the goodness of God | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

In which our Sehnsucht, Restless Longings, are Really a Longing for God Himself

Image: My Photograph of St. Paul’s Bay in Malta

So we are looking forward to our half-term holiday—to sleeping in, no stress, family movies…and especially to getting away.

* * *

The funny thing is, we had all that—sleeping in, staying up late, family movies, luscious meals, creaking family dinner tables, and travel– last summer (when we squeezed in an epic drive through Belgium, Germany, Austria and Slovenia in our motorhome) and for 24 days over the Christmas holidays (home, and Florence).

And towards the end of each holiday, I was actually looking forward for school. For a routine. For those rascally girls to get to bed at a half-decent hour, and not sleep in. For predictable silent undisturbed hours to sink into reading and writing.

* * *

After weeks of them being home 24/7, I look forward to school. After weeks of school, I want them home.

You know why? It’s because both are good. It’s all good.

Life is good because it’s a gift from God.

* * *

I am going away later this month, and am really looking forward to sunlight and movement and seeing beautiful things. Sometimes, I have had very exciting, dream holidays, full of doing and seeing and learning—Istanbul, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, and after an intense week or so there, I am surprised by a yearning to be home, to spend a day in my pyjamas, reading or playing around with words.

What? I had so yearned to see these magical places. On my first trip to Paris, I heard an American say on the phone in a rich resonant voice, “I am travel weary. I am homesick.” Travel-weary and homesick in Paris? I thought. Yeah, it’s all too possible.

Life is a gift from God. That’s why at home, we can think of glorious art, architecture, history, gardens, mountains, forests, and the ocean and yearn to be there. And that’s why, in the middle of Rome or Athens or Madrid, I have had a sudden longing to go nowhere, do nothing, just sit with green tea, God, a book, and a laptop.

* * *

“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” St. Augustine wrote.

This restlessness in our hearts is meant to lead us to the one who stills all restlessness.

German has a word for this restlessness, this indefinable longing: Sehnsucht.

C.S. Lewis describes sehnsucht as the “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what.” That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan“, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. (Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis).

* * *

The restlessness in your heart is a God-yearning. Don’t confuse it with what you think you desire— finishing and publishing a beautiful book, having a successful blog, travel, stimulating friendships, the holiday cottage by the sea…

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them,” C. S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory. “These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

* * *

So listen to your restlessness. Listen to your longings. You are longing for more than Alaska, or Antarctica or the Amazon (places I would rather like to see before I die). You are longing for more than to write a beautiful book (something else I would like to do before I die).

You are really yearning for the infinite sea of God. For the ocean of God to pour into your spirit, and for your spirit to pour into the ocean of God, now and in eternity.

You are yearning to abide and dwell in Him, and to be filled with his spirit, which Jesus says is possible in this life.

The things of this world for which you think you yearn are just signposts to the things which will truly satisfy your soul.

This world, this life, which lies, “before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new,” is a gift, a love-gift from God.

Its loveliness is designed to delight, but not entirely satisfy our hearts.

Only the Giver can do that.

* * *

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Pilgrim’s Regress by C.S. Lewis on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

When the Bible Makes You Want to Run Away… A Guest Post by Heather Caliri

By Anita Mathias

(credit Chris Zielecki)

This was going to be a pretty post about God singing back to us.

Zephaniah 3:17 says:

The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

I love this image of God singing back to us, of the music of the universe originating in the one who is mighty. I love the idea of God standing over us like a mother singing lullabies. I love the closeness, the power and music in this verse.

The only problem is the book that surrounds it.

It’s horrifying.

I don’t like reading about entrails being poured out, or people groping like the blind because they have sinned. I do not like hearing about the Philistines being wiped out completely.

I don’t usually like reading the prophets unedited, because I do not understand them.

I have been afraid of the Bible many times when I read it. Sometimes I read it and its words do not speak to me, or the words they do speak are dark and bloody, like something out of a movie I wouldn’t watch for fear of bad dreams. There is darkness and death in the Bible, and I want to ignore it. There is ugliness and pain and condemnation and I want to run away.

I have been trying, lately, to not run away. I have been trying to take baby steps towards being honest about passages that grieve me. I am trying to trust God with His word.

So, I bring myself back, trembling, to Zephaniah. There the Lord is, singing, and there is the death and destruction alongside him. I wonder: how do these belong together? How are entrails and the quiet love of the Lord not just in the same Bible, but in the same book?

And here’s what I see when I read more carefully, when I look through some commentaries and read a few different translations:

I see the power structures of the ancient Near East exposed and condemned.

The foreign powers: the kings that mock the Israelites and their God, who oppress and exile the people.

But also the powers in Israel: the wealthy, the indifferent, the corrupt.

Zephaniah speaks words of some comfort to the humble in the middle of the book:

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s anger. (2:3)

It is something, especially given the verses that attracted me to Zephaniah in the first place. No, I don’t like that word “perhaps,” but it is something.

I think about those causing pain in our world and I can understand, with an ounce of me, the desire for compensatory suffering.

I sit with that ounce for a moment. Here’s what comes to me.

Compensatory suffering: I see Jesus on the road to Calvary. I see him stumbling as though blind. I see them piercing his side, and the water from his entrails running out.

Did the conflagration come? No, God took it upon himself. Somehow, he swallowed whole that awful prophecy and bore its destruction for us.

The truth is, these words, the awful darkness in the Bible is too much for me, but it is often because I hear it echoed each day in the destructiveness of this world. I do not want it to exist, but it does. I do not want redemption to be needful, but it is.

I would like the darkness to be less obvious in the Bible, because it makes me deeply uncomfortable. But maybe uncomfortable isn’t a terrible reaction. No, I’m learning to sit in my discomfort and my honesty and wait for the song to come.

* * *

Heather Caliri

Heather Caliri is a writer and mom from San Diego. Two years ago, she started saying little yeses to faith, art, and life. The results shocked her. Get her free e-book, Dancing Back to Jesus: Post-perfectionist faith in five easy verbs, on her blog, A Little Yes.

Where Good Stories are to be Found

By Anita Mathias

: Image Credit

My tender-hearted children hated sad stories. Neither would let me read Oscar Wilde’s exquisite short stories to them, or even Hans Christian Andersen’s because they were too sad.

When I recommended a book or movie, they wanted to know if it was sad, and especially if it had a sad ending.

But there is no story without sadness, I keep telling them. It’s an old creative writing maxim: No story without conflict.

* * *

Who needs the stress and emotional trauma of conflict with others? And who needs internal conflict—when the self is at war with itself, knowing what is good to do, but doing the very things it hates, punishing itself by over-eating, or over-working, or under-sleeping? By psycho-somatic illness?

But without this internal conflict–this struggle against our very selves: to corral ourselves to rise early, work hard, stay focused, self-educate, eat healthily, exercise, read, write–our lives would be flaccid and formless, with the structure of obstacles, both within and without, to overcome.

And, as Donald Miller writes in A Thousand Miles in a Million Years, dealing with these obstacles head-on (losing 150 pounds in his case, and tracking down the father who abandoned him) gives our lives a shapely story.

Because stories and blogs come out of sadness, and struggle, and failure, and eventual triumph over Resistance.

* * *

And ironically, each failure, and sadness and step backwards gives us more of a story than our successes.

Where are stories found? Not in quiet times, not in scripture study, not in money you gave away, not in fasts, not in the meals you took around, or your turn in the coffee rota, these good, shiny things, which, anyway, by the strictest Scriptural injunction we are commanded to keep secret.

Where are our stories found?

In the places where you learn about yourself, and you learn about God, and you learn about shame and grace and self-forgiveness and God’s forgiveness in the crucible of failure.

When your daughter says, “I don’t want to play scrabble today, Mum, because you get snooty about my words,” and you say “Oh no, of course I won’t get snooty about your words!” and then you do indeed get so snooty!

When the house could so do with some loving up, and indeed, so could those who dwell in it, and you’ve resolved to do both, but words are flowing, and you dance in the flow.

When you had solemnly resolved on that run today and yoga, and weights—you know, flexibility, strength, cardio-vascular, the three elements of fitness!–but an idea presents itself, and you want to explore it, express it,

And the word count may be good at the end of the day, but your Pilgrim’s Progress….well, it hasn’t progressed.

And you wonder why today joy doesn’t throb,

Or peace flow like a river.

And you remember: He who loves his blog more than me is not worthy of me.

She who loves her writing more than me is not worthy of me.

And all you can say is Kyrie Eleison.
Lord, have mercy.

And you kneel down and repent

Till peace flows again.

And you say, “Lord, I am not worthy of you.
But say but the Word
and I shall be healed.”

And he says the Word.

The word like manna,
The word like honey
Coursing through your brain.

And you, the unworthy, are healed

And, again, sing.

* * *
And, besides, you have a story!

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.

All is Grace. All is Gift. All is Good, despite our Sehnsucht, indefinable longings!

By Anita Mathias

Caption: The Bay Where St Paul was Shipwrecked, Malta

So it’s the last day of this half-term, and I am tired. And my girls who’ve worked hard, and Roy, who’s woken early to drive them to school, are even more tired.

We are looking forward to the nine days of the half-term holiday—to sleeping in, no stress, family movies… And especially a five day trip to glorious Ffald-y-Brenin in Wales.

* * *

Funny thing is, we had all that—sleeping in, staying up late, family movies, luscious meals, creaking family dinner tables, and bits of travel– last summer (when we squeezed in an epic drive to Copenhagen in our motorhome) and for 24 days over the Christmas holidays (home and Malta).

And towards the end of each holiday, let me be honest, I was actually looking forward for school. For a routine. For those rascally teenage girls to get to bed at a half-decent hour, rather than the early hours of the morning and not sleep in till noon. For the house to be tidy and not have bowls, mugs, plates, juice-boxes, and chocolate wrappers, scattered around couches and armchairs and bedrooms. Or coats, scarves and socks kicked off anywhere. For predictable silent undisturbed hours to sink into reading and writing.

* * *

After weeks of them being home 24/7, I look forward to school. After weeks of school, I want them home.

You know why? It’s because both are good. It’s all good.

Life is good because it’s a gift from God.

* * *

I am going away next week, and am longing to do so. Sometimes, I have had very exciting, dream holidays, full of doing and seeing and learning—Istanbul, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and after a week or so there, I am surprised by a yearning to be home, to spend a day in my pyjamas, reading or playing around with words.

It’s all good, it’s all gift, it’s all grace. That’s why at home, we can think of glorious art, architecture, history, gardens, mountains, forests, and the ocean and yearn to be there. And that’s why, in the middle of Rome or Athens or Madrid, I have had a sudden longing to go nowhere, do nothing, just sit with green tea, God, a book and a laptop.

* * *

“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” St. Augustine wrote.

This perpetual restlessness in our hearts is meant to lead us to the one who stills all restlessness.

The Germans (of course!) have a word for this restlessness, this indefinable longing: Sehnsucht.

C.S. Lewis describes sehnsucht as the “inconsolable longing” in the human heart for “we know not what.” That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan“, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves. (C. S. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress).

* * *

The restlessness in your heart is essentially a God-yearning. Don’t confuse it with what you think you desire— finishing and publishing a beautiful book, having a successful blog, travel, stimulating friendships, the holiday cottage on the sea, let’s say.

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them,” C. S. Lewis says in “The Weight of Glory.”“These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

* * *

You are really yearning for the infinite sea of God. For the ocean of God to pour into your spirit, and for your spirit to pour into the ocean of God now and in eternity. You are yearning to abide and dwell in Him, and be filled with his spirit, which Jesus says is possible in this life. The things of this world for which you think you yearn are just signposts to the things which will truly satisfy your soul.

This world, this life, which lies, “before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new,” is a gift, a love-gift from God. Its loveliness is designed to delight, but not entirely satisfy our hearts. Only the Giver can do that.

A tale of four famous Christian siblings: When Christian children shipwreck, there’s still hope

By Anita Mathias

A tale of four famous Christian siblings.

A) His ex-wife “alleged that her husband not only abused drugs and alcohol and had inappropriate relations with other women, but also that he engaged in domestic violence and used pornography.

In the meantime, he admitted becoming ever more dependent on alcohol. He was granted “board-approved time away” to deal with his alcohol dependency.

On his return, tensions in his marriage and at the offices of the ministry he headed escalated when he began spending extended time with a young woman who had recently joined. He also had an ongoing intensive friendship with another female staff member.

Source: Christianity Today

B) The third of the five siblings has dealt with a daughter’s teen pregnancies, another daughter’s bulimia and a son’s drug use.

She struggled with suicidal thoughts herself in the wake of her first husband’s infidelity — a discovery that led to a “rebound marriage” of only five weeks.

Source Columbus Dispatch

C) Both of C’s brothers rebelled, using drugs and alcohol.

And one of C’s sons grew so uncontrollable as a teen that his parents called the police to their home. He ran away at 16, spending several days and nights on the streets of Fort Lauderdale.

C. has suffered bouts with depression.

After her divorce and remarriage, she was arrested for domestic abuse of her new husband

Source: Houston Chronicle, USA Today

D. In the news for taking “two full-time salaries and two retirement packages from two Christian family ministries. Last year his total compensation from the two Christian ministries was $1.2 million.”

All these individuals make their living through donor contributions to Christian ministries they run.

* * *

Okay, who are we taking about? A “white trash” family (to use a mean phrase I occasionally heard when I lived in America)? A ethnic minority family on welfare for generations? A feckless illegal immigrant family?

Actually, these are the children of one of the most respected men and Christians on the earth. Billy Graham.

A) Ned. Christianity Today B) Ruth or Bunny Columbus Dispatch C) Virginia or Gigi , Houston Chronicle. USA Today D) Franklin—Thinking out Loud

· * * *

As a young Christian, I read biographies of Billy Graham, and his books, including his autobiography, Just as I am. I admired and admire him. I tried to imitate Graham’s spiritual disciplines (unsuccessfully). I was charmed and impressed by Ruth, as she came across in her books. She was indeed an beautiful and remarkable woman.

I read out these news articles of Roy as I googled them and we were chilled.

How did their children shipwreck?

And, if they did, what hope is there for us unprofessional Christian parents, who know our Scripture less well, who do not have the additional safeguard of practising our faith on a world stage to keep us honest?

If that’s the parenting outcome of the undoubtedly godly Grahams, down to the third generation, who can stand?

However, Billy Graham is on record as saying that if he could go back and do anything differently he would “spend more time at home with my family, and I’d study more and preach less.”

* * *

I think of one of my favourite Psalms, Ps. 130

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;

² Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

to my cry for mercy.

³ If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,

Lord, who could stand?

⁴ But with you there is mercy,

so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

Ah, that’s our hope for ourselves, our parenting, and our children. The mercy of God.

Hesed, the steadfast goodness, mercy and compassion of God which will follow us all our lives.

* * *

And for each prominent Christian family which shipwrecks–and I can think of several off-hand–there are another 2 or 5 who do not.

I think of my friend Paul who was the son of Jack and Rosemarie Miller who founded World Harvest Mission. All five siblings are faithful Christians. As are Paul’s six children. In A Praying Life, he describes how he brought up his children– (one of whom was severely disabled) amid financial difficulties, great work stresses, working two jobs, and his own breakdown–by quietly, steadily, and specifically praying for each of them and their specific needs—and what amazing answers he saw!

He once told me that he asked his wife Jill what she wanted most, half afraid she would say, “A new kitchen.” And she said, “The mercy of God for our family.”

Ah that is what we all need!

* * *

So, there is hope for us and our children, in the mercy of God. And, as I feel more convinced, the best thing we can do our children and family is pray for them. At red lights. When walking. During sleepless nights. While doing housework. In lines at grocery stores. Whenever. As much as we can.

And then trust the mercy of God.

Into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my spirit.

Into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my family.

Into your hands, oh Lord, I commit my children.

anita.mathias