In which I'm amazed by the goodness of God | Anita Mathias: 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.

God Comes to Those Who Dare to be Different: Do Not Be Afraid

By Anita Mathias

And when God chose to become flesh and dwell among us, the angel wisely prefaces his glorious announcement, “You have found favour with God,” with “Do not be afraid.”

You, a “virgin,” will bear a child. Do not be afraid.

Oh, the looming scandal, what would people say? How many would have rejected this “blessing,” but Mary did not balk. She accepted the potential disgrace, the disapproval, the whispers. “I am the doulos, the servant of the Lord. Be it done to me, according to your word.” I will not be afraid. [Read more…]

Images of the Magical Azure Window in Gozo, Malta. And I learn about God’s Infinity Game

By Anita Mathias

Azure window, Dwerja, Gozo, Malta.

And so I walk by the beach, which for me is holy ground near Malta’s stupendous Azure Window. And I say, “Oh Lord, you speak to me so clearly by the ocean. You give me such good ideas. You pour insight and revelation into me. You have already done so this holiday. I can’t expect you to speak to me with good ideas and insight and direction every time I walk by the beach, can I? I have experienced so much of your kindness already. I do not deserve more goodness.”

And I felt God chuckle, and say, “Silly! It’s not a zero-sum game. It’s an infinity game. My goodness is unlimited. There is no budget.”

“Just because I blessed you yesterday does not mean I will not bless you today. That I blessed you last year, and the year before and the year before–does not mean that I won’t bless you next year. Blessings in my kingdom are infinite. They never run out. They are fresh each day like manna.”

And I repent for the fear that my streak of blessing might run out.

Why should I fear when I live in the arms, beneath the beating heart of Abba, my Father?

* * *

A series of shallow oval pools, each draining into the one below. Dwerja, Gozo, Malta.

The rocks in Dwerja Bay are weathered into a lunar landscape.

There were numerous fossils embedded in the rock.

The “craters” nearer the sea are fill with water.

Lunar landscape, with the sea in the background.

The sea entering a cave

A blow-hole that is fed by the cave — much more impressive in real life than this photo.

Sunset, Dwerja Bay, Gozo, Malta.

: Sunset, Dwerja bay, Gozo, Malta.

Walking by Ramla Bay, Gozo, Malta; Musing on the Eternal Abundance of God

By Anita Mathias

Ramla Bay, Gozo

I enjoyed walking today by Ramla Bay in Malta, supposed to be one of the best beaches in the Mediterranean. Oh abundance!–jellyfish on the beach, shells, and a scatter of brilliant marble-like pebbles, which, with a few swishes in a rock tumbler, would reveal their sleek preciousness.

Pebbles left by the retreating waves.

Pink jellyfish, Ramla Bay, Gozo.

[Read more…]

Dreaming in Malta’s Neolithic Temples: Hagar Qim and Mnajdra

By Anita Mathias

The garrigue, as the sun sets.

We hiked today to the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Temples in Malta, through picturesque garigue, covered with fragrant thyme, wild fennel, and stunted rosemary.

It reminded me of Provence, and the landscape of Marcel Pagnol’s marvellous films, La Gloire de Mon Pere et Le Chateau de Ma Mere. A wild rabbit, a pot full of rosemary, thyme, wild fennel, wild onions and wild garlic—you see how cuisine evolves from landscape. Rabbit, incidentally, is Malta’s national dish, and we had some superb rabbit yesterday, with Maltese ftira, bread smeared with olive oil, baked with a stuffing of roast chicken, tomatoes, garlic and onions.

I like Malta. I love their food, and their immense tenderness to children, a trait they share with other Mediterranean cultures like Spain and Italy. And perhaps having lived through a magical period of being a bambino or nina, smiled at and petted by all, contributes to a warm, friendly, good-natured society, as these petted children expect the best of the world, and, in general, the world and people and life correspond to our expectations. [Read more…]

Blackberries Everywhere, Sweet as the Goodness of God

By Anita Mathias

Blackberries growing wild outside my study.

I walk along the country footpaths around my house, the hedgerows full of blackberries. They’ve been out for weeks, and I’ve seen families gather them for jam or pies, but I, I’m trying to jog, and maintain my pace, or am engrossed in my audiobook, I rarely stop to taste them.

Today, I did, and oh, they were sweet, and delicious.

And ripe with allegory and metaphor.

* * *

Whole sections of our orchard have been taken over by these brambles running wild. We’ve lived here for 8 years now. What a task it’s going to be to tame it!!

Yeah, weeds grow more readily in the garden of life than apple trees; the unwanted proliferates, but in the midst of the jungle of the never-asked-for-this, don’t-want-it which is our life, there remain fat, black, sweet blackberries. In the middle of the thorniest, most ensnarled thicket.

* * *

And the question is, am I stupidly going to be too busy for the banquet?

Or am I going to slow down and savour sweetness in the midst of all the things which didn’t go according to plan, the brambles which have taken over my orchard?

Am I going to stop my mind in her I’ve-Got-To track—got to listen to this book, got to maintain my jogging pace, and instead, slowly savour this goodness given to me unasked, unbidden, freely, generously?

Fat, sweet, ripe delicious blackberries.

Today, I returned my face stained with Holy Communion. I ate those free gifts from the goodness of God.

“Abundance, I give you,” He says. “My own self, I give you. Come, eat.”

Plan A, Plan B, Plan Z, and Plans for Good

By Anita Mathias

It’s exam season in the UK at present. My daughter Zoe took exams last May and June, aged 16; this year, aged 17, and will do so again next year, aged 18. And then, in 2015-2018 it will be Irene’s turn.

British Universities state the minimum grades necessary to be considered for admission. So these examinations determine whether, for the next phase of their lives, they dwell in their personal Plans A, Plan B or perhaps, Plan Z.

* * *

Very few people live their lives in Plan A. At 17, my Plan A, oddly, was to become a nun, and work with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Well, I entered the novitiate, but left 14 months later, when I was 18.

Plan A was then academics. I read English at Somerville College, Oxford, and was accepted for a Ph.D at Oxford University, contingent on getting a First. I didn’t.

Plan B saw me go to graduate school in America to study Creative Writing rather than Literature. I grew close there to Roy, now my husband.

* * *

Plan A then involved becoming a writer. I published articles in various prestigious places, won prizes, including a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts award. I got a dream editor and agent.

But my manuscript was not the one they envisioned, and in the process of revising it, I got depressed, and abandoned it—and for 4 years abandoned writing, while I founded a successful micro-publishing company which now supports our family

And the publishing company has opened other doors, such as travel, which is a happy, refreshing, revitalising and educational experience for us. We tend to explore Europe, or further afield during every school holiday, sometimes on a shoestring!!, but the frequent shoestring travel might not have been possible or affordable without the freedom of a small business.

I will still write books, but I might self-publish them. They won’t be perfect, but they will be exactly the books I want to write.

* * *

For most of us, Plan B is where our real life happens.

It’s where I live. I don’t live in any of my plan As which would have involved me being a successful and very prolific writer by now.

It is an interesting life, a happy life. I like it.

But, in common with the lives of most people I know, it’s just not Plan A.

For Plan A has a fatal flaw we do not realize. It is too golden. It is a scheme which would please our parents, and dazzle our friends and contemporaries. Since we are not all-wise, our Plans A are not necessarily the very best thing for us. For one, they do not develop character.

And our happiness depends on our characters, not on the success, wealth and glory that our Plans A often involve.

Plan A is a Do-It-Yourself plan of strength and success and achievement. It has little room for God.

It is the failures, weakness and tears of Plan B which teaches us our need of Him.

And gives us the joy and peace which can only be found in Him.

* * *

And then, there is the dread Land of Plan Z, which Joseph called the Land of Suffering.

I know a young mum dying of cancer; people dying of debilitating illnesses; friends who have never married, but would have liked to; who have not been able to have children; who are struggling to adopt. The very worst thing they could imagine has happened to them.

And most of us have, or will, visit the Land of Plan Z, the land of suffering, for a season.

It is in the shadows of disappointment and heartbreak, of things not working out as they should, that we develop character: endurance, toughness, optimism, and compassion for those who are walking the same shadowy path. That we learn to trust God!

* * *

I have a Plan A for the second half of my life. It involves health, happiness, fruitfulness, happiness for my husband and children, the continued success of our family business, and God’s blessing on my writing. It involves some travel, much gardening, much reading and writing.

I believe I can ask God to bless it.

* * *

For after all, God does often grant the desires of our heart, our mid-life Plan A’s.

Moses catching sight of God bursts out with, “Show me your glory.” And the Lord replies, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you, and I know you by name.” (Exodus 33:17).

Hezekiah’s prayer in Kings adds 15 years to his life.

Prayer is the action which is most likely to bring Plan A into existence.

I like this Davidic prayer, May he give you the desire of your heart, and make all your plans succeed. “Psalm 20:4. I am praying this for myself and my family.

* * *

But ultimately, I hope I will be content to dwell in God’s Plan A for me for the rest of my days, “plans for good and not for evil, to give me a future and a hope.” (Jer 29:11).

May it be so!

A tale of four famous Christian siblings: When Christian children shipwreck, there’s still hope

By Anita Mathias

A tale of four famous Christian siblings.

A) His ex-wife “alleged that her husband not only abused drugs and alcohol and had inappropriate relations with other women, but also that he engaged in domestic violence and used pornography.

In the meantime, he admitted becoming ever more dependent on alcohol. He was granted “board-approved time away” to deal with his alcohol dependency.

On his return, tensions in his marriage and at the offices of the ministry he headed escalated when he began spending extended time with a young woman who had recently joined. He also had an ongoing intensive friendship with another female staff member.

Source: Christianity Today

B) The third of the five siblings has dealt with a daughter’s teen pregnancies, another daughter’s bulimia and a son’s drug use.

She struggled with suicidal thoughts herself in the wake of her first husband’s infidelity — a discovery that led to a “rebound marriage” of only five weeks.

Source Columbus Dispatch

C) Both of C’s brothers rebelled, using drugs and alcohol.

And one of C’s sons grew so uncontrollable as a teen that his parents called the police to their home. He ran away at 16, spending several days and nights on the streets of Fort Lauderdale.

C. has suffered bouts with depression.

After her divorce and remarriage, she was arrested for domestic abuse of her new husband

Source: Houston Chronicle, USA Today

D. In the news for taking “two full-time salaries and two retirement packages from two Christian family ministries. Last year his total compensation from the two Christian ministries was $1.2 million.”

All these individuals make their living through donor contributions to Christian ministries they run.

* * *

Okay, who are we taking about? A “white trash” family (to use a mean phrase I occasionally heard when I lived in America)? A ethnic minority family on welfare for generations? A feckless illegal immigrant family?

Actually, these are the children of one of the most respected men and Christians on the earth. Billy Graham.

A) Ned. Christianity Today B) Ruth or Bunny Columbus Dispatch C) Virginia or Gigi , Houston Chronicle. USA Today D) Franklin—Thinking out Loud

· * * *

As a young Christian, I read biographies of Billy Graham, and his books, including his autobiography, Just as I am. I admired and admire him. I tried to imitate Graham’s spiritual disciplines (unsuccessfully). I was charmed and impressed by Ruth, as she came across in her books. She was indeed an beautiful and remarkable woman.

I read out these news articles of Roy as I googled them and we were chilled.

How did their children shipwreck?

And, if they did, what hope is there for us unprofessional Christian parents, who know our Scripture less well, who do not have the additional safeguard of practising our faith on a world stage to keep us honest?

If that’s the parenting outcome of the undoubtedly godly Grahams, down to the third generation, who can stand?

However, Billy Graham is on record as saying that if he could go back and do anything differently he would “spend more time at home with my family, and I’d study more and preach less.”

* * *

I think of one of my favourite Psalms, Ps. 130

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;

² Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

to my cry for mercy.

³ If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,

Lord, who could stand?

⁴ But with you there is mercy,

so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

Ah, that’s our hope for ourselves, our parenting, and our children. The mercy of God.

Hesed, the steadfast goodness, mercy and compassion of God which will follow us all our lives.

* * *

And for each prominent Christian family which shipwrecks–and I can think of several off-hand–there are another 2 or 5 who do not.

I think of my friend Paul who was the son of Jack and Rosemarie Miller who founded World Harvest Mission. All five siblings are faithful Christians. As are Paul’s six children. In A Praying Life, he describes how he brought up his children– (one of whom was severely disabled) amid financial difficulties, great work stresses, working two jobs, and his own breakdown–by quietly, steadily, and specifically praying for each of them and their specific needs—and what amazing answers he saw!

He once told me that he asked his wife Jill what she wanted most, half afraid she would say, “A new kitchen.” And she said, “The mercy of God for our family.”

Ah that is what we all need!

* * *

So, there is hope for us and our children, in the mercy of God. And, as I feel more convinced, the best thing we can do our children and family is pray for them. At red lights. When walking. During sleepless nights. While doing housework. In lines at grocery stores. Whenever. As much as we can.

And then trust the mercy of God.

Into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my spirit.

Into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my family.

Into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my children.

anita.mathias