Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Do not forget that when we weep, the Lord weeps with us

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(Revised, updated, July 21, 2013)
In a memorable scene in John Wimber’s biography, The Way it Was, a “prophetess” comes to him, saying she has a word for him from God.She sits and weeps wordlessly. After about ten minutes of this, Wimber, who has a sermon to prepare, gets irritated, and asks her to give him the word. “Yes,” she says, and resumes weeping silently for another ten minutes.

Finally Wimber says, “Listen, I’ve got to go. If you have a word for me, please share it.”

And she says, “I did. That was the word.”

And Wimber, who was then overworking and miserable, a victim of his own success, was shaken.

The Lord was weeping over him.

* * *

Jesus feels our pain, in the same way that we wept with Martha over the death of Lazarus. The wrong tracks we take, the times we hurt ourselves with our sin, the times we exhaust ourselves for nothing. He sees the futility of it all, and he is grieved.

I am resuming writing the book which I most want to write. After working in it, off and on for 15 years, I shelved it 7 years ago.

And I have been having extensive conversations with God about it.

I have mentally put into his hands, this book which, in many ways, is blood-soaked. In my ambition for my writing, I blew off health, not exercising enough, or eating healthily or taking time to cook, and so gained a lot of weight—85 pounds, to be precise. I sacrificed quality time with my husband. I could have invested even more in the girls. I let the house slide into mess. I overstrained my nervous system with frequent burn-outs.

Oh, that period of idolatry had physical, mental, spiritual and emotional costs, for idols are like that—cruel. They suck you dry and still want more.

But I still feel it is the book I have to write. So claiming the promise that “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18) I put the book into Jesus’ hands, and ask him to redeem it.

And in my mind’s eye, I see him bend down over my book. I see his tears fall over it.

The Lord is weeping with me over all the unnecessary pain, and his tears of love and forgiveness are turning the scarlet of sin as white as snow.

I seem them as tears of redemption, merging with my tears of repentance.

And I am set free to go forward with joy.

 

 

 

 

What Kind of Blog would Jesus have Written?

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A few words Jesus wrote

Well, if Jesus were a blogger, rather than an itinerant preacher, what kind of blog would he have?

1) It would be unique. It’s recorded that people were amazed at his words. No man ever spoke the way this man does (John 7:46).

Oh great. That’s a tall order. And how do I be unique?

By being myself. 

Since no two people see the world in the same way, by being honest, we stumble upon the secret of being original, of being unusual.

Each person is unique, as unique as each snowflake, rose, fingerprint, zebra’s stripes, the iris of an eye, or the dots on a penguin’s chest.

As we grow to utter honesty, we discover in the process–unique blogs.

2) It would be full of grace and truth. 

Full of graciousness, of course, but it would be honest too. Hypocrisy was the trait Jesus most abhorred in the Pharisees, “who did everything to be seen by men” (Matt. 23:5) and honesty was the trait he adored, for instance, in his foot-in-the mouth, speak-first-and-then-think disciples.

3) It would be a blessing.

There would be life in it, living waters, and nourishment–the bread of life.

4) Would Jesus spend time in gaining readers for his blog, or would he proceed on the “If you build it, they will come?” principle?

Both. He sees Philip and Matthew and invites them to follow him. He invites himself to Zaccheus’s house for a meal.

And the real-life friendships which grow out of blogging is one of its great pleasures.

But I get the impression that Jesus went about his Father’s business and drew people to him because there was life in his words. That he would have delivered the Sermon on the Mount if there were five people there, instead of five thousand.

If one invests time in blogging, it is perhaps only sensible and responsible to invest some time in finding readers for one’s blog. And I do far too little of that…

5) Jesus would not embark on or continue a blog without being sure that blogging was his Father’s will for him, what he was called to do.

He said, “I do nothing on my own.” I think he would be continually checking in with his Father on what to write, and how much to write, and how.

6 A blog written by Jesus would be somehow prophetic.

He would listen to his Father until he heard him speak. He would record what he heard.

6 A blog written by Jesus would be varied, like his teaching ministry.

Jesus used parables and sermons, exhortation and admonition. He taught his disciples spiritual lessons from their everyday experiences. He used metaphor and allegory, humour and satire.

He loved pithy aphorisms—oh how he would have loved Twitter—and stories which, twenty centuries later, reveal fresh depths of meaning each time we ponder them.

He loved questions. His favourite answer, in common with many Jewish rabbis was a question, which silenced his questioners.

* * *

I would love my blog to bear some resemblance to the blog a central figure in my spiritual, emotional, and thought-life might have written.

And how do I do that?

Oddly enough, it begins with relaxing. Slowing down.

Spending more time with him–to catch his spirit. To have my soul filled with his bread of life, and with the living waters He said would flow from those who believe in him.

 

No man is a hero to his valet–except Jesus

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Raphael, The Transfiguration
Yes another proof (to my way of thinking) that Jesus was who he claimed he was. John who observed Jesus closely and lovingly, almost 24/7, for 3 years could claim that He was the Word who became flesh and tabernacled among us. “And we have seen his glory, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

All our idols fail and disappoint, and we ourselves will disappoint anyone we allow to idolise us. But he remains, the one whom men could scrutinise for three years and declare that they had seen the glory of Jesus, “the glory of the One and Only, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Christ is a Miracle Himself (Philip Schaff, The Person of Christ)

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From Philip Schaff, The Person of Christ

“No biographer, moralist, or artist can be satisfied with any attempt of his to set forth the beauty of holiness which shines from the face of Jesus of Nazareth. It is felt to be infinitely greater than any conception or representation of it by the mind, the tongue, or the pencil of man or angel. We might as well attempt to empty the waters of the boundless sea into a narrow well, or to portray the splendor of the risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour, though drawn by the master hand of a Raphael or Drer or Rubens; no epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante or Milton or Klopstock,—can improve on the artless, narrative of the Gospels, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. In this case, certainly, truth is stranger than fiction, and speaks best for itself without comment, explanation, or eulogy. Here, and here alone, the highest perfection of art falls short of the historical fact, and fancy finds no room for idealizing the real; for here we have the absolute ideal itself in living reality. It seems to me that this consideration alone should satisfy any reflecting mind that Christ’s character, though truly natural and human, rises far above the ordinary proportions of humanity, and can not be classified with the purest and greatest of our race.

Christ’s person is, indeed, a great but blessed mystery. It can not be explained on purely humanitarian principles, nor derived from any intellectual and moral forces of the age in which he lived. On the contrary, it stands in marked contrast to the whole surrounding world of Judaism and Heathenism, which presents to us the dreary picture of internal decay, and which actually crumbled into ruin before the new moral creation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one absolute and unaccountable exception to the universal experience of mankind. He is the great central miracle of the whole gospel-history. All his miracles are but the natural and necessary manifestations of his miraculous person, and hence they were performed with the same ease with which we perform our ordinary daily works. In the Gospel of St. John, they are simply and justly called his “works.” It would be the greatest miracle indeed, if He, who is a miracle himself, should have performed no miracles.
Here is just the logical inconsistency, contradiction, and absurdity of those unbelievers who admit the extraordinary character of Christ’s person, and yet deny his extraordinary works. They admit a cause without a corresponding effect, and involve the person in conflict with his works, or the works with the person. You may as well expect the sun to send forth darkness as to expect ordinary works from such an extraordinary being. The person of Christ accounts for all the wonderful phenomena in his history, as a sufficient cause for the effect. Such a power over the soul as he possessed, and still exercises from day to day throughout Christendom,—why should it not extend also over the lesser sphere of the body? What was it for him, who is spiritually the Resurrection and the Life of the race, to call forth a corpse from the grave? Could such a heavenly life and heavenly death as his end in any other way than in absolute triumph over death, and in ascension to heaven, its proper origin and home?
The supernatural and miraculous in Christ, let it be borne in mind, was not a borrowed gift or an occasional manifestation, as we find it among the prophets and apostles, but an inherent power in constant silent or public exercise. An inward virtue dwelt in his person, and went forth from him, so that even the fringe of his garment was healing to the touch through the medium of faith which is the bond of union between him and the soul. He was the true Shekinah, and shone in all his glory, not before the multitude or the unbelieving Pharisees and scribes, but when he was alone with his Father, or walked in the dark night over the waves of the sea, calming the storm of nature and strengthening the faith of his timid disciples, or when he stood between Moses and Elijah before his favorite three on the mount of transfiguration.
Thus from every direction we arrive at the conclusion, that Christ, though truly natural and human, was at the same time truly supernatural and divine. The wonderful character of his person forces upon us the inevitable admission of the indwelling of the Divinity in him, as the only rational and satisfactory explanation of this mysterious fact; and this is the explanation which he gives himself.”
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C.H. Spurgeon on Why Jesus is Better than Switzerland, its Alps and chocolate.

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“If any of you can save up money to go to Switzerland, you will never regret it, and it need not be expensive to you. If you do not find your head grow on both sides, and have to put your hands up, and say, `I feel as if my brains are straining with their growth,’ I do not think you have many brains to spare.

As I have stood in the midst of those mountains and valleys, I have wished I could carry you all there. I cannot reproduce to you the thoughts that then passed through my mind; I cannot describe the storms we saw below us when we were on the top of the hill; I cannot tell you about the locusts that came in clouds, and devoured everything before them; time would utterly fail me to speak of all the wonders of God which we saw in nature and in providence.

One more remark, and I have done. If you cannot travel, remember that our Lord Jesus Christ is more glorious than all else that you could ever see. Get a view of Christ, and you have seen more than mountains, and cascades, and valleys, and seas can ever show you. Thunders may bring their sublimest uproar, and lightnings their awful glory; earth may give its beauty, and stars their brightness; but all these put together can never rival Him.”
C.H. Spurgeon

Google and the Mind of Christ

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Google Search is a marvel. Fling a question at it, any question, and it whirrs away, producing hundreds of answers–in seconds.

I imagine the mind of Christ is like that. Infinitely creative and playful. Delighting in the extraordinary. In miracles.

Ask it a question. Let’s say, a mundane one–“How do I adjust the energy balance so that I eat fewer calories than I consume?”–or a creative problem: “Tell me something new about this Biblical passage I am blogging about,” and I imagine Christ smiles, sets his immensely creative brain whirring, and presents solutions.  “Your choice, Honey.”

Part of our task as Christian writers and human beings is to still and quiet ourselves right down, and tune in to his mind, and hear or overhear the brilliant solutions his brilliant mind is coming up with.

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