Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

When we Walk in Love, There is Nothing to Make us Stumble

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Late last year, I was struggling with hostility, anger, and judgmentalism towards a fellow Christian who was getting on my nerves, and walked at night listening to 1 John and James again and again on my iPod, until my grumpy heart was converted, and I could look at the person who was annoying me, and say, “Oh, please, help me see her as you see her, Jesus.”

This passage particularly spoke to me “Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them,”  (2 John 10-11).

Living in the darkness, walking around in the darkness, blinded by the darkness…

A charity worker working in the third world visited us last year. He was depressed, and consistently focussed on the dark side of people, nations, and international politics. Everything was stark and negative. His hatred of the US in particular, and of what the rich world was doing to the three-quarters world led him to have darkness within him.  And that is truly scary.

Jesus says of stingy, greedy, money-focussed people (the word he uses for unhealthy, poneros, implies stingy) “But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

“Oh Lord, let me focus on you.  Let me have light within me,” I found myself praying.

But for those who walk in kindness-there is nothing in them to make them stumble.

A Christian walk without stumbling–the impulsive angry email one later wishes one had worded more kindly; the harsh criticism which stuns everyone, and which is slightly off base; covert relational strife because someone has thwarted your pride, or your ambition!… Oh, wouldn’t want an assured Bolt towards Jesus rather than this stumbling.

When we do not walk in love, we walk in the darkness, groping, stumbling, bumping into things and people, going off course, in tangents, losing our way…

Because when we do not make an effort to see with the eyes of kindness, we cannot see clearly. We cannot see whole. We see the speck of sawdust in our brother’s eye, and how it annoys us.  It’s all we can focus on! But that annoying dust mote is not the whole person; it is just an aspect of the person which grates on our sensitive nerves.

And so we speak hastily and act hastily and wound hastily—because we are not walking in the light of kindness  with the high beams of love turned on, which help us see the good in people, as well as the darkness. Instead, we are stumble in the darkness, the darkness of our cross feelings.  Blinded in the darkness of our lovelessness, our judgements then are not to be trusted. Why should they be? They are small, shrivelled, loveless; we are focusing on the dust in the statue, instead of its entire goldeness. The evil we see is only a partial truth, a disortion.

* * *

What is walking in love, practically?

Perhaps kindness is the better word, more contemporary than agape love.

Trying to see people as God sees them? As children of God, made in his image, sometimes bratty , throwing their toys in a tantrum, but still children of God.

Have you ever been in a situation, perhaps a financial dispute within an extended family situation, or a business situation where you feel you are walking in a fog and darkness. You grope; you know people have a self-seeking agenda, and are lying, but it’s hard to shift truth from lies. Whoa. What stress! I have experienced this in a toxic situation in a previous church, groping in the darkness, not knowing to what extent anyone was telling the truth, knowing we were being lied to, worked and manipulated, but why certain questions were being asked, and what use the information would be put to—all this was fog and thick darkness. Have you ever been on scary situations like that, where you don’t know who you can trust, where everyone is out for themselves and private advantage, where everything you say can be twisted out of context and distorted?

* * *

How can you walk through the darkness without stumbling? Act in kindness and love. Balance the two important imperatives Jesus suggested, “Be wise as a serpent, but innocent as a dove.”

I am using this passage from James as an anchor when my feelings are volatile, and I don’t necessarily trust my own judgement. Am I walking in kindness? Then there is nothing in me to make me stumble.

But if I let hatred, animosity and irritation possess me, I can no longer entirely trust my own judgement in that situation. I cannot trust myself to see my way clearly, because the fog, the darkness of my own loveless heart and emotions is blinding me, and I am groping, stumbling over obstacles I cannot see, unaware of what is making me stumble, in danger of losing my way.      

What Do You Really Want? (John 1:37)

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What do you want? John 1:37

 

And no-nonsense, getting down to business,

the first thing you ask us,

in this most beautiful of books.

is a question.

What do you want?

 

I am today ashamed of the smallness

of my desire.

But I must be honest about it.

Here it is.

I place it in your hands.

Please grant it.

 

But if you transform it,

or deny it,

still, be thou blessed.

 

Just give me your joy.

Give me yourself.

 

The Questions Jesus Asked

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Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God



Some very penetrating and hard-hitting questions from the Gospel of John


1 Do you want to get well, John 5:6

2 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God. John 5:44  


3 Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? 6 He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. John 6:6




4 John 6: 55 Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.   57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.  
 60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” 61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?

5 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. John 6:75 

6 “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” John 11:40

7  John 13:12 “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.


8 Again he asked them, “Who (what) is it you want?”John 18: 7 




9 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” John 20:15


10 John 21: 5 He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
   “No,” they answered.
 6 He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.


11 Again Jesus said, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”


12 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
 22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” 



The Disciples’ PR advice: No one who wants to be a public figure acts in secret

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I just read the blog of a minister who mentioned dating again after a divorce. “I didn’t know the Anglican Church permitted divorced ministers,” I say to Roy.

(Evidently, what I don’t know about the Anglican Church can fill a blog. I learn more every day, even in the arcana of my own church. I see a member of staff is a Missioner! What’s that? What’s a Parish Vicar? A Pastor of Theology?)

Roy snorts. “The Anglican Church was founded on divorce,” he says. (We are ex-Catholics, so forgive our reductionist history.)

He sees gleam in my eye which tells him that this conversation is going to be recorded. In my journal if he’s lucky; on Facebook or my blog, if he’s not.

He reads my thoughts; we’ve been married for 21 years after all.  “I’ll attribute it,” I offer generously.

“Oh don’t bother!” he says. “I do not want to be a public figure. I want to operate privately.”

Now where have I heard that before? I ask him.

It comes to us, the PR advice his cocky disciples offer Jesus.  “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. 4No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” John 7.

Facebook and Twitter and blogging have apparently inaugurated a culture in which everyone is a celebrity, and shares their thoughts and movements with the world in 240 or 140 characters.

But the phenomenon of the public figure, of a life lived in the public arena, and advice on how to get there is apparently not new at all.

On Eating Jesus

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I am the bread of life. Unless you eat my flesh, you have no life in you. John 6:35

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”

“This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.”
“Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Astounding claims.

 In Mere Christianity Lewis famously says, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”Jesus claims to be that which sustains life, that which keeps us alive.  He might be saying that the occasional sense of deadness which is part of 21st century life, revealing itself in the epidemic of depression, is because we do not eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood.

The bread we need to stay alive is not in friendships, or social life, or motherhood, or marriage, or money, or gardening or success or work or other life-enhancers–it is in a continual communion with him, in literally eating him, drinking him.

I would love to know Jesus so intimately. How? Through devouring him Scripture, inviting him into my heart in prayer, and, most of all, and hardest, doing what I hear him tell me to do.

 

  Things can happen very quickly once we take Jesus into our boats    

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“The disciples got into a boat, and set out across the lake for Capernaum. By now, it was dark, and a strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. When they had rowed three miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.” They they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore.”

 

Often that is the case. There is a very simple solution to a seemingly insoluble problem, and when we ask Jesus, over many days or weeks sometimes, it presents itself.

 

Taking Jesus into our boat, as the Psalmist describes, was the turning point for people in their troubles.  Terrible things happened, then they cried out to the Lord in their distress, and things changed.

The missing secret ingredient in problem-solving is prayer.

I am running a small business, and as Bill Johnson mentions in his book “Dreaming with God” it’s amazing how precise and brilliant the instructions God gives you can be when you cry aloud to him in your distress.

And in other areas of life. Friendships, let’s say. It’s often most effective to keep one’s eyes open for open doors and God’s plans rather than to rush ahead, squandering one’s limited energy. See the patterns, see who wants to be friends with you; see who you want to be friends with; see what dots God is connecting. That will be far more effective than simply rushing ahead.

Sometimes, we go through a difficult time because God is working on our character. At other times,  however, we are forfeiting grace and wisdom because we have not prayed. When we ask Christ, he shows us the solution.

 O what peace we often forfeit,

 O what needless pain we bear,

 All because we do not carry  

   Everything to God in prayer.

 

In which light is stronger than darkness

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. John 1:15

Light is brighter than darkness,
Goodness stronger than evil.
All the darkness in this world cannot extinguish a candle
but a candle brightens the most majestic hall.

All the darkness of the wild woods cannot quench a candle,
but that candle can set the vast woods ablaze.

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I am the gate; whoever enters through me will come in and go out, and find pasture. John 10:9

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I AM THE GATE.

I love that image. Jesus as a wide open door, through whom we step into abundant life.

We are never in prison, never entirely the victim of our circumstances. We can always open the door of Jesus, follow the leading of Jesus, into the life we crave.

And when human doors close, there is that lovely door which stands open, through which we can step into His wonderlands.

A door open for everyone.

A God who loves to say, “Yes!”