Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

In which Jesus Commands us Not to Judge

By

 

Do not judge because I am the Judge, not you.

Do not judge because your quick judgement cuts you off from my flow of goodness and mercy.

Do not judge because I am the positive, creative one; your negativity cuts you from me.

 

Do not judge because you are not that smart; you see only in part.

Do not judge because your own experiences colour your sight.

Do not judge because you see men’s public failures, but not their secret victories, the hidden good they did, or the hidden evil they stopped short of.

Do not judge because you know nothing of people’s shaping, crippling childhoods.

 

Avoid those snap, imperfect judgements.

They shut you off from opportunities to learn, to see and to be kind.

Remain open. Ask me to let you see people as I see them–and as they really are.

 

Do not judge because your judgement is confining. People will find it hard to transcend it.

Do not judge because Satan is the accuser of the brethren, and you do not want to resemble him.

 

Do not judge. Keep your mind open in mercy; don’t snap it shut in judgement.

 

Do not judge, because this is an inexorable law I have set in motion: In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

As you wish for mercy, offer it. As you wish to be assessed kindly, do not judge.

* * *

 But Jesus, assessing people is a life-skill. I would be a sheep among wolves if I did not know how to read people.

When you must assess people—look at the fruit of their lives. Their children are a testimonial; how they treat those less important than themselves; the peacefulness of their demeanour; how they respond to reverses, and to their enemies; the things they value; the tensile strength of their relationships.

* * *

 But use your tendency to swift, harsh judgment as a means of growth. See if you do the same thing. When the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eyes bothers you, see if you have a plank in your own eye.

Ask my help to remove it.

So will you use your instinctive tendency to judgement to grow, and to transcend your own weaknesses (which, ironically, will, often be in the very area in which you so swiftly judge).

 

Invite me into your eyes so that you will be able to see people as I see them. Invite me into your mind, as that you will be able to read people as I do.

In which Birds Teach us Not to Worry

By

We can worship God in church, and we can worship God while walking through the spectacular natural world he made, which is full of clues to his character. The heavens declare God’s glory, without words.

Trees, the ocean, the day and the seasons tell of a God who loves beauty, who made all things well, who offers us rhythms as a gift, alternating periods of blazing bright and quiescence, when we gather strength for the next period of full flourishing.

* * *

I think Christ uses examples from the natural world most tenderly when he assures us that the Father feeds the birds of the air, who do not sow or reap or store away in barns, (Matt 6: 25-34).

Or that he clothes in glory the lilies of the field who do not labour and spin. He watches the sparrow, his eyes full of delight.

And we are more valuable.

So do not worry about your life, about the future, Jesus says. Your father is watching you, as you, with delight, watch the finches at your feeder, for whom you’ve laid out food and fat and water.  You are under his protection.

* * *

Do not worry.

Not worrying is a mental discipline we learn with practice, just as writing well, or running fast are creative and physical disciplines we learn with practice.

So I am training myself to be calm, relaxed and super-chilled, to go through my day peacefully.

* * *

Norman Vincent Peale describes, in one of his Positive Thinking books, being hustled from event to event at a conference he was speaking at. He was finally gets to his room, and is told, “Dinner in 10 minutes.” “Yes, yes,” he says nervously, and looks around stressed. Then he realises he doesn’t care if he missed dinner. He could get room service.

He lies down, falls asleep, wakes up twenty minutes later, refreshed, calmly snaps on his bow-tie, and goes to dinner. He had only missed the pre-dinner speaker and the soup, and by all accounts neither was good.

* * *

Kathleen Chesto writes, “A story is told of a safari in the Serengeti. A researcher was rushing to the mating grounds of the African elephant. He had started late and pushed his porters relentlessly to arrive by mating season. On the fourth day, the porters sat down and refused to move. The translator explained they would go no farther until they had given their spirits time to catch up with them.”

Peale waited for his spirit to catch up with him, only missed the soup, and did his evening peacefully

* * *

One thing I have learned from the Peale story, which I think of every time I am running late is that rushing and stress are simply not worth it. If I am running late, I don’t look at the clock at home, or  in the car. I get there when I get there, and enjoy it, and if I’ve missed the soup, so be it.

(Must add though, that having been the girl who always ran late all my life, in mid-life I have realised that being late is a choice, which I don’t need to make. It’s stressful, and a bit rude. Am getting my act together and re-configuring things so that I am late less often.)

* * *

Another area in which I have decided not to worry is my blog. Interestingly, we cannot control the most important factor in the success of our blogs: i.e. how many people read it. Normally, the number of my readers or “Unique Monthly Visitors” in blog and Google parlance rises, month on month. When it drops, in summer or December, I wonder if I should write more.

However, I cannot, at present, see how I could write more, or devote more time to my blog without neglecting the other things God has given me to do—I want to work on a book. I am a wife, and mother, own a house and a garden and a body which I need to exercise. I am a spiritual being, and I need to nurture my relationship with God from which, truly, everything flows.

And so, having spent 30 minutes drafting a blog, I need to lay it aside for the day, and when I am worried that it is static, I need to pray about it as I go about my day.

For it is a Christian blog, and the meat of good Christian writing comes from surrender, from burrowing more deeply into the holy things of God and reporting your findings, and that can be done while gardening or walking.

And so if I find myself worrying if my blog will ever grow, I pray instead that I may know Christ more, and that he may bless my blog, and give me whatever ideas he may have for its growth. For he is kind, and his ideas will lead to energy, not exhaustion.

And so I lean in, and listen instead of worrying–and ideas come.

So that is my rule for myself vis-à-vis my blog: I am not allowed to worry. I am allowed to pray, for blessing, for ideas, for strategy. And, oddly, that simple rule will work for every area of my life.

 

“Do not Resist Evil;” One Way to Heal after Experiencing Evil

By

Image Credit

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.  If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. (Matthew 5 38-41).

Oh Jesus, how costly your words are.

Recently, when I’ve suffered actual or perceived injustice or annoyance, and have taken up the matter with Jesus, I’ve heard him say, “Let him.” “Let her.”

“Just don’t get entangled with evil, with resistance, with revenge. Let them do what they want to do. I am the ultimate score-keeer, the umpire, who will provide you another coat, and strength to walk the third mile on your own business after you’ve marched two miles carrying the Roman soldier’s gear.”

* * *

If we do not “let them,” if we plot revenge, if we put our emotional hooks in our enemy’s flesh, mentally dragging them behind us everywhere, we get embroiled in an endless tit-for-tat world of malice.

The principle of an eye for an eye, applied in the Code of Hammurabi, Judaism and Islam was neat, merciless, and there an end. But in our more sophisticated societies, what constitutes an eye for an eye is not so easily calculated. People extract revenge in all sorts of ways: gossip, slander, blocking, passive aggression, malice, and pettiness.

Sad for the victim, and sad too for the perpetrator—whose character becomes smaller and meaner and shrivels, becoming increasingly cut off from the waterfall of the grace and power of God. Once we put those who have wronged us on a mental blacklist, unconsciously ready to get even given a chance, we are no longer quite so open to God’s guidance; the presence of the Holy Spirit no longer pulses in our souls.

But what are we to do when we suffer injustice? Because we well might. The enemy of our souls stalks this world, twisting, corrupting, darkening. However, he plays against the Grandmaster who will, of course, ultimately win.

* * *

Let tell you a story of my initial failure and ultimate success in one of my encounters with evil. And about one way I have stumbled on to heal after experiencing evil.

Several years ago, I was wronged, unfairly treated, and humiliated. Because this happened at an extremely vulnerable point in my life, it precipitated an episode of “great sadness.”

A couple of years after that incident, through an unexpected turn of events, I got to “whistle-blow,”—I publicly pointed out a severe dereliction of duty on the part of the person who had unfairly treated me. They resigned from their relatively well-paid sinecurish job.

Quits, huh? This person furiously said to me, “Well, you’ve got your pound of flesh now, haven’t you?” And I childishly replied, “No, what you did to me was far worse.”

But yes, I had got my pound of flesh, plus. However, each time I remembered how I had been treated, my heart burned with indignation at the injustice and shaming. I wanted to do something about it, all over again.  Though, I had already done something. As they said, I had had my pound of flesh. (And eating anger probably did add some pounds of flesh to my frame.)

We will never feel quits, never, because the memory of past wrongs feels fresh again. And at the “re-injury,” we again want to get even, though heck, we’ve already done so in so many petty soul-corrupting ways, damaging our souls, damaging our communion with Jesus, and with his sweet spirit.

* * *

And so for our protection, Jesus tells us not to even try to get even. But we are not to sit all tensed up saying, “I will not take revenge. I will not think of a pink elephant.”

There are other ways for the soul to  heal. One is do good to those who have injured you. And what when our soul cannot yet stretch to that sublimity? When we cannot bring ourselves to do our enemies a good turn?

I am reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly.  She quotes psychologist James Pennebaker who says that the act of not discussing a traumatic event or confiding it to another person could be more damaging than the actual event. Conversely, when people shared their stories and experiences, their physical health improved.

In his book Writing to Heal, Pennebaker says, “The act of writing about traumatic experience for as little as 15 or 20 minutes a day for three or four days can produce measurable changes in physical and mental health. Emotional writing can also affect people’s sleep habits, work efficiency, and how they connect with others.”

So then, I write my three morning pages about this particular episode which still made me feel outraged when I thought about it.

* * *

And as I write, I see it wholly, not just all the infuriating bits, but the whole chain of events, including my culpability.

In scripture, a turning point is often marked by the phrase, “But God.”  And unexpectedly, God steps in. As I was able to see those disturbing events more clearly, I was also able to see the good God brought out of them.

He showed me that his loving kindness had been extended to me, though other people may have behaved out of insecurity,  competitiveness, jealousy, malice or in a good old-fashioned power struggle. Augustine writes in his Confessions that his teachers acted towards him in malice or indifference, but God was working too, turning it to good.

I then had been leading and spear-heading something I shouldn’t have been because I was overwhelmed and beside myself in my personal life. I need to get my house in order, literally. I needed to get my business profitable. I need to stabilize my emotions. I needed more sleep, more rest. I needed to write, which I wasn’t doing at all. I needed the desert, which I so chafed against. I needed an Elijah experience of sleeping, eating and resting. I needed to see God in the wilderness like Hagar did. And I needed to emerge from it, strong, leaning on my beloved.

And through my enforced sojourn in the desert, forced on me by these people, I developed my latent entrepreneurial gifts. I established our family business, freeing me to focus on writing. I had time to establish my blog, slowly writing my way to a blogging style which speaks to people. I learnt soaking prayer. I became convinced of the deep love of God for me. My soul healed. And I cut all ties with those toxic people!

God was in the situation, the Grandmaster, putting me in a corner, to rest, to heal, to gather strength for the destiny he had in mind for me. The people who put me in the corner were also pawns in the grandmaster’s hand. Nothing happened to me but what He permitted; nothing, but what He turned to goodness and blessing for me.

Nothing, nothing, happens to you but what God has permitted. Nothing, nothing happens to you that God is unable to turn to good.

Do not resist an evil person. Do not get emotionally entangled with them. If they force you to march a mile, march it. If they take your cloak, shrug it off; let him have it. And then march free, your eyes on your Father, who can give you the cloak you need, the strength you need, whose eyes are on you, who can do anything, for whom nothing is too wonderful.

And Jesus, please give me the grace, if and when necessary, to live my own words—and Yours.

 

Over to you:

Have you experienced evil? How have you healed after that experience?

 

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

By


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

* * *