In which I am amazed by the love of the Father | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

In Which He Loves Me Anyway

My day is running away with me, and I am not getting much done, and I look at the clock, and realise my day is not working out very well.

And that’s when it’s lovely to realise that God loves me when my day works out with mathematical precision, and loves me when it doesn’t.

Loves me when he gives me blogs which are right at the first typing, and loves me when I spend hours on a post which flops,

Loves me when my house is a mess, and I am a mess, and loves me when we’re all shinily together.

Loves me! Loves me, loves me, loves me, just because he’s lovely.

The love of God, the love of God!

It is indeed the great theme I could ponder forever, and just scratch its surface.

And so, instead, I’ll rest in it.

In which Lucy fears her mother is in hell, and I long for a theology which reflects Jesus

By Anita Mathias

My friend, Lucy, has recently lost her mum. Her father had died when Lucy was two, and her sister a baby, and her mother had brought them up on an army pension. “She was a shining example of selflessness, and strength in adversity,” Lucy says.

Now, Lucy tells me she is having very awkward conversations with her teenage daughters who adored their lovely grandmother.

You see, Lucy is an evangelical, and her mother was an atheist.

* * *

“What?” I say, appalled. “You can’t believe the Jesus we both know would consign your lovely, kindly strong mum to Hades, to torment, desperate for a drop of water to cool her tongue because she was in agony in the fire?” (Luke 16:23).

“Well,” Lucy says, a trifle doubtfully. “It does say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

I sigh. I am silent. Who am I to argue against John 3:16, Tim Tebow and the massive evangelical tradition?

But I am dubious about pastiche theologies built on selected verses. Especially on a verse which says, “God so loved the world that he sent his son to redeem” not “God so hated the world that he sent his son to condemn it.”

We need to look at the entire revelation of God in Scripture, at the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6). We need to look at Jesus, who modelled mercy and compassion in his life, and in every parable he told, who showed us God as the shepherd looking for the one strayed sheep, the Father on the battlements, looking out in hope for the return of the son who had rejected him.

* * *

A man, MY man, writhes on a cross, dehydrated, asphyxiated, his head pierced with thorns. The pain from his nail-pierced hands and feet is excruciating.

In a haze of exhaustion, he lifts himself on that nail, and says, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Sorry, wait a minute, forgive whom? The believers?

No. Everyone.

Pontius Pilate and the Romans who flogged and crucified him callously, carelessly, because he was too much trouble.

The Pharisees, who delivered him up because of envy because all the people flocked to him. (Matt 27:18).

The crowd who shouted “Crucify him,” the very crowd he had miraculously fed, and who had feted him.

His own disciples who abandoned him

The thief who mocked him

The mockers who said, “He trusteth in God, let God deliver him; let him deliver him if he delights in him.”

* * *

Were all these people for whom Jesus requested forgiveness believers?

Nope.

The night before he had said, “This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for the forgiveness of sins.”

Whose sins?

The sins of the world.

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John cried. (John 1:29)

My sins, your sins, Lucy’s mother’s sins, my departed father’s sins, the sins of the world.

Jesus taught us to forgive aught against any when we stood praying. Would he do less? Jesus taught us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us, and do good to those who hate us. Would he do less?

Oh, when will we get the shattering, cosmic significance of the Cross of Christ?

The Father agreeing to send his oldest son as a scapegoat, paying in full for the sins of mankind, everyone, because fathers can be lovely like that.

* * *

So do I believe in hell? Yes, of course, I do. Hell and money were Jesus’ most frequent subjects.

Am I certain of its demography? No. Of course not. But I believe it will be far more sparsely populated than some evangelicals think.

For I do know that Jesus said, “All sins and offences shall be forgiven men,” (Mark 3:28) , except the sin against the Holy Spirit.

* * *

The Jesus I know from the Gospels is a God of mercy, of compassion, a bleeding-heart (liberal, perhaps), with a sharp eye and a sardonic tongue for religiosity and religious hypocrisy which really got him.

When I talked about the Jesus I know, an evangelical friend told me, “You can’t say “the Jesus I know”. You can’t pick and choose.”

But, of course, I have to go with the Jesus I know from my careful reading, study and near-memorisation of the Gospels over the last decades.

How stupid it would be to go with the Jesus someone else knows! With the Jesus of the evangelicals, or the Jesus of the Calvinists, or the Jesus of the liberals, or the Jesus of the liberation theologians, when the real Jesus both lives within the pages of the Gospels and within my heart, ready to step out of the pages and wreak havoc in my life, should I let him?

* * *

All these people had seen and heard Jesus—Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Jews, the adoring crowd, which later bayed for his blood, the disciples who loved him, and then abandoned him, the women who stuck by him. They made vastly different things of him.

I mean, Jesus is GOD, for heaven’s sake. None of us can comprehend him wholly and entirely. We all have blind spots, blue-spot cataracts, in our comprehension of him.

Why, why, why, are we privileging Calvin’s merciless reading of who goes to heaven, and who doesn’t over our instinctive moral sense and our instinctive knowledge of the Jesus revealed in scripture? We cannot use theology as a stronghold to ensure we are in, and safe, and excused from the rigours of thinking.

WHY should we accept someone else’s pre-digested Jesus, the Jesus of the Catholics, or the Evangelicals or the Jesus of the Calvinists who sends the vast majority of people to hell, the Jesus of those who believe that most of Africa, and Asia and Latin America and Europe will burn in hell, while, they, you see, they accepted Christ in Sunday School aged six and prayed the sinner’s prayer, and so despite a lifetime of greed, cupidity and self-indulgence, they will be in a nice, quiet white heaven.

The Jesus I know is a God of inclusivity, not exclusivity.

Well, all sins and offences shall be forgiven men, Jesus says, so let me not get worked up by stupidity.

* * *

We are made in God’s image. Christ dwells in our heart. When other people’s theology conflicts with our instinctive moral sense, we have to quietly agree to differ, and not sacrifice our common sense, and our instinctive knowledge of God and Christ, to fit in with the dominant theology of our day. Which well may shift within our century.

Salvation is not a theological examination. The sinners prayer is not a shibboleth.

I have family members who are good Catholics, but may not have made a profession of faith Calvin might recognize. Am I afraid that they are in hell? No! I have faith in the goodness of God.

It’s not our works that save us, and it’s not our confessions of faith that save us. And it’s not Scripture that saves us either. It is Christ who saves us because he can, because he is good, and perhaps all our faith contributes but a mustard seed to our salvation, and perhaps all our works contribute but another mustard seed, but ultimately, our eternal destiny, like our earthly destiny, depends on the goodness and mercy of God. Because he is a Father. Because he loves people who are made in his image. Because Jesus shed his blood to atone for the sins of the world.

In which I ponder False Starts & Dead Ends, & God says, “Come, Dance.”

By Anita Mathias

I set aside a few hours one day a week to declutter.My maternal grandparents left a house full of a lifetime’s stuff which neither they, nor their three unmarried children who lived at home, had ever dealt with.And the accumulation made their house seem small and cramped and dark.

Oh, how much space it took up. Whole corridors and large sections of rooms!!

And my father died, prematurely, after a few dreadful months of sorting it out, tossing it, selling or trying to find homes for it. He didn’t even get to enjoy or use the stuff!!

* * *

Yesterday, I heard my friend, David, the son of John Bendor-Samuel, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, UK, say in his Sunday sermon that his brilliant father was a hoarder and left two rooms full of papers, magazines, sermon notes, lecture notes, and journals, which David is stolidly dealing with.

I can’t stand the thought of leaving mess and papers for someone else to sort out. It’s just plain wrong. And so, I declutter once a week.

* * *

It’s a bit of a sad exercise, really. I see projects started with enthusiasm, which proved abortive. Courses I took which were a red herringish waste of time. Diaries filled with “Lunch with X and coffee with Y,” and you know what, twenty years later, I don’t remember who on earth these people were. I look at To Do lists: “Reply to A, email B, thank C.” Who are these people? They are all out of my life.

I look at projects taken up and abandoned. I love French, but early into my French classes, I bought the complete Remembrance of Things Past in French. Oh-uh!!

How many hobbies and interests I plunged into by buying a pile of books on the subject!!

How much I tried to do with my own strength instead of relying on God!

How long it took me to focus on my writing!

* * *

And, the odd thing is, when I look at these things I poured my intensity into which were unfruitful, which failed, or disappointed me; things I wanted so badly which I did not get, or which I got, but which did not satisfy me; false starts, dead ends, I have the same overwhelming sensation.

And it is not sadness.

It is someone saying, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I sense God’s overflowing love.

What?

Well, when does a good parent love their child most? Feel most protective? When they have aced their exams, or when they have truly blown it, and are down in the dumps? When they experience rejection, failure and sadness, or when all is sunny?

And he who is melding the shards of my life—wasted time, wasted energy, wasted intensity–into a beautiful stained glass window sees me turn over these scraps of wasted things sadly, and says, “I will let nothing be wasted.”

And he says, “Yeah, I know. I know: you did all that in your silliness without enquiring of me. I love you anyway. I love you.”

And he says, “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”

And he says, “Come, beloved. Want to dance?”

There is always water

By Anita Mathias

Do you remember Joshua’s outrageous prayer, “Sun, stand still.”

On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“O sun, stand still over Gibeon,

O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”

So the sun stood still,

and the moon stopped,

till the nation avenged itself on^b its enemies,

as it is written in the Book of Jashar.

The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel! Joshua 10:12

* * *

I once asked my Bible study group if they had ever prayed a huge prayer– and what happened next. And we heard a faith-building flood of stories.

And here was one which struck me. A woman told us of the time she, aged 28, was leading a team of 18 year olds on a gap year at a mission project in at an orphanage in South America. There was a drought, so tap-water was mostly unavailable. And the water ran out in the orphanage.

The 18 year olds freaked out, “What should we do; what should we do?” My friend who had no idea herself, so said, “Let’s pray.” And they did–had a little prayer meeting asking for water.

Even as they were praying, there was a knock on the door, and an old farmer they had never seen before or since, said, in Spanish, “I’ve heard you’ve run out of water. I have a well. I have come in my pick-up truck, and can take you there.” And so they scrambled into the pick-up with every container they had, and there was water.

* * *

Even in times of drought, there is always water. There is 35 times more freshwater underground than in lakes and streams. There is fresh ground water, even in desert regions. (Seriously, perhaps development charities should prioritize digging wells in drought prone regions of the world?).

I thought of Heidi Baker’s transforming vision, “There is always enough.”

And I thought: there is always water when we are sad. We might need to quieten down and dig deep within, or deep into Scripture for the water which Jesus gives, a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14).

* * *

And as for ideas, there is no writer’s block in heaven. God is always thinking, his thoughts towards us are like the grains of sand on the seashore. Part of our job is to quieten down, get out of the way and listen.

Creative blocks are caused when we don’t tune in to God, when we don’t slow down enough to sense his smile on us and our work. (And often, when there is unforgiveness. Then we need to forgive ourselves, forgive God, and forgive all whom we perceive as contributing to the block.)

We might need to realign ourselves with Jesus for streams of creativity to flow out of us, for Jesus promised, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:37).

* * *

We are never without water, spiritually; never without grace. The rain of grace is always available. When things seem dry, and wild fires rage, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to rain down on us, in mixed metaphor tongues of fire. And prayer for the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, is a prayer which is always answered. (Luke 11:13)

And thanking God for what we have, for the equal opportunity blessings which persist when all seems lost, opens our eyes to the goodness of God. And restores our joy–bringing rain to our parched, ungrateful hearts!

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.

In Which He Loves Me, Anyway

By Anita Mathias

You love me

On a fat day

You love me on a weight loss day.

It’s all the same to you.

You love on a bad hair day

You love me on a pretty day,

You love me just the same.

You love me on an inspired day,

And on a sluggish sleep-in day.

You love me just the same.

You see me when I’m sleeping.

You know when I’m awake

You know if I’ve been bad or good,

And you love me just the same.

In which we are Protected by the Father’s Roar

By Anita Mathias

An image which stuck out from the John Arnott conference was little Simba, trying out his lion roar, to the amusement of the hyenas. Then, suddenly, his father appears behind him and roars. The hyenas scatter.

We are princesses in God’s kingdom, crowned with glory and honour. Behind us is Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His father, the Emperor is behind him. The Holy Spirit, visible love and comfort wraps us in golden light.

The hills around us are ringed with angels in chariots of fire.

And THAT is who we are, who we truly are, as we face our days.