. Those with a bit of English teach the smaller fry.

We spent a day in Pastor Te Pich’s church, and even dug in a field. The earth was more fertile and easier to dig than Oxford’s clayey soil, but I must admit I am no better at agriculture and hard labour in Cambodia than I am in Oxford! What struck me was the unsimulated joyousness as everyone, men, women and children, dug together in a field, and the field was dug in half an hour. It would have taken Roy hours! And then we ate Cambodian snacks, and played Cambodian games, and all the foreigners lost!!

Tearfund’s Village Integrated Development Project or Umoja is training facilitators to encourage communities to come together to pool money together so that they can borrow from the group in emergencies at 3% rather than from money-lenders at 120%! This savings and loan group also provides seed money for the community pig, for instance, a source of

much affection and interest to everyone, and for chickens and ducks.

The unused land around the church is intensively planted as a community garden, even children digging around the tomato and chilli plants. The savings group provides the “seed money” for the seeds.

The resources for change come from the community itself, thus rescuing them form the vicious circle of hand-outs and foreign aid, which crush pride, self-respect, self-reliance and creativity.

Cambodia is a country of abundance—fertile soil, beneficent climate, optimistic sweet-spirited people. It is also a country with great corruption at the governmental level, one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

It is even more important then that people develop self-sufficiency and their own parallel non-taxable economies– vegetables, chickens, piggeries, fruit trees, private free schools, so that they survive and, God willing, thrive while their forests are despoiled, their gems and hardwood and minerals shipped away, and their land appropriated by powerful, mighty corporations.

Please help Tearfund help Cambodia’s people develop self-sufficiency.

Simon Cutmore— it is a gem of a book and a beautiful parable and I think could be read by you and old alike.

Jules Middleton— I love the story! I wanted to read more! I love the history of Art connections.

Joanna Mitchell— I thought it was lovely – sweet and true and good — – and a bit like one of Francesco’s jewels.

I would like to give it to you as a gift if you give £3 to Tearfund here by direct debit.

Just leave me a comment saying you have done so, and send me your email address at anitaATanitamathias.com and I will email you an e-copy of my newest baby 🙂

On Pol Pot, Cambodia’s Killing Fields, and the Power of an Idea to Transform–or Destroy. (In Cambodia with Tearfund)

By Anita Mathias

Stupa in the Killing Fields, commemorating the victims of the Khymer Rouge

We wandered around the “Killing Fields” today, where thousands of the 3 million Cambodians who perished (out of a population of 8 million) were clubbed, hacked, or axed to death by the minions of Pol Pot, leader of the murderous Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot apparently was a sweet child, and then a brilliant student, sent to Paris by the Cambodian government on a doctoral scholarship. (Most of the Khymer Rouge leaders, incidentally, were intelligent and highly educated, mainly in Paris).

Pol Pot’s barbarity started with an idea. That the simple agrarian society he had stumbled upon on Cambodia’s borders was the very best society.

Sadly, his personality was dangerous. On the DISC personality assessment, he would score as DI, dominant and influential. And so instead of living a peaceful agrarian life himself, and buying farms, and inviting people to live and toil on them, he enforced his idea on society, forcing the entire population of Pnomh-Penh and other cities into the countryside, where they toiled for 12-14 hours a day in forced labour in rice paddies, etc.

The Pol Pot regime was control in the extreme. What does control stem from? From wanting your own way. From thinking you know best and wanting everyone to do what you want them to do.

But of course, everyone wants their own way, and so control will never be complete. Everyone has at least a residue of stubborn autonomy which cannot be snuffed out, and which leads oppressors to suspect, rightly, that their control is not complete. And leads to increasingly cruel, fearful and desperate attempts to control.

So Pol Pot, instead of trusting the power of his idea, used greater and greater barbarity to force society to accept it, killing intellectuals and the educated, those who knew a foreign language, those who wore glasses, doctors, professors, and eventually, in growing paranoia, loyal members of his own Khymer Rouge.

It was eugenics in reverse, a single-handed attempt to lower the IQ of a nation, murdering the educated and cultured, and I would expect that 35 years later Cambodia is still suffering from the effects of having her entire intelligentsia murdered.

Nations and human history, however, tends towards equilibrium and balance. Great evil has within itself the seeds of its own extinction. Pol Pot was overthrown to great rejoicing within 4 years, just as the extreme evil of Hitler and Stalin reduced the shelf-life of their regimes.

Peaceful agrarian scene, just outside the Killing Fields.

I walked through the killing fields, in which now birds sing, trees flower, hens march outside followed their chicks, and skinny cows graze.

Cambodia was an agrarian society, and Pol Pot could have enjoyed it peacefully and privately , without three years of stress for his people and himself–for like all dictators he grew increasingly paranoid as he realized that absolute control was impossible, suspecting everyone, friend and crony alike, killing people on suspicions, and dubious information extracted over months of torture.

Was it just Pol Pot? Nope, I think every parent, every lover, every friend, every church leader, or small group leader has in themselves a urge to control things. I’ve been meditating on control after hearing an acquaintance, a “good” and respected Christian woman say that her greatest weakness was that she wanted to control everything, her family, her work, her church, her small group and that this was the greatest source of stress in her life.

Like her, I would really like to have things go the way I think they should go, and want them to go. I resolved then to give up this silliness, to persuade but not control, to go with the flow in relatively unimportant things, instead of directing the flow. And if people don’t behave the way I want them to, or think they should– to “control” them, in the only way God has left open to us, by the immense force of prayer, which as Paul Miller repeatedly points out in his book The Praying Life, does change people but with the invisible force of the spirit.

* * *

I chatted to our tour guide at the Genocide Museum, an intelligent man who was made to work in the rice paddies, essentially as a slave, on a ration of two bowls of rice a day, sometimes more gruel than rice. Pol Pot viewed his people as expendable, since he thought he needed only 2 million out of the 8 million to run his communist society. Those who died from overwork and malnutrition died. The rice they produced he exported.

Obviously, having to live and work in community—the same food, the same clothes, all colour banned, with the fruits of your toil going elsewhere was not a trust-inspiring taste of community for the people of Cambodia. Tearfund’s Umoja process in healing in encouraging to work in community.

* * *

Cambodia’s Christians don’t lack for uncoordinated help from well-meaning Western Christians. I saw concrete pigpens and water butts in a Tearfund Project today, donated by Samaritan’s Purse.

samaritans

Heck, who wouldn’t be tempted by a hand-out? There is something magical about something for nothing; it has the whiff of grace about it; it would sure tempt me.

But as I’ve mentioned in his blog, one of the turning points of my life was when I fell in love with a house I could not afford (in which I now live). Roy hopefully suggested to his mother who has inherited wealth from her husband’s family and her own that she help us buy it, since she has bought houses for his brother David, and Jeph Mathias, who, consequently, no longer needs to work.

She refused. Providentially. So we bought the house with a crazy mortgage, almost 7 times his salary and I started a business. I gained confidence. I changed my self-definition. I thought I was not detail-oriented. Heck, I was wrong. I could be obsessively detail-oriented when I needed to be. I thought I was no good with money. Nope, if I prayed for guidance and God’s ideas, I discovered I could be brilliant with money.

I learnt dozens of things I did not know—including working in a team and biting my lip often, and how to plan something step by step from concept to execution, to plan with enough detail that you intuitively know it is going to work because your detailed step by step plan is concrete, credible and practical.

That has helped me in other areas of my life, my blog, for instance.

* * *

The worst thing about poverty is hopelessness. At a meeting at ICC (International Cooperation for Cambodia) they described Tearfund’s Umoja process (which encourages communities to dream about what they want to see, to set aside a small sum of money every week into a savings and loan program, and to use some of that money in micro-entrepreneurial enterprises).

At the first meeting, they ask, “What resources do you have?” The people say, “We do not have any resources. We are poor.” But they realize they have unused land around their houses in which they can grow things in containers. They have enough to buy a laying hen or two. They can buy a community pig. Put fish in a pond. Dig a well. Pool together for a water butt for the hot, dry season (i.e. now!)

The self-definition—that we are poor, and so we need help is self-limiting. One you define yourself as a poor person (or a fat person with a bad metabolism, or someone not techie, or not smart enough to learn X, or do Y well, you have limited yourself. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy). A pervasive hopelessness spreads.

Hand-outs don’t work permanently (except in disaster relief, where they make the difference between death from starvation or thirst and life). They are like putting a finger in a dyke, which sooner or later will burst. Once you have spent your hand-out, you will need another. And another.

What changes people is ideas, not dollars. The idea that they DO have resources—physical strength, optimism, a bit of land around their houses, the ability to keep chickens, and to pool money and work together on a community garden, a piggery, a fishery.

Tearfund is helping train people in new agricultural and animal husbandry techniques, and in starting small businesses like sewing shops.

A donation of £3 a month will pay for a family to go through Umoja, Swahili for togetherness, the Church and Community Mobilization programme.

Would you care to donate here by direct debit, please.

If you’d like to sign up to support Tearfund’s work in Cambodia through either of these links, I’d like to send you a beautifully formatted PDF version of one of my books

Wandering Between Two Worlds—a series of memoiristic essays on my life and faith journey

The Meek Inherit the Earth—a meditation on that Beatitude

The Church That Had Too Much—a recording of a vivid dream.

Just leave me a comment saying you have done so, and send me your email address at anitaATanitamathias.com. Thank you