redemption | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

He Makes the Failures of Friday Beautiful in His Time

By Anita Mathias

Ravaged by grief,

she saw you standing right there,

but did not recognize you.

She was living in Friday,

That traumatic Friday.

But it’s Sunday now,

And there you stand,

In front of Mary.

It’s a new day,

The only day that really counts.

Today.

* * *

Lord Jesus,

I give you the Fridays of my past.

My Fridays of trauma and grief

The Fridays I was betrayed,

The Fridays I failed.

It’s Sunday now,

And there you stand in front of me,

Oh Lovely One!

And you make all things new.

* * *

Cleopas walks downcast,

His hopes have crumbled.

He has seen betrayal, and he has learned

Religious leaders can be evil.

He walks, sad, foolish

And slow of heart,

Thinking of crumbled hopes

And his beloved

Humiliated teacher

Who walks beside him,

Always walks beside him.

* * *

Forgive me, Lord,

For the times I walked in darkness,

Shrouded in self-pity,

Unable to get over past betrayal,

Past evil, past disappointment;

My vision darkened as I considered

Other people’s evil

Instead of clearing the logs from my eyes.

Living in Friday.

Not noticing you

Walking beside me,

Always walking beside me,

Even in my valley of suffering

Offering this heart,

Still puckered with yesterday’s vinegar,

Fresh bread.

It is Sunday, today,

And you feed me

With the breaking of the bread,

And beauty and creativity,

And you say, “Be not afraid of broken things.

Even the Christ had to suffer.

Be not afraid.”

“When you walk through the waters, I’ll be with you

And the floods shall not overwhelm you,

When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned,

And the flame shall not consume you.”

* * *

Thomas says:

“Oh, the failure was dreadful,

Humiliating.

How could it be the Lord?

I saw hasty nails pierce

Those exquisite hands.

The impatient spear

driven into his side.

He failed

despite his prayer,

our prayer,

all the love, the preparation,

the hopes,

He failed.

They killed him.

But if prayer worked,

as he said it would,

If faith could move mountains,

as he said it would,

if his Father loved him,

As he said he did,

If he was God,

As he said he was

Would there have been that disgrace,

The mocking crown of thorns,

The mocking scarlet robe,

The stripping, the crucifixion?

* * *

“Thomas,” they say.

“He’s alive now.”

Faith!

I have no faith left.

I am bereft of faith.

Unless I see the nail marks in his hands

and put my finger where the nails were,

and put my hand into his side,

I will not believe, I say.

* * *

And then, I see him,

And words fail me

And I kneel,

And all I can say is

My Lord and My God.

* * *

Oh stupid Thomas!

Forgive me, Lord for my stupidity.

For believing you come

Only in day, and not in night,

Only in summer and not in winter

Only in success and not in failure.

Only in glory, never in shame.

My Lord and My God

Forgive me for needing

to see your radiant, risen body

To realize that there was beauty too

In the three hours on the cross

When you were the voluntary scapegoat

For a selfish world.

I believe.

Help my unbelief.

Help me to accept from your hands

Whatever you give me

With praise, and thanksgiving.

The lacerated hands,

The mauled side,

They too are part of the beautiful body of Christ

Things you make beautiful in your time.

May I never forget this,

lovely Lord Jesus.

Grieve No More For All That’s Broken

By Anita Mathias

Wheat must be crushed to become bread

And bread broken to be eaten.

The chrysalis crumble for the butterfly,

The egg splinter for the chicken.

And sheets of coloured glass

Must be shattered

To become stained glass

Through which the love of God–

In rainbowed light–

Shines.

* * *

And I consider…

Did growth spring green

From my own brokenness?

It always does!

My rejected manuscript

Got me to hone my craft,

Again, more diligently.

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it:” How the Best Thing can Spring out of the Worst Thing

By Anita Mathias

So Jacob, running from murderous Esau whom he has cruelly and unscrupulously deceived, rests at Bethel.

And in his dream, he sees a stairway between heaven and earth, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And at the top, stood the Lord, who speaks blessing and encouragement.

And Jacob says, “How awesome is this place. This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

* * *

Jacob is in a fix. He has stolen Esau’s birthright, by taking advantage of his hunger and weak character. And then, taking advantage of Isaac’s blindness, he pretended to be Esau, stealing the blessing Isaac intended for him. He is now running for his life from Esau. He will never see his parents again, never return home.

And in the midst of this self-caused tragedy, God meets him, and blesses him.

* * *

When are we most likely to be unaware of the presence of the Lord?

When we are in the land of suffering.

I am working through Donald Miller’s StoryLine.

Step 1: We plot out our life to date, as if were a movie script, or the outline of a novel or memoir, assigning a positive or negative value to each event.

Step 2. We try to see if something good, something redemptive has come out of all the negative plot turns.

We make two lists for each negative event. Along with the list of catastrophic things, we make a list of the good things which emerged from the event.

* * *

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist, founder of Logotherapy, helped thousands of patients heal as he helped them see the good, positive, and beneficial things which came to them or others because of their greatest sufferings.

In fact, once people see the good which has come out of their sufferings, they no longer view it as suffering.

Donald Miller writes, “I now claim what I used to see as tragedies as honest gifts from God. Still painful, but redeemed.

* * *

Doing the exercise was eye-opening for me. I found myself assigning positive values to the most painful, disappointing and traumatic things that happened to me because I now, in middle age, can see the good which came out of them.

Some of the best things in my life have come out of some of the worst things, out of failure, humiliation, shame, and loneliness.

In fact now, there is nothing I assign a straight negative score to, for each of these “plot turns” has led to so much good.

* * *

Here are some of my plot twists:

1) I was “the naughtiest girl in school” in my first school run by local nuns, and got expelled at 8. Who gets expelled at eight? Apparently, I!

As a result, I went to a boarding school, run by German and Iris nuns in Nainital, in the Himalayas, receiving a rather more cosmopolitan education than I would have got in my small Indian town. Boarding school was a calm and very disciplined environment, with set hours for study and reading. I read hungrily and left relatively well-read, having read hundreds of books.

2) After my undergraduate degree in English at Somerville College, Oxford, I was offered a place for a Ph.D in English at Oxford, contingent on getting a First.

I did not, and was overwhelmed with shame.

Instead, I went on to graduate school in the US, earning an MA, and then some of a Ph.D in English and Creative Writing, before quitting that to get married.

I would never have gone to America on my own, but having lived there 17 years, I am as comfortable with Americans as with Brits; have a sort of Anglo-American sensibility; and, psychologically, live mid-Atlantic, which is an asset in the blogosphere.

3) I was so depressed after the rejection of a manuscript in 1996 that I diagnosed myself as “sick,” and decided I needed a physican. I committed to 90 minutes a day of prayer and Bible study.

That practice has changed who I am, and the course and events of my life more than anything else.

4) After a painful conflict (about a group I was leading), I withdrew for a few years from active involvement in church life and politics (though not from church services), pouring my energy first into establishing a stable family business, then into blogging.

The redirection of energy, away from leading Bible studies which I did for over ten years into writing , proved a blessing to me. And I left that church, SO toxic for me, for a grown-up, emotionally healthy church.

A few examples of “negative turns” eventually bringing many blessings my life.

It makes me more convinced that God is definitely working through my life, working through its plot, bringing good out of all the plot twists.

That He was there in each plot twist, though I might not have been aware of it.

Christ says, “I will let nothing be wasted.”

By Anita Mathias

“Let nothing be wasted”

“Nothing, Lord?”

“Nothing.”

* * *

Not the weary years,

Not the silent tears,

None of the loneliness

Which caused that deep, echoing silence

in which we could hear you?

None of our failures

Which silenced the insistent voices

Of those who might otherwise have found a use for us.

We were nobody and nothing

And in the vast silence which surrounded us,

We heard your signature sound:

A whisper.

And the bad days we planted which became bad weeks,

Bad years, wasted to bickering, quarrelling, and anger?

Even them?

“ I will let nothing be wasted.”

* * *

The wise learn wisdom from your Word,

The stupid learn it from experience.

I was stupid, Lord.

* * *

The years I wasted in depression,

Ingratitude, bitterness, jealousy, hatred…

Will I still be as fruitful

as if I had spent them in praise and thankfulness,

hidden in the holy places of the Most High?

“I will let nothing be wasted.”

* * *

And when I overworked so much that I burned out,

And still tried to read, being too exhausted too read,

Those wasted hours and years?

Nothing was wasted.

And I got terrified and perfectionistic,

And revised pieces of work a hundred times,

And have not finished my big book

NOTHING IS WASTED.

* * *

The friendships, Lord.

I expected too much, held on too hard,

Was too impatient, too possessive.

Nothing is wasted.

Oh and how many people I could have loved,

How many could I have got to know

But I–I read and wrote and worried

That I wasn’t reading and writing more.

I and my sweet Roy.

We could have been so happy.

Everything was, is, given us.

But how we have fought!

Nothing is wasted.

And those sweet, adorable little girls

And me adoring them, and wanting to write too

And writing often won.

I was there. With them and with you.

I was there.

Nothing was wasted.

And worry, anxiety…

That my in-laws would land up for months on end,

Would stay forever,

Would run our lives, ruin them,

All the eventualities you averted!

But how long did fear rule me,

Instead of trust!!

And why did I not get it, Lord,

That love is all that matters

That I can trust you in everything

That you mean good when men mean evil

Why did I not learn to trust you instead of worrying?

* * *

Mess, Lord!
I sweep it up,

Shards, tesserae, beach glass,

Broken vases, fragmented shells, beads.

Take and receive, oh Lord:

The mess I have made of the jewels

You have lavished upon me, again and again.

* * *

Nothing is wasted, He says.

I take what you give me:

broken jewellery, broken crystal, broken children’s crafts,

kid’s toys, never assembled, parts missing,

birthday presents never used, now just clutter,

broken pottery, broken dreams, broken body,

And my hands work instantly, busily.

They mould, they shape, join, and paste,

And from what you thought was a Psyche heap

of broken baubles they create

Such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake,

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium.

Nothing and No One is Beyond Redemption

By Anita Mathias

Matthew 1: 1-17

I begin reading Matthew again, and again notice that though the Messiah could have chosen to come from nice, safe, unremarkable, pious humans, he instead chosen as his ancestors those who have messed up and blown it—and had their transgressions recorded in the holiest of books!

Amazing: the Redeemer, the most beautiful human I know of, came from generations of the unredeemed, sinners who’ve spectacularly messed up.

All generational sins and curses are broken in him–and for us who are grafted into him, and live in him, he provides newness, freedom from the sins of our past, and our family’s past.

The Holy One comes from the unholy, proving NOTHING we have done, no matter how we have blown it, wasted our time, our lives, our talents, destroyed our relationships, nothing is beyond redemption.

* * *

Those repeated generational lies on the part of Abraham and Isaac, “She is my sister,”–not beyond redemption. The little bit of Do-It-Yourself assistance Abraham provided the promises of God in fathering Ishmael with Hagar–not beyond redemption.

Or Rebecca helping God out in doing what he had promised, by the gross and heart-breaking deception of Isaac. Jacob, the deceiver, the scheming grabber of the main chance, becomes the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Judah, who slept with a prostitute, and his daughter-in-law Tamar who incestuously slept with him disguised as one. Rahab, the good prostitute who sheltered the spies.

Redeemed, all redeemed, chosen as ancestors of GOD become flesh. Sexual sins, sins of manipulation, anger, fear and lack of faith—none of these preclude redemption.

* * *

Goodness came out of all these lives. Sweetness from what was very messed up.

And King David with his eight wives and ten concubines, who could not resist the beautiful woman he saw bathing, and indulged his desire, his weakness, his lust—his adultery leading to murder of Uriah, the righteous Hittite.

And—oh sing redemption’s song!–out of his weakness, out of his sin, his lust, his adultery, his taking of Uriah’s one lamb, the murder and adultery he so bitterly regretted– out of that came the wisest man who ever lived. Out of that came the Messiah.

And Solomon, with his 700 wives and 300 concubines, who was given wisdom, knowledge, wealth, possessions and honour (2 Chron 1:12) and the honour of building a glorious temple to the Lord.

And out of all the wicked kings of Judah, whose actions lost the Kingdom and led their people into captivity, the Messiah came.

* * *

Because the father-heart of God cannot help himself. We are his children, the work of his hands, he cannot help redeeming us, as we– come on, ‘fess up—if we can, when we can, give our children a leg up in the rat-race of life. Whether they are eminently deserving—or not.

* * *

And what a comfort that is, that nothing I have done is beyond redemption.

That I can place all the silliness–things done stupidly, impulsively, hot-headedly, selfishly, maliciously, sinfully!—place them in his hands,

His kind hands which work fast and skilfully,

Redeeming, working all the foolishness and weakness into a new beautiful story for my life.

One by one, I bring to him my sins and failures, the times I have messed up, sins in my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, my church relationships, all these wobbles, bring it to him who amazingly, incredibly, died for me, and they are redeemed, washed in the blood of the lamb. Washed whiter than snow, repurposed.

Oh, take it all lovely Redeemer, take my life, past and present, work on it with your strong brilliant hands; make something beautiful out of it.

In which I ponder False Starts & Dead Ends, & God says, “Come, Dance.”

By Anita Mathias

I set aside a few hours one day a week to declutter.My maternal grandparents left a house full of a lifetime’s stuff which neither they, nor their three unmarried children who lived at home, had ever dealt with.And the accumulation made their house seem small and cramped and dark.

Oh, how much space it took up. Whole corridors and large sections of rooms!!

And my father died, prematurely, after a few dreadful months of sorting it out, tossing it, selling or trying to find homes for it. He didn’t even get to enjoy or use the stuff!!

* * *

Yesterday, I heard my friend, David, the son of John Bendor-Samuel, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, UK, say in his Sunday sermon that his brilliant father was a hoarder and left two rooms full of papers, magazines, sermon notes, lecture notes, and journals, which David is stolidly dealing with.

I can’t stand the thought of leaving mess and papers for someone else to sort out. It’s just plain wrong. And so, I declutter once a week.

* * *

It’s a bit of a sad exercise, really. I see projects started with enthusiasm, which proved abortive. Courses I took which were a red herringish waste of time. Diaries filled with “Lunch with X and coffee with Y,” and you know what, twenty years later, I don’t remember who on earth these people were. I look at To Do lists: “Reply to A, email B, thank C.” Who are these people? They are all out of my life.

I look at projects taken up and abandoned. I love French, but early into my French classes, I bought the complete Remembrance of Things Past in French. Oh-uh!!

How many hobbies and interests I plunged into by buying a pile of books on the subject!!

How much I tried to do with my own strength instead of relying on God!

How long it took me to focus on my writing!

* * *

And, the odd thing is, when I look at these things I poured my intensity into which were unfruitful, which failed, or disappointed me; things I wanted so badly which I did not get, or which I got, but which did not satisfy me; false starts, dead ends, I have the same overwhelming sensation.

And it is not sadness.

It is someone saying, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I sense God’s overflowing love.

What?

Well, when does a good parent love their child most? Feel most protective? When they have aced their exams, or when they have truly blown it, and are down in the dumps? When they experience rejection, failure and sadness, or when all is sunny?

And he who is melding the shards of my life—wasted time, wasted energy, wasted intensity–into a beautiful stained glass window sees me turn over these scraps of wasted things sadly, and says, “I will let nothing be wasted.”

And he says, “Yeah, I know. I know: you did all that in your silliness without enquiring of me. I love you anyway. I love you.”

And he says, “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”

And he says, “Come, beloved. Want to dance?”