Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

In Denmark on our summer holiday

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  I will try to keep up my blog, as I enjoy thinking and writing—but… regular service will be irregular!
After much debate, we bought a motorhome. Or, rather, Roy bought it. When it came to it, I couldn’t bring myself to go car-shopping, and Roy has quite successfully bought all our previous cars and mini-vans, so he bought this, and we got a professional to check it out.
We love it, and far prefer the adventure of motor home travel to regular hotel and rental car travel. You can keep going till you find an idyllic spot. In Norway (where there is a law called allemansreit) Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand etc. motor-home camping or wild, free camping is legal in wild areas, in the mountains, by rivers, or by the sea.
We’ve been renting motor homes for over ten years, and some of our favourite travel experiences have been camping in the Alps, doing our washing up in streams; camping on beaches in Ireland; facing fjords and waterfalls and the tarns of the Hardangervida plateau in Norway, or the vast inland lakes Vannern and Vattern in Sweden. To step out into sheer beauty, but still have a good night’s sleep with books, a laptop, and creature comforts is the best of both worlds for me. Our new (to us) motor home has a kitchen, a shower, a loo, huge picture windows, and a little family sitting area. Love it.
                                             * * *
I love Scandinavia in summer. We flew to Norway and Sweden for the last two summers and rented a motorhome there. This year, since we bought our own, we decided to drive from Oxford to Denmark.
It was an epic drive, but we have listened to some of the Narnia books which I last read to the kids over 10 years ago, and which were enchanting and have a travel feel–The Horse and His Boy and Prince Caspian. And slept a lot (well, not the driver) catching up with our sleep lag.
So Oxford—Dover—Dunkirk, where we slept by a canal, through France, Belgium, Holland, where we slept in farm country, through massive Germany, and then into Jutland, which is the only point that Denmark connects to mainland Europe. Slept by a lake, last night. This sort of holiday is cheaper than flying and renting a camper—but it takes a day longer—but you listen to more books on the way, and arrive rested and in a holiday mood. Yeah, I think we will do it again.
As one drives through Europe–I guess we’ve driven through 6 countries in the last couple of days–globalisation, or rather Americanization is evident. KFC, Pizza Hut Burger King and McDonalds’ everywhere!!  I know everyone hates globalisation, but I must confess I do stop into McDonald’s on the way, for the free WiFi, and a mocha caramel Frappe
                                             * * *
The American business model is generosity. McDonald’s throws in free WiFi, and clean loos, and sells many accidental coffees and Big Macs in the bargain.
In Germany, I was struck by the fact that, though it was a great big successful economy, nothing was free. To get “free” WiFi at McDonald’s, you enter your German mobile phone number, and they send a text to your phone with a code. In other countries, like France and Holland, you just enter and use it!! No German phone, no luck. (In fact, a friendly employee logged us in!!). And in Germany, you are automatically logged out after an hour!! No nursing your latte for hours!
To refill water in the camper at rest areas, you put in a 50 c. coin. To use the loo at gas stations, you go through a turnstile with a 70 c. coin. Etc.
And Germany is the most prosperous European country.
I wonder which model is more profitable. Free loos in petrol stations, and the grateful customer might pick up a coffee.  Or a paid loo and you don’t feel you need to buy anything. If the very American story of Wall Drug is universally applicable, the former should be better. Generosity is good for business as well as for personal relationships. But no doubt, number-crunchers in business schools have analysed all this.
Denmark is a very small country. You can drive from one end to another in 3 hours, so we are hoping to see a lot of it.
* * *
Scandinavia, in particular, and Northern Europe in general, is so pleasant. Polite, considerate people, clean surroundings, a high degree of honesty, and everything so efficient, well-organised, and highly innovative. For instance, parking spots in Haderslev were marked 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 3 hours. Danes have a little clock in their cars, and punch in their time of arrival. And if you are a visitor. “Oh, just leave a note saying when you came.”
Cleanliness, tidiness, order, hard work, efficiency, punctuality, consideration, decency, honesty: All these traits have are integral to the ethical system called Christianity.
Jesus, of course, didn’t directly stress the first six virtues, but Northern European Christianity today, as percolated through the Reformation, Luther and Calvin, is a construct which does not closely resemble the simple , revolutionary and wonderful faith Jesus taught.  

Not that I am criticizing the Protestant work ethic, and “cleanliness is next to Godliness”– Reformed Northern Europeans distinctives which have become synonymous with their brand of Christianity. The world might well be a better place if run on the Scandinavian and Northern European model—but with a smile.
Scandinavian and Northern European countries consistently rate among the happiest in the world. The high emphasis on fitness probably plays a part–physical fitness keeps endorphins high, and gives you a positive outlook on life, increased self-confidence, and disease resistance. And increases productivity. Perhaps their is a connection between their love of outdoors sports and the high wealth.

I see the wealth in Scandinavia, generated by hard work, innovation, discipline, honesty, and inherited income. And feel sad for Africans who probably put in as many hours as the Northern Europeans, but who still struggle for subsistence.

Roy reminded me that Jesus said it’s perhaps harder for those who are rich in this world to wriggle  into the Kingdom of Heaven. And that is some comfort for me. I don’t want these strapping Vikings to be out, but I would rather like the smiley cheerful Africans to be in!!

Rich Christians and World Poverty. How much should we give?

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god we trust Tithing and the abundant life

So there is unbelievable poverty in the world. But most of us who live in the West have enough to satisfy all our needs and many of our wants.

And, often, the disparity gnaws at us.

How much should we give away?

We feel sad about the suffering of the poor.  But we live in the West, we take on the coloration of the West, and our needs become Western, including the need to take a break from the pace of life (our children’s frenetic pace of life, if not ours) and escape distraction by distraction, in Eliot’s phrase. For instance, I don’t particularly covet things any more, but I do enjoy working hard/playing hard, and I love travel and exploration.

* * *

To think  what you spend on coffee each  could send an African girl to school; your holiday in Europe could support an African family for a year could poison your life with guilt—particularly if you do not in fact give away the money saved (which, I suspect, is often the case!)

But how much should we give away?

The Apostle Peter asked for a concrete figure to appease his conscience.

“How many times should I forgive my brother if he sins against me. Seven times?” he asks magnanimously.

But Jesus does not fall for this.  When can I stop forgiving? he hears Peter asking

So he gives a rhetorical, hyperbolic figure, impossible to track. 70 times 7.

Infinitely.

(And I must say that I have probably forgiven Roy and my children that often!)

* * *

Giving away a large percentage of our money, something we have toiled for, worried about, and greatly desire because of the worlds and opportunities it opens to us, is as difficult as forgiveness perhaps.

And so those who lived under law were given a convenient, easily calculated figure–ten percent as a minimum. And then something over that, as their conscience led them, “offerings.”

* * *

For us, under grace, no figure has been given. No easy: “Okay then, ten percent is God’s, and 90 percent all mine.”

But giving ten percent is a useful rule, and will probably unleash much blessing in your life. I have read it in biographies, been told so by friends, and most persuasively, giving 10 percent has always unleashed miracles, windfalls, and unexpected blessing in my life.

* * *

I read in late 2003 in the World Vision magazine, about struggling cherry farmers in Washington State, who wanted to do something about world poverty. They decided to tithe to World Vision, though their business was precarious. And then increased it. Soon, the amount they gave away in tithes each year was the same as their annual salary the year they had started giving. Their income had increased ten-fold, and they were giving away substantial sums! God blessed their business because he trusted them to be a conduit of blessing.

I was so inspired by the fact that ordinary individuals could dent poverty on a small scale, that I decided to increase our base tithe by a percentage point each time we got a financial windfall, a grant, a cash prize, a cash gift. So we were giving 16 percent by the time we left America in 2004. The generosity unleashed blessing.

And then we moved to England, and money was tighter—significantly higher house prices, taxes, and we went private for schooling. Though we had tithed for all our Christian lives, we stopped. We gave, of course, but not ten percent. I led Bible studies as my service to the church.

And we financially struggled for the first two and a half years that I ran my small business–and for the only time in our lives. I wonder now what would have happened if we had tithed!! It wouldn’t surprise me if God would have blessed us with good ideas and good luck, and the tide would have turned sooner.

But there is a toughness and tensile strength of character which is best forged in the school of suffering, and so I do not regret its lessons.

* * *

Though the Old Testament tithe is no longer a requirement to us who are redeemed by the blood of Christ, and live under grace, it is a good starting point. Easy to calculate, and not difficult for almost everyone in the West, and many people in the majority world too. And then, offerings over that, as our heart is moved by specific needs.

I think world poverty would be significantly dented if Christians tithed.

* * *

But we do need to tithe way beyond our little church. The Old Testament tithe supported widows, orphans and aliens in addition to the Levites (Deut 14:28).

If we all gave ten percent of our income to the church we attend, we’ll soon have obscenely overpaid fat-cat pastors in affluent areas, and the money would provide a show on Sunday to rival a concert, and the church could become a club with aerobics classes, weight loss classes, coffee mornings and pamper evenings, being ever more appealing and ever richer, while the poor in the majority world become poorer and poorer. As Larry Burkett points out, tithing in rich, inward-focused, growth-focused churches is essentially tithing to yourself and your church family!!

Not every pitch you hear from the pulpit is motivated by real need. Some are motivated by the pastor’s ambition for glory. Learn to distinguish between what pastors legitimately need to preach the gospel, and which appeals are motivated by ambitious profile-boosting and empire-building. For these sort of appeals will never end.

On the other hand, if we followed the Old Testament model and ensured that 2.5 percent of our income goes to support the local church, and 7.5 goes to support the poor, including “aliens,” our economy will be closer to the one God envisioned, and perhaps there would be few poor among us.

* * *

We ourselves, of course, may have less money than if we did not give. Though not necessarily. Gretchen Rubin, a secular writer who writes on happiness, cites studies that the more one gives, the more one’s wealth increases—perhaps because of the positive feelings that  giving and generosity provide, and other people’s respect for the generous. Roy and I first started tithing in 1990, and were amazed at all the little miracles of financial provision which suddenly followed us, seemingly as a consequence.

And if tithing leaves us with less money than we would have had? So what? Less money=less stuff, less distraction, more simple pleasures, and a quieter life. Money truly does not buy happiness beyond a certain point, and most of us, if we track our times of deepest happiness, may discover that they were times of simple pleasures which did not require very much money at all.

The Blessing of Jabez and Jacob

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Jacob wrestling angel
Jacob wrestling with the Angel


When we lived in America around the turn of the century, the Prayer of Jabez was the most lucrative Christian marketing craze: a best-selling book, audio CD, mugs, magnets, t-shirts, books, even a CD of worship music composed around that two line prayer. Some of these might be spotted around my house, I must confess.

The prayer of this new-minted 21st century celebrity came from an obscure sentence in the Book of Chronicles, which contains all we know of Jabez.
Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. 1 Chron 4:10
Nice prayer, inn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to pray it?
And why did God answer this prayer? There is no magic to the formula. Jabez has not serendipitously got all his prayer ducks in a row. God answered because Jabez asked.
* * * 
I have been re-reading the life of Jacob. The one thing Jacob wanted all his life was the blessing of God. The blessing encoded in creation, in the genetic code of corn and cows: abundance from the limited, the miraculous multiplication of one’s feeble efforts, protection. 
He tries to get it by manipulating a ravenous Esau of his birthright (which, as first-born, included the blessing promised to Abraham and his seed), then by mercilessly deceiving the blind Isaac into giving him the blessing he had reserved for his own favourite son, Esau. He flees Laban at night, devises a cunning ruse to pacify Esau who comes to meet him with four hundred fighting men.
* * * 
And then in the night, he encounters a opponent whose magnificent strength tells him he is more than human. He does not let go, even when the opponent, desirous of leaving before dawn  (“because no one can see the face of God and live” Exodus) dislocates Jacob’s hip. 
Jacob says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
And so God does. 
God blesses him because of the strength of his longing for God’s blessing.  He blesses Jacob because what Jacob wanted–for his entire life–even more than he wanted wealth or success, was God’s blessing. 
All his life he has sought it desperately, tricked and manipulated and wrestled to get it.
And now, no scheming, no tricks, no bargaining with God as at Bethel, twenty years earlier. 
He simply asks.
* * *
Though old habits die hard. Jacob still finds it hard to believe that he can have God’s blessing for the asking.
So he informs God that he is certainly not going to let go of him until he has blessed him. And this from a man limping with a dislocated hip!
God is charmed. And probably amused. And so He does what he has always intended to do, even before Jacob had been born, what he had been waiting to do if Jacob had but asked him, instead of defrauding his relations and having to flee from them for 20 years of bitter toil. 
He blesses him. 
And Jacob achieves what he could have had all along for the asking. If he had relied on God rather than on his own stratagems.
Open my eyes, Lord, to see the times when I worry and fret instead of praying; when I quarrel instead of praying; when I work in convoluted, tortuous ways instead of praying.

Open my eyes to the stratagems I use to avoid having to come before you with empty hands, asking for your blessing.  

Hamlet in the Bodleian Quad

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Watched an open-air Hamlet at the Bodleian Library yesterday. Magical! The Quad was a suitable stand-in for Elsinore Castle, all very majestic.


Pigeons flew around to roost as darkness fell, and the setting sun bathed the quad in golden light.
And oh, the poetry! Though I have last studied that play in 1986, I was surprised at how much I remembered, at how gorgeous the language was, and at how many phrases have entered the English language.
If I had not formally studied the play, I would not have enjoyed it as much.
Formal study, or self-study, adds so much depth to our appreciation of the arts, whether painting, architecture, poetry or film.
I was grateful to God for a magical evening.

What are your spiritual default settings?

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Peace, Be Still

David Foster Wallace in his famous commencement speech refers to the default settings he returns to—self-centredness, negativity, judgmentalism.
What are your default settings? The things your thoughts turn to when your mind is empty, bored or fallow, say on a too-long walk on a circuit, or in a traffic jam, or interminable queue?
When I am bored or tired, my default settings sometimes lapse into paltry concerns. I might wonder about whether our savings plan is on track (it often isn’t J). I might think about ways to fine-tune our family business so that it is more profitable. I think about this blog and how to grow it. I might fret and worry—about my writing, or whichever relationship is currently annoying me, etc.

And so I am trying to change my default settings: the framework through which I see the world, and process experience, to something more energizing, joy-filled, and full of the positivity which radiates through the Sermon on the Mount.
·      * * *
These are the spiritual default settings to which I return to find peace. The God contact lenses I put on to see my life sanely!
 Rejoice, always.
In everything give thanks.
There is usually a silver lining in situations which one can thank God for anyway.
And when I cannot see it, I thank God for his power to bring good out of all things, even situations which seem irredeemably bleak, even seeds which seem shrivelled and unpromising.
2 If you have aught against any, forgive. Keep the stream of your inner life positive.
Releasing debts is a quick way of returning to peace
3 Do not worry about anything at all (Matt 6).
4 Do not be afraid (Matt 28:10).
5 Prayer changes things. It is the greatest power in the world. Nothing is impossible with God. Prayer can move our mountains.
These are the core convictions I return to when I am frazzled, stressed, negative, empty and bleak, and are part of my shortcut back to God. And spiritual health and sanity.
How about you? What are your spiritual default settings, or core convictions?

On Tiger-Mothers, and Good-Enough Christian Mothers

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So I read through Amy Chua’s  article, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger-Mother, and feel I have failed as a mum. (This, of course, is the uneasy reaction the sassy book was intended to evoke.)

“Zoe and Irene,” I say dramatically. “I have failed as a tiger-mother.”
Zoe snorts. “You never were a tiger-mother, Mum. Especially now. You spend too much time with imaginary friends on your blog.”
“Zoe, cyber-friends. NOT imaginary friends.”
She, “Whatever.”
Irene nods absently. She is playing a game on her iPod. Thus highlighting my failure as a tiger mother!!  I have a strict rule: Only educational games, but, apparently, the word educational has multiple meanings. Who would have thought?
* * *
Amy Chua, however, is not a failure as a tiger mother. Her article at The Wall Street Journal subtly and modestly titled, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” commences as it continues,

“Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do: 
 • attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.”
                                                                       * * *
Oh dear!
Readers are either impressed or disgusted.
My list would be closer to a Western parents’ than to Chua’s. My kids have certainly done playdates, school plays and sleepovers. They choose their own activities, with input from us, and we don’t require that they be better than other people, which is a wholly unfair requirement, in my opinion.
Irene, my younger one, is chipping away at the strict rules we put in place. We never had TV at home for the first 17 years of Zoe’s life, but watched lots of carefully chosen documentary DVDs, and movies. But since I bought an Ipad last autumn, Irene has started watching what I consider frivolous TV and disapprove of. It’s just hard for me to be constantly vigilant and omnipresent!!
Computer games were banned for Zoe, and reluctantly permitted for Irene, in limited quantities at her persistent insistence. However, her joy in these games equals our joy in our work, and when we retreat into our zones of private joy, she retreats into hers, and plays them more than I approve of.
                                                     * * *
I have often felt that there is a saving grace to ambition. I never wanted to waste my life, and so have never taken drugs, never been really drunk, etc. Irene likes to achieve academically, and this year got an A1:5, the highest possible mark in every subject, and the school’s award for achievement, given to those with the highest marks. And this desire to do well at school has helped her cut back on computer games.
Chua says it is selfish, careless parenting to allow your children to waste time on computer games and Facebook. I agree with her on that. We banned Facebook for Irene until she was 13, and then, blessed decision, she decided she didn’t want it. I think it’s a brilliant decision as the Facebooks of 13 year olds cause more unhappiness than joy, I’ve decided from checking up on my older daughter’s FB in her mid-teens.
                                                  * * *
Chua’s parenting is incredibly unbalanced, as she knows, no doubt. The goal is success. To work very hard as a child to get a pleasant job as an adult later.
This is a common attitude in Asia, and among Africans, and other immigrants to the West.
There is something to it. The Polgar sisters were pulled out from school and made to practice chess for 8 hours a day, 50 hours a week. All of them became grandmasters, I believe. They say “We worked hard as children and now have more leisure and opportunities and fun as adults. Our friends did not work as children, and now work hard as adults.”
Hard work as a child can give you a pleasant, gratifying job with less grind and drudgery and more interesting opportunities as an adult.
                                             * * *
What annoys readers, and the flaw in Chau’s parenting, is its obvious egocentrism. When she won a second prize at a school assembly, her father was furious. “Never ever disgrace me like that again,” he said.
Sorry, disgrace whom? Chua’s parents came to America as poor immigrants; they attempted to achieve their dreams through their children. She says, “Knowing the sacrifices they made for us makes me want to uphold the family name, to make my parents proud.” Was it impossible for Chua’s parents to do something themselves of which they could be proud? Why burden her with having to bring them honour or disgrace?
Chua has been condemned to a treadmill in which she is a disgrace unless she does something spectacular so her parents can be proud. She condemns her children to the same treadmill–20 practice tests every night if they ever get the second highest grade, three hours of violin practice every evening. She condemns them to a life of having to be the best, compensating for any deficiencies in intelligence by hard work, and more hard work.
And what if they encounter another tiger cub, who is naturally smarter, but works equally hard? Sounds like a recipe for a nervous breakdown to me.
The flaw in her plan is that her children, who are not allowed playdates, sleepovers, gym, drama, TV or computer games, will naturally do better than children with equal intelligence who lead a more balanced life. They will therefore get into a better university and get more prestigious jobs than they would have—alongside with smarter, more naturally gifted children, who have led a balanced life. And then, they’ll have to jog very hard on the relentless treadmill of overwork to keep pace.
It seems a pretty pointless life, dominated by fear, pride and competitiveness.
                                                  * * *
All this comes close to the bone with me, as with most mothers who read it.
Roy, my husband, was unusually gifted at math and chess. He was the national high school chess champion in New Zealand where he grew up. Both our daughters are good at both these, as well as being very verbal.
We taught Zoe chess somewhat late, at 8, after she was housebound after breaking her leg in a freak accident. (I believed board games are a waste of time compared to reading, but she was housebound and sad, so we taught her chess.)
Irene at 3 watched us play, played against herself, first, then with us, and emerged as a fairly formidable player by 5. At 6, coaches noticed her talent. She has played at a city, county and national level, and has won prizes in all these, about two shelves of prizes, 50-60 of them. For several years, she was among the top two girl players of her age in the UK, and among the top handful of all players her age.
She loved chess when it was fun, just loved it and lived it. When, however, she reached the stage at which it was estimated to take 1-3 hours a day of practice to be competitive at a national level, and when, 6 or 7 days a week, she was spending her evenings at chess clubs or tournaments, and was away most weekends at tournaments around the country, she began to lose interest. She did not want to practice as much as she needed to.
Chess is brutal. The games were three hours. A momentary flicker of concentration in the end game, and you could lose a game you had so carefully and brilliantly played.
Your opponent can take up to 15 minutes to think–or more–and this is torture for a quick-thinking, mercurial child.
And she loves reading. She has a stable of books she knows almost by heart–the entire Little Women series, the entire Anne of Green Gable series, Harry Potter, Alice, some George Macdonald, Narnia. She has read and re-read them, and listened to them again and again on her iPod. Reading was being compromised for chess. I was sad about that.
We fought epic battles over whether she should continue chess or give it up. I thought she was instinctively preternaturally good at it, judging by her success with very little practice. I thought chess was part of the story God was writing in her life. I did not think an extraordinary talent should be so lightly given up.
We shouted, screamed, cried, both of us. And eventually she won. Because her will was stronger than mine. Because she cried at the thought of day-long tournaments, and said the sight of a chess-board made her feels stressed.
And so with much sadness on my part, and no doubt, some sadness on Irene’s part, we surrendered something which had been part of her identity, life, friendships, self-image for 6 years. And only because that was her desire, I hasten to add, assuaging the last of my tiger-mother guilt.
                                                            * * *
 So, what’s my conclusion? Chua is partly wrong.
Tiger mothering is not a secure foundation to build your life on. It is psychologically dangerous to live your life through your children, forcing achievement for bragging rights, seeking brilliance from your children so as to impress your peers, and be the envy of mouse-mothers. It makes it harder to let your children go, and to recover your own life and interests once they leave.
The best gift we can give our children is not to be the best at whatever they do. They may meet a more naturally gifted Siberian tiger, who also puts in the necessary hours, and so let competitiveness and jealousy poison their existence.
I honestly believe the best thing we can do for our children as Christian parents is to give them a solid, durable faith foundation beneath their feet, and to introduce them to a personal friendship with God.
Apart from that, the best thing we can do is to help them discover their “shape,” and their sweet spot—the things they are naturally interested in and good at.  And this will help them find life-work they love, enjoy and are good at.
And helping them find such work is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. For as the wise King Solomon said, “There is nothing better for a person than to enjoy the work at which he toils at under the son.” (Ecc 3:22).

 

The Stars Sing of Him who has the Power to Make Dreams Come True

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One of the delights of living in the country, in a small village outside Oxford, is returning home at night, stepping out of the car, and looking up at the night sky, so vast and tranquil.

We live at the end of a dirt road, where all houses stop, so there are generally no lights to dim the brightness of the stars.
It is calming to stop and look up at the silent beauty of the stars. “Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis” as Pascal puts it, the eternal silence of the infinite spaces.

* * *
Abraham, stuck in his tent of impossibility, was told to step out, look at the heavens. And count the stars.
An impossible task.
And a reminder that nothing is impossible for him who made those stars, and called them each by name.
Look up. Count the stars. And when you grow tired, remember the tireless one who made them.

* * *

Don Miller tries to make his book Blue Like Jazz into a movie. He hits obstacles. His life does not have a satisfying plot. He needs to lose 150 pounds, but does not pursue the goal in a consistent way. He would like to trace the father, who abandoned him, but has not pursued that consistently either. He sees these false starts and dead ends destroy the shapely form of the story of his life.

In A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, he describes how he set about changing the story he was writing with his life. He loses the 150 pounds. He finds his father.

* * *

Does your life have dreams long deferred, goals you should have accomplished, but haven’t?

Mine does. One is finishing the memoir on which I worked off and on for 15 years, and which, to be honest, had reached daunting proportions. And the other is reaching optimal health for my age, which includes weight loss. Still another dream is waking at 5 o’clock!

* * *

And the key to accomplishing both these goals will be saturating them in prayer. Placing the petri dish with my prayer requests in the force field of God’s power.

Remembering not to try to accomplish these goals on my own, but through constantly asking for and accessing, “his incomparably great power for us who believe, which is the same as the mighty strength  he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead.”

Living by faith. Continually leaning on God’s power and help and grace and ideas.

Oh, help me, God.

 

Does worship music provide a short cut into the presence of God?

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Are there short cuts into the presence of God? Into the most holy place, between the wings of the cherubim?
Yeah, I think God might provide them, because he is a searching, seeking God, looking for the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost sinner.
For me, one of the short cuts is worship music.
Not instead of more muscular devotions, like prayer or Bible study. I haven’t yet considered listening to music instead of a set time of prayer, but as an addition to it.
                                                          * * *
My time of listening to music is while doing housework. Or brushing my teeth, because I often start my day spiritually cold and emotionless. Or I take a break when I feel disgruntled, or spiritually bored, and distracted; I tidy my room, while listening to music
The music profoundly affects my brain, liberating oxytocin and endorphins (and occasionally, an adrenalin rush), ushering me into the presence of God, changing my emotions, making me feel devotion. 


Saint Augustine wrote, “He who sings prays two-fold.”
                                                    * * *
Is there any value to emotions initially sluggish, now stirred into devotion by soulful worship music?
As with anything else in the spiritual realm, it depends on the fruit. Mere feelings that bear no fruit in action, or changed thinking or changed emotions are the seed which falls by the wayside. (One could read the Parable of the Sower as saying that the word of God bears no apparent fruit 75% of the times that it falls on our souls!)
However, sometimes, the music, the lyrics convict and soften us. We remember times we have been hard—lacking in mercy, lacking in generosity. We cannot respond fully to “I surrender all,” because we recollect some area in which we have not been surrendered. We surrender it.
As the stream of music, like the spirit of God, flows through our hearts, it might meet obstacles, little pockets of anger, unforgiveness or self-will, and God willing, some of these dissolve.
Yes, music definitely does often melt my heart and usher me more swiftly into the presence of God. The spiritual value of it, of course, depends on what I do with the insights and convictions which spring from my time of listening to the music.
Whom do I like listening to? Michael Card for the lyrics, almost evenly good, and the music. Matt Redman whose lyrics and music are hugely uneven, but who is sublime at his best. Love Rich Mullins, his music, lyrics and heart. Like Stuart Townend. Many of the Vineyard compilations are marvellous.
Since I changed my whole way of praying two years ago, using soaking prayer, I have got interested in a style of music which aims to mimic “the soundscape of heaven,” like Ernesto Rivera, or Misty Edwards, who though uneven, but brilliant at her best.
My favourite classical pieces are the Messiah, and Pachelbel’s Canon. I like Byrd and Tallis too.
I  haven’t been keeping up with worship music of late.
Who do you like listening to? Does worship music usher you more swiftly into the presence of God?