Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

In which Birds Teach us Not to Worry

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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.

 

The Light and Easy Way of Sanctification or Transformation

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I strayed onto an acquaintance’s blog, and started feeling tired.

Oh, it was all so bossy, so prescriptive. 10 ways to be a better wife; 10 ways to be a better mum; 10 ways to lose weight in a Biblical way; 10 ways to read more spiritual books.

It made me feel so tired. I scrolled through the blogs she had  blogrolled, even more prescriptive and bossy, and began to feel even more tired.

* * *

18 years ago, when I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, I had taken a theological course called Sonship developed by the brilliant Westminister Seminary Professor and founder of World Harvest Mission Jack Miller. It was the most heavily theological material I had encountered to date, and gave me a taste for theology!

At the outset, Miller reports someone raving about Richard Foster’s“The Celebration of Discipline.”

And Miller, a big, hearty, larger-than-life man, laughs a big booming laugh and says, “I am too big a sinner to be fooled by the Celebration of Discipline.”

* * *

Huh? I did not understand what he meant then, but understand it perfectly now. Discipline cannot save us. 10 ways to study scripture, fast, give, serve are not going to change our selfish, self-seeking, ambitious, twisty old hearts. If anything they might just make us more self-righteous. For our hearts to change, we need a heart transplant. We need God to pour his Holy Spirit into us and give us a new heart (Ez 36:26).

* * *

We do need strategies—for ensuring we pray every day, spent time soaking in Scripture everyday, and for our own particular battles: eating healthily is one of mine.

But strategies cannot save us. For me at least, lists of food rules, or domesticity rules or spiritual rules or time-management rules get a bit boring and feel like too much of a strait-jacket and I soon drop them. They are the law, a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? Acts 15:10.

What helps me, and fills my days with sweetness is going through my day with Jesus, sharing the easy yoke.

* * *

I do have food rules, as for much of my adult life, I have medicated boredom, low spirits, stress, anxiety, and even happiness with food. So my two rules are: Limit eating what is not a blessing to your body (sugar, white carbs, chocolate). Do not eat when you are not hungry.

I was energized when I first formulated them, but now, especially that I am walking 6 km. a day, I sometimes buy chocolate or pizza or Indian takeaway after a long walk. The law, my strategies, weren’t strong enough to save me. On the other hand, slowing down, and asking Jesus for help and grace and the filling of his spirit does help me to resist things which are a curse to my body.

Slowing down. I wondering if that is a major secret of the spiritual life.

It’s the same with exercise. I know I will be stronger if I do it. I know I will be happier if I break up my writing with housework breaks (pomodoros) but this is very hard for me, for really, I like to work till done—and if what I am working on takes 3 to 4 hours it is quite painful almost for me to leave it and switch gear. So I need Jesus’s help to get up and get moving more than rules.

* * *

Hudson Taylor after continued spiritual failure, and self-excoriation stumbled upon the secret of abiding, which is known as Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. He writes:

“Not a striving to have faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need.”

Here, I feel, is the secret : not asking how I am to get sap out of the vine into myself, but remembering that Jesus is the Vine-the root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all indeed. Aye, and far  more too! He is the soil and sunshine, air and rain-more than we can  ask, think, or desire. Let us not then want to get anything out of Him, but rejoice in being ourselves in Him-one with Him, and, consequently, with all His fulness. 

” I have not got to make myself a branch. The Lord Jesus tells me I am a branch. I am part of Him, and have just to believe it and act upon it. If I go to the bank in Shanghai, having an account, and ask for fifty dollars, the clerk cannot refuse it to my outstretched hand and say that it belongs to Mr. Taylor. What belongs to Mr. Taylor my hand may take. It is a member of my body. And I am a member of Christ, and may take all I need of His fulness.”

Perhaps this is the easy way of sanctification—to see yourself as a branch in the vine of Jesus, and pray,  relying and drawing on the wells of his strength and sweet life when tempted to indulge your temper, your gluttony, your laziness, or any of the deadly seven temptations.