Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

 On Keys (of the Kingdom), and Knowing Where to Cast one’s Net

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So this summer, my husband locked us out of the motorhome, in which lay all three sets of keys, which he had hidden, in case we lost them.

After some colourful and entirely justified language…I contemplated keys. Scraps of metal, smaller than one’s little finger, yet they can unlock homes worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, palaces, super-yachts, safes–and motor homes!

Jesus promises us the keys of the Kingdom. Earthly kingdoms have great variety–the United Kingdom in which I live has mountains, oceans, lakes, palaces, priceless art, golden universities, and storied cities. So too Jesus’s oft-repeated phrase “the Kingdom of God,” means different things to different people. To me, the Kingdom is within me (Luke 17:21). I know I am “in” the Kingdom when I experience peace, joy, love and the awareness of God’s presence and power. For others, it means justice, healings, miracles, shalom, lightning bolts of spiritual power…

And sometimes, it just takes a key, small shifts, for us to enter this Kingdom. Forgiveness, for instance, repentance, persistent prayer, a humble heart, and, always, gratitude.

* * *

In this workaday life of ours, simple shifts can bring disproportionate changes and benefits. For instance, after the crippling pain of sciatica, I worked with a health coach. Losing weight has never been easy, but she suggested that I completely eliminate all starchy carbs (bread, pasta, noodles, wheat, rice, potatoes, oats, grains), and all sugar and chocolate, and limit caffeine and dairy. And I discovered that, for me, entirely cutting out things that are not a blessing to my body is oddly easier than moderation (Moderation kills: Dr. Esselstyn) and weight is coming off, 18 pounds more recently, and I am 40 pounds down from my highest weight. A simple key, a big shift. (I have more to lose, sadly!!)

Similarly, I have always had romantic, yearning feelings about waking up early,  and “awakening the dawn,” but have never been an early riser. My brain lights up around 6 p.m., and I am often alert and clear-headed until midnight—or later. However, I finally followed the gurus’ most common sleep recommendation which is to sleep at the same time and wake at the same time daily, even on weekends, and to keep pushing it back by 1-5 minutes a day until one’s goal time. I am now waking early, and, God willing, will continue waking at even earlier and more magical hours.

I am seeking the keys, the simple secrets of two other changes I want to make …to become a more productive and faster writer, and to write some good words each day (anyone know the secret, please tell me!), and to make time to run an even more organised, decluttered, tidy, super-efficient house. As with the first two keys, there’s probably a simple secret lurking in plain sight. I just haven’t stumbled on it yet

* * *

Luke 5 is an amazing passage. After a hard night of fruitless fishing, Jesus tells Peter, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Peter says he’s “worked hard all night and hadn’t caught anything.” But because Jesus asked, he would let down the nets. He takes the risk. Risking further exhaustion, and looking foolish, and wasting time on a wild fish chase, he goes into deep water again, because Jesus told him to.

And then, “they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.”

 Because of the divine direction.

* * *

I have reached a stage in my life in which it’s almost become second nature to ask Jesus where to cast my nets before I cast them. Almost. When I forget, it leads me into foolish pointless activity, wasted money, wasted time, wasted days, weeks,  months… Oh yes!

I, most memorably, experienced being told exactly where to cast my nets, 12 years ago. I had, the previous year, flung myself into starting a business which I’d always thought would be fun. And it was fun, and exciting, and interesting and I learnt SO much on its steep learning curve, but it was also hard, exhausting work, with no potential for leveraging it, or exponential growth, or passive income.  The only prospect was more of the same.

When I reached rock bottom (which often is a prerequisite for hearing God speak), I read the words from Psalm 81.

“In your distress you called, and I rescued you,

I removed the burden from your shoulders;

your hands were set free from the basket.”

 And I called out to the Lord in my distress, and he lifted the burden from my shoulder, and my hands from the basket, and I was “given” an idea and a business plan, in which a lot of things I had learnt and done in the course of the unsuccessful business, coalesced and which used the knowledge and character and grit and perseverance gained through the business that exhausted me. However, it was far easier, and worked better than I had dreamed of praying for it to, so much so that less than 3 years after I started it,  my husband was able to retire in 2010 from his Professorship in mathematics, and run that small business, which now entirely supports our family.

Would this work every time? Would Jesus tell a fisherman exactly where the fish were every time they asked? Would he tell a Christian investor which stocks to pick?   Tell a Christian medical researchers how to cure cancer with just plants?

He might. We should always ask.

* * *

   However, Jesus’s prime objective for our lives is not easy money, success, or fame. (It’s probably not even health!) Jesus treasures beauty of heart and character, and that is sometimes learned in a hard and bitter school. Grit, perseverance, resilience, patience, endurance, these are sometimes earned and learned when we labour all night and catch nothing, but become physically stronger in the process, and learn not to snap at our fishing mates, or blame them or God for our failure, but instead work past soreness, thereby increasing our strength.

Always ask for the key, always ask where to cast your nets, but be aware that God doesn’t always give us easy answers. He sometimes wants us to use the brains and experience He has given us.

And once we have aced one challenge, God releases us to another, and bigger one. Peter proved he could follow directions, and fish brilliantly when he did the tiring, irrational, pointless thing Jesus advised. He was then released into a nobler call: “I will make you fishes of men.”

The will of God always leads us to a bigger place.

 

 

“If God doesn’t tell you to do anything, then why are you doing things? Why not just sit at his feet?”

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 I am reading, “The Grace Outpouring: Blessing Others Through Prayer. The Amazing Story of God’s Work at Ffald-y-Brenin” by Roy Godwin. Ffald-y-Brenin is a retreat centre in Pembrokeshire National Park, Wales. Roy, Zoe, Irene and I spent a blessed 5 days there in December.

Roy and his wife Daphne, out of their own brokenness, feel called to a retreat centre in Pembrokeshire. They stumble upon the simple act of blessing everyone who comes to them, blessing the valley, blessing the nearby towns. This simple act unleashes miracles–the farmers’ yields go up, the livestock have multiple births, B & B’s win awards, long-submerged streams start flowing. But they don’t seek to convict or convert, just to bless.

* * *

As his retreat centre prospers, and there are miracles, healings and deliverances from oppression, as people encounter the presence of God there, other people come wanting to know his “method.”

But he has no method to pass on. Roy Godwin writes, “The key is searching for God, learning to listen for his voice, burrowing into his heart, listening to what he says, and then doing it, however simple or complex it might be.

If He says it, do it. If He doesn’t tell you to do anything, then why are you doing things? Why not just sit at his feet?”

I love this.

* * *

Because sometimes, God puts you in a place in which learning to hear his voice is absolutely vital and crucial for you. A matter of health and sanity.

For me, as I’ve blogged before, I reached the stage where hearing the voice of God was vital for my life in 2006-2007, when we put both girls into an expensive private school, Oxford High School, and bought our dream house.

It rapidly became obvious that I would need to bring in real money, but how? I had taught Creative Writing at the College of William and Mary before, and found teaching was incompatible with writing, and too great a drain on my energy.

Write rapidly? In retrospect, I wish I had tried that–there have been books knocked off to pay for parent’s funerals (Johnson’s Rasselas) to pay off debts (Dostoevsky’s), but I didn’t have the faith or the energy.

Instead, I decided to start a business. I have three college and university degrees, but all in English and Creative Writing. What an amazing background to start a business with, right?

My first business attempt was exhausting and time-consuming. It was fun (selling antiquarian books) but definitely not sustainable for someone who loves leisure, reading and writing.

And so, as  in Psalm 107, I had to continually cry out to the Lord in my distress, because I was SO tired, and SO overwhelmed, and life was SO hard. And he responded by removing the burden from my shoulders, setting my hands free from the basket. He gave me a sustainable idea–publishing the very antiquarian books which were so in demand when I put them up on auction on Ebay.

And that enterprise was greatly blessed because (as far as I could tell), it came from God’s brain, not mine.

* * *

So I stumbled upon the vital importance of what Roy Godwin says, “Searching for God, learning to listen for his voice, burrowing into his heart, listening to what he says…

I do set aside long hours, mostly on holiday (luckily the rest of my family have more hiking and swimming energy than I have) to seek God’s face, rest in his presence, to run through the details of my life with him, checking in with him about them, seeking his wisdom and guidance and correction on what I am currently doing, and seeking his guidance for the future.

* * *

Now I need to work on the second part of this paragraph, which leapt out at me last night. “If he doesn’t tell you to do anything, then why are you doing things? Why not just sit at his feet?” Indeed!! That is the other part of our life which needs to be put through the sieve when in the presence of God.

The things that are draining and sapping you, did God tell you to do them? No? Then just stop. Why not just sit at his feet and wait?

We need to have drastically pruned lives to bear fruit.

* * *

And so, I am increasingly putting my life through the sieve of God’s will.

What does he want me to do in each area of my life? And what I am currently doing which he never told me to do? And this includes innocuous things, good things, helpful things–but which, however, are not things that God told me to do.