Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

“Follow me”

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Follow me
Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” (John 1:43)
Well, where are we going?
Oh, I never tell people that,
It’s all a surprise:
The beauty and danger of the ravines and crevasses
The glory of the mountain tops
The valley of the shadow of death
The still waters, the spacious places.
You will just have to come and see.
You mean you want me to follow you,
But refuse to tell where we are going?
Yes.
                                 * * *
Hmm. I kind of like him.
No, well, I really like him
He has kind eyes.
I want to be with him.
What gets me is this: he is just so kind.
And that sense of barely suppressed joy:
He’s alive, really alive.
He seems to be standing on tiptoes,
ready to take flight
into some adventure.
I want to follow him.
And my old life,
well, it’s no great shakes.
Nets, fish, stink.
Even if I became a partner,
bought everyone else out,
and retired to a mansion in Galilee,
Well, so what?
So what?
I would be an old rich man,
sitting under my wine and fig trees,
remembering him who called me into adventure
and whom I refused.
He looks like a man who knows what he is doing.
And when he looks at me,
I can tell he cares for me.
Do I trust him?
How can anyone look at him and
NOT trust him.
I think of the options:
Let this man, who is all life, all flame, all light,
his eyes full of merriment,
go on his way without me?
I cannot do it.
The thought makes me too sad.
And then, the other option:
Following him,
though I do not know where he is going?
Oh, that’s the exciting option.
                             * * *
Come follow me, you say
But where are you going? What are we going to do?
Shouldn’t I know that before I set out to follow you?
I ask, once again. No harm in asking, as they say.
I am enough.
I will satisfy your soul’s needs as in a sun-scorched land.
You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring which never fails.
Those who pass up the chance to follow me
For their stuff, their status, their old identity
For safety or security,
are simply not worthy of me.
You do not know where I am going,
but that is okay.
All you need to do is to put one foot in front of the other,
and follow me step by step.
My yoke is easy.
There will be glad times,
and sad times,
but this will never change:
Following me will always be
simply putting one step in front of the other.

First World Christians and Immigration: A God’s Eye View

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The Lord looks down from heaven. He says vast empty expanses in the Dakotas, Montana, Scotland, Canada, Norway and Sweden. He sees staggering wealth, loneliness and depression–and is perhaps surprised.
The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees Bangladesh, Rwanda, India, Ethiopia, Malawi, Vietnam. Starvation. Children dying because the mothers can’t read the directions on the donated medicine. Widespread malnutrition. Bright children pulled out of school to earn a few pennies. He sees them look northwards longingly.
The Lord looks down from heaven at Europe, Canada, the United States. He sees nursing homes where there is little kindness. He sees highly educated, gifted women who could use all their giftedness if they had help with childcare or housekeeping. He sees frazzled women writing facebook status updates, “Busy, busy busy. Stressed, stressed, stressed.”
The Lord looks down from heaven at Africa, Asia, South America. He sees kind competent women who would happily help with their richer sisters with childcare, with housekeeping, so to move to a country in which their own children would get a good education, and a roof over their head and be well fed. These are good desires, are they not?
And the Lord can think of a solution.
Can you?
* * *
And the Lord knows several secrets, which the fearful do not.
2)    The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. He knows the world produces enough food to feed everyone. He knows there will be enough, even if the rich world relaxes its immigration policies. Even if we have open borders on earth, as there are in heaven.
* * *
 Oh Christian, if your country has much of the world’s wealth, and you fearfully keep it for yourself, how does the love of God dwell in you?
I speak particularly to the citizens of America, since, oddly, I and my family are American citizens.
I believe the Lord reads cruel anti-immigrant laws and weeps at Alabama’s shame. I think he would just as soon not be associated with such courtrooms.
Dear American fellow-citizens: If you are not the descendant of native Americans or enslaved black Americans, you are an American citizen because America once opened her arms to tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of teeming shores.
Give as you have received, and you will receive as you have given.
       If you provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
And when you see the naked, clothe him,
  Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
       and your healing will quickly appear;
  Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
        you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. (Isaiah 58 7-9)
* * *
O Christian, there is enough for you and the poor. Kindness and generosity and openness are always good– for individuals and societies. (Witness the success of immigration-based societies like America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia)
 So, please, oh rich Christian brother and sister, if you cannot be an immigration advocate, please do not oppose immigration of your poorer fellow humans to your rich country.
They will add life, colour. They will work hard at needed jobs. They will pay taxes, eventually. They will contribute to your economy. Your mind and hearts will broaden.
There is always enough for the users, the abusers, the makers and the takers, the givers, the receivers, and your life will be enriched by your darker neighbours, their high-decibel music and their high-voltage food.
And perhaps, in that nursing home, when you are gently nursed by the kind Filipina, or saintly male nurse from Barbados when many of your own race scorn such work, or do it with brusqueness or a bad grace, you will be so, so glad you did not oppose immigration.
And, oh rich Christian, in 75 years, 50 years, 25 years, 5 years, today, you might well be living in the last and glorious multi-cultural society
There will be people there from every tribe and language and people and nation. (Rev 5:9).
Yes, jubilant Africans, tiger mother Chinese, the pushy, the noisy, the dirty, the messy, the illiterate, the vociferous, you will soon be elbow to elbow with them.
If you are lucky!
But if we arrive face to face with the King of Kings and have no reference letter from the poor (Matthew 25:31), let’s hope that none of us who selfishly retain the world’s wealth for ourselves, and our own countries will hear what the rich man in the Gospels heard, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony,” (Luke 16:25).

Friend, Come Higher

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Peter, from Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth
  
“You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter, the rock). John 1:42


Yes, I do know you.
I see you

and know you better than you know yourself.

I know you are friable.

I know you can crumble,

though these things may surprise you.

But your strength shall emerge from the weakness

you shall thoroughly conquer,

and thoroughly renounce.

I am calling you

from being Peter, the impulsive,

to becoming Peter who unshakeably loves me,

who is built rocklike on the bedrock of me.

I am calling you from being a fisherman

to being a fisher of men.

Following my will

will always lead you upward and onward

to a higher place.

Friend, come higher.

Come follow me.

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Come and you will see (John 1:39)

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Continuing my blogging through the Gospel of John
35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

 37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

   They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

   39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

You know, I would like to know where I was going.

I would like to know where the road ends.

It would be nice.

But, you, Jesus, are compelling,

your eyes, magnetic.

I don’t really have a choice.

The road that leads away from you

seems to lead into a dark, overgrown, dense forest.

I don’t want to enter it.

Following you leads into the light,

and, so Lord, I will follow you.

step by step, and find out where you live.

* * *

Yes, come, and you will see.

I make no promises, but these.

I will give you

myself,

and priceless gifts which can neither be bought,

lost, nor stolen.

I will teach you to give thanks for all things

so that you may progressively see

the joy which pulses through all things.

I will give you my peace,

which will abide unshakeably.

My love for you shall be

water which will quench your thirst.

My body will be real food for you,

as you learn to turn to me with your soul hungers.

My blood will be real drink.

I will give you light,

guidance, for I am the way.

Come to me, come to me,

keep coming, and I will teach you to see

truth.

* * *

Come and you will see.

Words of invitation and danger.

You will not tell us what you are going to show us

 as slowly, imperfectly, often lagging behind,

we follow you.

Glory or Gethesemene?

Or both?

Great fruitfulness,

or the great silence of the desert

in which character is forged?

Fame, our name a household word as yours was,

or the obscurity of your first thirty years?

The love of a circle of close friends as you enjoyed,

or your almost absolute aloneness on Calvary.

Will we experience the miraculous,

feed five thousand from five loaves?

Or will we be shunned and condemned as you were?

I do not know.

But you are too intriguing, Jesus,

for me to do other than what you ask,

and come and see where you will lead me.


Write down the Vision and Make it Plain

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Write down the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it (Habakkuk 2:2).
Bill Johnson (in The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind: Access to a Life of Miracles) says he writes down God’s ideas and revelations about his life and other matters, as they are revealed to him.
I think I am going to change the way I write my blog and write down what I hear God say to me as he says it (rather than note down the idea in a single phrase to develop later, because later I often do not remember what I meant, and, unbelievable though it may seem at the time of vivid revelation, may not even remember all the details and fullness of the idea God gave me.)
In that way, writing down ideas as they occur to me, I might be able to develop my blog while, ironically, spending less time on it!!
That will be great, as I am really longing to go back to mainly writing books, rather than blogs (rather than mainly writing blogs).
John Piper writes that there are eyes in pencils and in pens. In writing down the vision, one sees it more clearly.
Before guests, or the cleaners arrive, bad housekeepers have a flurry of putting things back in the right place. The organized housekeeper does not have this; she has been tidying as she went along.
At present, I have been setting a dedicated hour a day to blog, and letting it spill over, if the post is not finished in an hour. However, if I keep “writing the vision, and making it plain,” God willing. I will no longer need to dedicate an hour to blogging, but will have a little stash of blog posts—which I have always yearned to have, but never managed to create.
I have been the kind of blogger who finishes writing, and then hits “publish,” and, generally speaking, posts written that way are more mediocre than those carefully written, rewritten and polished!

Writing God-whispers as you hear them. The exciting holy ground where a prophetic ministry (if that’s not being 

I have news for you: Ninth Century Irish poem

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I have news for you:

The stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone
Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course
The sea running high.
Deep red the bracken; its shape is lost;
The wild goose has raised its accustomed cry,
cold has seized the birds’ wings;
season of ice, this is my news.
Anonymous

Scribbled by a monk on the margin of his manuscript in ninth century, Ireland.

Blog Vacation: Off on Retreat at Ffald-y-Brenin in Wales

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Okay, I am really excited. We’re off to Ffald-y-Brenin in Pembrokeshire National Park tomorrow. It’s a Christian retreat centre, which is a thin place between heaven and earth, with the presence and peace of God powerfully evident. I have felt such a longing for long hours in the presence of God of late–but for a married woman, with children, and other commitments, it’s not always possible. Now, for 5 days it will be!! I am so grateful to our wonderful house-sitter.
There is no internet or iPhone or iPad coverage in the retreat centre, so I will be taking a blog break until the 20th December.
Have a blessed Advent, everyone.
From the Ffald-y-Brenin website.
“There are two things our visitors tend to notice as they arrive. One is the stunning beauty of the buildings, site and surroundings. Unbidden peace seems to invade your heart and mind.

The second is an awareness of the stillness of God’s presence. This has often been called “a thin place” where the veil between heaven and earth has been pulled back. It is easy to pray, to be still, to listen, to worship. It is also a place of joy, of creativity and of learning, a place of encounter.

Visitors coming on retreat at Ffald-y-Brenin tend to find it restful, challenging or life changing, depending on their purpose in coming and God’s agenda for them while they are here.

At its heart, Ffald-y-Brenin is a House of Prayer. Everything that happens is soaked in prayer. Guests are welcome to join with us and gaze into the face of Jesus during our daily rhythm of morning, midday and evening prayer if they choose. Some have deep encounters with God at those times. “

Counting my Blessings on my Birthday

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I  



In random order
1 Look at the beautiful flowers kind friends gave me
2 and the lovely new antique cherry mahogany table we bought, which I love.
3 Lovely Roy has been able to work from home in our family business this year, and look after most practicalities, freeing up SO much writing for me me.
He’s been able to do the things he always wanted to–read more, pray more, garden more, grow our own veg, and keep up with news, the house. He’s also enjoying exploring “hacks”–the most efficient ways of doing things.
4 Zoe did very well in her G.C.S.E.’s–all A*’s and A’s, and is enjoying her A levels–Philosophy, theology, English and French. She is a strong Christian, and goes to two youth groups, in both our old and new church.
5 Irene is doing brilliantly academically, receiving more enthusiastic reports than I ever, ever got!! She’s cheerful, bouncy, and very happy, with a very tight-knit, loving, supporting group of friends.
6 Peace, joy, and happiness. Yes, I am really happy.
7 Blogging has brought me great joy this year.
8 And twitter–what a revelation. Love it!
9 Travel–I’ve enjoyed a Dec trip to Granada, a Feb. trip to Rome, an April trip to Ravenna and Bologna, a July trip to Strasbourg, an August trip to Sweden, and an October trip to Devon since my last birthday.
We are going to Wales soon, and then London.
10 A wonderful cleaner and housekeeper, who keeps everything clean and running smoothly.
11 Taking up running, which I SO enjoy, though anyone of you could beat me at it.
12 Beginning to read again intensively, which I SO, SO love.
13 St. Andrew’s, Oxford, my new church, in which I am so happy.
14 My wonderful women’s group, which is THE BEST women’s group I’ve ever been in.
15 Our couple’s small group, which is so interesting.
16 A lovely birthday party at which I caught up with so many friends.
17 Good health all year.
18 Starting writing again after a break of 4 years. Slowly, but a beginning.
19 Our family are individually happy, and happy together.
20 My dog who’s always with me, and my rabbits and ducks
21 The deep, deep love of God into which I am falling ever deeper