Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires
Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art
This was prophesied of Christ by the Prophet Isaiah:
He will not quarrel or cry out;
no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out,
Are you feeling bruised today? He will not break you.
Is your wick almost extinguished? Ask him. He will relight it.
The Beatitudes are the blazing heart of everything Jesus taught. Once you’ve got them, once you’re living them, then you’ve begun to “get” Jesus and the way he thinks.
And I am only beginning to!
For the Beatitudes to travel the longest journey in the world, from the head to the heart, is a life-long endeavour, a matter of stumbling, and getting up again, and I am just learning. I am a disciple, learning cognitively, emotionally, and experientially.
* * *
Mercifully, however, the Beatitudes are not ontological statements of reality. It’s not blessed are the beautiful; blessed are the brilliant; blessed are the bronze-skinned, which you either are, or are not.
Instead, it is blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful; blessed are the pure-hearted, and these are things we choose to be and become through a series of noble choices.
We become gentle by choosing gentleness, again and again.
We become merciful by choosing to be merciful, again and again.
We develop the purity of heart which helps us see God by repenting of our sin, again and again.
Tiny step by step, we inch towards promised land where the meek inherit the earth, and we are shown mercy, and we see God.
* * *
How practically do we enter the blessedness promised in the Beatitudes? I guess it’s behavioural modification. If we are not merciful, we behave as if we are merciful. If we are not meek, we behave as if we are meek.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy, Jesus says. Tempted not to leave the tip after harried service? Leave it anyway. Tempted to let rip on anonymous feedback. Be merciful. Store up credit, and God, the great mathematician, will ensure that you will have mercy in your time of need.
I shopped at Amazon for years before I ever thought of selling there, and, often, voluntarily removed bad feedback I’d impetuously left, thinking, “Blessed are the merciful.”
When we started our publishing business, with just 1 title, then 5, then, 10, too few to outsource all customer service (as we now do, of course), I personally sold books on Amazon, and often had to email to get negatives or neutrals removed. My success rate was amazing—as if the Universe, or God remembered all the times I was merciful, realising that mom and pop in their back bedroom wouldn’t be as efficient as Amazon, so why rate them that way. The mercy came back to me.
The Beatitudes are true, objective statements of reality, whether we realise them or not.
I like Jesus’ great invitation at the end of Matthew 11:“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I like that fact that Jesus suggests we learn meekness by observing and studying him. So, obviously, meekness is not a natural character trait like being sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic or choleric, but a learned behaviour.
I have various mantras, what Gretchen Rubin calls “splendid truths.” (One of these, adopted from her, calms me down: “There is only love.”) I need to add one more: “I will learn how to be meek and humble of heart from Jesus.” Since, obviously, it does not come naturally!!
* * *
Why would one want to be humble of heart? Because pride is silly, narrow and self-centred. We are not focused on anything important, anything worth having, but merely on self, on how others perceive us, and treat us.
Why would one want to be meek? Because being gentle is the best way to be, rather than being proud and aggressive.
And besides, the meek inherit the earth: The value of meekness, even in regard to worldly property and success in life, is often exhibited in the Scriptures. It is also seen in common life that a meek, patient, mild man is the most prospered. An impatient and quarrelsome man raises up enemies; often loses property in lawsuits; spends his time in disputes and broils rather than in sober, honest industry; and is harassed, vexed, and unsuccessful in all that he does. (Barnes Notes on the Bible.)
* * *
So how does one learn to be meek? Practice. Practice meek practices.
So that is what I am training myself to do.
Let others have the last word. If someone puts you down, let them.
Overlook lots of things. Blow things away with the breath of kindness. When spoken to harshly, you don’t need to retort in kind. Return a gentle answer or none at all when someone gets irrational through tiredness. This is particularly useful in family life: the blind eye and the deaf ear so that one can get on with one’s work.
Ignore negativity directed at you on social media as much as possible. Block repeat offenders.
Practice, practice, practice, one step after another, until all this becomes second nature!
* * *
Learn from Jesus how to be gentle and humble, and the prize is the rest we seek, as we work–as we sleep–as we relax–as we live.
Our souls are as rested when we work, or hang out at home, as they are after a week of beach and mountain walks, because we are choosing meekness which obviates conflict, and we are choosing humility, daily defining all our grand ambitions, and then placing them in his hands to grant–or not.
Whoever seeks to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matt 10:39) NIV.
If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. (Matt 10:39) New Living Translation.
* * *
Time cannot be saved; it is a river. It flows, 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. You cannot save it.
Use the hours well, make them shine, and when you cannot, release them without recrimination into the river of time. Already, the giver of good gifts is sending you more.
* * *
Strength cannot be saved. The more we spend it, the more we exercise, the more our strength grows. Are our bodies telling us something?
* * *
Ideas rust and atrophy when saved. But creativity blooms in the expending of it.
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes,” Annie Dillard writes in The Writing Life.
* * *
I reflect on these things, and squirm, since, for much of my life, I have been exceedingly precious, careful, indeed stingy with time.
Donald Miller says in Blue Like Jazz, “I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil, but rather have us wasting time.” I tend to believe him
And so I have been too careful with time, grabbing too much for reading and writing, instead of investing in friendships and activities which would perhaps have brought happiness or health or peace or growth, the rough edges of my character smoothed away.
And I used to burn out with metronomic frequency, growing too tired to read and write.
* * *
Money is the other thing people try to save.
I was relatively relaxed about money as a single woman. When I married and decided not to work for money (except for spells of teaching creative writing at William and Mary and the Loft at Minneapolis), I tried to be careful with money because of guilt over wasting money Roy had earned. And when I was preoccupied about saving and investing–and what a dreadful use of time all that was!!– money was not particularly plentiful.
However, I gradually began to see money as a river from God, some of it flowing to me, giving me the desires of my heart, and some of it flowing through my hands to other people. God was giving me that money to use, or spend, or give away. This river is not to be dammed up and saved, just enjoyed; held lightly, not held on to–for there is plenty more where that came from.
Sometimes I “lose” money, make unwise decisions; sometimes, I am taken advantage of, and money flows through my hands to someone else. That is okay; it is the nature of the river.
When I relinquished my concern about finances to God and turned my attention to other things, they were no longer a particular concern. There seemed to “always be enough.”
* * *
Hmm. Would this work with time too?
“Wasting time?” My father used to ask me with the expression of greatest disapproval and severity (though most of the time, I wasn’t!), and I turned the same disgust on myself if I judged myself to have wasted time.
But I now see “wasted time” as seeds. It’s inert; it seems nothing good came out of it. But put into God’s hands, who knows what beauty may emerge from those seeds?
* * *
So my time challenge is two-fold. To see time as a sparkling river coming towards me, and seek to use it well, while being totally relaxed when things don’t work out as I hoped, and time, apparently, has been wasted.
More, to learn the habit of surrendering my day and its hours to God, giving them to him, asking him to bless them, and work in them. (I haven’t yet learnt this habit!).
* * *
And—here is the challenging part: deliberately “lose” some time, give some time away for the sake of Jesus.
How can I do this?
Now, because my domestic skills are meagre, and because my husband is practical, I do not do much in the way of cooking, shopping, laundry or housekeeping. We have a cleaner who also does some housekeeping. We have gardening help. And Roy who works from home, keeps it running efficiently.
I have often spent more hours serving my church, in leading Bible Studies and speaking, than in serving my family
But for the sake of Jesus, I am planning to help my family in a tiny specific way.
It probably won’t be noticed, except by Jesus for whose sake I am doing it, but it will bring more peace to my soul, and since Jesus says that he who loses his life for His sake will find it, it will be a counter-intuitive surprising way of “finding” time!
So be it. Amen!
I looked at the programme for “The Greenbelt Festival: Where Faith, Arts and Justice” collide, and blinked at the title of a talk: “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.” The description read: Based on the story of Naboth’s vineyard as a perennial tale of land and dispossession. The presentation takes us into the temple with Isaiah as he reaches the depths of despair, to the outer court of the temple as Jeremiah denounces the king, to the Peruvian rainforest as the army confronts indigenous people and to the Scottish Highlands as the people are cleared from the land to make way for sheep. It ends on the hillsides of Galilee”.
* * *
I was startled: What?
“Does anyone really believe that the meek inherit the earth?” I asked my husband, Roy.
Roy said, “Well, Jesus said they did. If you believe the words of Jesus, you’d believe it.”
Oh! I see.
These paradoxes are, indeed, a golden thread running through the teaching of Jesus: Those who give -time, energy, money- receive far more than they have given. Seed sown yields an exponential harvest. The greatest is she who blesses other people. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who can take the lower place will be exalted by God.
* * *
But, you see, I once was young and now am middle-aged, and so my initial reaction is, “What? The meek inherit the earth?” Well, if that’s true, then perhaps I didn’t understand “meek,” “inherit” or “the earth!”
And so I settled down with a Bible, a journal, and a thermos of green tea for some deadly serious Jesus-and-me time.
Because what I believe about these questions is crucial: Do the meek inherit the earth, or don’t they? Is what Jesus says true, or isn’t it? My answers will determine the direction of my life and how I live it.
So what is meekness?
Meekness is a quality of soul and character, unrelated to economics, social status or education. The New Testament word “meek,” πραεις, praeis, describes those who have a mild, quiet, gentle spirit, in opposition to the proud and supercilious.
“The meek are those who quietly submit to God; who can bear insult; are silent, or return a soft answer; who, in their patience, keep possession of their own souls, when they can scarcely keep possession of anything else. These meek ones are happy, even in this world,” Matthew Henry’s Commentary.
* * *
Roy is a mathematician, and has a more logical mind than I do (or so he tells me!) He pointed out that I was puzzled by Jesus’ statement that the meek inherit the earth because I was instinctively equating the meek with the poor. But this is a false equation.
Poverty does not necessarily bring out meekness and gentleness. Friends who worked with Heidi Baker’s Iris Ministries in the bush of Mozambique wrote that though they had brought enough food to distribute, the desperately hungry people fought “like wolves” for the food, so they moved on, without distributing what they had.
Jan Sassenberg who works in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, wrote in a guest post on my blog “Dreaming Beneath the Spires” of being “overwhelmed by the vastness of the suffering around us. Children beaten mercilessly and dying needlessly.”
In contrast, we noticed during a recent holiday in Sweden, one of the richest countries in the world, that children were brought up affectionately and with good humour. (Sweden was, incidentally, in 1979, one of the first countries in the world to outlaw the spanking of children.)
The poor are not necessarily the meek. These countries lead the world in homicide rates—Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, Belize, Columbia, Trinidad, South Africa, and Brazil. The most dangerous countries for women are Afghanistan, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia. And when it comes to physical abuse and economic exploitation of children, the worst countries include India, Nigeria, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos. All these countries have a low per capita income.
Poverty can bring stress, anxiety, bitterness, jealousy, and increased temptations to dishonesty. It can also bring empathy, gratitude, an appreciation of simple pleasures, family bonding and closeness.
Some very poor people are meek and gentle, and some are not, just as some rich and successful people are meek and gentle, and some are not. I have met humble, gentle people at High Table in Oxford Colleges and at Oxford’s magical garden parties—as well as, of course, the opposite. And I have met prickly, arrogant poor people—as well as, of course, the opposite.
Why should I be meek?
Because I am a Christian, and Jesus wants to teach us meekness so our souls may find rest. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt 11 28-30).
And rest is one of the pearls of great price in life. These include: health, love, friendship, fascinating work, and enough money to live a stimulating culture-filled, low-hassle life. And mental peace, shalom.
Without inner peace and well-being, shalom, one cannot fully enjoy the rest of these.
And Jesus promises–to those who are meek and humble like him–the rest and peace we need to enjoy the earth.
* * *
Meekness, like humility, is an abstract concept, best understood and illuminated by its opposite.
The opposite of humility is pride. Pride steals our rest and peace. It makes entertaining stressful. Wastes time and money in the effort to keep up appearances and impress. Leads to conflict in trivial things. It makes us overwork. It blights creativity with perfectionism instead of making peace with good enough. And adds a special twist of bitterness to failure, making it feel like death.
What’s the opposite of meekness? Being pushy, aggressive, loud and overbearing. Self-centred, manipulative, deceitful and scheming. Would you want to be like that? To achieve your heart’s desires? To gain the whole earth, so to speak.
I would not. I would loathe “unmeekness” as a way of life. The stress would not be worth it.
And people instinctively resist the pushy, aggressive and manipulative. Not only do you not find God on your side—for “God resists the proud,” as the Apostle James writes, you may well find the world of men resisting you.
Besides, it is safe to be meek.
There is really no need to be pushy, scheming, manipulative or aggressive.
Why?
Because we live in a world charged with the power of God, and so don’t need to push and shove, manoeuvre and intrigue our way through life.
Because the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.
Because the whole earth throbs with his glory.
Because we do not have because we do not ask (James 4:3), and we have but to ask to receive (Matthew 7:7).
Because he can give me what he pleases without my having to scheme how to get or grab it.
Because when I look out for myself, he lets me.
But when I let him look out for me, he lets me, too.
And I know which is better.
* * *
An excerpt from my ebook and paperback The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth available on kindle and paperback on
Part II: The Earth Belongs to Those who Take the Time to Enjoy It.
“Come you apart from them and be secret,” Christ calls out to us. (Matt. 6 1-18)
We live in a world governed by “the rules,” described by Brene Brown in Daring Greatly: For women, “be naturally beautiful, thin, and perfect at everything, especially motherhood. Be sweet, stay quiet; be perfect moms and wives; don’t own your power.”
For men: “stop feeling, start earning, climb the way to the top, or die trying. Winning, emotional control, risk-taking, dominance, self-reliance, primacy of work, pursuit of status.”
And in the microcosm of church, do these rules still apply? Sure. Men who are wealthy, successful, dominant are feted, and elected as elders, never mind when they last opened their Bibles, or settled down for a time of prayer. For women, being fit, pretty, well-presented, and a perfect mom and housekeeper has become a subset of spirituality in a way the medieval mystics would not have recognized.
But we also uneasily respect those rare birds in our churches: the prayer warriors, the Bible mavens, the mission freaks. They may not be entirely accepted by the cool Christians to whom Sunday morning services are a respite from a week of getting and spending and managing, but we respect them in the way fifth century Christians respected St. Simon Stylites who spent 37 years on a pillar to escape worldly distractions.
But Jesus does not permit us to use our devotion to him as yet another means of gaining status and attention. He advises: Don’t publicly donate or serve on every board to gain a reputation for philanthropy. You might get the respect shallow people accord the rich if you do so, but not the unspecified (but undoubtedly marvellous) reward which your Father will give you. Give generously, but so secretly that your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. Give for your Father’s reward, which will be wonderful, whether it be the success you crave, the wealth you need, the family closeness you want, or health, or, best of all, peace.
* * *
Similarly, with prayer. We might hold sway in prayer meetings, with long prayers whose secret, perhaps unconscious, objective includes impressing people with our soft heart, our passion for Christ, our theological understanding–or even to gossip through the tidbits we drop in, or subtly manipulate people by the things we pray for them. And people may be impressed by our long prayers. And that is all the reward we get. Pretty paltry, huh?
But what if we waste time with God, and–instead of earning, organizing, working, networking, promoting ourselves–spend time in prayer so secretly that no one knows, and no one will guess?
We get God’s reward.
Again, unspecified, but I think it will be really, really cool. It will be the right reward for us, and for our lives. He might crown our efforts with success. Grant us health like Caleb, who claimed he was as strong and vigorous at 85 as at 40 (Joshua 14:11).
He might bless our family with love. Deliver us from evil. Make our plans succeed. Guide us.
* * *
When Roy and I were newly-wed and newly committed to Christ, we joined a Christian “young marrieds” group.
Some of those people have soared the heights—were named by Christianity Today as young pastors to watch, became passionate career missionaries. Others just chugged along, same old, same old…
I noticed the same in Christian friends I’ve known for decades. A few have taken enormous spiritual strides, becoming people of wisdom and spiritual wealth with which to bless others; others remained apparently stagnant.
What makes the difference between a passionate Christian and an average one? I used to think it was whether one actually obeyed the “rhema” word of God–when God highlights certain passages of scripture to your spirit, or clearly speaks to you. And that’s part of it.
But the other thing which makes Christians sweet, rather than sour, and a pleasure to be with, like cool spring water on a hot day, is their hidden life of prayer.
Prayer running through the day like a quiet, underground river, guarding your heart, keeping you calm, giving you guidance.
Walking with Christ, an invisible friend, a secret sharer, who will at crucial times whisper, “This is the way; walk in it.”
And this guidance and direction makes all the difference between one life and another, between a blessed life and another.
* * *
The rewards of prayer include a quieter spirit, a more loving spirit, being saved from sin, God’s blessing, God’s guidance. These we can guess at.
But perhaps, once it’s all over, and the last curtain falls, we will see all the difference our secret life of prayer made to our actual life amid the hurly-burly. We will see all the blessings that came as a result of our secret life of prayer which we were unaware of; all the things we were saved from; all the times life-changing guidance welled up within our spirits–and how grateful we will be that we cultivated the habit of prayer that grew to be so sweet and necessary that we would have done it for its own sake.
But, in fact, God, who is infinitely generous, had rewarded us for our secret times with him in myriad ways we never guessed at on earth, but now see clearly.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen 1: 2-31)
* * *
Darkness and formlessness were the natural state of things. But God loves order and light.
And with four words God created light out of the darkness and formlessness in which he did not delight.
Dawn, sunrise, sunlight, blazing sunsets.
All good.
And he could have given us a world of these, of sunrise and sunset and sunny days.
But he chose to leave darkness. For rest.
And for his own mysterious purposes.
And God pronounced this world, of light and darkness, of birth and death, of babyhood and old age, of beginnings and ends, very good.
* * *
In that beautiful Last Supper, Jesus sits with John, who adored him, practically draped on him. And on the other side, Judas. Sweet love and bitter hate on either side. And, in front of him, his father, on whom the eyes of his heart were ever fixed.
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. (Matt 26:26)
Within a day, he would be dead, and he knew it. And he gave thanks before the brokenness.
For this is the world the Lord has made, there is light, and there is darkness, and God pronounced it very good.
Darkness will turn to light again and again, and one day we will leave this earth we so love, and this life we so love, and be with him who is all “light, and in whom there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5).
* * *
The Spirit of God hovers over the world, insistently hovers, and so we can forth into it knowing that God, the great alchemist can bring good out of everything, all the darkness that sometimes oppresses us.
It can take ten thousand years for the light from the most distant stars in our galaxy to reach us.
And if the speed of light can be so slow, if its story unravels so glacially, why are we astonished when we fail to immediately understand the story of our lives?
* * *
Joseph, in the well, abandoned, betrayed.
All his dreams of glory—had come to this.
It seemed utterly meaningless–because the next chapter had not yet to be written.
* * *
Joseph in charge of Potiphar’s household.
The shepherd boy becomes the head butler in an Egyptian country house.
Was that the meaning of the well, and the humiliations of slavery at the hands of the hairy Ishmaelites?
Only part of it. The story was still being written. He was a character in a story someone else was writing. How could he understand his own story in medias res?
* * *
The dungeon, punishment for righteousness.
“But, Lord, I thought I understood the plot you were writing. Now WHAT are you doing?”
Utterly forsaken.
* * *
But the dungeon was the way for the butler of a small manor to meet royalty.
Again, God blessed Joseph. Again, he rose to the top. And once again, apparent failure and humiliation were the means of Joseph’s elevation to an entirely different social, economic and political circle.
Let no one underestimate the creativity of the Master Craftsman of the Universe.
* * *
We cannot understand the story of our lives while we are living them.
We do not understand the significance of each plot element yet. They seem random, inexplicable, and cruel. It takes the retrospective glance to understand.
* * *
And my story? It has foolishness in it, ah so much—money and opportunity and years and talents squandered.
It has sin in it, my sin, and sins against me. It has apparent dead ends, missed opportunities, wastage, stupidity and heartbreak.
* * *
And because a master artist is still working on it, still writing it, it has gold in it, infinite possibilities for redemption.
I do not yet know how God will weave all the plot elements together into an eternal beautiful story, and make it all the apparent red herrings and random plot twists work out for good, but I know he will. He’s that smart.
And I trust him.
