In which I am Amazed by Grace | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

All is Grace. All is Gift. All is Good, despite our Sehnsucht, indefinable longings!

Caption: The Bay Where St Paul was Shipwrecked, Malta

So it’s the last day of this half-term, and I am tired. And my girls who’ve worked hard, and Roy, who’s woken early to drive them to school, are even more tired.

We are looking forward to the nine days of the half-term holiday—to sleeping in, no stress, family movies… And especially a five day trip to glorious Ffald-y-Brenin in Wales.

* * *

Funny thing is, we had all that—sleeping in, staying up late, family movies, luscious meals, creaking family dinner tables, and bits of travel– last summer (when we squeezed in an epic drive to Copenhagen in our motorhome) and for 24 days over the Christmas holidays (home and Malta).

And towards the end of each holiday, let me be honest, I was actually looking forward for school. For a routine. For those rascally teenage girls to get to bed at a half-decent hour, rather than the early hours of the morning and not sleep in till noon. For the house to be tidy and not have bowls, mugs, plates, juice-boxes, and chocolate wrappers, scattered around couches and armchairs and bedrooms. Or coats, scarves and socks kicked off anywhere. For predictable silent undisturbed hours to sink into reading and writing.

* * *

After weeks of them being home 24/7, I look forward to school. After weeks of school, I want them home.

You know why? It’s because both are good. It’s all good.

Life is good because it’s a gift from God.

* * *

I am going away next week, and am longing to do so. Sometimes, I have had very exciting, dream holidays, full of doing and seeing and learning—Istanbul, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and after a week or so there, I am surprised by a yearning to be home, to spend a day in my pyjamas, reading or playing around with words.

What? I had so yearned to see these magical places. On my first trip to Paris, I heard an American say on the phone in a rich resonant voice, “I am travel weary. I am homesick.” Travel-weary and homesick in Paris? I thought. Yeah, it’s all too possible.

It’s all good, it’s all gift, it’s all grace. That’s why at home, we can think of glorious art, architecture, history, gardens, mountains, forests, and the ocean and yearn to be there. And that’s why, in the middle of Rome or Athens or Madrid, I have had a sudden longing to go nowhere, do nothing, just sit with green tea, God, a book and a laptop.

* * *

“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” St. Augustine wrote.

This perpetual restlessness in our hearts is meant to lead us to the one who stills all restlessness.

The Germans (of course!) have a word for this restlessness, this indefinable longing: Sehnsucht.

C.S. Lewis describes sehnsucht as the “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what.” That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan“, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. (C. S. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress).

* * *

The restlessness in your heart is essentially a God-yearning. Don’t confuse it with what you think you desire— finishing and publishing a beautiful book, having a successful blog, travel, stimulating friendships, the holiday cottage on the sea, let’s say.

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them,” C. S. Lewis says in “The Weight of Glory.”“These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

* * *

So listen to your restlessness. Listen to your longings. You are longing for more than Alaska, or Antarctica or the Amazon (places I would rather like to see before I die). You are longing for more than to write a beautiful book (something else I would like to do before I die).

You are really yearning for the infinite sea of God. For the ocean of God to pour into your spirit, and for your spirit to pour into the ocean of God now and in eternity. You are yearning to abide and dwell in Him, and be filled with his spirit, which Jesus says is possible in this life. The things of this world for which you think you yearn are just signposts to the things which will truly satisfy your soul.

This world, this life, which lies, “before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new,” is a gift, a love-gift from God. Its loveliness is designed to delight, but not entirely satisfy our hearts. Only the Giver can do that.

Common Grace: Or Why God Loves Classical Music, Zen Habits and The Happiness Project

By Anita Mathias

(Credit )

So I was tidying our bedroom today, putting my stack of CDs back into their cases and listening to Stravinsky, glorious music filling the room.

And though I had been in a bad mood, for no good reason, ungrateful girl that I am, my bad mood lifted. I unconsciously started praying in tongues. I started praying.

I put Beethoven on next, a CD with the Moonlight Sonata, Appassionata, and Pathetique, music my father had loved. It was his private refuge from the stresses of the day, sitting quietly in the living room, just listening.

And grace flooded the room. Common grace.

The love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit he has given us (Romans 5:5).

And sometimes, through the classical music he has given us.

* * *

In my first decade or so as a committed Christ-follower, I honestly believed the only valid solutions to my problems were to be found in Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3).

I even preferred diet books written by Christians–“Biblical diets” which, in practice, meant whatever the writer wanted to emphasise.

I felt dubious about psychotherapists who weren’t Christian, really believing that true happiness and joy were only found in Christ. (Though, in fact, my two most helpful therapists were not Christian. In the course of our moves, I’ve had one good Christian therapist–but tried dreadful ones who were Christian!!)

* * *

And then, I read this article on “common grace” in Christianity Today by David Neff– Why God Enjoys Baseball.

R. T. Kendall in his brilliant book The Anointing says the same thing. Because of God’s overflowing goodness, his blessing—anointing– is poured out on certain mathematicians and musicians and writers and artists and architects, whether they are believers or not. And He rather enjoys the work of their hands.

The goodness of God cannot be restrained. His sun shines and his rain falls on pagan and Christian alike. He is the true light that enlightens everyone (John 1:9). And he bestows the ability to write and paint and invent and suggest ways to increase the sum total of human happiness on Christian and non-Christian alike.

* * *

A Christian friend recommended Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. And I privately thought, “But happiness is found in God alone.”

But hey, I am a sucker for life-makeovers—being in that phase of creative upheaval called “mid-life”–and bought it.

And it is amazing how much applying Rubin’s simple tweaks increase happiness or decrease unhappiness, which is the same thing, perhaps. Increase energy by exercising, getting rid of the clutter which weighs you down, and going to bed an hour earlier. Deal with procrastination. Keep up with friends. Eliminate as much as possible from your schedule and experience free time again–all these greatly increase our happiness.

As Rubin says herself, after instituting these small changes, “Each day, I felt more joy and less guilt; I had more fun, less anxiety. My life was pleasanter with cleaner closets, and a cleaner conscience.”

* * *

I have recently decided that becoming more organized and efficient was really part of my Christian discipleship, and am becoming passionate about it as I make daily minuscule changes.

A practical blog I highly recommend which will probably make you happier is Leo Babuata’s Zen Habits. I have bought his ebook on the 52 tiny changes which will provide the most leverage and set up virtuous cycles in your life.

Since 2005, Babuata has lost 70 pounds, stopped smoking, gone vegan, started running marathons, started waking early, got out of considerable debt, tripled his income, written successful books and launched a leading blog, Zen Habits, all using a Zen technique called kaizen, used by Japanese companies like Toyota.

Kaizen brings about major change in tiny, incremental instalments. So if you wanted to wake at 5 a.m. instead of just doing it tomorrow, continuing a bit, then crashing (a familiar scenario) you would, tomorrow, set your alarm clock just one minute earlier, and so on, until you were waking at 5.

If you want to take up yoga or weights but are too busy, you’d do a minute of stretches on day one; two minutes on day two and so on, until your own body gets addicted, and becomes its own reminder system and alarm clock.

Babuata has simple wisdom on a way to incorporate fitness with our busy lives. Interperse it with work. Make it social. (For instance, I tweet my Runkeeper records whenever I have broken a personal record, and I tweet and facebook my Fitocracy achievements whenever I move up a level (now on level 6), and looking forward to the showing off is motivational.)

He is excellent on focus, decluttering, simplicity, and healthful living. And, as far as I tell, he’s not a Christian, though not lacking in the true light which enlightens everyone (John 1:9).

So, (though, of course this may have been perfectly obvious to you) if you are trying to lose weight, or declutter or become organized, because of the common grace you can learn just as much from Leo Babuata, or Gretchen Rubin, or Joshua Becker’s Becoming Minimalist Blog as from the Christian Michael Hyatt’s splendidly practical blog—which will also, step by step, make over aspects of your life, (though don’t expect him to talk about housekeeping or cooking any time soon!!)

Books to check out

R.T. Kendall The Anointing on Amazon.com and The Anointing on Amazon.co.uk

Gretchen Rubin The Happiness Project on Amazon.com

Brennan Manning on Grace (from The Ragamuffin Gospel)

By Anita Mathias

An excerpt from Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel.

Paul Tillich in The Shaking of the Foundations writes:

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…

It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.

Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.”

If that happens to us, we experience grace.

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last “trick,” whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school; the deathbed convert who for decades had his cake and ate it, broke every law of God and man, wallowed in lust, and raped the earth.

“But how?” we ask.

Then the voice says, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

There they are. There we are—the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to the faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.

Inspiration from Brennan Manning’s “The Ragamuffin Gospel”

By Anita Mathias

Brennan Manning

I am listening to Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel on my iPod as I walk (on the hottest days of the year to date). And I experience grace. I allowed myself to become overweight through 3 decades of being sedentary, and eating carelessly and unthinkingly. And I get to listen to amazing stuff—the Bible, Blue Like Jazz, and The Ragamuffin Gospel—as I walk to fend off further weight gain, and with grace, burn off some unnecessary pounds.

Anyway, the rest of this post shares some of Brennan Manning’s fabulous insights from Chapter 1 of The Ragamuffin Gospel .

“As we read Psalm 123, “Just as the eyes of slave are on their masters’ hand, or the eyes of a slave-girl on the hand of her mistress,” we experience a vague sense of existential guilt. Our eyes are not on God

Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber’s license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, “I think I can fix this.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky caught the shock and scandal of the gospel of grace when he wrote in Crime and Punishment:

At the last Judgment Christ will say to us, “Come, you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!” And he will say to us: “Vile beings, you who are in the image of the beast and bear his mark, but come all the same, you as well.” And the wise and prudent will say, “Lord, why do you welcome them?”

And he will say: “If I welcome them, you wise men, if I welcome them, you prudent men, it is because not one of them has ever been judged worthy.” And he will stretch out his arms, and we will fall at his feet, and we will cry out sobbing, and then we will understand all, we will understand the Gospel of grace! Lord, your Kingdom come!”

I believe the Reformation actually began the day Martin Luther was praying over the meaning of Paul’s assertion that righteous shall find life through faith (see Romans 1:17). Like many Christians today, Luther wrestled through the night with this core question: How could the gospel of Christ be truly called “good news” if God is a righteous judge who rewards the good and punishes the evil? Did Jesus really have to come to reveal that terrifying message? How could the revelation of God in Christ Jesus be accurately called “news” since the Old Testament carried the same theme, or for that matter, “good” with the threat of punishment hanging like a dark cloud over the valley of history?

But as Jaroslav Pelikan notes: “Luther suddenly broke through to the insight that the “righteousness of God” that Paul spoke of in this passage was the righteousness by which for the sake of Jesus Christ, God made sinners righteous through the forgiveness of sins in justification.

When he discovered that, Luther said it was as though the very gates of Paradise had been opened to him.”

What a stunning truth!

“Justification by grace through faith” is the theologian’s learned phrase for what Chesterton once called “the furious love of God.” He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods—the gods of human manufacturing—despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do.

But, of course, this is almost too incredible for us to accept.

Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: Through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, and resurrection of His beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.

With his characteristic joie de vivre, Robert Capon puts it this way: The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace—of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.

The word of the gospel—after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started… Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

When Was it Ever About My Deserving? Or Why The Gospel is Good News

By Anita Mathias

I had a fail on holiday. For perhaps the longest period since I became a Christian, I neglected sitting down with my Bible, or having a dedicated period of prayer. I got annoyed with one, then two, then perhaps even three members of my family. The only reason I didn’t get annoyed with any more is that we left the pets at home!

And we were on holiday in a campervan (RV for American readers) which meant that I would feel odd reading my Bible or praying in semi-public if I hadn’t repented and made nice. And so….oops, I didn’t read my Bible! I didn’t set aside a time for prayer. I re-read Wuthering Heights instead!

* * *

And so I was less internally happy, less able to see the world charged with the grandeur of God, singing and bathed in his glory. Normally, on a nature holiday, I sense and worship God deeply while surrounded by beauty.

Yes, I was out of sorts, not really enjoying myself, not totally happy. I had got out of alignment with God, my friend, the ocean in whom I normally try to live.

* * *

And now, I am finding it hard to abide again in the centre of God, as a molecule in the vine. I am blogging on a Biblical passage, and realize I am approaching it with my left-brain, rather than my right; with my mind rather than my heart, spirit and soul.

That’s not a problem for God: he made both sides of the brain, and our minds, as well as our bodies, souls, and spirits. But he might like us to approach his Holy of Holies with our whole selves. (And approaching the Bible that way touches people’s spirits and hearts, as well as their minds.)

* * *

And I say, “Oh Lord, can you bless me?” And then I chide myself, “You’ve not dwelt in the heart of worship for a couple of weeks, Anita. You could have repented and surrendered and returned to live in Christ so much sooner!” And I think “I don’t really deserve God’s help and blessing….”

And then I realize, “When was it ever about my deserving?”

* * *

And I think again about the most incredible thing I know. That when I realize I have blown it, and return, you are full of compassion, you run to me, throw your arms around me, and kiss me.

You barely listen to my litany of failure. Instead you clothe me in your best robes. You put a ring on my finger, and sandals on my feet. You set out a feast and celebrate, serving the best steak. There is music and dancing.

All because I have returned?

This is incredible, Lord. I don’t deserve it.

And you say, “When was it ever about your deserving?”

And I repent again. Totally.

I will live in the heart of worship, live in you, a molecule of sap in your vine, a happy red blood cell in the beautiful Body of Christ.

And if I fall, I will not delay in fleeing to the sanctuary, to the joyous heart of worship, to the embrace of the Father.

Chocolate and Grace

By Anita Mathias

A friend told me yesterday about their family’s chocolate box. Twice a week, they gave their young children chocolate after dinner. To teach them about grace.

They said, “Have some chocolate. Whether you’ve been good, or whether you’ve been bad. Whether you are glad, or whether you are sad, God loves you anyway. And so do we.”

Not surprisingly, my daughters are very eager for this sweet instruction in grace.

A caterpillar in a ring of fire: Martin Luther on Grace

By Anita Mathias

Brunnhilde in the Ring of Fire, Arthur Rackham

The wonderful seventeenth century theologian, Philip Melanchton and Martin Luther and Philip Melanchton debate grace.

Melanchton says grace is like one parent helping a wobbly toddler across the room to the other parent who crouches down with an apple.

Luther says No, it’s more than that!! We are caterpillars in a ring of fire. Our only hope is that someone from above will rescue us.

So, when you feel there are impassable rings of fire around you, obstacles which seem impossible to overcome, don’t look at them, and be afraid. Look at the hand above, ready to rescue you.

Luther probably got the ring of fire from the Nibelungenlied in which Siegfried leaps over the ring of fire to rescue the beautiful Brunnhilde.

Jesus is our Siegfried.

Redeemer, redeem my heart again.