Prayer | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Jesus Prayer: A Prayer to Pray when you are Struggling

I was so angry with my husband Roy one night recently that I could not sleep. Oh yes, the sun well and truly went down on my anger.

And the hours passed (or I assume they did—I never look the time during sleepless nights, it makes me more stressed) and I was still awake, and still furious.

Normally, when it cannot sleep, I welcome it as a playdate with God. I pray through my life, asking for wisdom and blessing and guidance in every area of my life. I pray over my involvements, activities, and future. I pray for everyone I care about.

Now all I could think was Roy’s terrible wrong-headedness (it was very late at night, remember!) I was too stressed to pray in tongues, which is what I often do late at night.

And I knew I was not repenting, not obeying Jesus’ command to forgive. But at that moment, I had not reached the emotional point of being able to forgive. I was still too outraged.

So how could I pray?

* * *

Turns out there is one prayer you can still pray when you have not reached the point of repentance, when you are still stuck in the quicksand of sin, and are longingly looking at heights, at the stars. One prayer we can always pray when we feel lost is the Jesus prayer,

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, repeated again and again in tune with your breathing, until your pulses calm, the prayer prays itself in tune with your heartbeat, and you become the prayer and the prayer becomes you.

* * *

I went to a Festival of Prayer at Ripon Theological College, Oxford, earlier this month, which highlighted contemplative forms of prayer. A treat to find robed Franciscans and Benedictines wandering the campus; I started thinking of The Name of the Rose!

Anyway, I loved my seminar on the Jesus Prayer with Hugh Wybrew. He told us of The Pilgrim’s Tale, discussed more extensively in Gary Neal Hansen’s comprehensive book, Kneeling with Giants (which looks at the prayer practices of Benedict, Luther, Calvin, Ignatius, Teresa of Avila, with an eye to what we can learn from them).

The Pilgrim prayed the Jesus prayer through the day until “his life became so steeped in the Jesus prayer that he prayed it in his sleep. He woke to find his lips forming the words, over and over.”

The prayer was saying itself in his heart, the Spirit was praying it in his heart, the Jesus prayer had become embedded in him, was praying itself through him and in him.

It became “the unceasing, self-activating prayer of the heart,” “a self-igniting flame of prayer.”

* * *

When I come to the Jesus prayer, or, for that matter, to yoga, and begin to pay attention to my breathing, I am astonished at how short and quick it is, how rushed and intense I have been, though I have not been aware of it.

The Jesus prayer is a way, as Hansen says, of drawing the intellect into the heart, of stilling both mind and body through long slow breaths breathed in tune with the prayer, of approaching God in worship with one’s whole self, mind, spirit and body.

I pray it when I am stressed, when I want to calm down, or as a prelude to prayer. I pray it when I am too anxious or distracted or tired or sleepy to pray coherently

I pray it when I need more of God’s mercy, and that is my deep desire, undeserving, impulsive me, so prone to selfishness, so prone to sloth: Mercy.

And who of us does not stand in need of more of God’s mercy?

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

In which Christ Lures us to Secret Prayer, and Promises us a Reward for it.

By Anita Mathias

“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.

A Richer Palette for Your Prayer Life: Martin Luther’s Advice ( A Guest Post by Gary Hansen, author of “Kneeling with Giants”

By Anita Mathias

I am honoured to host this post from Gary Neal Hansen, author of the marvellous book, Kneeling with Giants, in which he offers practical ways to apprentice ourselves to history’s great pray-ers, Benedict, Luther, Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Avila, among others.

background-72245_640 Martin Luther, the catalyst of the Protestant Reformation, needed a shave. And his barber, like the one I had when I had hair, liked to talk. Master Peter the Barber’s question was something like “Dr. Luther tell me: how can I improve my prayer life?”

The sharp blade scraping his neck might have put some pressure on for a clever response, but Luther’s advice was the same as he gave to theologians, ministers and parents: “Pray the Lord’s Prayer.” His full answer came in a lengthy letter, a little book actually, translated as A Simple Way to Pray.

His passion for the Lord’s Prayer knew no bounds. In a preface to his Small Catechism he wrote that if ministers won’t make good use of it “we deserve not only to be given no food to eat, but also to have the dogs set upon us and to be pelted with horse manure.”

Well, Dr. Luther, tell us how you really feel.

Maybe you are thinking the same thing my students say whenever I teach about Luther’s way of praying: “But I already pray Luther’s way! We say the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday in church.”

For Luther, the Lord’s Prayer is not merely “a prayer” to be recited and be done with. The Lord’s Prayer is a list of topics that we are invited to pray about; commanded to pray about, actually. It is an artist’s palette, a full range of colours for our prayer life — more than the monochrome we find when guided by personal interests.

So how does Luther’s method really work? I say a lot about this in Kneeling with Giants but here’s the short version:

I recommend writing out the Lord’s prayer on an index card, no matter how well you know it. Hold it so your thumb is on the first line, and spend a few minutes talking to God about that first topic; then move your thumb to the next line and spend a few minutes on that; and so on.

What might you pray for in these almost too-familiar words?

Praying “Our Father in heaven” you can thank God for adopting you in Christ as a beloved child, and praise the mystery of God who dwells in light inaccessible.

Praying “Hallowed be your name” you can intercede for the Church and the world — God’s name is indeed holy already, but we ask God to help his glory be known.

Praying “Your kingdom come” we ask God to truly reign in our own lives, and in our families, and in our churches, and in all the world. God’s kingdom won’t be complete until he comes again, so here we also pray with the early Christians “Come Lord Jesus!”

Praying “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” can lead to confession: we all have ways of resisting God’s expressed will for us. This can also be a great tool for intercession: when praying for a sick friend we can remind God that the Gospels show Christ’s will is for healing.

Praying “Give us today our daily bread” reminds us to ask God for everything, even the food we eat — even if we don’t like to ask things for ourselves, here Jesus commands us to do so. And we can pray for the millions who do not have even bread to eat.

Praying “Forgive us our sins [or trespasses, or debts] as we forgive those who sin against us” reminds us to keep at the hard work of forgiving others, since we set up our own forgiveness as the standard by which we ask God to abide!

Praying “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil” reminds us that we have struggles, whether inner weaknesses and temptations, or oppressive outer circumstances. We admit that we need God’s help to get through.

Luther did not comment on the familiar conclusion “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever,” but praying it we acknowledge that God has all the power needed to answer our prayers, and that what we really want in asking is God’s glory.

Luther always had a lot to say, however, about the final word, “Amen!” He said to pray it boldly, expressing the confidence that God has surely heard us and will surely answer.

There is not just one thing to pray for in any line of the Lord’s Prayer. Each clause can lead to praise, thanksgiving, confession, or intercession, as needed at the moment. Luther’s point is to pray all the parts, and let Jesus’ own prayer stretch us to bring God everything — even the things we usually forget to pray about.

You can pray through the whole prayer at a sitting, or follow Luther’s other suggestion and sticking to one line for your whole prayer time. One clause per day will bring you through the Lord’s Prayer once a week.

Luther is right about one thing: we need something to guide us into a richly-hued conversation with God. That’s why he thought this was Jesus’ very best prayer. As he put it once, “If he, the good and faithful Teacher, had known a better one, he would surely have taught us that too.”

Give it a try. Take a week or two and follow Luther’s advice. I’d love to hear how it goes for you.

Which line of the Lord’s Prayer is most important to you — and why?
What helps your conversation with God take on more and richer colours?

Gary Neal Hansen

Gary Neal Hansen is the Associate Professor of Church History at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is the author of Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers (InterVarsity Press: 2012), winner of Christian Resources Together’s “Devotional Book of the Year” in the UK, and Hearts and Minds Books “Best Book of the Year on Spirituality” in the US. His current book project explores movements in the history of the Church whose ways of being Christian community blossomed into effective mission and service in the world. He lives in Dubuque Iowa, USA with his wife and their two small children. (Blog: GaryNealHansen.com, Facebook page: Gary Neal Hansen, Twitter: @garynealhansen. Links to Kneeling with Giants (Amazon.com) and Kneeling with Giants (Amazon UK).)

In which I am Learning to Master Anger

By Anita Mathias

(Reuters/Mike Stone)

14 years ago, I was furious with my husband Roy for some just-discovered crime or misdemeanour, and since he was teaching at the moment (in those pre-mobile phone days), and I couldn’t call him, I called our pastor. (No, I am not joking!)

Had Roy been at the end of a phone, it would have gone somewhat like this: I would have yelled, explaining all the things he had done wrong, exaggerating his wrong-doing, my very words making me angrier. He would have answered in kind, raking up my past wrong-doing, an eye for an eye, his very words making him angrier.

If the row had had shades of Armageddonish, the nearest object might have become a projectile missile—and occasionally did!

* * *

So, I tell the pastor all about that now-forgotten, but I am sure absolutely heinous offence—his messiness; something he’d said he’d do but did not; lack of adequate and suitable domestic help probably. I express my rage.

And he says, “Okay, you’ve told me. No need to tell him too.”

I, “But I am still so angry. What can I do if I don’t express my rage to him?”

He, “Don’t tell him. Tell Jesus.”

* * *

Cheesy, huh? Except this particular man was a cool Midwesterner, and the opposite of cheesy.

And over the years, I realized that that is, probably, the best way to deal with anger.

Tell Jesus.

* * *

Biochemically, anger is a build up of adrenalin. The fight-or-flight response says “Fight.” We have to do something about this build-up of adrenalin. Somehow discharge it. Many women clean when angry, apparently. (Effective or not, you, at least, get a clean house!)

When I am sensible, I walk when angry, getting times among my personal best. I mentally compose withering, scathing emails on my walk and when I come back, I am so calm, I’m like: “Now what was that I wanted to say?” My fury has dissipated.

* * *

But having a walk-and-talk with Jesus is the best. Express your anger. Don’t minimize it. Anger is like a red light on your car: “You’re out of gas,” it says. “Stop. Refuel. Change the oil, perhaps.” It can be the impetus to overdue changes in our lives and relationships. We ignore this powerful emotion at our peril. Ignore it, push it underground, and it surfaces as depression, or as the sudden fit of rage and irrational actions which trip us up (Prov. 4:19).

Having expressed it your rage to Jesus: Go to his healing fountains. Let them flush out and cleanse your soul.

Call out as desperately as the man who wakes his friend in the middle of the night, “Jesus, you see my soul. You see how angry it is. Send your Holy Spirit to soak, drench and saturate it. Maranatha.”

And if you can get calm enough to pray about the sources of your rage, sometimes words are given you to resolve the problem without all the shouting, all the sin. When you speak the words given to you by Him who is the Word, they achieve more than hours of fighting which, in general, achieves precisely nothing (positive).

* * *

Sometimes, we need scripture to flush out the darkness of our soul. Once, in a dark November, when a fellow Christian was annoying me, I put on I John and James on repeat on my ipod, and listened to it, again and again, grace rushing through my soul, calming it, sweetening it.

* * *

Sometimes, we just need a little bit of sanctified intelligence or Jesusy thinking to deal with our anger.

On my travels, I sometimes encounter rudeness, or snootiness, or dishonesty or attempted or successful scams.

And I am cross. And for years, I have been telling myself the same thing, “Why should I let their bad behaviour, their sinfulness, rob me of my peace?”

I tell myself that often. “Why should I let X’s sinfulness deprive me of my peace? Use your brains, Anita. You are not without sin. Why should you expect other people to be blameless? Anita, just release the rascal into the waterfall of God. Step into God’s waterfall of grace yourself.”

* * *

Yes, sanctified intelligence and faith help us deal with our anger.

Think of the greatest injustice you personally have experienced. Which made you the angriest?

God know that was going to happen, from the beginning of time. That event, that injustice is just seed, neutral raw material in his hands, from which he can, at any time, bring something beautiful.

* * *

I have another solution to anger. Remember God.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? (Gen 4:6)

Have you been cheated, defrauded?

Who creates wealth? Creates the world and everything in it. Bestows wealth on whom he pleases. Cannot God give you at the snap of his fingers far more than you’ve been cheated of? Forgive.

Have you been betrayed, slandered, lied about, back-stabbed? Tell God. If God is for you, who can be against you? (Romans 8:31). No one can block a career or a vocation which God ordains.

Have people wasted your time, used your energy, used you to further their own agenda?

Goodness, girl. Who created time? Who can stretch it, infuse eternity into it, so that you are astounded at how much you got done in an hour, a day? Who can ensure that the work of minutes is read for centuries, like Pascal’s Memorial is?

God can give our work wings.

* * *

Hey, whatever is annoying you, the sheer annoyingness of the person, the situation, the injustice, it’s all in God’s hands.

He may have deliberately put that person into your life for you to learn the one thing which all the law, and the prophets and the teachings of Jesus come down to: Loving kindness.

* * *

Much anger is selfishness, stemming from blocked self-centred goals and desires. And then we need a heart-transplant. We need repentance, literally metanoia, to change one’s mind.

We need God’s magic: grace to change, soften, and convert our souls.

Grace alone, which God supplies. Strength unknown, he will provide.

Yes, Grace: God’s magic. Flood my soul with it. Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.

On Public Rewards for Private God-Chasing & on Prayer as the Root of a Life

By Anita Mathias

I’ve been to some good church conferences, among them John Arnott’s International Leaders School of Ministry and Paul Miller’s A Praying Life and The Person of Jesus courses. However, the St Andrew’s church weekend away led by Rupert Charkham of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, was among the most refreshing and interesting among them.

Charkham talked about prayer, and about how prayer, by the strictest divine command, must be secret (Matthew 6:6). When we pray, or live a life of prayer, we are OHMSS, Oh His Majesty’s Secret Service, and none should know it but ourselves.

He went on to say that people–even (or especially!) the committed, bustling, ubiquitous church men and women, upfront, on stage, on every committee, running everything—are tempted to neglect the life of prayer because they feel “no one can tell.”

However, Charkham went on to say, “People can tell. Prayer has a profound effect on your life. And prayerlessness has a profound effect on your life. You can’t hide either of them.”

As 90 % of the bulk of an iceberg is below the water, so 90% of what happens in our lives, and what makes us the men and women we are, and makes our lives turn out the way they have, happens in the realm of prayer. Prayer is like the roots of our lives, hidden, but vital to the health and strength of the visible plant–or life.

That’s why there is a quietness about mature Christians. Their big work is done in prayer.

Like giving, like fasting, Jesus commands us to pray in secret, seen only by God (Matthew 6 1-18). As such, it is an act of pure faith, pure love.

We are promised a reward, though. A public reward—“and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you openly.” (Matt. 6:6).

A reward from God. Wow, it makes me rub my hands in anticipation. I am happy to take whatever reward God chooses to give me–whether in the earthly realm of health, wealth and success, or the spiritual realm of good relationships, peace, joy, shalom and happiness. Or, God willing, both!!

The things we do in secret will be revealed openly, both the good things–our prayer lives, our giving, our fasting—and our hidden intrigues, manipulations, evil words and gossip. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.” Luke 12:1-3

* * *

Converting a Gray Plot into Wild Spirals of Colour

By Anita Mathias

When the stream of our lives

Seems to vanish into desert sands,

and we wonder if we’ve lost our way,

When between our talent and output,

Between our aspiration and achievement.

Falls the shadow,

When we have reaped less than we’ve planted

And we wonder if we’ve given our children

Solid skills for this whirling world.

There is still hope. A lever

Which can change everything

And revise the plot

Of what seems like our wasted lives.

* * *

Prayer which can take the story of a life

Which seems hopelessly mired

Unpromising and bleak,

Oh, and just reverse the whole thing!!

Making it burst into colour,

Twists and turns, whirls and spirals

When we call out to the Lord in our despair

He comes,

Scouring our spirits with repentance

Filling them with his Spirit,

New ideas, new vision, new love.

Fresh grace, fresh strength, fresh fire.

* * *

And again and again, when my life

Seemed stymied, and my dreams

Have crashed, and sadness surrounds me,

When I seemed unable to do the simplest things,

Lose some weight

Write some words,

Parent well,

And I cried out to you in my despair,

You came, you came,

Flooding me with your tenderness

Bestowing new ideas, new grace!

* * *

Oh Lord, we see so little of reality:

We see the caterpillar,

Not the iridescent butterfly,

The acorn, not the oak.

But the drab apple seed

Is never the end of the story.

Help me remember, Lord,

That you take five loaves and two fish

And multiply and multiply.

So I give you my hopes,

I give you my dreams,

My weakness, my strength.

Take and receive, Oh Lord,

Breathe on them, transform them,

Bring fruitfulness from these seeds.

When Should we Quit Praying? Or, How to Pray for Impossible Things.

By Anita Mathias

Nik Wallenda performs a walk on a tightrope during a training session in a wind-driven mist at Niagara Falls, New York, on Monday.

Image Credit

I’ve know a lovely man who, a few years ago, fell off a ladder, and broke his back, severing his spinal cord. As a result of that tragic minute, he became a paraplegic, wheelchair bound. They have been told the spinal cord damage is irreversible.

This has been near impossible for his loving wife, in particular, to accept. Prayer for healing has consumed their lives. Going to healing prayer centres, getting people through the country to pray. They have found it hard to be in home groups, because most members lacked the faith to continue praying for complete healing, which, is, apparently a medical impossibility.

But faith that he will be healed has shaped their lives. When they remodelled their kitchen, they put counters at the usual level, not handicapped accessible. She galvanized everyone to pray for healing in time for their daughter’s wedding, so he could walk the bride down the aisle, but, alas, that did not happen.

But she remains convinced her husband will be healed.

* * *

I salute her faith.

However, I have long been on prayer ministry teams, but do not pray for things I lack faith to believe will happen. When a much childless older woman asks me to pray for a baby, I think biology and fertility and inexorable facts, and try to get someone with more faith to pray for her.

To my shame, I lack faith to pray for healing when people in wheelchairs ask me to pray that they will walk again, or near-blind people ask me to pray that they will see. Technically, I believe in miracles; practically, if I can’t “see” it happen, I don’t want to toy with their faith, and damage it further. To pray for something I do not have the faith to believe will happen feels almost like mocking God, and so I get help.

Heidi Baker says the blind have seen and the lame have walked when she has prayed for them, and I believe her. These miracles have been attested by eyewitnesses from many nations. But that is her “anointing,” what she has faith to believe will happen, and so what she sees happen, again and again.

My faith, far weaker than hers, is strong in different realms.

* * *

There is a saying in Charismatic circles: You must see it to receive it.

I frowned the first time I heard that; it sounded as if it came from a productivity book. But I now think it’s true.

Secular people would call it “creative visualization.” Perhaps, you must somehow “see” it happening in the spiritual realm to be able to believe it will happen –and then to later see it actually happen in the physical realm. And so I never pray with people for things I cannot “see” happen or believe will happen.

· * * *

Faith, however, does move mountains. My husband’s small group has been consistently praying for Tamsyn, the Manic Mum, who is a friend of the leader. As you can read, her husband Alex suffered a minor brain injury playing rugby in France with friends, which through a series of unfortunate medical mistakes, led to brain swelling, epilepsy, blindness, drastically impaired speech and movement. The French doctors delicately said he would be “a vegetable.” The English doctors delicately suggested she put him in a long-term nursing home, and get on with life.

As Dr. Dean Ornish comments, the speed and even the possibility of recovery from brain injury depends on love, depends on how much time people are willing to invest in helping you rehabilitate.

Tamsyn, a Christian, refused to accept the predictions and has been helping Alex try to speak, move, respond, cross one minuscule milestone after another, as you can read on her blog.

* * *

And the power of faith and prayer should never be under-estimated. A mum in a small group I went to was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most deadly kind of brain tumour, and given two years max to live. Most people die within six months of diagnosis.

She got intensive prayer from our whole church, and is alive, functioning and even travelling, four and a half years later, despite some physical and mental deterioration.

I put this down to the power of prayer.

* * *

So how do we pray for impossible things?

I think the only way we can pray for impossible things with peace are the twin prayers Jesus prayed in Gethsemane. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

And then, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

Ah, how hard, how inexpressibly hard it is to believe in the good story God is writing in your life when it involves pits and dungeons, as with Joseph; dens and lions as with Daniel. The valleys and depths in which one is prepared for the mountain-tops of glory and spiritual promotion!!

But, hey, ultimately, we are only co-authors of the story of our lives. We need the humility and flexibility to accept it when God appears to be writing a different plot, a different story, than the one we had dreamed of, and hoped for. Accept the plot change, even while we continue to pray for the plot we want.

Oh, this tight-rope walk of faith!! We only get through it without broken hearts because He, whom we love and trust, is our balancing wire as we cross the Niagara Falls of our lives with faith and hope. And a smile!

When Faith falls into Place like a Jigsaw, Piece by Piece

By Anita Mathias

Jigsaw Puzzle Tabgha - Bread and Fish Mosaic

As I was writing on the cosmic significance of the Cross of Christ, I realised that though I was born Catholic, remaining so until I was 21 and was, sometimes, a serious Catholic–even a novice in Mother Teresa’s Convent for 14 months–I had never understood why Jesus had to die. If I committed a mortal sin, I would go to hell–if I had not had the chance to go to confession and be absolved before I died (Do you see how this strengthens the power of the priesthood?)

If I only committed venial sins, I would go to Purgatory, and then after a period there, shortened if people prayed or paid, offering Masses on my behalf, I would go to heaven. Just as if Jesus had not died?

And when–after a six year period in my twenties of not really believing anything very much–I decided to recommit to following Christ, I went to serious Bible-believing Protestant churches.

And when the Atonement was first explained to me, I am afraid I did not really believe it.

Why? Because it could not really be proven.

I had, similarly, not really believed in heaven and hell for those six years, because, for all I knew they were theological inventions, theological fairy tales. I had decided not do anything for desire for heaven or fear of hell, because there was no proof for either of these.

* * *

As an undergraduate at Oxford, I had listened to lectures on Lord Raglan’s The Hero and was struck at the resemblances the life of Jesus bore to these mythical heroes across cultures.

1. Hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3 4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favour with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Numerous heroes fit into this archetype, including Krishna, Moses, Romulus, King Arthur, Perseus, Heracles, Mohammed, Beowulf, Buddha, Zeus, Samson, Achilles, and Odysseus.

And so I wondered: Was Jesus God? Was there a God?

* * *

When C.S. Lewis was troubled by the same thing, in Oxford, 45 year earlier, Tolkein sorted him out by explaining that Christianity is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened:

Lewis writes to his friend, Arthur Greeves,

My puzzle was about the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense the life and death of Christ “saved” or “opened salvation to” the world. I could see how miraculous salvation might be necessary. What I couldn’t see was how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now — except in so far as his example helped us.

And the example business, tho’ true and important, is not Christianity: right in the centre of Christianity, in the Gospels and St Paul, you keep on getting something quite different and very mysterious expressed in those phrases I have so often ridiculed (“propitiation” — “sacrifice” — “the blood of the Lamb”) — expressions which I could only interpret in senses that seemed to me either silly or shocking.

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a God sacrificing himself to himself, I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it.

Again, the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me, provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose “what it meant.”

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call “real things”. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a “description” of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties.

The “doctrines” we get out of the true myth are translations into our concepts and ideas of that wh. God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approached the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also certain that it really happened…

Ah, but I then had no Tolkein to sort me out!

* * *

In my mid-twenties, I yearned to return to faith because my life was not working elegantly, and I thought I had made rather a mess of it. Surely I would do better if I followed Christ, I thought.

When I longed for faith again a North Star to guide; when, you might say, I missed Jesus; a friend, Peggy Goetz, suggested I try to do what Jesus said, and see if it was true or not.

“If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own,” John 7:17 was Jesus’s own apologetic, the proof he offered of whether his words were from God, or his own.

So I started giving to everyone who asked of me; lending and not asking back; praying and keeping a list of my prayer requests. And there was a tidal wave of answers, sweeping me into the Kingdom. Little odd things: I had just moved into an unfurnished house for my Ph. D and realized I’d need to buy a mattress. What a hassle without a car! I prayed I’d be given one, and a student returning to Korea offered me hers the next day. Several coincidences like that! Wow!

And so, real faith slowly slipped into place like pieces in a jigsaw.

* * *

Does anyone become a Christian and then instantly believe all its doctrines? Or do they fall into place, step by step as they did for me? Do we construct our creeds gradually? Yeah, I believe in the Resurrection. Yes, I believe in the Atonement. Yeah, I believe in Hell, because Jesus talked so much about it, though I am uncertain of its demographics. Yeah, I believe in Heaven–ditto!!

I believe!

anita.mathias