Gospel of Matthew | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Grab Christ’s Hand When You Are Sinking

By Anita Mathias

Hi friends, I’ve recorded a podcast meditation, which I hope you’ll enjoy. Feedback welcome 🙂

Sometimes, the little boat of your life is tossed in

the darkness, in a storm-swept lake, far from shore,

It’s buffeted by waves, with the wind against it. And a dark

figure looms, walking on water, and you cannot see his face,

and you do not know his name, and you are terrified.

And in the encircling gloom, Christ always speaks the same

magnificent words, “Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.”

He comes to us in the darkness, a future that looks bleak,

with unsolvable relational difficulties or financial difficulties, or

when intellect, energy, and organisation feel puny, matched with

our dreams and calling. But it is Christ. Do not be afraid.

And Peter, the risk-taker, from an overabundance of love and

impulsivity, says, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on

the water.” And Jesus speaks another of his great words, “Come.”

Jesus, the merciful, did not ask Peter to do something that

transcended the humanly possible and Peter’s faith, but

since Peter wanted to get to Jesus as quickly as possible, and to

do whatever Jesus did, he gives him permission to walk on water.

We sometimes yearn to do things for which we know we don’t

have the money, time, abundant gifting, or even the character.

Never begin them before you’ve prayed, “Lord, tell me to do it.”

If he says, “Come,” start tackling the impossibility, immediately.

And Peter walks on water, until he sees the almost visible wind,

is afraid, and begins to sink. Fear paralyses, sinks, and destroys.

And Peter prays a powerful prayer, “Lord, save me.” And

immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and catches him,

scolding, “Oligopistos. You of little faith. Why did you doubt?”

And the wind dies down, and Peter learns to keep his eyes

on Jesus and his power when he attempts the impossible,

and to cry out for Jesus’s help when he begins to sink.

Help us, Jesus, you who control the wind and waves,

and all things, when we are sinking in the darkness,

and all seems impossible. Tell the wind to be quiet.

Take my hand, precious Lord. Lead me on. Let me stand. Amen.

On Using Anger as a Trigger to Transform Ourselves

By Anita Mathias

Dear friends, I am continuing my series of short meditations on the Gospel of Matthew. This one, the eight in the series, concludes the meditations on the sublime Sermon on the Mount. Thank you for reading along!

On Using Anger as a Trigger to Transform Ourselves

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” Jesus says. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

And so, Jesus reiterates a law of life: sowing and reaping. “Those

who draw the sword will perish by the sword,” he says. The

swift to condemn will be judged more harshly. For the seeds we plant

in the garden of our lives–our secret thoughts, our words, and the

kindness or meanness of our actions determine our flourishing.

We reap what we have sown in unexpected ways and at unexpected

times, since God, the righteous Judge, observes both our generosity

and our unkindness towards those we judged powerless to help

or harm us, and God holds our lives in his hands.

Jesus does not condemn accurately reading character. That

is an essential life skill—to realise that not everyone is trustworthy,

honest, truthful or decent. Indeed, Jesus warns us about

deceptive, smooth-talking people–“wolves in sheep’s clothing,”

out to devour you. Assess people by the fruit of their lives,

he says; thornbushes don’t bear figs.

However, dwelling on another’s faults, while ignoring our own,

invites judgement, Jesus says. He recommends using our irritation

with annoying or evil people as a reminder and trigger for

self-examination. When we are bothered by a speck in another’s eyes,

Jesus recommends checking if we have a whole log of the same

failing or a greater one in our own eyes. (Interestingly, Freud says

we are most infuriated by our own faults mirrored in other people!).

Obsessive judging is wasted time and energy. We must train ourselves

to refocus that energy into transforming those blind spots, limps, and

cracks in our characters, which so often destroy the house of people’s lives.

Besides, fretting over others’ faults leads only to evil, as the Psalmist says.

We unconsciously imitate speech and character traits we dwell on!

Read a good stylist, and you write better; focus on another’s stinginess,

manipulativeness, or dishonest self-promotion, and you risk mirroring it.

And what of us who’ve been judgey and critical? When we

repent, we live “under the mercy,” in Charles Williams’ phrase.

Jesus forgave Peter, who betrayed him, and he will forgive us.

God devises a unique calling suited to both the naturally sweet and

the naturally outspoken and no-nonsense. Whatever seeds you

have sown into your life, thistles or grapes, place them in the hands

of the God of redemption. Ask him to make the garden of your life

bloom, and to help you do the work he has given you to do.

I would love you to read my memoir, fruit of much “blood, sweat, toil and tears.”

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India in the UK, and in the US, here, well, and widely available, online, worldwide 🙂

If you’d like to follow these meditations the moment they appear, please subscribe to Christian Meditation with Anita Mathias at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or

Amazon Music

or Audible. And I would be very grateful for reviews and ratings!!

If you’d like to read my previous recorded meditations,

9 Do Not Worry About What To Eat: Jesus

8. Happy Are the Merciful for They Shall Be Shown Mercy

7 The Power of Christ’s Resurrection. For Us. Today

6 Each Individual’s Unique and Transforming Call and Vocation

5 Change Your Life by Changing Your Thoughts

4 Do not be Afraid–But be as Wise as a Serpent

3 Our Failures are the Cracks Through Which God’s Power Enters our Lives

2 The World is full of the Glory of God

1 Mindfulness is Remembering the Presence of Christ with us.

Thank you 🙂

Changing the Soil of My Heart, Little by Little

By Anita Mathias

I read the Gospels, I hear them preached, and tap, tap, tap, go my jubilant feet.

The Gospels tell me lovely things I wanted to believe but feared were not true; that fellow Christians often suggested were not true, by their deeds, if not their words; and that our world definitely believes are not true. I read the Gospels and sense everything sad coming untrue, as Sam Gamgee exclaims in his delight.

What only fools gather and heap into barns? And see here: He says, it’s safe to forgive and bless even our pesky enemies, for he has our affairs in hand. And–look, he says prayer can move mountains, lame feet, dead bodies, anything… And look, I am commanded not to worry, but to live free as a bird–commanded, I tell you.

Tap, tap, tap, my toes beat at the Gospel’s jazz rhythm of hope.

“Oh yes!” I resolve as Rilke did when faced with the sheer beauty of the Archaic Torso of Apollo, “I will revise my life.”

I have decided to follow Jesus, my heart sings. I will forever live in the waterfall, the force field of God’s power.

* * *

And then, I go out into the world, where not everyone in the stands is a cheerleader and I am sometimes cheated; where my prayers are not instantly answered and my words are plagiarized.

And something leaks out of me.

The resolve to seek comfort and joy in the filling of the Holy Spirit? Well, it becomes chocolate and the Holy Spirit. And 10,000 pedometer steps, for my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, well…

And keeping the house orderly for God is not a God of disorder but of peace…Well. And waking very early in the morning, while it is still dark to spend time with my heavenly Father. Well…

Oh, I had wanted to speak words which give energy and life, but I hear myself speaking critical words which sap resolve, words which stem from tiredness and frustration, and I am filled with shame.

Oh, wretched woman that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?

* * *

Jesus Christ will, oh yes, he will, through multiple means of grace.

And here is one, suggested by the prophet Habbakuk, 2600 years ago. I will write down the vision and make it plain that I may run when I read it…

What I resolved when I was on fire on the mountain-top, I will re-read in the damp-squibby valley.

I have a sheet of “epiphanies and resolutions” in my prayer journal. I resolutely pray through each desire of my heart, a page or so a day, and when I come to that page, I resolve again.

And I resume revising my life.

* * *

In the long run, failure does not matter. Getting side-tracked doesn’t matter. All that matters is beginning again. And again. The simple glory of persisting.

Yes, I will eat more veggies and walk more because my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and I want to keep it fit and strong. Yes, I will run an orderly house for the sake of my own mental health and happiness and for the peace of its inhabitants. Yes, “there is nothing but love,”–so help me God, I will remember that “all is small save love, for love is all in all.” Yes, I will wake early. And writing, oh yes, writing! I will write faithfully as a bird sings, for that is what I’ve been created to do.

“The essential thing in heaven and in earth is that there should be long obedience in the same direction. There thereby results, and has always resulted something which has made life worth living: virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality– anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine,” Nietzche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours,” Thoreau observed.

And I read my resolves, and I re-resolve, and by persisting with the help of invisible friends—the Lord Jesus himself; God my Father; the Holy Spirit my Comforter; and the protective angelic hosts sent at my prayers — I will more than conquer those invisible enemies of my soul, the birds of distraction, the sun of discouragement, the thorns of hassles and the temptation to earn more than necessary.

And, God willing, my heart through constant amendments with the sun of grace, the water of the word and the compost of Christian community will become good soil, in which those beautiful seeds of the gospel, seeds of mercy, kindness, gentleness and love will be fruitful–ever so fruitful.

The first version of this appeared on Addie Zierman’s beautiful blog. Thank you, Addie.

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